City Council - Regular Meeting

Thanks for looking out for me.

Council will call this meeting to order. For the record, it is June 16th, 2026 at 4.30 p.m. We'll begin this afternoon's work session with roll call attendance.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Councilman Kavanaugh? Here. Councilman Whitlock? Here. Councilwoman Little-Roberts? Here. Councilman Overton?

Here.

Mayor Simison? Here.

Next item up is adoption of the agenda.

Mr. Mayor. Councilman Overton. There are no changes to tonight's workshop agenda. I move that we approve the agenda as published.

Second.

I have a motion and a second to adopt the agenda. Is there any discussion? If not, all in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Opposed, nay. The ayes have it, and the agenda is agreed to.

Next up is the consent agenda. Mr. Mayor. Councilman Overton. There are no changes to tonight's consent agenda. I move that we approve the consent agenda for the mayor to sign and the clerk to attest. I have a motion and a second to approve the consent agenda.

Is there any discussion? If not, all in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Opposed, nay. You guys have it. And the consent agenda is agreed to. There are no items moved from the consent agenda, so we'll move on to department reports. First item up is a citywide energy study and plan update. Let's turn this over to Director Bakken.

All right, thank you. Public Works we have a presentation that goes along with the, with the speech. So we completed our city energy study, and I wanted to provide you with high level updates about that and overview of the results and essentially recommendations for our next steps. I think before we jump in, it's really important. The report highlighted this as well, but this isn't starting. We're not, Meridian isn't starting from scratch. We prioritize energy efficiency. Over the past decade, we've built it into our city operations and the way we do business. So since 2008, when we completed or started our first energy efficiency study, we've actually reduced our per capita energy use. In spite of rapid system growth, that means we're making decisions that support energy levelizing rather than energy expansion. And we actually perform at or above average compared to peer or benchmark cities and utilities. However, I still think it's important to talk about energy as it accounts for a large ongoing cost for the city. So citywide energy utilization costs us nearly $3 million a year. So it's good to look for ways that we can get even better at our energy utilization. So a little bit of background, like I mentioned, we started our first energy study in 2008 and completed it in 2010. We've done other various plans and resolutions over the past few decades that continue to affirm the city's desire to be energy conscious. Just as a reminder, we received a federal grant to complete this study. And for the last year and a half-ish, I've been working through that. We have been working with our energy consultant, Straven Strategy Group, which is a local energy consultant. And I also want to give a lot of credit to Jason Korn. He is our environmental programs coordinator. He really shepherded this study through the process. And so as we developed this process or this study, it was important for us to have a plan that met our objectives with City of Meridian. And really for us, that was to be data driven and to give us a clear roadmap for planning current and future projects. So in the energy field, there's a lot of ideas. There's a lot of concepts. Some of them are not quite ready for prime time. And we wanted a roadmap that said, give us projects, give us data that shows that this has a good ROI and return on our investment. So one of the first things we want to do is establish a baseline for our current and future energy tracking. And like I mentioned, we wanted projects that had clear cost effective outcomes, and then looking for future projects that had ROIs that make sense to implement later on. So maybe when equipment reaches end of life. things like lighting and hvac it makes sense to change those out then so what we ended up with was the report that you saw it captures where we're at today establishes a clear list of projects that have both near-term and long-term rois so one of our first goals was to establish our baseline energy use so this was not something that we had or had been tracking so some kind of interesting information so we tracked both energy use or created a baseline for both energy use and greenhouse gas metrics. So we can track our project, our progress moving forward, um, as well as identify areas where we can make the most likely impact. Um, so as I mentioned earlier, our per capita energy use is down and while this doesn't mean that our total energy use has decreased. In fact, as you can see in this graph, um, our energy, uh, use has risen, um, but it's not risen as quickly as our, uh, quickly in proportion as the population numbers that we have added. So when you look at energy use, it's tracked in three areas. So fuels, and that includes both gas and diesel, natural gas and electricity. And so one of the great things this report does is that it breaks down the energy use by major utility or major work group. So you'll see the majority of the city's energy use resides within the water and wastewater utilities, as we expected. There is a high electricity demand required for pumping and treatment. However, what's interesting with this report is the ability to break down use even further, showing us areas and facilities separately. So these are just a couple of examples pulled out of the report. On the top graph is the electricity and natural gas, greenhouse gas emissions for all of the parks. And what you'll see is the pool and home court have the highest energy users, which would be expected as they have facilities versus just open parks On the bottom there, you'll see it allows us to compare across buildings. So those are all of the fire stations, and it allows us to see that some stations are consuming more energy than others. So switching over to fuel, most of our fuel use is located within the public safety sector as expected from police and fire. You'll see a slow increase in utilization, and this is indicative of a growing fleet, but also a growing service area, meaning that more miles have to be driven to reach all areas of Meridian. One of the things that's important about this is that the fuel sector is much more volatile to cost than natural gas and electricity, all of those have gone up over the years but fuel, as you, as we all know, fluctuates. More frequently impacting our costs here, and so one of our goals with. This energy study and one of the recommend recommendations you'll see at the end is, we want to create an internal energy tracking dashboard that will let us track our monthly costs and can more quickly make comparisons on. vehicle replacements, fleet replacements, and especially with this where prices change pretty frequently, we can have more real-time data to make better decisions. So, in addition to energy use so that's electricity, gas and natural gas, we also looked at greenhouse gas emissions. And so, if you've ever worked with greenhouse gas emissions there's different scopes that you look at so scope one is what they call direct emissions so it's. The direct emissions coming out of your building, your pipe, your factory, whatever it is, it's directly attributed to you, sort of end of pipe. Scope two emissions are emissions that are generated from your purchase of electricity or energy. And scope three is all other emissions. And that really takes into things like the emissions that are created by your employees driving to work or jobs. the energy that's used to make the paper towels and ship them to your facility that you then use. For this study, we just looked at scope one and scope two. Getting into scope three, as you can imagine, is a really in-depth process. From this, though, you can see that our greenhouse gas emissions are also decreasing. This is great news, but is in the large part not necessarily because of anything that we're directly doing, but we can thank our partners at Idaho Power. So they have an initiative, a clean energy initiative, to have 100% clean energy by 2045. So as they achieve that goal our scope to energy emissions also improve, which is great so similarly to our energy use the highest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions is our utilities, however, also noted about 30% of our missions come from our fleet and our building heating. So the next thing that we did in the report is we took a deeper dive into some of our larger facilities to really help us understand operations and opportunities in these buildings. So we looked at 17 facilities across the city. Um, and we looked at energy use and intensity, which essentially lets you compare energy use by square footage. So you're comparing like to like, um, we created heat maps and then we also did physical, uh, walkthroughs and looked at equipment and conditions. So I'm not going to go over all 17 facilities, but I kind of want to show you an example of what kind of information came out of the report. So the first one is called heat mapping. And this is pretty interesting, I think. It looks at hourly energy use over a whole year. So the brighter color indicates higher energy use. And it quickly allows you to see trends and compare facilities. So the image on the top left is City Hall. And the image on the bottom is the police headquarters. So if you just do a quick look, you can see that... A couple of things stand out so police headquarters uses a lot more energy which makes sense, they are a building that operates 24 hours a day compared to city hall which generally operates eight to five. It also helps us look at interesting anomalies, though, for example. You wouldn't expect a whole lot of energy use at city hall in the evening, however, on this heat map we're seeing something turn on at midnight and some power use extending well past our normal operating hours in the evening. So what that shows us is maybe we could do some fine tuning with our lighting and HVAC controls. What heat mapping can also do is help you compare buildings over time and against each other. So this top row here is an example of fire station one in 2022, 2023, and 2024. And so what you'll see is the power use has increased indicating a higher usage for more hours of the day. The bottom row, is Fire Station 6 in 2022, 2023, and 2024. So not only will you notice a higher energy use, but you'll also notice a different pattern of use from Fire Station 1. So what this report doesn't do is tell you why that's happening, but what it does is it gives us these triggers where we can go out and look into this further and see if this is something. And it could be totally normal, explainable things, but it also could be things that we could change, like lighting and HVAC and maybe... you know, our operational behaviors. So our site visits were also interesting. So a few examples on the screen here. But when we did our site visit, our city hall server room was set to be cooled to 57 degrees. And in checking with IT, server rooms can actually operate without issue up to 75 degrees. So this is something that just over time, the thermostat had been set lower, lower, lower, lower. and we're cooling it probably more than we need to. Below that you'll see an example of a building that was heating and cooling at the same time. That can indicate a poorly balanced HVAC or controls issues. On the top right up there you'll see a coat rack that was installed over the HVAC So a simple no-cost relocation there could help us keep that station temperatures maybe in a better range. And then finally down there on the bottom left, you'll see the heat impact of east-facing windows and doors with an opportunity for door sealing and window tinting. So kind of some interesting things in the report there. So our next step was evaluating potential energy savings projects. So one of our key metrics on the projects was it needed to have a positive ROI and be data-driven. So we grouped the projects into different tiers. And essentially, we looked at tier one projects are projects that have potentially a lower capital cost. They result in a quick payback of just a couple of years, and we're calling those kind of no-brainers. They have a quick ROI. They seem to make sense to do. Tier two are projects that have a slightly longer payback, but we should continue to evaluate them and plan as we have funding or as technology maybe comes down in price. And then tier three projects are ones that have longer 10-year ROIs that fall into kind of two categories. One is replace as you go. So if it's a... old HVAC or an old water heater, as it goes out, we should put in an energy efficient new one. We're generally doing that today, but we could probably tighten up and put some procedures around that. And then the other one is perhaps the capital costs aren't quite there yet. So maybe it's a technology that hasn't quite come down in cost enough to do a quicker than 10 year ROI, but could be something that as those technologies, which we're seeing really good advancements, maybe those prices come down and it makes more sense to complete that project. So I'm not going to go over all the projects that were identified in the report, but just some examples of the tiers of projects. So the first one actually is not one of the tiers, but I'm calling ongoing base level things that we should work on implementing. So these are things like optimizing building control settings, training staff on energy use and developing a dashboard and database to ensure we continue to track and monitor progress. Most of these have little to no cost besides staff time and can be implemented as soon as we want and worked on over time. We also recommend incorporating energy efficient procurement policies and looking at regional fuel and gas procurement contracts. That's some places we could save. And then it's also recommended to build energy efficiency into our design standards so that any new buildings that come on are built with these energy efficient HVACs and appliances from the start. Also recommending building commissioning and recommissioning, which does have upfront cost, but it can help ensure that your HVAC is balanced and continued to be balanced so that, like I mentioned, the building isn't heating and cooling itself at the same time. So if we jump to tier one projects, these are some that have some initial cost but have the quick ROI. Some of them examples of adjusting the server room temperatures, adding window tinting, looking at weather stripping, consolidating. So home court has seven electric meters. consolidating that down to one could save us the ongoing base cost that's at that facility and potentially evaluating the pros and cons of covering the pool at night so there's a big list of projects, some you know with relatively small cost that could result in good energy savings. Examples of tier two projects include installing irrigation controllers at facilities. So we have these at a lot of the parks today, but just making sure that all of our facilities, these are the sprinklers that sense if it's rain and turn on or off. Installing smart power strips. These essentially will turn off your computer monitors and your computer if there's no use on your computer. Potentially heating the pool with solar and continuing to work on our SCADA system refinement and control. And then some of our tier three projects remember these are the ones that are kind of the replace as you go or keep on the list and evaluate as technologies get more affordable. But some of them are in upgrading to ground source heat pumps continuing to look at hybrid and electric vehicles evaluating rooftop solar and adding more water storage tanks to reduce pumping demand during peak energy times. So what all of these end up in is essentially what these charts show is the potential energy reduction of if we did every single tier one and tier two initiative, as well as tier three initiatives in the next couple of years. So if we did all tier one and tier two initiatives, we would have a $1.6 million in savings and a 7% energy avoidance over the next 20 years. If we did all tier three initiatives, that would jump up to 3.5 million and a 31% energy avoidance over the next 20 years. So we have some potential. We have potential to do energy savings and to make some impact. With that, though, I did want to say we have to weigh implementation with a couple of caveats. So we're not proposing to add any additional staff to complete these extra projects. So I have to balance the requests with the staff time that's available. So how do we strategically plan and budget for these upgrades over time? And one of the first ones which we'll talk about is we are going to propose, which you'll see in the budget presentation, a $55,000 budget request for FY27, which we believe would cover all of the Tier 1 recommendations and Our recommendation is that we do that to start and see how that goes and see how we get through that. You'll notice that there's a initial, if we did all the tier one projects, the initial cost is close to that 55,000. The first year we would save close to, oh, and there's an extra zero in there. We would save close to 39,000. So the first year, these projects don't necessarily pay themselves back, but in year two, they do. And that... Cumulative savings over 20 years equates to almost $800,000. So definitely worth the investment, in our opinion. So our recommendations and the recommendation of the study was to essentially, like I mentioned, proceed with the Tier 1 initiatives through the budget process. with that balance of staff time, with the ability and existing workloads and capacity to implement. So specifically our recommendation for FY27 is to create an energy tracking dashboard, conduct citywide staff training about energy efficiency and the behavioral things we can do to try to save energy, request $55,000 to address all tier one objectives in the budget process, and then create a plan for future funding in the CFP for Tier 2 and Tier 3 projects. So with that, I will stand for any questions, comments. I'm definitely not the energy expert, so some of them may need additional follow-up, but we can definitely get that for you.

