City Council - Regular Meeting

Everyone, thanks for joining us this afternoon. I think the mayor is running a few minutes late, so I think we could go ahead and get started without her. Um, before we jump into the much anticipated water renewal history and overview presentation that we missed last week, um, I would I'll ask the clerk to please call roll. Corus here. Ali Burton here. Morales here. Nash dead here. Well, it's four present, two absent.

Great. Thank you, Haley. Over to you. On got our tech worked out. Madame Mayor, members of council, thank you for having me and do appreciate the schedule change. I think this will lead to a good conversation today. Um, today part of two Haley Falner, deputy director public works for water renewal services. uh glad to be here kind of leading first of two parts talking about water renewal. This is a bit of the kind of background and overview leading into a a bigger conversation on prioritization and funding in a future meeting. There we go. Uh by way of just a little bit of background on water renewal services, this is the wastewater utility for the city of Boisee. We collect and renew 30 million gallons of water every day. We do this at two primary water renewal facilities. Lander Street is located off of Veterans Memorial Parkway and West Boise is located off of Chinden out by the HP campus. Um we have over 300 staff and water renewal with a real focus on protecting the Boisee River and in doing that we collect over a million data points on the river every year. The entire system, the thousand miles of pipelines, our pump stations, these five facilities are valued at approximately $4.5 billion. It's a pretty hefty amount there. It's a big number. Um, and those facilities are 75 years old at Lander Street. West Boise is turning 50 this year. So, we've got some assets that have been around for a while. And really, this kind of the entirety of this work in this system is what we'll be talking about. Okay, that mouse doesn't want to play. Um, today's presentation focused on that background of water renewal, the planning efforts that we that have been underway and ongoing over the last decade. We'll spend some time talking about the drivers that really form the foundation for water renewal work, the risks that we're experiencing, and we'll touch into

the the funding a little bit today, but really looking toward that May presentation where we'll be seeking direction around the project priorities and the funding strategies. So for today, really want to make sure that you all have the information that you need to inform that future direction meeting. So if there are questions today or also information we can get you between those meetings, please let me know. And I do have a couple places in the presentation today to pause for a bit of dialogue so that we don't have to wait until the end. I this is a slide that has probably been repurposed a few times but I think worthwhile to spend a little bit of time on. In 2015, we embarked on our water renewal utility plan process. And this was really a different approach at looking at what would be the strategy and the direction for water renewal for the city of Boisee. And we started with a conversation or a series of conversations with the community. In that um three five years of work, we engaged over 2700 community members in 20 different types of activities to ask questions like, do you know who provides your water renewal service? but building into what is it that you expect of the city and of water renewal services in doing this work and each of those pieces of information we took and then we would go do some of the technical work to form the plan bring that back to the community to say did we hear you'd ask some more questions so we did that cycle a few times uh we included an in-depth six-month advisory group process to really dive into the ways that we can use the water as a beneficial resource and in all of that produced what is the utility plan or the strategic direction for water renewal that was passed in 2020 and the work that we've been doing since then has been to implement what was in that plan and I'll refer back to this a few times today because I'm going to just there the vision and values of the utility plan remain

consist consistent since that was since the plan was developed and adopted these continue to form the foundation of our work what we heard from the community from mayor council and what continues to be reiterated in our engagement is to protect the Boisee River. That that is the cornerstone kind of an anchor point of this community and we do that in water renewal by providing reliable operations by providing enough system capacity to serve the current and future growth in our community. That we plan and prepare for our current regulatory requirements and future regulations. and that we're investing in creating a resilient future really tied into our climate action work. The plan itself is a document that is adaptive and we look at that and update it, but it also came with kind of projects and other other activities that are the outcomes of the plan. And a couple examples of those a commitment in the utility plan is that that 75-year-old facility in Lander Street will be replaced over the coming decades. that we are keeping that facility and in order to meet those those drivers that we just talked about, we'll be replacing Lander Street. The utility plan committed to increased reliability and redundancy at each facility to match those needs and that we will have new facilities to support recycled water for the growth in the community. And then there are a lot of operational and organizational updates and changes that we've made to be to be able to deliver on this changing work. And the plan itself was was married to a a financial strategy. These things came together where we had the plan that said, "Here's the vision and where we're headed." We also had a financial strategy that came along with that 2020 utility plan. At that time, the 10-year capital costs for the plan were around $750 million. The funding strategy for that included the bond approval from 2021, which was the $570 million bond authorization that passed with voter approval of 81%. And the remainder of

that funding is through cash funding rates and fees. That financial strategy did always include um an anticipated second bond authorization in the future. So this is the first place I want to take just a moment and ask if there's any questions or comments on the water renewal priorities that planning process itself or the financial strategy from 2020 before we move on. Madam Mayor, yes. Haley, just a quick question. When talking about funding and the um so I know it's 2020 plan, was um the thoughts of how much these were going to cost and the money we went out for bond based in 2020 or was it another like 2018 2019 when we did the planning?

Madame Mayor, mayor, council member Corass, a combination. So the planning from the actual 2020 plan was based on 2018 numbers. The bond was then updated be and and then projected in future costs because the bond vote was in 2021. So those numbers were updated at that time. And so there was some projection in those costs of what it would be. There were and madame mayor, council member, some updates as well to reflect some of those early um cost changes we were seeing at the very beginning of CO in 2020. Great. Thank you,

Madam Mayor. Um Haley, um tell me if we're going to get into this and and I can pause and get the answer a little bit later, but um one I had forgotten that it passed the 81% which is pretty cool considering our open space and clean water levy was about the same percentage and here you're asking for you know water renewal um and not necessarily you know parks and stuff in the foothills. Uh but when we went out and we asked uh folks for this bond, we were kind of giving them some different projections of, hey, we could do, you know, bond financing right now. What that will allow us to do is keep some rates a little bit lower, you know, short term and kind of gradually go up over time versus a huge spike at the very beginning and across the board. Um if we're getting into this, let me know. But how did we deliver as far as what we told folks um what our plans were with the renewal bond and how we've spent that money so far? Yeah, Madame Mayor, Council Member Hallebertton, I have some of that here today to talk about where we've been and then a bit of the look ahead and where we're asking and kind of looking for that partnership with you all will be in the next meeting. So, let's maybe at the end of today if there's something that's needed between now and then, uh, that will be helpful to know.

Sounds good. Yep.

Okay. The next kind of section here, I want to talk about the work we've been doing. I know we've shared some of those updates. Certainly you all see some of the contracts and things coming through, but also what has changed in the landscape of water renewal, not just for the city of Boisee, but broadly for infrastructure and what we've learned from that and a bit of what that means moving forward. We have sort of in the kind of outcome of the utility plan and those projects that we committed to, we have either completed or have ongoing and underway about $465 million of capital projects at Lander Street, West Boise and in our collection system and with the development of the recycled water program. So, there has been and will continue to be investment in the highest priority, most critical projects to meet those drivers. Here's some pictures that give a little bit of a snapshot of the scale of the work that we have at each of these facilities. To look at it sort of from the aerial view, this is an aerial of Lander Street from 2015. The bottom kind of just cut cut off this image is the Boisee River. Just over here on the bottom right of the screen is Veterans just to orient us. So this was at the beginning of the utility plan what Lander Street looked like. Right now, this is the 2026 image of construction at Lander Street. Uh, this is a facility that treats about 10 million gallons a day, and we are continuing to treat that wastewater and meet regulatory compliance. Our teams there doing an excellent job, but also this is the scale of construction to get through that replacement of this infrastructure and adding the capacity and meeting the future regulatory requirements. Right now, we're in a second of what will probably be three phases of work over the coming decades to fundamentally replace this facility. We have similar work ongoing at West Boyisey, although in earlier stages, so not quite the dramatic aerial photo. Um, and then I want to talk a little bit about the recycled water program as

well. So this has been both the development and creation of a new program to deliver recycled water as the new capacity for water renewal as well as a project um associated with that. So a couple of different things and the work that we've talked with you all about is has led to some learnings and some things like how to purify the water, what are those treatment technologies that it will take to produce an uh have an advanced treatment facility and produce purified water. We've had ongoing conversations with our community about the priorities around the water quality and the use of the water. Much of our work has been in combination with our regulatory agencies and our technical and consulting engineering teams on how are we going to recharge this water into the groundwater. Certainly the kind of first of its kind type of project in Idaho. to the permitting strategies and how this will look with DWR and and the Department of Water Resources and Department of Environmental Quality. And lastly, you know, we've we've started on the design of that facility to get additional information and what that would look like to take. And all of these pieces have been kind of components as we build out each of these programs that we've learned and that inform kind of some of what's coming in the decisions before us for water renewal. That's sort of what we're facing kind of inside the fence and what we've been doing. Wanted to zoom out just a little bit on some of the nationwide challenges that are affecting us here locally. Um certainly as we talk about infrastructure and in this case we talk about water renewal infrastructure nationally. We are seeing kind of the impacts of deferral and investment um in infrastructure and replacing aging assets. That's something that's in a national storyline on the amount of investment that's needed for water and wastewater infrastructure. Certainly something that we will continue to talk about here. For the regulatory requirements, whether that's discharging to the Boisee River or going towards recycled water in a different type of