Thank you, Lorelei. Council, any questions?

Mr. Mayor?

Councilman?

Team, thank you for the memo and the presentation. Can you go back to your slide that kind of showed the initial capital investment with the ongoing? Perfect. So when you look at the Tier 1 projects, and I forget, I don't have my paperwork for me. Does the Tier 1 projects include the streetlights that were flagged to the slide? Because I'm just curious if this is additional as to what's already planned or incorporating kind of we're already doing?

Great question. So streetlights, we left out, one of the recommendations was to continue with the streetlight program as is. It is not in that 53,000. So the budget does also include its 260,000 as our normal LED upgrade request. And with that, if we stay on track with our LED plan, we should have all streetlights upgraded to LED within five years.

Mr. Mayor, what's the, for the 250-ish thousand investment in the streetlight upgrade, what is our annualized savings for doing those? Because we did, if let's say we got our budget that's coming up on Monday, our budget hearing, council agrees to continue to fund that at that same level. You build those lights. What is the city's future anticipated savings on an annual basis as a result of that? Do you know?

I do not have that in front of me, but we can have it by Monday.

Perfect. That's fine. That'll be helpful.

If I recall, those were three-year cost savings back when those were originally done. So take that for a grain of salt on the cost of those ones, but yeah.

And Mr. Mayor, I think you're kind of at least tracking kind of where my line of thought is, is that has the technology continued to evolve that that ROI comes sooner? Or is it still kind of what has been when we first started making this changes a number of years ago?

And great, great question. We also are capacity limited on that. So my team can't put in more than that in a year or so.

Thanks, Mr. Mayor. On your last slide with those four steps, conduct citywide staff training. Give me some sense of the psychology behind how do we engage all of our employees in wanting to be a part of this and seeing the benefit of doing it.

Yeah, great question. So what I'm kind of envisioning for that is that I would give maybe something similar to this little boiled down but more facility specific. So going to each of the different departments areas and specifically sharing with them the highlights that came out of the report for let's say the police station and Say, hey, here's what the heat maps look like. Here's some of the suggestions. Because twofold, we want them to be on board with the changes that we're recommending, right? So we want them to see here's why we're doing these things. And here's some of the things that we can maybe change by changing the thermostat or changing out the light settings and some of the small behavioral changes that could maybe help with that.

Any additional questions at this time?

Yeah, maybe Mr. Mayor.

Council Member Cameron.

So this is a study that the staff completed. There are recommendations. Is this more of a place of we're informing you that these are the things that you as the department are going to continue to pursue that would have future budget impacts? Is there an action for the council to adopt this plan? Help me understand kind of what you're looking for from us coming out of this. Okay.

Great question. So not looking for any specific approval tonight or adoption of the plan. This is more just, I would say, a roadmap for us of if we have budget, which I guess the question would come on Monday, is if we have budget for even some of the Tier 1 energy initiatives, it gives us direction to move forward with implementing those. We can certainly implement the no-cost ones over time with just staff time too, which is a totally okay approach. um i think creating that energy dashboard is one of the most important things that we that we could do and that would be internally in-house and then it just kind of depends on what the funding levels look like um kind of our thought was that we would want to focus on the ones that had quick roi with the longer term ones they need more evaluation they maybe need some technology to catch up and we hold on those and bring them to you when when they're maybe more ready

And I think, Councilman Kavner, maybe from my perspective is, you know, we've talked about replacing things as they go bad. If council says, no, we think we should replace them before they go bad to have a higher, a quicker ROI in some regards, I think that would be a question that I would say, if that's your desire after digesting this information, well, make sure you tell us that so we can adopt that into the plan differently than the current attitude, which would be, No, we're not going to do those until they need to be replaced.

Mr. Mayor, I think, again, that's a piece that I certainly weighed in on the report is certainly it's contemplated that there's some things that we should be replacing outside of its life cycle. And I'm I'm a little reluctant on some of those, but if there are really entrusting the department, if there are some things that the department really believes that we're going to see a strong benefit, there are some things in tier two and certainly in tier three that I'm somewhat suspect on the real ROI. So I would like to learn more about those kind of on a case by case basis. but sort of would want the department to feel empowered that if there are things that you felt we needed to move sooner on, I'm open to that conversation, just recognizing that we're all well aware of the real budgetary challenges that we have. And for myself, looking at things that I've been a big cheerleader for in the past, you know, like LED streetlights, maybe saying, I don't know if we've got the revenue to be able to do that at that same level right now. So I appreciate the presentation.

Thank you very much. So you'll see some of this come back next week in that capacity for the price you see up here. Yes, and next we'll move on to item 18, which is the 2026 City of Meridian survey, which is being held. Lorelei, you may want to stick around just in case. As was mentioned, Kendall is out. So Mr. Miles has agreed to pinch hit, but treat him like a pinch hitter who has not been involved in the day-to-day operations of this project recently, but he does have familiarity with this history. And I'm obviously here for that, but I'm going to turn this over to Mr. Miles to help us at least lead through the conversation.

Thank you, Mayor. Good afternoon Council there as the mayor said 2026 survey we're in the process of rolling that out I think today the intent really is to understand from you all get any questions about the questions that. are drafted currently if you have additional questions comments that you think are relevant for the survey trying to understand your feedback as we begin to roll this out as i understand we're sort of in the process of we've got the consultant on board formats drafted up ready to go pending your input we would proceed through the summer with our normal schedule of sort of a june july out to the public get the feedback july august have the consultant um compiling the data and the results and then no later than september um maybe an earlier do the report out as we've done in past years so really that's sort of our standard process that we've done for the last i don't know i feel like since 2014 i've been involved since at least 2020 so the third one i've been involved in um Pretty straightforward, but want to hear from you if you've got questions, if you've got additional things that you want us to consider in this document that I hope is the current one I'm looking at. Anyway, I'll stop there and I'll leave it to you all to see if there's any additional feedback.

And I'll just add in a few things. Maybe what's different than the last survey? The public safety levy, obviously, the questions that were in that have come out. They've essentially been replaced on some stuff regarding composting program. So we thought we'd actually take that information and have a little bit more directed information that's in this one to get that feedback to come back. So council. So the SWAC and the council considered that information moving forward. We've updated the transportation projects from the last time. Other than that, I think it's pretty much the same that we've traditionally seen. I can't remember, Chief. If we made any changes to any of the police related questions, I think that you left in all the code enforcement related issues that were in there. So I'm not, I'm up the top of my head. I can't remember if we made any other changes to any of the public safety related items.

We only removed just one of the code enforcement questions.

Yeah. Mary, you'll find in some of the communications questions, same resulting choices, different way of framing the question kind of, but similar intent. A couple of upgrades there.

Just maybe a couple of suggestions. We talked about this a couple weeks ago, that more of our friends in the state legislature continue to weigh in on local matters, the more we feel that, the more our citizens feel that, the more our citizens may have a different, you know, a growing opinion on those issues. And we've never specifically kind of gauged our residents' feedback on the legislature. I think that that is a question worth asking. We certainly are measuring how we do as a city, how we do, I know we, I think we call it out versus other agencies, don't know if our residents necessarily think of the legislature as an agency so there may be some convoluted feedback in that level of questioning so i would encourage a specific question about our citizens feedback on the legislature and then mr mayor the second question that i would like to see included is you know our public's perception around property tax increases foregone i know that we ask the question if our residents feel satisfied with how we spend their tax dollars As one who's been very vocally opposed to foregone and has really pushed back like many of us have about property tax increases, I'd like to know if that voice is represented by our community or if my perspective is an outlier. I think that we all take our job representing our neighbors serious, and if my perspective is out of line with my constituents, that's feedback that I'd be very interested in learning.

Mr. Mayor, Councilman Kavanaugh, I think those are all options that we can certainly wrap into the mix, consider and evaluate. If they are to be asked, how do you ask that? And what are you trying to pull out of that and figure out the best way to ask it based on that? Mr. Mayor.

Councilman Kavanaugh.

And Dave, I think it's something that you and in the past when you ran this survey, and I know our consultant helps with, is not trying to solicit a specific answer, but to really ask the question in a way that our citizens feel compelled to give a very authentic response. And I know I have great confidence you'd be able to do that.

Mr. Mayor. Councilman Overton.

I appreciate the fact that we're not just asking the same questions year after year, that we're mixing it up, adding ones that are more relevant for today than taking out the ones that we needed to gauge where we were at in the past. I agree with the concerns of Councilman Kavanaugh. The concern I would have is how we craft that question correctly to elicit a response that's helpful. But that's probably my biggest concern in a question like that. I really want to know. I just don't know how to craft that one at this time. But I appreciate the work that's being done, and hopefully we can come up with a few of those questions that will elicit the information in a way that's useful for us moving forward as a city.

I'd be happy to pass that information along to the new project manager.

And if I could add to that request, I would ask council to take a look at the current questions, and if we have to trade out questions, which questions, to get those questions answered, would you say we drop out? Because I know that we're going to get pushback from the consultants. They were already pushing against us for what we put in there for the COMPOSTING CONVERSATION. SO FOR EXAMPLE, IF WHICH TRANSPORTATION PROJECTS ARE THEY NOT, IF THAT QUESTION IS NOT AS RELEVANT OR IMPORTANT IN TERMS OF WHICH ONES BECAUSE OF THOSE, I WOULD ASK YOU, SEND KENDALL A NOTE SAYING YOU WOULD BE OKAY DROPPING THESE QUESTIONS IN EXCHANGE FOR THOSE. THAT'S REALLY THE MAIN THING THAT I'M WORKING ON. YES, WE WANT TO ASK THE RIGHT QUESTION. but we also want to have the survey answered and have the survey takers be able to do that appropriately.

Mr. Mayor?

Councilman Kavner.

When are you guys looking for that feedback by?

If you could, end of the week, since you would like, and this is just if we need to. I just want to be prepared so we can know which ones council's okay dropping from the survey. It doesn't mean we can't try to still do them and add them in, but by the end of the week, anything that you would be okay removing would be helpful. And my guess is we will probably just work with the council president if we add any in or remove any to inform him. through that before, but we will notify the council overall of the final product and when it would start going out to the community so you are aware of that.

Great.

Okay. Thank you, Dave. Appreciate it. You're welcome. Thanks for participating. With that, council, we're at the end of the items on the agenda. Is there a motion to adjourn? Mr. Mayor, I move we adjourn. Motion is seconded and adjourned. All in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Opposed nay. The ayes have it. We are adjourned. And so we'll call this meeting order for the record of June 16 2026 at 06 PM will begin tonight's regular city council meeting with roll call attendance.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Councilman Kavanagh, Councilman Taylor, Councilman Whitlock, Councilwoman Little-Roberts, Councilman Overton, Mayor Simpson.

Next time is the Pledge of Allegiance. If you'd all please rise and join us in the pledge. Next up will be our community invocation, which tonight will be delivered by Kelly Laframbois. Kelly, good to see you again. Thanks for being here. If you'd all please join us in the community invocation and take this as a moment of silence and reflection.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor and members of the council. It is a privilege and an honor to... It's a privilege and an honor to be able to open these proceedings with prayer, and I don't take that lightly. So tonight I'd like to read briefly from Proverbs 2, 1 through 9. It says, For the Lord gives wisdom. From his mouth comes knowledge and understanding. He stores up sound wisdom for the upright. He's a shield to those who walk uprightly. He guards the path of justice and preserves the way of his saints. Then you will understand righteousness and justice, equity, and every good path. Thank you, Lord, that you have given us access to your wisdom, to your understanding and your discernment, and to your knowledge. Through these gifts, you guide us to understanding justice and equity. Please grant to these men and women the guidance they need as they deal with the issues facing them this evening and throughout the coming months. Give them integrity and discernment to guide this great city. We ask these things in your name, Jesus. Amen.

Amen.

Thank you.

Next up is adoption of the agenda. Mr. Mayor. Councilman Overson. There are no changes to tonight's agenda. I move that we approve the agenda as published.

Second.

I have a motion and a second to adopt the agenda. Is there any discussion? All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed nay. Guys have it and the agenda is agreed to. Next up is announcements and recognition.