use, we are seeing an increase in regulatory requirements in both of those spaces. So, the water quality will continue to get more stringent wherever this water goes. We've talked about it and I think council member Coriss and asking about the cost. The cost of projects and I'll talk about it a little bit more here in a moment have certainly gone up in the last five to six years since that plan was adopted and that's balanced with a lack of federal and state funding to support this type of work. Again, not unique to Boisey, something we're experiencing on a broader scale, but certainly something we're feeling here. And then the workforce and contractor challenges that's in the house, that's outside of the house to deliver on this work kind of ties into those cost and delivery pieces, but also our ability here to to do this same work. Um, I'm going to take a minute to describe what's on this slide, but I think it tells an important story. So on the the bottom axis here is time. It starts in 2014 and goes through 2024. So we have a 10-year snapshot. And the the y-axis here is just the percent difference from 20 um 2014 and the kind of increase over time as a percent. And what we're showing is the change in cost for different types of materials that are common in water and wastewater construction. So we've got plastic pipe and fittings. We've got other types of pipe like concrete and steel. We've got valves and pumps. And what we see here is there was an increase in the cost of these materials in the first part of this 10-year time span. And then at the kind of COVID timeline when we saw cost increase dramatically we do see a pretty dramatic change in the cost of these products and while some of them have come down certainly not they haven't gone back to the same trend that we saw before co um and this does not capture the impact of the last couple of years. So the just generally the cost of materials as well as the cost of labor and delivering this work is something that has changed dramatically in the last five years since the plan was

adopted. And then those were kind of the national picture. This is a little bit of the local impacts that we have that we respond to in water renewal. So with the growth and the changes of growth and how that's happening and the type of development, we look to what's happening through planning and we reflect that in our utility plan updates. And so that can look like changes to where and how and the density of residential development, what's happening with commercial and industrial. and we update our planning efforts to then reflect that which then changes what we may expect to receive in the future at each of the facilities. As we've seen the increased cost um on our projects as well, similar to what I shared in the last two, our response has been in many ways to defer projects off of the capital plan. So, in a commitment to stay as close as we can to that capital plan from before, we've pulled projects off that we we know that we need for one of those drivers, capacity or regulatory requirements, and we've taken those off the capital plan. Um, and now we're seeing that there's we're probably at the time where some of those will need to come back on. And then the [snorts] last two as we look at planning for the future around climate change, climate resilience, increases in drought, that was a big part of the foundation of the recycled water program. development is planning for the future and keeping that water local to respond to the resiliency needs of our community. And [snorts] then with the age of our 50 and 75year-old and in some cases older than that with our pipelines, um we have increased what our preventative maintenance system and planning looks like so that we can get the most out of those while we plan for the bigger capital investments. A big part of coming today, I think, is also talking about the risks that we're experiencing in water renewal and what that what that means for the system and why we're we're here talking about this. And in a lot of ways, these risks are

kind of the opposite side of those vision and values, kind of the drivers we talked about earlier. So, we want to be planning for current and future growth in the community. One of the risks of the amount of investment we can make in our system and what projects that we build is the limited ability to support that growth. Um the what we may start to see as risks and impacts is equipment failure or emergency repairs. Those can be pretty reactive and not as proactive as that preventative maintenance regulatory non-compliance. the impact of that. You know, the pictures are indicating, you know, some of what that could look like, a sanitary sewer overflow, water quality impacts, or a limited ability to use the river. All of those things come together with a loss of community trust. And these are the these are the things that that we kind of focus on to avoid. And that's really the kind of the flip side of those drivers. But the foundation of how we plan and the priority of the planning is to reduce the risk in kind of reduce the highest risk that we're seeing and invest in the projects that bring those risks down. And uh had to have an equation in here somewhere. So this is the uh simplified summary of a little bit of what we've been experiencing because it hasn't been any one single change since the utility plan was passed. It's this combination of effects between increasing demands on the system. For example, the amount of flow that's coming in, the water that's coming into our system has not changed in the amount of growth that we expected, but the stuff that's in the water, the loadings that we have to treat has increased at a higher rate than what we had planned for and what we had experienced in the previous 5 to 10 years. And so as those loadings and kind of what's coming in the water changes, that means we have to build different amounts of infrastructure to treat those to the same regulatory requirements. That's kind of one example of those increasing system needs. And then we've

learned a lot as well as we've built out these programs and invested in this work, heard from the community and met with the regulatory the regulators. We've learned more about what's going to be expected sooner and what we could be doing in the future. And it's the combination of all of these changes that is bringing us to a point really at the next meeting where we'll be talking through what it might look like to realign what some of the projects and that delivery looks like and what needs to happen first to allow us to then invest in the kind of the future needs that we have. Okay, that was a lot in that section. Um, and I did I think this is a good place to pause before we jump to some of the financial pieces. So, just wanted to ask for if there's any kind of clarifications or comments on the upgrades I talked about. Um, what risks were experiencing or these challenges or any of the changes that we've experienced because that was a compressed update of the last few years. Madame Mayor, um, thank you so much, Haley. think it's um sorry I jumped in before council member Corless but um before we get to the financials it's very easy to say um I the water renewal might not be something that's on front of the papers every day the work that you're doing but it's so important and I know that the water treatment and clean water access to water clean rivers is so important to our constituents um and I I know that we've we're facing some challenges that I think you covered and we'll also face on the next couple of slides. But um I'm really supportive of the staff's creative thinking on how we could approach this in the um under the current I don't know the current challenges that we're facing. So really really appreciate you bringing this to us um allowing us to really sit with some of the challenges that you've been facing on a regular basis and uh look forward to seeing really how we can continue to support the work at the

level that I think our residents have come to expect from us.

Thank you madame mayor. Um thank you. I certainly uh public works and a water renewal is not as uh probably as well received as maybe a new park. But uh more important, we need to make sure that we have safe water and um we're processing water as needed. My question though for you Haley is you had mentioned um loadings in the water have increased and what's coming in that water is different than what we've seen before. Um can can you kind of give us some examples so we know how to think about that? Yeah, Madame Mayor, Council Member Corass, uh, it's we have investigated this one to see if it was from a single like from one type of business or one type of industry or if it's something that's been more broad and it's a combination of all of those. So, it's in some cases we have seen an increase in what's coming from the dischargers that we have contracts with. Sometimes that's industry, sometimes that's the, you know, the sewer districts or other users. But it's also been just from our residential and commercial base that we don't monitor individually, but we track kind of as a as a collective. We've seen an increase in those loadings as well. So, while we've been maybe more efficient in the water and kind of water plumbing infrastructure, we see less water coming our way. We're also seeing more of the loading distributed across our different users. There's not a singular point that it's like, oh, it's only coming from this place. It's It's from multiple sources.

Yeah. Being on septic, it's definitely not coming from my house. But [laughter] um are we seeing things like additional I mean I've heard things of you know with our clothes are more plastic and these are things that are come off in the washer and are going back into the system. Is it is it plastics? Is it um Oh, can you give us an idea of those types of things?

Madame Mayor, council member, it's what we're looking at in those loadings is pretty kind of the traditional things that we remove. So while we are paying attention to microplastics, this is really in the solids um and the nutrients that we have to treat for. So what comes from what's in our human waste, what's in the detergents, what's in the commercial and kitchen waste from restaurants. So we measure it as total suspended solids and biochemical oxygen demand. But it those are surrogates for kind of what is in the water that we then have to build treatment capacity for and bring that's what we're regulated for is those pieces. So it's um it much of it is coming from human waste but it's also coming from kitchens, grocery stores, restaurants all all the sorts of users that we have. Does that did I answer your question?

Yeah, Madame Mayor Haley. Thank you. And I imagine this isn't anything unique to Boise that this is something across the country we're seeing. Is that correct? That's correct. Okay. Thanks,

Madam Mayor. A couple things. So I think with the load discussion, there's also probably more folks that are flushing. We have a lot more efficiency as well. And so you've got the same amount of load, but you've got less water that's being used at the same time. So there is some efficiency of like, oh, we actually guessed right about on the right amount of water. Um, but some of that I think is maybe an efficiency thing. Um, two, uh, I'm just kind of wanting to go maybe back in time a little bit when I was first on council. Council member Beijing and I think we're both on the public works commission and like I cannot believe how many times we had conversations with uh public works coming forward talking about this aging infrastructure, billions of dollars of pipes that are underground and some pretty horrifying pictures of what some of the conditions of those you know pipes kind of look like um that were been been being replaced for the last several years. And so I guess I just want to focus a little bit on some of the things that have stayed the same and then some of the things that have changed. And I guess what I've heard is that one of the things that have stayed the same is is why we're doing this. Um this is what the community told us that they wanted. Um they wanted clean water going into the Boisee River. They wanted to make sure that we were, you know, treating our water, that we were investing in recycling water, that we were becoming more drought resilient. Um all these different types of things that we were replacing our infrastructure before there was a catastrophic event. All those things seem like they've sort of stayed the same and I guess I would maybe just say a little bit amplified. It feels like this year having no snow pack in the mountain where all of a sudden the drought is right right in front of her face. I'm wondering if any of the the why of when we put this word in the first place, have those changed? Are those really still the same thing? It's just the challenges that have really sort of popped up that are different or am I hearing that wrong? Yeah, Madame Mayor, Council Member Hallebertton, the the why and those I probably should have put that slide back in as to reiterate those drivers are unchanged and we do we continue to hear that. Invest in the system we have, meet our regulatory requirements, allow our

community to grow, build in the resilience, the challenges that we've experienced maybe have reordered what needs to come next. So that investment in aging infrastructure and understanding where we've got some priority needs there maybe we thought we had more time on some of that infrastructure or those solids loadings that we talked about the loading changes will likely pull forward some projects that we didn't have originally planned in this time frame because we're seeing more of that to treat. So the the drivers haven't changed maybe the order of which things are at the forefront right now is what is adjusting. Okay, wonderful. Um, one of the questions that I remember having or was such a major part of discussion uh several years ago, a lot of it had to do with the temperature of the river and the temperature of the water that we were putting back into the river. I'm wondering if if some of our investments have been helping with that, if that's becoming a larger challenge, if you know increased load, decreased water, like I imagine that there's still some challenges here. Are those growing about the same? Did we predict that right or how I know that that's a huge deal as far as what we can discharge as far as temperature- wise goes in the water. Can you give us a little bit of an update on what our status is there?

Yeah, Madame Mayor, council member, temperature and phosphorus are are at the forefront of the things that we treat for that are the the most they're in our permits right now. We are required to do that and they are the things we we don't have um the final technologies in place. With temperature in particular, it varies by season. We as humans are much warmer than the river and what the fish like for spawning and living. So there is that is a challenge for us. That's an area that could be a different update if we wanted a little bit deeper dive. But we've been looking and working with the Department of Environmental Quality on some different solutions to temperature regulation to say how do we get to the right temperature of our water or invest in other types of projects like the enhance the river work and stream bank restoration and habitat for fish that's really focused on that outcome which is the fish in the water and not losing sight of temperature and continuing to do things to bring that down where we can. but also avoiding investment in major capital that doesn't have the same outcomes for the fish in the river that we'd want to have. So, that's a that's the simple answer. It is uh it's an area of big focus for us right now is working through some of those regulatory strategies to be able to prioritize as the city which order of things should we be doing for the outcomes that meet the expectations of the community. Okay. And can you go back to the slide that has kind of the really badl looking graph? That's the one. So when we were going through this process, um I think one of the things that we were maybe hoping for and maybe we see in just a few areas is that this really high escalating price was going to go really far up, but hopefully would sort of return, you know, maybe not back down to where it was, but back down a little bit. And sort of what I'm seeing, and I realize that we can't see 2025, is that it seems like it really went up and then it just kind of stayed

Yeah. stayed about the same. Um, and that tells me that I don't know that there's any huge signs that it's going to, you know, drop back down, but like this is probably kind of what normal is looking like at this point. I know that when we were working on at least the first phase of Lander, I think we were able to get the first phase completed under budget. Um, and so as we kind of get into the finances, I just kind of want to make sure that when we're when we're predicting here, this is one of the areas where we thought that we would actually come back down a little bit and now I think as we're going forward realizing that that's not the case. Is that am I getting that right,

Madame Mayor? Council member, that's correct. I've I think I've brought a different slide in the past that showed chemical power and labor costs that follows a pretty similar trend nationally and regionally and we haven't seen that come back down to where it had been. Yep.

And that's yeah that I do we reflect that in how we've adjusted. So we've adjusted to these changes in cost by how many projects we put on the plan to invest in um not by what we that's what we have done is by sticking to that that plan. And then my last thing and I'll let us move on. So in addition to these costs staying pretty high um at this point I think that we can predict that continually our regulatory requirements um are only going to increase. We're going to want to make our water cleaner and cleaner and as we get more science that comes out about what's in our water, we'll probably have to treat more stuff. And so there's more complications and I I would be guessing more cost involved in that as well. So sort of both the higher cost and then the complications of treating the water sort of has two different impacts I think as far as finances go. Am I understanding that correctly too?

Madame Mayor, council member, that's correct. Our our costs the where we and we try to plan for that on what we anticipate those future regulations would be. So we're not making decisions today that may change in the future and certainly that's um changes as that regulatory landscape does. But those will be increasing costs and levels. What that looks like is either additional tankage like we currently have or additional types of technology to remove more from the water so that it's cleaner whether it's going to the river or going to recycled water. Great. Thank you. Yeah.

All right. Just as you jump into the next section is on the the funding needs and approach. Yeah. I wanted just to um set the stage for this since I missed the beginning. I mean, we we've had a great presentation so far. I love council member Halle Burton's history having been on the public works committee when um the water renewal you uh the rup I'm just going to say rup right now. I'm so stuffy. Same

that it's I don't know why it's affecting the words that I can say too. Um, I have given the graph that we just ended on as such a perfect spot to really stop and reflect because we had this election with over 80% support in 2021 and it was just about the time that prices really started changing. But all the work that we did in front of that even at election day we you know were working on this the assumptions that that made sense at the time. The whole world and the con construction industry has seen um just es escalation in prices. But I have asked staff um and they they continue to deliver to think hard about how we can both meet the needs of our system to provide clean water to create opportunities for economic um development and growth and residential development and growth in the future while also recognizing the real impacts that raising rates have on folks. Um, and so the the the numbers are going to show us will set us up then to speak in the next meeting about capital needs um to align that ideally with our um develop our look at development and planning and um new parts of the city, but also um set us up for the the budget meeting and then any future discussion we might have about that next stage um bonding and if there's next stage bonding is originally anticipated in the years ahead. Um, so appreciate all the work that's been gone gone into this. We're going to see some needs, numbers, and costs that, you know, are different than we had anticipated, and we're being mindful about how we approach that. Um, but also want to acknowledge the the work and intentionality that's gone into keeping our rates as anticipated despite these escalations that we've seen because it's been um a priority of of ours as a council, my my myself and the office, and the city as a whole.

Thank you, Madame Mayor. And I think before there's disappointment totally there are not numbers in this presentation. Oh, there aren't already. Um more the graphic representation of what we're experiencing and as we work through towards that next we've got a series of kind of ongoing tasks that are still underway to get pulled together for that May presentation. So there are some numbers but not the ones for the future needs. Um I did we I think council member Halbert see I consider this numbers these are numbers there are numbers on this numbers in the future

these are that's true [laughter] uh this is in response to have we have we stuck to the plan so this table shows what was projected for annual rate increases coming out of that 2020 utility plan and with a couple of exceptions we have stuck to this um stuck to this plan. I think there was one year that was a bit higher. Um this shows those rate increases on an annual basis. What we're experiencing now is the increasing costs that we just talked about on each of those projects that we have some more projects we need to build to maintain that service reliability and regulatory compliance. And to the question of our drivers haven't changed. That direction still exists. but the prioritization of the reliability and meeting the growth and capacity needs of our community are what's coming forward in the work that we're seeing right now and that this will be the areas for conversation and what does this look like as we move forward and I just have a couple of more slides to set that stage. Um this is the so this is the graphic representation of what we're experiencing and what we will be bringing back tied to projects and numbers in the next time we meet. But let me tell you what's what's on here right now. So on the bottom is years going from now through 2035. And on the side here would be the the relative dollars. Um this is you know before we have the full kind of numbers built out that we're bringing back. The blue the top of the blue line here as we go through is oh shoot is represented representative of what we had anticipated for project needs on an annual basis in that 2020 utility plan. So that that's showing kind of what we had anticipated roughly. The black dashed line is the representative of the amount of available capital with that kind of rate table we showed on the previous slide. The difference there

really being that the potential for that second bond authorization. The green is what we're experiencing based on all of the changes that we've just talked about from regulatory requirements to the current needs of our our system to support current um the current kind of population and growth and future needs in the near future. There is a gap between our available funding and the project needs in the next 10 to 20 years. And um this is intended to sort of set the stage for and and kind of building on what the mayor shared what what it is that we'll bring back numerically in the next meeting. Um we talked a fair amount about this in the prep for the bond election in 2021. So this slide is a slide that we used then with some minor updates. But as we're talking about the ways in which we fund this enterprise fund, there's cash and there's bond funding. Um, in other places there might be some other options as far as grants and other things, but for the purposes of this, we're really comparing these two. On the cash only side of things that the improvements that we invest in are are paid for by user rates and fees to do that. and council member Hallebertton what you shared earlier we would likely experience higher near-term rate increases to bring the revenue up early to be able to invest in those when we're paying with cash or with rates we we don't have that interest payment you'll see the asterk we have current loans and bond funding so we do have some current bond funding there and those projects that funding is today's as we make those those rate increases early today's users today's customers are paying for those And then with bond funding added in, then we have the option to include bond funding and rates or cash. That allows for that kind of leveling of those rate increases with lower near-term rate increases. We do add in an interest payment. So in

addition to paying for our projects and operating costs, we're paying for interest over time. And the projects are then paid for by current users, but also distributed to future users as well because we have that bond funding. This is a piece of that conversation and the scenarios of what that looks like. So bringing back the capital and the projects, the timing of those and then the scenarios around how we fund it is what will come back in a future meeting. Um we so we were at a conference a couple of weeks ago on it's a utility management conference for water and wastewater and one of the speakers shared that the pace of change the last 10 years is more than the last 50 years combined and the last six months has been more than the last 5 years and that is broadly in change and innovation. It's not limited to water and wastewater, but certainly those changes that we shared earlier are what we're experiencing. And much of that comes with now a need to zoom out and rep prioritize and figure out what the next best step is. It also is an opportunity for us to say what's the next best thing for us and how do we capitalize on some of that change and innovation in a way that's opportunity for us. And right now we know that the investments we're making at our facilities are the highest priority projects to meet those drivers. Those projects are on time and on budget. Um we had the 2020 rate increase plan that we we have honored that we've stuck to that and looked for other ways to change the projects so that we could stick to that plan. And now we are at a place where we're seeing a gap in the funding for those new system needs. But we've got options that we want to be able to have that conversation with you all on how to close the revenue gap. And so next time as we come back together, kind of two parts to that conversation. The first part around the water renewal priorities, the specifics of those

projects and which come first and why uh tied back to those those drivers and then we'll be looking for direction on the project priorities and the funding strategy. So not a decision around that funding strategy. I think important to set that expectation on what it is and the specifics, but understanding like we're looking for kind of feedback and direction that there there could be a change in that funding strategy that allows us to go do that work and bring back for future conversations on what that strategy will look like in detail. Madame Mayor, yes. Um Haley, can you go back to the rate changes?