Mr. Mayor. Councilman Overton. I could take just a couple of minutes to have an announcement. Coming up this next week is the 97th annual Dairy Days week, culminating with the parade on Saturday, June 27th at 11 a.m., I don't take it lightly that I'm sitting in the chair that was once held by Councilman Keith Byrd and He was a longtime member of the dairy board and I get to sit on that dairy board now as well But the first thing we do is Monday is the Keith Byrd annual golf tournament named after him The Dairy Princess is Wednesday night one of the highlights is Thursday evening in the park and is the ice cream social. And if you've never had an ice cream social from Reed's Dairy, it's some of the best in the Valley. Friday, we'll start the morning off with a pancake feed, and they'll have dairy shows all day long. There's music throughout the park with bands playing all three days, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. You can come back to see where the roots of this city came from, as we are one of the largest dairy consortiums in the United States in its heyday. It's hard to find a dairy around here now, but the history is still here, and Old McDonald's Farm will still be going next to the Speedway. There's Demolition Derby. Trust me, there's something for everybody at this event. There are some flyers, some big ones on the back table, and it is all over Instagram and Facebook, too, if you just search for it. But I'd love to see everybody show up. um the parade will usually have 75 to 100 floats usually by the time the first one finishes the last one hasn't even got out on the street and we'll all be out there the weather's supposed to be really good i'd love to see if everyone would get out and join us thank you mr mayor thank you council anything else under uh announcements and recognition okay then with that mr cork anyone signed up under public forum mr mayor nobody signed up okay

Then we will move right into our, you have to sign up in advance, yeah. Next up will be our public hearing, which is continuing from April 14th, 2026 for Van Trust, ZOA 2025-0002. We will continue this public hearing with staff comments.

Good evening, mayor members of the council. So yes, this application was continued on April 14th. Um, and the city council continued the subject applications. and directed staff to prepare development agreement provisions, coordinate with ACHD and the developer to the adjacent property to the south regarding improvements to Black Cat Road, and provide updated language for the proposed flex space standards. So on May 15th, 2026, city staff provided the draft development agreement provisions and flex space code amendment to the applicant for their review. In addition, staff met with ACHD on April 23rd, 2026 to discuss potential improvements to Black Cat Road. Following that meeting, ACHD indicated that it would not pursue a cooperative development agreement for Black Cat Road improvements, citing higher priority projects, including improvements at the Venable intersection regarding the new community center and the extension of West Corporate Drive to West Waltman Lane. And those are highlighted right here. So additionally, staff also met or talked with the developer of the Black Cat Industrial Project, which is directly to the south across the canal. And he indicated his intent was to pursue a development agreement modification to their existing development agreement in the future. And this amendment would propose revising the square footage thresholds that would trigger required improvements to Black Cat Road. Additionally, staff is preparing an application to amend the future land use designations within the 10 mile interchange specific area plan. This proposed amendment is limited to the future land use map concurrently concurrently staff is evaluating potential additional amendments to the 10 mile interchange specific area plan and related modifications to the comprehensive plan to better align. with the direction provided by city council the initial flume amendment and application is anticipated to be presented to city council later this year and this is just a little highlight of the area that you guys will see some changes to later this year and i will stand for any questions you guys here's the proposed flex space code change it's also in your packet and the development agreement provisions are on the next slide which i can change to in a little bit and i'll stand for questions

Thank you. Council, any questions for staff?

Mr. Mayor.

Councilman Taylor.

Nick, thank you. Just a quick question. With some of the changes that are actually shown on the screen here, did you pull these together based on feedback from council, your own kind of research? Just kind of want to know how you ended up with what we see in front of us tonight exactly.

Mr. Mayor, Councilman Taylor, it's a great question. So yes, some of us from your guys' feedback wanting to provide some more flexibility for the development community. I was also taking some feedback from the development community on really what percentages, for one, it was to clean up the percentages. which we actually just went to more of a standard ratio across all zones that FlexSpace is permitted in, which is that 10% to 30% of office and retail showroom. So any zoning district that allows for FlexSpace as permitted will allow for 10% to 30% retail showroom across all districts. So it could be 90% warehousing and 10% office, and that's allowed in the CG zone as it would be in the IL zone. And that was based off of a lot of feedback we did get. Obviously, it's still a work in progress. I wouldn't say this solves all of the issues that FlexSpace has, and we actually are evaluating that and having a workshop with you guys next week and meeting with more of the focus group to have maybe a more comprehensive change. But I think this is a, in the near term, solution to some of the challenges that we were facing as well as to what the applicant was asking for in their code change.

I appreciate just a follow up. Mr. Mayor. Yeah, thanks, Nick. Some of the feedback you got from the development community. Was this some feedback that you'd had previously kind of on file? Did you go out and sort of have some more informal discussions? I know we didn't have any kind of formal outreach, at least I'm not aware of. But how did you collect some of this additional information from the time we had this last meeting till today to kind of inform that?

Yeah, Mr. Mayor, Councilman Taylor, it's a great question. Yes, so we did definitely pass feedback. This has been an ongoing thing. I wouldn't say this is new. Flex space has been, I wouldn't say a challenge, but it's been trying to find the balance between WHERE THE OFFICE RETAIL SHOWROOM SHOULD LAND IN REGARDS TO THE WAREHOUSING AND IN WHAT ZONES. SO IT WAS DEFINITELY BASED OFF OF PREVIOUS FEEDBACK. I ALSO DID I TALKED WITH A COUPLE PEOPLE THAT I DEAL WITH ON A REGULAR BASIS INCLUDING THE VAN TRUST TEAM ON WHAT THEIR THOUGHTS WERE ON IT AND ALL OF THEM WERE SUPPORTIVE OF IT GENERALLY. I DID LET THEM KNOW THAT WE ARE GOING TO HAVE A LARGER CHANGE PROBABLY COMING IN THE FUTURE THAT WILL MAYBE ADDRESS MORE OF THEIR CONCERNS BECAUSE A lot of the feedback we got was actually wanting less retail showroom and office because most people aren't going to have 30% office, especially in the IL zoning. But today we actually got a request from another developer that wants maybe more flexibility to have 50% office, which was the first time I had heard that. So it is a little bit of a moving target that we're trying to find where that happy medium is, and we hope to accomplish that really in that workshop. But I think that this is a code change that satisfies kind of what the applicant was looking for while also cleaning up the code in the near term, which knowing that there will be a bigger change in the future, correct.

Council, any further questions for staff on this item? Okay, would the applicant like to come forward?

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Council. Chris McCluskey, address is 205 North, 400 West, Suite 100, Salt Lake City, 84117. I want to start by saying thank you for the time this evening and echoing Nick's comments a little bit on the UDC. That was one of the conversations we had quite a bit of discussion on last time when we were here for a council meeting. um as nick said van trust is supportive of the co-changes in that order and so that alleviates that problem from our our concern so i wanted to spend a few minutes to actually discuss a little more i think what was the bigger concern which was black cat specifically um from an access and traffic standpoint so um i think in my humble opinion or the interpretation i got the the project from a a aesthetics and location and type of use was was not the question as much as much as the traffic impact and being the smaller development within a larger development area. We are obviously 20 acres out of a much larger area that has industrial zoning still generating traffic, obviously, but at an impact rate that's lower than a lot of our development partners who are in the area, specifically south and east and west, some of the other development areas that Nick and Bill highlighted last time. So working through that, obviously, our impact isn't the one that's going to necessarily change the level of service from, say, a C to a D, but we do understand that there is an obvious impact once we do complete the development. So we've tried at both council and staff's recommendation to try to discuss with the adjacent developers opportunities for us to help in some way to alleviate the problem. Obviously, ACHD coming forward with no development cooperative agreements was kind of a little bit of a hiccup, not giving us an opportunity to provide additional infrastructure improvements, which was tough as we were trying to find solutions to move forward so in that vein though we did reach out obviously had some great conversations with our development partners the south black cat and sawtooth there are opportunities for us to partner with them in the long run if the improvements that they're required versus their development agreement come forward we're willing to offer some contributions of capital to be able to facilitate that obviously being a smaller development that's not a large amount but we are willing to contribute up to two hundred thousand dollars to help for infrastructure improvements kind of a back of the napkin analysis that we did that kind of somewhat prices out to for example a turn lane or a suicide turn lane it's it's a bad term for a center turn lane i shouldn't use that but the center turn lanes to help facilitate some of those turning movements at Franklin Road off of Black Cat to help alleviate some of the traffic. So that was one of the things that we were trying to do to help alleviate some of those concerns, obviously. the right timing is kind of the question on this. And from a land seller's perspective, obviously the families you're probably gonna hear from later, I believe they're gonna speak on the open forum, but this is an opportunity from exit generational assets that they've held for a long time in the families franklin is forcing obviously the choice to make the decision a little sooner so we're trying to help facilitate a some families to exit the area plus for the development and at the same time already contributing quite a bit of infrastructure improvements with the collector street that you see kind of between the northern buildings and the southern buildings which again for a small site building a road on site is is also obviously a capital cost that we're willing to contribute there, but then also trying to contribute to the Black Hat improvements as well. So we just hope that, you know, if there was any questions, maybe we could help. Obviously, this is a much larger concern that was voiced last time that we only have a small portion that we can help with. We would love to either filled any questions or if we needed to go over for i believe all the council members were here last time so they heard the project saw the saw the level of quality and what van trust his vision is and hopefully that's a win-win for the city as well at least we feel it is so maybe i'll stop there and see if there's anything that we could answer questions or specifically with the transportation we've tried and and don't know if that's adequate but would love to answer questions

Thank you. And Mr. Mayor, I'm going to turn to you. Technically, I only called up the very first item. Are both of these items being considered simultaneously in this conversation? Or are we doing them separately just from the conversation?