Uh oh, sorry, this one. Yeah, thank you. So, um these this is the actual rate of change in utility billing. Is that correct, Madame Mayor? Council member Corass, this was the projected rate increases for water renewal kind of across the board for those years. Yes.

Okay. And so with the bond, um I just want to make sure I have a good understanding how we set this up for the public where we're at today so that we know we're going forward. And with the bond, we said short-term there'll be lower increases. So these are those lower rates. Is that correct? Okay, that's that's correct, Madame Mayor. Council member, the comparison I we can send that back out in the meantime if needed, but I think it was around a 50% initial increase with the no bond alternative. So that's that higher rate increase up front and then lower long-term with no bond funding. and the mayor next

and I just said on the side but I'll say it the reason if I remember correctly was it was so there was such a big increase at the beginning was because we would have been paying cash for the improvements so we'd need to raise that money immediately so we could spend it so we were looking at a 50% increase at that time had we not go with the bond that's okay right um thank you

yeah madam mayor um yeah just if I could on that one It it was significant. It was it was I don't remember it being 50, but if it wasn't 50, it was pretty darn close to it. And then there was additional increases even after that 50% as well. And I wish I could phone a friend and have Patrick Bent uh explain this, but he did such a good job at explaining it from an equity standpoint and the reason why we did that bond um funding. And this slide really captures it as well. Like had we done that cashonly funding the current residents of Boisee at that time would have been fronting all of the costs for future growth at Boisee going forward and because we went with the bond funding we were able to certainly have some of the community members who are here right now investing but really long-term the community members who are going to be here and using this infrastructure for the next 50 years um contributing to it as well. And that was really I think such an important point from an equity standpoint. it's it's not just the current users, it's all the people using it in the future and not necessarily fair for that first group to pay that 50% increase um right up front. So that was such an important point I think when we were making this over $500 million decision um you know to go out for funding which is probably the biggest money-wise decision I've you know ever made on on council outside of a annual budget. Um and it was a big deal. I think one of the things that would be helpful going forward for the next presentation is to know based off of the amount of funds um through the bond financing the 575 million that we had expected to raise how much of it we've spent how much is left over what the projects that we had wanted to get done um are remaining and what we think we can get done with that with those funds and that will I think kind of tell us how far can our original plan get us um and with you know future bond funding which we always expected there would be an additional bond um how far that's going to uh take us as well. So I think that both of those things would be would

be extremely helpful and then can you go to the very last slide? So the other thing I was I can't help but thinking about like in this moment what are the things that we can control and what are the things that we can't control. We don't really know if uh federal funding will become more available in the future or if it will become you know about the same it is as it is right now which is not a lot. Um hopefully it does. Um but can't necessarily control that. Um can't really control the weather. Uh you know, how much water is coming down in the mountains and so we have to be more resilient. One of the things I I hope that's on our mind is that while there will be growth as council, I think that we have the opportunity to control where some of that growth is. And I think one of the things that would be helpful in our larger discussions about land use and specifically land south of town, what how our decisions potentially affect finances and our investments in infrastructure um in really really meaningful ways when we're looking at a bond versus investing in infrastructure that currently exists or investing in growth that currently exists because I think that that's a a major decision as we have these other decisions we're having on council related to airport or influence areas and um our um different zoning and different uh um aspects of where the city stops and starts. I think it does have an impact on water renewal. And so I I hope that we can make those conversations intersectional and I guess I'm looking at marine somewhere here in the room as we're having these conversations with PDS and our area of impact. I just can't help but tie the two of these because I think that it is something that we can control. Um, and when we're looking at what we can actually afford to do and the challenges that we're faced, I just don't think that we can ignore how tightly those two things are are interwoven and the different types of infrastructure that might need based off of its residential, industrial, different parts of town. All

those things are linked and I think will be really helpful as we, you know, make large financial decisions going forward. Madam Mayor, um, Haley, if I could build on that, too. And I just looked at the time. I do want us to be mindful we're like 20 minutes over, but go I go ahead with yours and then um I'll ask if you all could share um information through staff with what more you'd like to see in the presentation.

Okay, I'll be really quick. I think building on what um council member Holly Barton had said um I think in my mind if we had a a 500 um apartment building, right? um unit apartment building um in downtown or um on central bench. Then we take that apartment building and we put it out southwest boy at Lake Hesol and Cole. How much does that impact I think is what we're getting at. If we could look to see is there much more impact what it is. Is it more in piping? I think that'd be helpful. And then also um looking at different or different types of waste causing us um more or are or more costly to process like industrial u versus residential would be helpful to know. Yeah. As we're looking at planning. Okay. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you very much. And next up we've got a presentation on um housing. I'm really excited about this. Nikki Heling Camp. Looks like Nikki's here to present, but I don't know. Everybody else is listed, too. I see um Deanna, Doug, like we've got all the partners here. Um is Nikki the pres presenter for everybody? No.

Oh, you're presenting too. Great. Okay. Um, I just want to say on this as we're getting set up that um, the Urban Renewal District, CCDC, the Boise City Ada County Housing Association um, and the city have all been working together to look at more new ways and more ways we can be more impactful in our shared goals of um, addressing affordability and increasing housing in the city and really excited about this presentation from the three partners.

Great. Thanks very much. Uh, Madame Mayor, members of council, really happy to be with you here today. Uh, Nikki Olivier Helenampamp. I'm the director of housing and homelessness policy in the mayor's office. Uh, as the mayor mentioned, joined here today by Diana Watson, the executive director of the Boisee City Ada County Housing Authorities and Doug Woodruff, the director of development at CCDC. And we also have Kent Rock. Thanks. I was about to do interrupt you, but no. No. I'm so glad you're doing it because I wanted to make sure we acknowledge Kent, too. Go ahead. Yes. Welcome back to his home turf. Uh we've got Kentrock uh the board chair of the housing authorities and former city treasurer. So

he can check the numbers for anything that anyone wants a second opinion on jokes. Um okay so again thanks so much for having us here. Uh we are bringing you an overview essentially of the various tools that uh related to housing affordability that are available to each of our three entities. uh a proposed joint housing strategy and uh before you tonight in the consent agenda is anou that would memorialize that joint housing strategy uh and that'll as I said be before you tonight for approval. Uh so in terms of just an overview uh I think we all know that housing affordability continues to be a challenge here in Boisee and that addressing it is critical to the economic growth and vitality of our region as well as to the quality of life for our residents. We know that we need more housing. We know it needs to be affordable to residents across the income spectrum. And each of the entities with you today, the city of Boisee, the housing authorities, and CCDC has an important role to play to address housing affordability and has access to unique tools to do so. So staff from all three of our organizations have collaborated on a review of our respective policies. And what we found is significant opportunity to better align those policies and to stack programs with an end result of creating more housing and supporting deeper affordability than any of our organizations can accomplish alone. So today we're here to provide an overview of a proposed approach, some context about existing agency programs and their constraints and next steps including thatou that I mentioned. Um, this slide has a lot of words, but I'm going to tour you through them. Don't worry. Uh so the challenge here is that we've got each of our organizations has distinct tools. We've got CCDC with its authority to acquire and dispose of property. We've got the housing authorities with their ability to do

conduit bonding. And we have the city of Boisee which has our land trust program uh it should say gap financing on here and incentives to expand affordability. The challenge here is that while each of us individually has seen success with each of these tools, they've largely been used in isolation, which limits their utility toward making an affordable housing project financially feasible or reaching deeper levels of affordability. So, if you're an affordable housing developer and you are trying to combine these tools in order to make a greater impact on our community, the challenge that you're going to face is that there's really no clear path for doing so, right? You are going to have to navigate the differing policies of our multiple organizations and it presents a myriad of complications and unknowns and particularly if you're trying to do this in a time limited manner, it becomes almost impossible. So without this kind of coordinated process, we know that we are missing out on opportunities to bring more homes and more affordability to our community. So to streamline how our tools are used together, staff are bringing forward a jointou which would allow our organizations to create this predictable multi- agency approval process again with aligned policies and requirements. Uh before we get there, uh we'd like to provide you with some additional context about the tools that each organization can leverage and the ways in which they've previously been used uh by each of us individually. So I'm going to pass it over to Doug uh to talk CCDC.

Well, thank you Nikki and good afternoon Doug Woodruff. Uh so good to be before you this afternoon. Uh up on the screen is uh a map of the city of Boisee. very familiar to all of us. Uh overlaid with the uh five active urban renewal districts in the city of Boisee. Um CCDC as the city of Boisey's urban renewal agency administers these districts. Uh and we have the jurisdiction and authority to make focused reinvestments within these districts. For the most part, you'll see that uh we have three downtown districts that serve the core. Um a large district about six and a half miles long. uh along State Street uh which is emphasize emphasizes transit oriented development. Uh and then the gateway east district on the south end of town in between the airport and uh the Micron facilities. With each one of these urban renewal districts uh is an associated urban renewal plan. And for the most part um outside of Gateway East which is really focused on economic development. The other four districts do have objectives that are focused on mixed income neighborhoods uh with aims to support and catalyze uh housing at a variety of affordability levels from market rate down to low income. We really do see the value of having mixed income neighborhoods as it creates a resilient environment. There's a lot of benefits um that come from that as well. By state statute, CCDC uh has certain authorities of how uh it can invest the um incremental tax revenue it receives. For the most part, that's associated with public infrastructure. So, think streets, roads, utilities, water renewal, uh and um al also some some others like uh environmental

remediation of brownfield sites and the ability to acquire and dispose of property for purposes of redevelopment. So, currently across all of our districts, you're seeing or we're implementing u neighborhood revitalization projects, um mobility improvements, uh as well as uh stimulating economic growth. What's that? That's okay. Yeah, we'll keep going. I didn't know this was karaoke, but we'll I'm game. I'm game. Uh and through all of these projects we have been prioritizing for um quite a few years now um support and assistance in in bringing more affordability uh in the housing projects that are being developed in in our city. The way that we are are doing that one of the main ways CC does CCDC does this is through the participation program policy. Uh this policy is what governs the agency's public private partnerships. Um, and this is basically how we administer uh financial assistance with funding public infrastructure. And what what the program aims to do is by assisting with the cost of public infrastructure, it reduces the overall development costs associated with building housing as well as hotels or or whatever um project may be um seeking assistance. But specific to housing, um, our assistance helps lower those overall development costs, which in turn can can be translated to lower housing prices for, uh, for the per people that are living, uh, in the new homes. What we've seen over the years, uh, is our participation program and the level of assistance that can be provided, aka the amount of public infrastructure costs that are associated with developing a project. those costs um can translate to um finding uh agreement

with uh the developers to provide housing affordability at an AMI range between 80% and 120%. Which is beneficial and that's a part of the spectrum where where housing income uh levels need to be uh addressed as well. To Nikki's point, more could be done with with some of these joint efforts that we're speaking about today. Uh we continue to update our participation program policy over the years. It was originally adopted in 2013 and was amended in 2019 and again in 2023. Uh and we have the ability to to amend it um in the future, too. Uh in 2023, some notable changes to the program included uh increasing incentives for affordable housing. uh we updated our type three program um which unlocked quite a bit of um assistance uh otherwise unavailable to to affordable housing projects. Uh and we've seen one notable example of that is uh the Wilson Station project the city uh developed uh recently. The other piece of the work that happened in 2023 was uh establishing a shared affordability covenant with the city of Boisee. Uh, and where this has been really helpful is is understanding what the income restrictions and income qualification, pardon me, the rent restrictions and income qualifications need to be um in order for uh a developer to meet the agency's requirements uh and in addition to meet the city's uh monitoring compliance. Um so through this uh shared affordability covenant uh CCDC and the city now are working closely in sharing um sharing the responsibilities where CCDC uh assists with u the costs upfront and the city monitors compliance to ensure that the uh assistance initially delivered. We're getting the results we want by

monitoring the rent restrictions and income qualifications are are being seen through in those developments. In the participation program, there's five fi five types of uh participation. All five uh are available and can help with uh housing projects. And um if you're interested, I could share more details after on on um past projects that have done that. Uh we think that what we're talking about with this joint housing strategy um is in alignment with uh all five types. Uh, one area that uh is maybe one of the biggest potentials for um additional partnership and um and increasing results is the type five program. And this program is what governs the agency's ability to acquire and dispose of property for redevelopment purposes. Uh some recent examples of that uh that the agency have done are the Aptton condominiums, Ash Street Town Homes which includes some workforce housing um affordability requirements as well as the water cooler apartments and and the Martha apartments as well uh which also have uh some affordability included in those. So, what we're proposing in this joint housing strategy would be um some adjustments to this type five program that um define the process and requirements that would allow for u potentially conduit bonding uh as well as gap financing from the city to easily be stacked with uh CCDC's um uh financial assistance um in the type five program.

So, with that, that's a basic uh overview of how CCDC fits in this puzzle and and what we're excited uh to be part of. So, at this point, I'll turn it over to Danna Watson to share more about the housing authority.

Thank you, Doug. And um thank you mayor and council members for your interest in the work that we have been engaging in for the last few months. I've always found it intriguing in looking at the uh statutes that create a housing authority uh as a quasi governmental entity that performs certain essential functions is right next to the statutes on the municipal side with CCDC and much of the language is mirrored. And so it makes sense that we would we would u find ways to join together with the city to try to maximize what we have to offer in terms of affordable housing and and safe uh affordable communities. Um a little bit about my organization. We've got a long name and a short director. Um, Boisee City Ada County Housing Authorities are actually two separate housing authorities, but they're staffed by uh the same u staff members. I answer to a board of commissioners that the mayor and council and the county commissioners take turns in appointing. And so we do have jurisdiction over all of Ada County. Um and we do have obligations to perform work to uh bring affordable housing and enhance affordable housing um to our communities. And one of the things that we have isolated is really some of the tools that we have that are uh maybe beyond um what you might think of in terms of a housing authority administering like the housing choice voucher, section 8 program, low rent public housing. Uh we do those programs. Those are sort of the bread and butter of housing authorities, but we also have other tools that are available to us um to do some finance work and and one of those is the conduit bonds that we've talked about, but I wanted to back up

just a moment to say the housing authority during my tenure has um mostly issued bonds for projects of our own. We have a a 100 home affordable uh home ownership program in northwest Boisee. We issued uh bonds to cover the cost, mortgage revenue bonds, and uh built um 100 homes and kept them in a a rent to own type category until they uh were then sold to people who were between 60 and 100% of area median income who had enough money to pay a mortgage but maybe struggled to come up with down payment and closing costs and maybe had some past credit issues that they needed help uh rectifying. We also have issued bonds to uh remodel some of our existing housing stock and to build new housing on vacant lots that were adjacent to each one of those. Several years ago, we did a uh in a combined bonding. Um, we purchased the Nespurse apartments with a loan, a short-term loan we received from the city and then we paid the loan off with the bonds that we issued to cover um bringing additional units and and bringing the existing units up to code and uh better living standards for the folks. Um the conduit bonds. We've done uh one project at 299 apartment complex called Civic Plaza next to the uh county uh building. And uh so that's a lowincome housing tax credit project, but the gap that the developer needed to fill uh ended up being filled in large part by us issuing the conduit bonds, which then gave the um the developer owner lower cost

financing. And in exchange, they agreed to uh keep at least 40 units available for voucher holders at all times. Last time I checked, we were at about 150 units with voucher holders living at that complex. So, and then just some basics on how it works. Uh, the agency would function as the issuer of the bonds. The debt is non-reourse to the housing authority and the developers responsible for the bond repayment. And an example there is the civic plaza apartments. Um, and I think that's it for me and I go back to Thank you.

Thanks so much, Doug and Diana. In the interest of time, I'm going to zoom through these next couple of slides uh largely because I think you're mostly aware of it. These are the things that the city of Boisee has been doing uh related to housing author uh excuse me, related to housing affordability. One thing I want to briefly point out here, uh this is the Dungeon Apartments. You may recognize yourselves in this photo. Uh, and you'll notice that the total project cost for this building was just shy of $75 million. The city of Boisee uh put in just under $7 million of funds to that project, but there were over $30 million in low-income housing tax credits that went into this project to make it possible. And this type of model that the city has been uh using and in kind of a rinse and repeat uh sort of cycle uh over the last several years is incredibly effective. It leverages, as you can see, huge amounts of federal resources in comparison to the amount that the city is required to invest. Um, but it only works when there's LITC credits available, right? And it also uh puts us into a situation where the uh low-income housing tax credit uh competitive application cycle is now dictating uh the timing of when we can move projects forward. So, one of the things we're excited about with this kind of partnership is to sort of diversify our gap financing approach and to be able to uh look at opportunities outside of gap financing LITC projects specifically. Um, this is just to remind you that we one of the things we also do is exempt and defer our development related fees for projects that meet certain affordability criteria. The impact of this is relatively modest on a project, but in terms of the stacking that we've been describing, it's one more thing that can be added to the stack between our different organizations. So, just to bring it back around uh to kind of the tool the various tools that we have, we've got bond issu issuance, we have the authority to acquire and

dispose of property, we have this gap financing, and we also each have constraints that we're working within. And what we're really excited about being able to do here is to pair the resources that each of us are able to bring uh to meet and address some of the constraints that the other agencies uh or the other entities have, excuse me. [snorts] Um again, if you're a developer looking to provide some level of affordability, there is very little uh certainty that you'd be able to access these tools in a coordinated manner. And that's what we really want to be able to um to provide. Um, by doing so, we hope to uh enable more mixed income housing and to allow that mixed income housing to reach a deeper level of affordability and to create more affordable homes overall. Uh, so intended outcome of the jointou that again will be before you tonight is really to create a roadmap for the work that's needed to align each of each entity's existing tools, which is no small task, right? we uh we've each set up our tools in uh in kind of in silos and we have our own internal reasons for the way that they are set up and so we anticipate some really robust discussion and really exciting work as we look at how do we bring these into better alignment. Um, so the housing authorities adopting a conduit bond program policy and operationalizing that program is what we anticipate as being kind of the initial step taken. And then CCDC and the city of Boisee then looking to mirror our policies and procedures with that conduit bond program. Um but really looking forward to being able to partner and having the flexibility also uh depending on the project to say you know what maybe it's just two of these entities that can stack resources on this one because it's not in an urban renewal district for example or maybe this is something that really makes sense you know the city doesn't have gap financing available right now and so but this is something that CCDC and the

housing authority could do in that kind of circumstance so uh a lot of uh potential for sort of creative problem solving here and for some collaboration that uh I think we're really looking forward to. So again, next steps, we're presenting theou to all three entities um for consideration and approval by their leadership bodies um and happy to answer any questions at all uh in advance of it being on your agenda tonight.