So, Mr. Mayor, members of the council, I mean, you can certainly hear them together. We need to vote on them separately, but you could hear them together if you wish. Okay. All right.

And I don't know if it's appropriate, I should ask Council, but the UDC text amendment, we are not pursuing at this time as the code changes alleviate those concerns. So I would say the, and item one, I believe of that is that, if I'm correct, is the UDC amendment changes that we requested. Van Trust is, I don't know if we can withdraw now on that or if you just vote to deny the UDC changes or the code changes would facilitate that. Those are adequate for us.

It might be best to withdraw. Withdraw that. Council can accept a withdrawal if that's your desire.

person mister mayor if i can chime in real quick just so i'm understanding correctly chris we would read that coachings that we've presented tonight would be essentially in lieu of what you guys propose so you don't want to withdraw because of you counsel would be acting on this language tonight so i it would be essentially piggybacking off of the udc text amendment that you guys did propose so i before we withdraw the application i don't know how we might be a little bit further down the line with our code further code change so i think we do want to keep this open if you guys would like it correct thank you yes sorry

Mr. Mayor, Deborah Nelson, 601 West Bannock Street. Just to clarify, with that understanding, that's great. Yes, thank you. We will keep the application active. If the council is amenable to accept the staff's proposed language to what the code change would be, then yes, we are in agreement with that remaining.

Okay. Sorry, Mayor. Any other questions or questions?

Counseling, additional questions? And I guess, Nick, did you have plans to do further on the application overall or not necessarily? Item two, are you going to do any more of a staff update on item two?

Mr. Mayor, no, I was not planning on it. It was just the annexation of the property with dial zoning. If you guys would like, I can. I can go into some more detail.

Counsel, do you feel like you need any more on the overall project? Okay, just want to make sure everyone's on the same page that we are. how I'm the one and two open before us for consideration conversation questions to the staff and the applicant at this time. Tony, additional questions to the applicant at this time.

Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council.

square quiving was sent to provide testimony.

Mr. Mayor, nobody marked they wanted to speak. I'm sorry. Nobody marked they wanted to speak.

Okay, is there anybody present that would like to provide testimony on this item, either in the room? Go ahead and come on up if you would like to provide testimony. And if you're online and you'd like to provide any comments or questions, testimony, please use the raise your hand feature. If you can state your name and address for the record, you'll be recognized for three minutes.

Hello, my name is Gina Thruston and my address is 496 East Amali Court in Meridian. And we own the property at issue in this application at 5201 West Franklin Road. And we're here to speak again in support of this project. Since the April meeting, we believe VTREE has actively worked to address your concerns. We kindly request your approval so they can move forward with this project without further delay. I'll mention again that the growth in this area over the past number of years has made farming more difficult. Meanwhile, road widening to accommodate that growth has taken more and more of our land. They took some in 2017 from my father-in-law and they just now are taking some in 2026. The proposed light industrial project by V tree is the right choice for this site. It creates a true win win for our community by bringing jobs closer to residents. This project helps fulfill the city's goal of allowing people to live where they work. Although coordinated coordination among competitors with adjoining properties is a typical, I believe V tree and saw tooth have initiated discussions concerning the black cat road widening, which is a very positive sign. Furthermore, VTRE's proposed acquisition of both properties creates a clear path for the development of the collector road. Without VTRE's site consolidation, acquiring both parcels is highly unlikely for another developer. This would severely delay the road project, and it would then ultimately limit future access to our property. We respectfully request your approval this evening. which will allow our families to successfully move forward to our next chapter. Thank you.

Thank you. Council, any questions? Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Is there anybody else that would like to provide testimony on this item? Good evening.

I'm Trina Netto. My address is 2434 West King Road in CUNA. I have a power of attorney for Mark Choi, the other property that's involved in this property. I won't take much of your time. I just wanted to say that we definitely support this project. Due to that road, actually that's what made me think about getting up, is with the road expansion happening, ACHD will be taking Mark Choi's home. It will be removed from the property. in the next 90 days. So not only is he without a home or rental property, he's also now struggling with the farming, the same as the Thurston's family. So we definitely want to support this project because he's going to be without a property that is of any use to anybody at this point without development coming in the future. So anyway, thank you for that.

Thank you. Council, any questions? Thank you. Is there anybody else who would like to provide testimony on this item, these items? Okay. Would the applicant like to make any final comments or is the applicant waived? Okay. Council, applicant waives. Any final comments?

Mr. Mayor.

Councilman Overson.

If there's no more comments, I move that we close the public hearing on ZOA 2025-0002. Second.

I have a motion and a second to close the public hearing on item 1, ZOA 2025-0002. Is it? Is there any discussion? Mr. Mayor, I'll kick off the discussion. Wait, if there's, oh, sorry, go ahead, yes. You want discussion on the motion, or do you want me to close it? Is there discussion on the motion to close? No. All those in favor say bye-bye, say an aye.

Aye.

Opposed, nay. The ayes have it, and the public hearing is closed. Do you also want to close the other public hearing as well?

Mr. Mayor. Councilman Overton. We're hearing these polls together. We close the public hearing on H20250052.

Second.

I have a motion to second to close the public hearing on item two, which is H2025-0052. Is there discussion on the motion? If not, all in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Opposed, nay. The ayes have it. The public hearing is closed.

Councilman Overton, for discussion. I'll open up discussion on these two. On the first one, I was in support of the changes to flex space just because I think we need to be more reactive to what is needed out there. And when we set any type of parameters up there and it's not what people are looking for, I don't know that we're doing our due diligence sitting up here. So I am fully supportive of the text amendment change on the office requirement down to 10 to 30%. That's the first time you've done that to me. New program. There you go. When it comes to the approval of the application, I initially was pretty concerned about the traffic concerns that we are going to have in that area. And I'm still concerned about them. but I think we get into a position where there's so much other property that's already been approved. And this will provide one of those roadway segments within it that will help with traffic getting in and out of this project, as well as other projects. You know, normally we hear from the public that can't believe that we're developing all this farmland that used to be farms when I was a kid. But to hear the testimony in this case, we're hearing from landowners. who can no longer farm that land, that know that the best move forward with that land is to sell it and have it developed into what its next stage of life is. And it's important. I don't think that message gets out enough to any media people that are sitting in the room. I don't think that message gets out enough to folks about exactly how some of these decisions come about to develop some of the land that we all grew up watching as farms when we were kids. So I appreciate your comments. It means a lot to hear you say that. I don't think that this one project is going to be that big of an impact on traffic in this area. It's going to have an impact, absolutely, but I don't think this one is the one that's the straw that broke the camel's back. I think we're going to have to work with a CHT in the future as we always do and continue to push for improvements in this area. So we can move traffic as quickly as we can. The city is full of roadway projects that have really high priorities. And we continue to try to work in this area, especially on the north side of the intersection of Franklin and Black Cat. But I'll be in support of both of these projects or both of these items tonight.

Mr. Mayor.

Councilman Cowder.