Madame Mayor Vicki, I'll be real quick. Um, I appreciate the presentation and we've seen it at the housing board. Um, as well and I just want to make sure to go on record that people understand that the memorandum of understanding does not tie or beholden any organization um to contribute or to take any next steps. It's really just a framework to say that we're going to work together um to see what we can make happen. Madame Mayor, council member. Yes, that's exactly right. Yeah, Madame Mayor, um certainly supportive of this. Thanks for all the hard work. We've been doing lots of collaborations over the years on a lot of areas already. So, um it's great to have an opportunity to formalize this a little bit more. My hope is that while we still have to go through the regular public processes for everything, that this at least cuts down on the bureaucracy a little bit and gives some clear direction from every single agency that the leadership is supportive of you all working together to stack these things on top of each other. making your jobs easier and ultimately creating more housing. So, that's my hope. Um, and if there's things that we can do to make sure that it is easier beyond theou, I would sure love to know. Thank you,

Madam Mayor. I'll just add um I'm so grateful for the great partners that we have in these other agencies and thank you so much for your work, Nikki. There's um you know, when you're talking about government agencies, it can be really hard to partner. They become very complicated quickly. There's different timelines. there's different expectations and obligations by each organization. So, I think by kind of bringing this public to say, you know, we recognize that we're making this new commitment to really partner together and leverage the tools that each of us have individually um will only make the work that we do more accessible, more powerful, um and and ultimately better for our community. So, I really appreciate this work and um the commitment from our partners, too. Thank you so much. I want to thank all of you for being here. I can't see you because I'm short, too. Um, and for the work that you do together with us and and separately as agencies, too. But some of the work that's been done together was highlighted today. There's so much more in the last five, six years that we've done. It's really exciting to be able to now welcome residents into new homes that organizations here have partnered with. Um, it's exciting to think about what we might do um in different ways together. and appreciate the willingness of all parties uh to collaborate this way. So, thank you.

And next up, welcome Melinda. Got Melinda McGoldrich from PDS and Kaia Jones from my office. [clears throat] Oh, and Katie O'Neal's getting up too from public works um to talk with us about um his housing preservation. Um if you'll recall, we had a discussion about um ways in which we can increase housing stock and then housing affordability in our city. And we just finished talking about and saw some examples of where we've helped create new homes. Um another strategy that we intend to really focus on this year is looking at how we preserve existing affordable housing. So keep people that are in homes they can afford in the homes because the homes are still working. And so we've got a team of folks that have done some asking of questions from residents and are going to be helping us figure out how we can now deliver on preservation programs in Boisee.

Thank you so much, Madame Mayor, Boyisey City Council members. Melinda Mcoldendrick, very excited to be here with you today again um talking about preservation. See, is this up on your screens? I'm sorry. Is it okay? Okay, there we go. Sorry about that. Um, so this is just a little overview of what we are going to share with you today. We're going to talk a little bit about the context of housing preservation. Um, kind of the existing tools and what we have been doing in this space and then also what we've learned through the work that we have been doing over the past many years. and then additionally about what we learned through community outreach that has been ongoing. And then we also want to bring in um our climate action team and kind of some of the goals that overlap between what the climate team has been working on and what we're working on in the housing space and how we can do this together in a more collaborative approach um to really serve our residents in the best way possible. So this might look familiar. This is a little bit of what I had shared when we were with you a short while ago. but really looking at the city's housing strategies, looking at how we can increase the number of homes that are available within our community, the d the diversity of those homes, where they are throughout our community. Um, and looking at the tools through our zoning code to do that. Uh, also looking at how we can invest in those homes that are more deeply affordable that we know aren't necessarily going to come online without some type of investment um in those homes. And then of course thinking about preservation, which really is what we're here to focus on today. But how can we ensure that folks who bought a home in Boisee a while back and now they've planned to live there, how can they age in place? How can they stay within those spaces that are already affordable to them? And how can we make sure that those homes are safe? Um, and that they're going to continue to be part of our housing stock for the foreseeable future.

So, a little bit more of a just kind of looking back. Our 2024 housing needs analysis identified that we need a little over 20,000 homes between now and 2033. So, that looked at both what we would need in terms of new housing stock added for our community and additionally what potential rehab was existing in our community to ensure that those homes would stay available. Um, so that identified a little over 4,600 homes that would likely need to be rehabilitated in some way, shape, or form between now and 2033. So, we know that this is a critical need in the community. That's a large number of homes that are potentially going to fall into disrepair. And we know that we need to look at ways that we can invest creatively, the ways that we can best use the funding sources that we have available and really target those uh homes where they need it the most. So, we also set a pretty ambitious goal around housing preservation, a thousand units. We're working on that and we've been coming at it in a lot of different ways. Right now, we're a little over halfway to that goal. Um, but we're going to talk about some strategies that we have in order to hopefully make it to that goal in the near future. So, there's a few different ways that we can approach preservation. So, we have done it in all of these different ways and you'll see there's kind of pros for some of them and then also things that we need to be mindful of when we're thinking about how much money we're investing in these projects. So, when we have had opportunities in the past, we have directly acquired properties in order to preserve them as affordable housing. That does come with a higher perve investment on the city's behalf. But opportunities like the Sage mobile home park we saw as really critical uh times to preserve homes for residents that really wouldn't have a lot of other housing options in the community and were likely to be displaced. Another strategy that we have been

pursuing is looking at gap financing. So, if a developer is interested in acquiring uh an apartment complex or a building within the community, but needs some additional funds to get them over kind of that initial hurdle of financing or in order to be able to preserve it for folks who are at lower area median incomes. Um looking at how we can invest alongside of them in this process. So, right now we're look we're working with a firm who's looking to preserve the Wildwood apartments. um that is less in less expensive than a direct investment, but still approximately $40,000 per door in that instance. The other way we've been looking at this is more on an individual level. So for homeowners in our community, looking at the work that we can do through our home improvement program and then also through the weatherization program that runs. Um so that's a much lower dollar per door investment. Um, but we are meeting needs of residents who otherwise might not be living in safe conditions within their homes. So, this is all work that we have been doing, how we've been kind of approaching this through all of the different avenues um that we've been able to identify. So, just wanted to share briefly kind of some of the quick learnings from this. Um, you know, being able to invest in a project alongside a developer is a really powerful tool. It's something we're excited to be able to do when we have the opportunity, but that and also direct acquisition do require us to be able to be pretty nimble um to respond to those market demands. And then also to have the financial uh capability to do that, which you know, sometimes we do have that opportunity and sometimes we don't have kind of the the funding that we might need in that moment to be able to move quickly in the market. Um, the home improvement and weatherization programs are a much more cost-effective way to look at housing preservation and we can be more nimble there. Um, making an impact directly for

residents. Um, which is great and something that we absolutely plan to continue doing moving forward. We also know that those home repairs are especially critical for our most vulnerable community members. So, folks who might be living in manufactured housing and then also a lot of seniors that we know are living on fixed incomes and have limited ways that they could finance repairs to their homes that might be needed. So, I'm going to turn it over to Kaa to share a little bit more about home repairs. Thank you so much, Melinda. [clears throat] Well, good afternoon, mayor, members of council. I'm so excited to be here before you for the first time uh this afternoon speaking a little bit more on the work that we've been doing to advance our preservation goals specifically around home improvement. As [clears throat] Melinda noted, supporting our neighbors and their existing homes is a really key component of our housing strategy. And h as housing costs continue to rise in Boisee, many residents are, as you know, feeling these impacts and are at risk of losing their homes or potentially living in substandard conditions. I'd like to just first acknowledge that home repair has not always been the most prominent part of our preservation strategy. However, the city has operated a home improvement program for decades and we've come to better understand just how critical this tool is in preserving naturally occurring affordable housing, especially within the current market context. Home repair programs, as you'll see on screen, are particularly important and effective because they support several overlapping city goals. Our program serves residents at 80% area median income and below, but we know that a lot of the participants are well below that income level. These families must make impossible decisions whether to pay for utilities or pay for a prescription or when their home falls into disrepair. The choice is whether to fix your broken window or live with it through the winter. When