I appreciate good feedback and insight from our council president. I think this is one where I look at it a little bit differently. I'm certainly in full support of the UDC tax amendment, but... The comment about this one not being the fly that breaks the camel's back is well heard. I actually think that we're headed down to kind of a death by 1,000 cuts. We've got development in this area that we have said no more growth because of the roads. And I'm disappointed and quite frankly very frustrated that our roadway authority, who looks at a road that was rated better than E two years ago, isn't worthy of investment for best case 10 years from now. I think Black Cat is an important part of our community. There are planned changes, but we are incentivizing a lot of growth with a lot of industrial traffic on a road that I just don't think can simply handle it right now. We didn't think it could handle it when we limited the growth of the other large-scale industrial project. And while I recognize that this has less than an impact on that large-scale project, it is impact on a road that we've set up. past council has said we want to really limit growth in this area until the roads are improved. I'm disappointed and very frustrated that I'll be voting no towards this annexation tonight, and I wish that our agency partner understood the value and the impact of not acting on Black Cat means for Meridian moving forward.

Mr. Mayor.

Aspen Taylor.

Um, initially I was the thing that bothered me the most was, um, making changes to our code on flex space. Kind of in light of an application, but really like where we've ended up, we've obviously had a few discussions about flex space since then on some other applications and. I like where we're going, and I appreciate the fact that we're very soon going to be having a broader discussion about how to handle this. But the 10% to 30%, I think that's the right spot. So my concerns with that have been satisfied. I like where we are going with that, and it seems like that's the direction we're going to go, probably broadly speaking, as we try to put a finer point on things. When it comes to the annexation request and some of the traffic concerns, I never viewed this project as dumping a lot of traffic on Black Cat, just kind of where it was situated with Highway 16 and the access point from Franklin Road. I didn't feel it was fair to hold this application sort of subject to some of those requirements that were put onto some of the properties. on Black Cat from previous council decisions in years past. So I think this is a really good project. I think the way we kind of pulled together a few different parcels for kind of a nice coordinated development, I think works well. I think I see it as a nice transition from the properties to the East and then to what will likely be more of an industrial park to the West. I think this is a kind of a nice transition into that. And this, I think it's a good area. This is kind of where we want this stuff right along a freeway. You know, we're not going to put a bunch of single family homes right next to the freeway. These are the types of things that we want. And I think this is attractive from some of the drawings that we've had. So. I'm going to support both of these tonight. I think where we started to where we've ended up, I'm happy. The last thing I'll say is I do really appreciate the applicant's willingness to enter into discussions with people in the area and being willing to put up money to fix the problem. It goes a long way towards helping us out. I don't like it when applicants just view their little universe and their application as sort of an island in and of itself. I like how there's an understanding that it's all interconnected and not being required, but being willing to put up some capital to kind of fix those problems, I think helps us when we have conversations with ACHD and with others to say, look, we're going to bring some money to the table. We're going to try to fix this and we need to fix this. So I'll be supporting both of these tonight.

Mr. Mayor, if there's no more comments, I'd like to move ahead with a motion. After considering all staff, applicant, and public testimony, I move to approve file number H-2025-0052 and ZOA-2025-0002 as presented in the staff report for the hearing date of June 16, 2026. Okay. Okay.

I'll second that, but is that how you wanted it? No.

So, Mr. Mayor, it's perfectly fine to either do it either way. You need to vote on that separately. You can move to approve them both if you want, but you do need to vote separately.

It'd probably be cleaner if we just voted separately on the two, the two separate motions.

um do that so second yeah withdrawal mr mayor councilman overton sorry i had it drawn up in front of me with both of them for one vote we'll separate them one more time after considering all staff applicant and public testimony i move to approve file number h 2025-0052 as presented in the staff report for the hearing date of june 16th 2026. uh second

I have a motion second. Clarification, does it matter what order we do them in? Okay.

I don't want to. So withdraw. Withdraw. Third time. Third time's a charm. Chris, if you'd like to buzz me. Mr. Mayor. Captain Overton. Third time is going to be a charm. After considering all staff, applicant, and public testimony, I move to, I really do, I move to approve file number ZOA 2025-0002 as presented in the staff report for the hearing date of June 16, 2026. Second.

Okay. I have a motion and a second. Do I have discussion on the motion? Not clear. Call the roll.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Kavanagh? Aye. Taylor? Aye. Woodlock?

Aye.

Little-Roberts?

Aye.

Overton?

Aye. All ayes. Motion carries. Sam is agreed to.

Mr. Mayor. Councilman Overton. After considering all staff applicant public testimony, I move to approve file number H-2025-0052 as presented in the staff report for the hearing date of June 16, 2026. Second.

Have a motion a second to prove item to age 2025 dash 0, 0, 5, 2, is there a discussion? If not, call the roll.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor Kavanaugh. No. Taylor.

Aye.

Woodlock. Aye. Little Roberts. Aye. Overton.

Aye. The poor eye is one name. The item is agreed to. Thank you. Good luck. And look forward to working with your partners to make sure we get as many improvements out there as we can that road network. With that, we'll move on to item three, which is a public hearing continued from May 19th for Syringa Crossing Mixed Use Development, H. 2025-0007. We will continue this public hearing with staff comments.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the council. The next application before you is Syringa Crossing. They have a request in for an annexation and zoning, preliminary plan, and a conditional use permit. The annexation portion of this site consists of approximately 62 acres of land, including right of way to the section line of adjacent roadways. It's currently zoned RUT and LO in Ada County, and it's generally located at the northwest corner and southwest corners of West Amity Road and South Meridian Road, State Highway 69. The comprehensive plan future land use map designation is mixed use community. The applicant submitted revised plans after the Commission hearing as outlined in the memo from staff to the Mayor and Council dated June 9th to address items discussed during the Commission hearing that contributed to the Commission's recommendation of denial. Staff's presentation will include the amended application information and the presentation slides will show the original versus revised development plans. The applicant will cover the proposed changes in more detail in their presentation. The applicant is requesting annexation of 62.44 acres of land with R15 zoning, which is 9.73 acres, R40 zoning, which is 16.58 acres, and LO zoning, which is 5.33 acres, CN zoning, which is 2.07 acres, and CC zoning, which is 28.73 acres. A conceptual development plan was submitted with the annexation application as shown that depicts how the site is proposed to develop. The northwest corner is shown there on the left and the southwest corner shown there on the right. At the northwest corner of the annexation area, a multifamily development is proposed consisting of 98 garden-style apartment units, three units fewer than before, at a gross density of approximately 10 units per acre, 37,000 square feet of office uses, which is 16,000 square feet more than before, A 63,000-square-foot grocery store, which is 2,000 smaller than originally proposed, with retail shops, restaurants, and a bank, totaling 117,600 square feet of commercial space overall. And that is 10,000 square feet more than the previous plan. Public quasi-public and plaza areas are also proposed in the commercial portion of the development. The open space has been reconfigured with the revised plans and has increased overall between the residential and the commercial areas. All commercial development is proposed to be a single-story in height, while the residential is proposed to be three- and four-story apartment buildings. A mix of at least three different land use types is proposed as desired. The applicant is proposing changes to provide better functional integration of uses as discussed during the Commission hearing in accord with the Comprehensive Plan. The proposed density conforms to that desired in the plan. Community serving facilities such as hospitals, clinics, churches, schools, civic buildings, or public safety facilities are not provided, which does increase service and transportation network impacts. Supportive and proportional outdoor public and or quasi public spaces and places connected by pathways are proposed consisting of plazas, outdoor gathering areas, and linear open space, areas that the applicant states consists of 23% of the Northwest development area, which exceeds the 5% required in the comp plan. And the original plan there that was reviewed and acted on by the commission is on the left. The revised plan is on the right. At the southwest corner of the annexation area, 30,000 square feet of commercial space is proposed, which is 5,000 less than before. Anticipated to include restaurants, retail shops, a coffee shop, and gas station convenience store, and 7,800 square feet of office space has been added. Across the street on the southern portion of the development, a 302-unit multifamily residential development is proposed, which is 20 fewer than before. with a gross density of 18.2 units per acre. Commercial structures are anticipated to be a single story in height. Residential structures are anticipated to be three to four stories in height. With the proposed changes, the development plan is now consistent with the following mixed use provisions in the comprehensive plan. A mix of three different land use types are now provided as required, whereas only two were provided before. And outdoor public and or quasi-public spaces and places consisting of plazas, outdoor gathering areas, and linear open space appear to meet the minimum standards. The development, again, this is just for the southwest corner that I'm speaking about now. The development is still inconsistent with the following policies in the comprehensive plan. The residential area is 68% of the site, which is down from 72%, which is 18% more than the maximum allowed of 50% in the MUC designation, and 3.2 units per acre over the maximum density allowed of 15 units per acre. Commensurate levels of employment and other non-residential elements supporting residents and reducing local vehicle trips are not provided due to the excess of residential area and density provided. Community-serving facilities such as hospitals, clinics, churches, schools, civic buildings, or public safety facilities are not provided, which increases service and transportation network impacts, as I noted. The applicant has requested the overall project be considered for consistency with the comprehensive plan rather than two individual projects. The comprehensive plan specifically states contiguous mixed-use identified areas that are bisected by an arterial or highway are considered separate and independent areas for use and design integration and will be evaluated independently of each other. Some of the reasons for such include safety and efficiency of the transportation network, pedestrians and motorists alike. An overall pedestrian plan was submitted for the annexation area as shown that shows 10 foot wide pedestrian walkways in blue. So the original plan again is on the left, the revised plan is on the right. And five foot to seven foot wide sidewalk shown in pink providing connectivity along streets through parking areas public quasi public commercial and residential areas. conceptual building elevations and perspectives were also submitted showing what future commercial retail buildings and Plaza areas will look like, as well as the residential buildings at the northwest corner of the annexation area. The primary transportation considerations for this development involve the timing and coordination of required offsite improvements, access management along Amity Road and State Highway 69, and completion of internal street and pathway connections needed to support a functional mixed-use neighborhood pattern. The project would add measurable traffic to a network that already experiences operational strain during peak hours, underscoring the need to align development phasing with programmed intersection and signal improvements. Because of its proximity to two major transportation corridors, the design must emphasize efficient site access, safe circulation, and continuous pedestrian and bicycle connections consistent with the city's adopted street and pathway standards. AC hds recommended conditions and findings addressing intersection mitigation access spacing. and collector completion reflect these shared objectives and are consistent with the comprehensive plan and unified development code standards for coordinated land use and transportation planning. A preliminary plat is proposed to subdivide the southwest corner of the annexation area, but not the northwest corner. The northwest corner is only conceptual at this point, and it's just part of the annexation. The plat consists of 10 building lots, 6 commercial, 2 office, and 2 residential on 24.46 acres of land in the proposed R40, LO, and CC zoning districts. One access drive is proposed via West Amity Road and one is proposed via South Meridian Road and State Highway 69. A portion of a future collector street, Hermitite, via West Amity Road is depicted along the southern portion of the west boundary of the site and stubs to the property to the south. The portion that connects to Amity Road is offsite on the adjacent property to the west and is not proposed to be constructed with this development. We do have an application that will be coming before you soon, Story Rock subdivision that is the property directly to the west, which would complete this road section if both projects are approved. A waiver from City Council is requested to UDC 113H4B2A, which prohibits new approaches directly accessing a state highway. ITD has approved this access. A backage road generally paralleling Amity Road and Meridian Road Road State Highway 69 is proposed for access to the properties fronting these roads in accord with the UDC. There is a 40 foot wide gravity irrigation easement. Let me find my slide on that here. There you go. On the southwest corner in the commercial area as shown, it's that kind of brown area. Trees and large shrubs are not allowed in that easement area. A conditional use permit is also requested for a multifamily development on the southwest corner of the annexation area in the Platt area, consisting of 302 apartment units on 15.23 acres of land in the R-40 zoning district at a gross density of 19.8 units per acre, which has slightly increased from before with the decrease of the residential area after addition of the office area. Three and four story multifamily buildings are proposed with parking on the ground floor on some units.