making critical repairs for low-income homeowners, these improvements make housing more affordable by decreasing utility costs. Replacing an old broken water heater with a modern one can help households save on their monthly budget. And also these repairs like adding insulation of course help keep homes protected from drafty uh weather, extreme heat and cold, but they also advance our climate goals by decreasing energy usage. I'm going to speak a little bit more in the coming slides about our home improvement program specifically, but one thing that we do know, as Melinda mentioned, is a lot of our low-income boyisey home homeowners are older adults, often in need of accessibility improvements. Repairing a floor that is falling or installing a wheelchair ramp increases safety and helps older adults age in place. Reducing fall risk and supporting community health outcomes. I think this is particularly important to note because also those 55 and older are the fastest growing group experiencing homelessness in in the United States and they are increasingly costbururdened as social security wages stagnate but costs of living continue to increase. We also know that many manufactured homes are at a disproportionately higher need for home repairs. Many mobile homes in Boisee were built before 1976, which was when the federal standards for manufactured housing were created. So this means that a lot of the mobile homes or manufactured homes that we have in our community were not built to any sort of safety standards and at our higher risk for disrepair. The what I really wanted to point out here is that home repair is preservation and it also is an overlap of climate, public health, affordability, aging and place and of course preservation goals that make investments in home repair particularly for uh manufactured housing a really meaningful community investment. We knew that home repairs were valuable from the existing city program, but we

did not know the scope and scale of the need and we hadn't done any community outreach. So, we didn't know what folks were actually facing in a large majority of their homes. So, we knew that we needed a lot more data. This led us to engage the community directly to understand what matters most about housing quality and of course the scope and scale of need. So, what we did is we sent out a survey that included residents from 49 manufactured housing communities across Boisee and the low-income homeowners who are eligible for our property tax rebate program. This survey asked residents to explain both the condition of their homes and specifically focusing on critical life and safety concerns and uh an emphasis on hot water heaters, electrical outlets, their roof condition. We asked them to circle how their kitchen was. So, we really tried to get into the nuance of what their experience is like. We received 241 responses and we learned that 81% of households are over the age of 65. So, the vast majority and over half are over 85 years old. The majority live alone, making less than 60% of area median income, which for one person is about $45,000 annually, and 40% live with a disability. So, these demographics show what we suspected, that the low-income homeowners in our community are often seniors, aging in place, living alone, and with a disability. A quarter of all respondents reported the need for improved accessibility like grabbars, handrails, and wheelchair ramps to continue living in their home. The other priority we heard was for weatherization related needs such as insulating severely damaged doors and windows and replacing heating and cooling systems. I'd like to just provide a couple of examples of some of the feedback we received. One senior in a manufactured uh housing community told us, "I live in a senior community and most live here on a fixed income, but they keep raising the rent even when our income does not increase. I need a new furnace and an AC, but I can't afford it." Another

spoke about being a senior and needing to continue to work two jobs to make ends meet. Speaking to the challenges, particular challenges of living in a manufactured home where you own your home structure but not the land that you live on. He said, "I have to pay a mortgage and a rent. I live in fear of being fined constantly." Of course, beyond the h cost of housing specifically, we heard that many residents uh we heard from many residents about the general challenge of affordability with wages not keeping up with housing costs and the increasing cost of home repairs like the AC unit comment you see here. To address this need, as we've mentioned, the city operates a home improvement program directly. This program uses federal funds and has served 72 households since 2020. We take a whole home approach here to support ongoing stability and we make repairs like the roof that you can see in this photo that's actually collapsing in on the living room. So, this was letting in the water and the elements uh throughout the seasons. Almost all of the households we work with are below 50% area median income and with an average of about $25,000 per door of city investment, these neighbors are are able to stay in their homes. This program, as you can see, has been operated on a relatively small scale and has maintained an extensive weight list. The need remains greater than we can support. We're encouraged, of course, that these households have been able to stay in their homes through our program. Still, as you've just heard from Melinda, we're not on track to meet our preservation goals. That reality has pushed us further to evaluate our most impactful strategies. While gap financing and acquisition are of course essential tools, home improvement provides a more proactive approach that is less dependent on market forces. There are also other uh community programs that have home improvement uh that offer home improvement and weatherization here in Boisee, including Habitat for Humanity, Neighborworks

Boisee, and Ela. We heard similar feedback from these partners. The highest needs in our community include, as sure you're tired of hearing me say, lack of accessible improvements, weatherization, and insulation, heating and cooling systems. To summarize, the experience with our home improvement program, conversations with partners, and direct resident outreach has demonstrated the significant need and cross departmental impact of home improvement programs. As I mentioned, the value of these programs support a lot of overlapping city goals. When you install an improved window to keep a manufactured home warmer, you also help energy efficiency. So, with that, I'd love to pass it off to Katie O'Neal to speak more about the overlap between these housing and climate goals.

Thank you, Ka. Thank you, Melinda. Hello, um, mayor and council. Thank you for having me. It's also my first time presenting, so um, here we go. Um, I'm Kate O'Neal. I'm the energy program manager on the climate team in the Department of Public Works. And oops, in addition to being an avenue for preserving homes, addressing housing quality aligns with other city goals. Um, so I'm here I'm going to talk about weatherization and some of our overlaps with climate when we are addressing our housing um our housing goals. So the goal of weatherization is to improve building efficiency for low-income residents. Often it's more than just efficiency. As Kaia mentioned, these homes have major repairs just to stay habitable. We partner with Lada Community Action Partnership and we um invest $150,000 annually. Since the inception of this program in 2020, we've reached over 250 households and 500 residents. And our investment here is about 2500 per door, which LA uses and leverages with $9,000 in additional funds from um utility and state investments. One thing I will point out is while this is a very similar program to the home repair, there are different funding sources. So, it kind of allows us to be more creative with um with with some of the um fund allocations. Services include insulation, replacement of heating systems, water heaters, windows and doors, fixing leaks to lower utility bills, and addressing health and safety concerns. You might notice that these are a lot of the same services that provided by the housing improvement. Um, and this is just highlighting that the need is is great and shows how we're approaching the preservation strategy through multiple angles. Um, this does also connect with our climate goals. As I mentioned, the goal of weatherization is to improve energy efficiency. Um, and as you can see, you've you're probably very very familiar with our four climate goals. The first two in blue are our municipal

goals and then the second two, the 100% clean electricity for the community and the um carbon neutral community. Those are the um the communitywide goals. So if we have a goal to lower community emissions while addressing affordability through the weatherization work, we have been able to have a savings of 10 million BTU, which is equal to a,000 metric tons of CO2. And so if you're trying to envision what that is, it's about the equivalent of uh taking 200 homes electricity usage off for a year. Um and the other thing I wanted to highlight about this program is it's scalable. So Kevin Viggers, the um program manager for LAA, he has his quote here. In a given year, we have over 8,000 applications and we're only able to serve about 150 households. So there's always a need to do more. There's another intersection here that Kaia and Melinda Melinda hinted at, but it's also with regards to affordability. So one of the things we try to manage with the weatherization program also is what's called the energy burden. Um, and that's essentially how much money you're paying for energy divided by your overall household income. Um, lower inome households often have high energy burdens for reasons you might not expect. Um, including less control over their electricity, staggered jobs or maybe not having a job and so being at home more often and having higher electricity bills for that, draftier homes and less efficient heating and cooling. We've also seen that the rising cost of living and high electricity prices have increased Boiseians should be a plural apostrophe sorry um energy burden especially for low-income residents. So just to show you like a visual um I'll walk you through this. On the bottom x-axxis you can see the sort of buckets of um of income that that residents are at. This is a graph from the Department of Energy. And so they use different terminology. In the

housing world, we would say AMI. And so I pointed out the 30% AMI is about 100% of the federal poverty level. And you can see that at the bottom of the x- axis. Um, what I wanted to point out here is that you can see the lowest income residents on the far left have the highest energy burden. So that's about 12% of their annual income. For reference, anything over 6% is considered unaffordable and the national average for low-inccome is about 8.6%. So this is a pretty severe need in Boisee. Um and then the last piece is just the annual energy cost and this is not relative. This is just absolute. What's interesting to me is that you can see the low resident the low-income residents up to the highest income residents. It's not a huge difference in energy costs. So this is some of what we're trying to address through all of these programs and we're always looking for ways to uh achieve the joint goals of housing and climate. So I'm just highlighting one other thing that we're doing with a picture of our housing and holistic treasure [laughter] Nikki Camp. Um the city recently received $1.2 $.2 million to integrate our city-owned geothermal heating municipality municip municipal heating to an affordable housing project. So the goal with this is to lower residents heating bills by up to 80% but also create a model for expansion beyond just our initial building um and address climate and affordability at the same time. And as part of this, um, we did an outreach with residents at a at an affordable housing, um, structure, uh, to ask what would it mean to actually reduce resident reduce your utility bills. And residents were were saying things like, I would have to put on my glasses. I can't even comprehend that amount. It's a big deal. And other residents were telling us, I pay my phone, my power, rent, gas, and then whatever's left goes

to food. So this would be a 10 out of 10 importance. Um so just a little we always are looking for synergies when we can and so um more to come on the housing and climate collaboration and back to you Kaia.