Let me find those elevations for you real quick here.

Those were the original elevations, and then these are the proposed changes. Building materials consist of fiber cement siding, variegated board and batten, and a variety of colors and styles, stucco and brick. The final design, if approved, is required to comply with the design standards in the architectural standards manual. The collector street access along the west boundary hermitite is needed for emergency access and should be extended from West Amity Road to the site prior to issuance of the first certificate of occupancy within the multifamily development, if approved. Based on 302 units, a minimum of 3.24 acres of common open space is required. Go back to that slide. Too many slides here. We missed a moment. A total of 3.8 acres is provided, exceeding the minimum standard. Proposed amenities consist of a clubhouse, swimming pool, and spa, a community garden, shade structure, walking trails, children's play structure, and three sports courts. Additional amenities are recommended by staff, if approved, based on the area inside the development. The applicant is requesting the following waivers from City Council to UDC 114327C8, which states common open space areas and multifamily developments shall not be adjacent to collector or arterial street buffers unless separated from the street by a berm or constructed barrier at least four feet in height with brakes on the berm or barrier to allow for pedestrian access. The applicant is requesting approval through the conditional use permit for common open space areas in the multifamily development to be located adjacent to a collector street buffer without a berm or barrier separating it from the street. The reason for such is an enhanced interaction is desired between the street and the 10-foot wide multi-use pathway along the collector street with a narrower street section and wider pathway adjacent to common areas. The second waiver is to UDC 11-3H-4B-2A, which prohibits new approaches directly accessing a state highway. City Council may consider and approve a modification to the standard upon specific recommendation of the Idaho Transportation Department, or if strict adherence is not feasible, as determined by City Council. The applicant is requesting Council approval of the proposed access south of Amity Road. A recommendation has been received from ITD on the access, they will allow a write in write out access. No written testimony has been received on this application. The Commission recommended denial of the annexation application and consequently the preliminary plat and conditional use permit applications, therefore conditions of approval are not included in the staff report. If the council determines the proposed annexation is in the best interest of the city with the proposed development plan, the project should be continued to a later hearing date in order for staff to prepare recommended conditions of approval. The possible motions on your hearing outline are incorrect. Please be aware of that. There are two motions before you tonight that you should consider. The first is for denial. The second is for continuance to a later hearing date to allow staff to prepare conditions. And again, council is the decision-making body on that. The possible motions do not reflect that. Thank you. Staffs, the applicant's here to present.

Thank you. Council, any questions for staff?

Mr. Mayor.

Council Member Little-Roberts.

Sonia, or maybe Bill, is one of our options to send it back to P&Z, because it seems like there are so many changes. Is that within our purview?

Mr. Mayor, Members of the Council, yes. You can always remand it.

Mr. Mayor.

Council Member Cameron.

Sonia, kind of along Council Member Little-Roberts' question, Could the applicant have, after the planning and zoning denial, after they provided updates and changes, request to be sent back to planning and zoning?