Thanks Katie. [clears throat] I don't know that like we often present alongside the climate teams, but it's it's important to talk about how overlapping I'd be curious to see with our weatherization program and with the home improvement program how much utility costs are decreasing even though we don't track that for residents. So, a lot of times the same repairs but through different programs and with different teams. So, what we really wanted to highlight and hopeful that you take away today is that there's a really strong community need to help neighbors age in place, lower utility bills, and to preserve, of course, our existing uh housing stock. The local context and our housing market has made preservation increasingly challenging. And so, in response, our investments need to be targeted and really practical to the community need. And this is achieved through home repair, gap financing, and weatherization. But how we cannot do this work alone. Like all of the work we do to support a home for everyone in Boisee, this requires really strong partnerships. Our funds go further when they are leveraged through existing programs. And in the coming months, we'll work to identify to work we'll work to identify partners to work alongside us and maximize the impact of this council's investments in housing preservation. And with that, we're happy to answer any questions.

Yeah. Madam Mayor, um I get to see you probably didn't know that you were going to have scouts watching your presentation. Yes, welcome

as well. So, welcome to the scouts. And for the scouts, we're having a conversation. There's a lot of people in our community who live in houses that are getting really old and they're not in very good repair. And so, they're living in conditions that are maybe unsafe or it's hard for them to stay warm in the winter or cool in the summer. And so, we're talking with our staff about ways that we might be able to address this problem. So, I'll talk with you all about this here in just a little bit. Um, one question I have is kind of about partnership and I'm curious if we know some of our nonprofits who are doing similar work to what the city's doing. I think we was it 70 households that we've helped repair since 2020 mayor. 72. Yes.

And it was about $24,000 per household of investment from the city. I'd be curious to know if that's similar investment from our nonprofits. Um, oftentimes our nonprofits can sometimes do things a little bit cheaper because they've got volunteers, they've got some grants, they've got some donors, access to some different funds that maybe the city doesn't. And so it'd be interesting. I don't know if we know the answer, but it'd be interesting to know that answer and to see if there are opportunities for investment, financial investment in partnerships that might be able to help us with some of these issues that we're not quite getting the number uh that we want on. But I had no idea. Um, one that we had actually helped with 70 houses. So, that's good to know. and that what our partners are doing as well. So, thank you.

Yeah, Madame Mayor, Council Member Hi Burton, thank you for pointing that out. Yes, we have had extensive conversations with our partners about one just better collaboration with existing programs and also similar challenges that they're facing. We'll say that the cost per household ranges so drastically depending on the needs of that home and the repairs that are needed. Habitat for Humanity has done incredible work f focusing specifically on wheelchair ramp installations, leveraging volunteer labor, using wood instead of metal for some of their wheelchair ramp improvements. And so they found ways to decrease their dollar per door, focusing on accessibility improvements. The neighbor works program is limited some of this by the fund sources as well. The federal funds that they're utilizing will have sort of a dollar per door cap on that. But again, there if you go into a home and they need a walk-in shower versus your roof versus maybe something that's more minimal to repair, that cost per door, and that's something that we've seen with our home improvement program as well, that that's the average cost, but the investment will vary really greatly depending on the household. So, I think there's a lot of opportunity for partnership here and to stack some of these programs and see how we better can kind of meet that community need with all the different organizations working on this.

Yeah, perfect. Thank you for those nuances. Yeah, Ka, Melinda, Katie, thank you so much for this presentation. I think this is um uh really important for our city. Um with our seniors aging in place, I was surprised by how many of them were 85 and older.

Um and I think it's right, you're on a fixed income and costs, as we saw from public works are drastically increasing and the dollars just don't stretch. I think what's really also important to highlight is is two things is one um it's a safety measure also safety measure for the health of the residents in there and for their homes and the longer those repairs sit um unfixed the worse the problems come. You can have one little leak in a roof and when that grows now you have to replace floors, all your sheetrock, everything. So it becomes exponentially more expensive. So I'm glad to see this work. I'm excited to work with other partners. It's something I fully support because just little changes and repairs can make a drastic difference and um again, we've got to help those most vulnerable or elderly age in place um and keep them safe in their homes as well. So, thank you for your work. Appreciate it. Madame Mayor, um I this is such a great presentation because we talk so often about affordable housing, accessible housing options, what we can do to add to the housing supply, and this is a story that we don't um we don't get to talk up here very often about, and it's such an important piece of the equation. Um so, I really really appreciate you bringing this information to us and kind of reminding us on the work that's going on um without the big groundbreings and the ribbon cutting celebrations. So, I think this is a really nice time for us to be able to celebrate this work and thank you so much for sharing for sharing it and all the work that you're putting into it.

Madame Mayor, I saved up a couple questions for this one. I was really excited. The home improvement program is important. Council member, I mean, you're out of time, council member Morales. Um, so thank you so much for this presentation. Uh, you noted that we have $300,000 annually committed to the home improvement program. Can you just talk about where those funds come from? amount if those are CDBG funds or what. And then kind of how the um you know some of those are low interest loans kind of how that maybe juices that fund. Um and then third what demand looks like. So is there a wait list? Um like how how much demand is not being met maybe from our fund and partners.

Absolutely. Madame Mayor, council member. So our home improvement program is funded with community development block grant funds. a really long time ago, we started what we call the revolving loan fund, which is seated with a large chunk of money um from the community development block grant. And so that is what we typically use to fund um all of these projects. So being a revolving loan fund, yes, a lot of those are loans that then the payments come back and then we can reinvest those funds. Um what I will say is what we saw especially during CO um when we started really examining these programs we had a little bit of time because we couldn't do as much work in people's homes for a little while due to co um but that gave us a chance to really evaluate the program and do a deep dive into like what was working wasn't working. Um, for many years prior to that, we had not seen a huge influx of applications every year, but that was because it was strictly a loan program. And so people might be interested in the repairs um and working with us on that, but they couldn't necessarily afford the payment on an additional loan on their home. Um, usually sits on a at a second on their home if they're still paying their mortgage. Um, so we took that time during CO to really kind of re-evaluate the program and that was when we shifted how we are providing funding. So now for folks who are lower income, so if they're at 50% or below, that money is actually technically a grant. We call it a forgivable loan. So it's forgiven over a period of time, but there's no expectation of them making a repayment to us because we know that they honestly just do not have any extra money in the budget to be able to make that payment, and they're just going to live in a home that needs the repairs um otherwise. And so in order to keep them safely housed, we kind of shifted that. that has impacted of course the amount of money that comes back into the revolving loan fund of course over time. Um so when necessary we use some of our CDBG entitlement funds to kind of supplement that revolving loan fund to keep that available. So the way the funds are structured now if you are below 50% AMI

um that is a forgivable loan over time. If you're at a little higher uh area median income uh we offer it as a deferred loan. So essentially, you don't have to make any payments on the loan. As long as you continue to live in your home, the loan does not acrue interest, but when you decide to sell your home, then the repayment comes back to us from the proceeds of the sale. And then if you're at kind of the upper tier of the incomes that we can support through our program, so that's 70 to 80% area median income. It is a loan, but it's usually at an extremely low interest rate. So between zero and 2% typically. Um, so we are receiving small payments back from folks on those, but that is the very very small minority of folks that we're serving through this program. So the I think you said we saw on the slide I think it's like 78% of the folks are really at that 50% or below. So those are receiving a loan that they don't have to make payments on.

Great. And then demand. So what's kind of

Yes, I was. Sorry about that, mayor, council member. Um, demand. So, our program since we kind of made these shifts to the program, we have always had a waiting list. Um, we typically have folks on that waiting list for around 6 months from the time that they apply until we can get to their project. Um, and then how long it takes them to get through our process really depends on the scope of the project and how much work needs to be done. Um, but that is how our waiting list currently is structured with that long wait. And that is without doing really much marketing of that program at all because we don't want to say, "Hey, we can help repair your home, but sorry, it's going to be 3 years until we can get to you on our wait list." Um, the program mainly come um people come to us through word of mouth. If we work in a community, especially in a manufactured home community, a lot of folks talk to each other and find out like, "Oh, hey, the city has this program. You can apply to it here." And then we also work with our partners like Neighborworks Boisey uh through Paint the Town when they work with households that might need repairs beyond just paint. They often refer them to our programs as well.

Great. Madame Mayor, I just have one followup then. What would it take from your perspective to uh be at a point in maybe fi financially or staffing to be able to um market it more broadly? Madame Mayor, council member, it really comes down to the funding and how we want to spend those community development block grant dollars. If we were to allocate a larger percentage of the budget towards that, a decent chunk of it would have to go towards staff time. Right now, we have two full-time staff members who do the actual repair projects and then another person who kind of facilitates the administration of the program overall. Um, and doing that, you know, is added capacity compared to what we've had in the past, but we're still at around 20ish projects that we can get through each year. Um, so it would have to be a pretty considerable amount of additional funds to put towards that project because it would have to support a staff salary in addition to whatever investment goes directly into the home. So, it is possible to scale it, but the trade-off is other things that we might be able to use those dollars on as well.

Yeah, that was great. Thank you. Yeah,

thank you. All right, that looks like it. Thanks so much for the work that's gone into this. Really look forward to coming up with um strategies for us to be able to extend the impact of this work because um it will have it's important to our community and especially given even as council member Corus said, so many folks that live in their homes or aging in place that could use the supporter are older residents. um that just as we've looked at housing in general and and homelessness and we want to keep people housed is one of those strategies, keeping people in their affordable homes is a strategy towards addressing more having more homes that are affordable in Boisee. So, I'm really look forward to seeing where we can take this and thank you for all that's gone into it to everybody that's here.

Thank you for your time. And with that, we will break for dinner and then have a quick city council meeting at six o'clock. Thanks everybody.