Mr. Mayor, Councilman Kavanagh, they could request that tonight, but they would have to go before you to request that. They can't just automatically go back to commission after they've made a recommendation. Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilman, any additional questions for staff? or the applicant like to come forward.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, council members. My name is Ethan Mansfield with Hawkins Company's 855 West Broad Street, Boise, Idaho, 83702. Sonia, would you mind firing up my PowerPoint presentation, please? Thanks. I would love to present our new project this evening for your consideration. Obviously, I'd love a recommendation of approval. If you feel that after you ask questions of me, you still need more information. I think that's appropriate to send it back to the Planning and Zoning Commission. However, I would love an opportunity to answer any of your questions about this proposal prior to that time, because I think I have the answers. Thanks, Sonya. Is there any way we could pop the PowerPoint presentation? I don't really love working in the PDF. It makes it a little difficult. But if that's all we got, Okay, no worries. Well, she's pulling that up. Just a brief outline of kind of what I'll be talking about this evening. I had quite a few project overview slides. I think Sonia did a really nice job of kind of summarizing the project. So I'll blow through those pretty quickly. It will be on the record. If you want to review or if you have specific questions about different uses, I do want to make it clear kind of while I'm giving the overview, there's nothing that is precluding any sort of civic use from occupying an office space. If there is a library needed by the city, we could absolutely entertain something like that. I just know that there's one down the street. We're happy to offer this space to churches. There is one adjacent to the property, and then we're actually extending sewer in partnership with another about a half a mile to the west. So all that said is we're absolutely not precluding any sort of civic use within this development. I know Sonya mentioned that there were no kind of community oriented uses provided, and I just wanted to kind of put that on the record tonight before we got the PowerPoint fired up. This is fine, Sonya. We can use it. That's okay. No worries. And with that, yeah, as Sonya mentioned, it's an annexation zoning and development agreement on the northwest and southwest corners. The CU pre and preliminary plat is on the southwest corner only. The genesis of that is a pre-app with the City of Meridian. We went in with only the northwest corner. We went in with 284 residential units, 130,000 square feet of commercial. We were asked by the city to come back with both the northwest and the southwest corners as a single kind of more cohesive development under a development agreement. And this is from the comprehensive plan in the orange here mixed use projects are to be developed with an overall master or conceptual plan for the larger mixed use area. This is, you know, a 56 acre area. This is the larger mixed use area and development agreement will typically be required for the area with the future land use designation of community. So with that, you know, I'll kind of skip the overview for the big both sides, and I just want to kind of talk a little bit. Here's kind of the overview in one slide. So we've got 400 up to 400 multifamily units. That's 23 fewer than the last plan. We've. More than double, well, nearly doubled, almost 100% more office space, dedicated office space. That's 45,000 square feet of office, almost 150,000 square feet of food, retail, personal services, other commercial services, shops. Bank gas station. That's an increase of 10,000 square feet. Overall, we have 9.9 acres. That's 18% of the site is quasi public open space. That's a civic use for the comprehensive plan. This excludes multifamily common open space. So just as you're thinking about that, right? None of that 18% includes anything within our CUP staff explicitly asked us and planning zoning specifically asked us to separate those out. So they weren't getting double counted or confused. So that 18% covers the whole site, including the multifamily area, but none of the, none of the multifamily amenity space, common open space is included in that 18% calculation. So in some, I'll go over kind of what that looks like in some. So here's the Northwest, uh, corner quickly about 31 acres. Um, We added 10,000 square feet of shop space, no extra drive-throughs proposed, additional office space, so 37,000 total on this corner. You can see the new layout kind of opens it up more between the multifamily and the commercial areas. We have 98 multifamily units. We created additional open space and linkages between the commercial and the residential. At our neighborhood meeting, one of our early neighborhood meetings, we actually had a household from Grace subdivision to the northwest gray stone gray lock i cannot recall and they said they're brand new to the neighborhood as most residents were because they're just new new homes we talked to them about our commercial development and they say we are excited to walk and ride our bikes down the pathway to this development so in my mind that's exactly what this sort of development should be doing um and i think you know given those comments that's a win The plan for the southwest corner is 25 acres, calls for 30,000 square feet of commercial space. We've added 8,000 square feet of office uses. Notably, your net density over the residential area doesn't change when you reduce the size of the residential area. It's like with math, you can reduce the units of the residential area, but if you reduce the size of the residential area too, your net density stays the same. So we could keep chipping away at the size of this residential area and never change the net density. So that's just something to consider when you're thinking through the math equations in your head. We made room for more office at the expense of residential units. And that's kind of the thing that should be remembered here. On this side, 2.8 acres. of quasi public open spaces provided that's 11.4 of total acreage and that's only the area that is not included in the cup. cup space so, in other words, an additional 3.3 acres of common open spaces provided that's 21% of the acreage and orange so within this orange area 21% is common open space for the CP so overall. Well, I guess I didn't add that in overall 6.1 acres of open space quasi open space clubhouse area park area 6.1 acres that's one in every four square feet is a common open space amenity so. I think it's safe to say it has adequate open space that's you know, a quarter of all the spaces is open space. Here is how we propose to integrate the uses. I think it's a relatively robust network of pathways. Something I'll talk about in a moment is the connection of that future roadway that is planned to be constructed with a STARS agreement that we're working through with ITD right now. And I'll talk about the STARS agreement in a second. I think it's very unique and it's important to understand why the site's laid out the way it is in relation to the STARS agreement. I'll say a little bit more about connectivity. There is a central spine on the southwest corner that connects every use from the central location. It connects the residential areas to the residential park area. It connects the residential areas to the commercial uses and office uses. We've talked about the northwest corner already. It connects houses from adjacent neighborhoods to our commercial center. I think that's a huge thing that cannot be overstated is the connectivity, not just within this neighborhood, but between other future neighborhoods and this neighborhood. That's the reason we're asking for a waiver between the multifamily area and the collector roadway, because we want it to feel more open to the street, open to the 10 foot pathway. So there's not a giant berm between the house and the pathway, right? We want this to integrate. That's the whole point. Here's some renderings. I'll go through these really quickly. A couple on the northwest corner, a couple more on the northwest, just a small office plaza to kind of give office workers, a space to relax, eat, drink, bring your lunch, run across the street to the grocery store, grab lunch, come back, eat. You could go to any of these plazas as an office worker or as a resident. Here's some from the southwest corner. We worked really hard to tie the multifamily area to the corner that's wrapped in commercial uses. It needs to be wrapped in commercial uses. That's the only place that commercial uses will truly thrive. This area is car dependent, so most of the traffic will be arriving via vehicle. So we're facing that reality and trying to blend that with the reality of bringing residents from adjacent areas able to walk and bike to the site. It's a real challenge in places that developed as an auto-dominant, auto-oriented site. And I think we've solved it here. Here's a few additional amenity renderings. Now let's talk about transportation improvements. So this project is proposing to use a STARS agreement. That is sales tax, a portion of sales tax generated from the commercial uses on the site will pay for the improvements to the transportation network not only adjacent to the site, but around the site as well. So we're proposing to complete the entire cross-section of State Highway 69 from our south end to the north end of the site. We're working through details with ITD, but we'll likely be including additional area farther south of the site to complete the cross-section essentially from where the Costco development stops. Pick that up. and run it past our development. That is economic activity on the site, paying for the transportation improvements that were planned by ITD. I think that's a huge win. The reason we need to put a grocery store user on the northwest corner, the reason we can't have equal parts residential, commercial, and office is because To generate that sort of sales tax revenue requires an anchored shopping center. An anchored shopping center is required to do the STARS agreement. And to do an anchored center, you need a certain amount of land. That land is only made possible by a big chunk of that northwestern corner. So what we're doing is we're trying to use that center and we're synergizing with some of the commercial on the southwest corner, but we can't do two grocery anchored shopping centers. That's too much. But we can do a bunch of pads out front or a bunch of pads on the corner that amity and state highway 69 corner that kind of feed off of the energy from that grocery anchored center so that i hope kind of gives you a little bit of context for why it's planned the way it is we're not trying to ignore any of the comprehensive plan mandates or requests or guidance what we're trying to do is we're trying to use those to put guard rails on it so we can then start there and then see how we can make this project economically feasible that's what we're trying to do ITD is really supportive of this project. I've had multiple phone calls with Kendra over at ITD. We really appreciate their support, and we're really working together well to make this STARS agreement a reality, but it doesn't happen without this site layout. It just doesn't. I should also mention that ITD did approve the access to the site on State Highway 69. There's a deeded access on Lyra, or sorry, excuse me, a deeded right in, right out where it's shown on the northwest corner. And we're requesting a right in, right out on the southwest corner. It's circled there in orange. That's approved by ITD. We only have two entrances to the site, one on State Highway 69, one on Amity. That's how you get to the southwest corner. So without that access to State Highway 69, it's really tough. It's going to be confusing for residents. It's going to be confusing for everyone who visits the site. So respectfully request that approval. ITD thinks it's a good idea. We're going to build it out. We're going to build the whole cross-section. So we're excited about that. And here's kind of the summary. You know, you can see in orange, that's comprehensive plan language. Any mixed use project must work towards the purpose and intent statements, including availability of goods and services to the community. Offset impacts by providing quality of life opportunities not typically achievable through other single use areas. We're building out the whole roadway network in front of the site and a little bit south. The base land coverage is our starting point. the health and well-being of the community and the market potential build-out over time for the service area of each misuse designation. We've done commercial development in the Valley for 50 years. We think we understand pretty well kind of the potential build-out. You know, what's going to happen over time in this area and this particular corner is can use a grocery-anchored shopping center. It reduces travel times for those around it. And it reduces travel times and potentially keeps people out of their car from the residence adjacent to the site. The higher the residential density, the greater the share of non-motorized trips to and from the development. So just keep that in mind. As you increase the number of people who live within walking distance, the greater the share of people who will walk and bike to the development. It's kind of math. It's just math. And in some, I think we talked about STARS agreement. We need this layout to be successful, to do a STARS, to build those transportation networks. So really appreciate your consideration this evening. Respectfully request approval, or I guess defer continuance to define conditions. Thanks very much.

Thank you. Council questions, Councilman Taylor.

Mr. Mayor. Ethan, could you... find the slide or at least the picture where it shows that Collector Street on the far west side. I have a couple of questions. That will probably work. So describe to me at Amity Road, what does that intersection look like? Is it going to be kind of built out? It's sort of five lanes on Amity Road. And I'm trying to get a sense of what that intersection is going to be like and how it's going to function.

Mr. Mayor, Councilmember Taylor, that is a great question. I'm assuming you're talking about the Plan North intersection. Yes. Okay. That is proposed to be at full build-out a lighted intersection. It will have... two lanes, one in either direction on Hermitite South, two lanes, one on either direction on Hermitite North. It may, I believe there's actually maybe some turn lanes in there, like maybe single turn lane, left turn lanes, but it's a two lane kind of cross section. And then yes, Amity will be two lanes in either direction and a center turn lane.

Mr. Mayor, a follow up. Is it your, as you sort of laid out the property with that collector, are you hoping that you will drive some of the interconnectivity of this proposal on that road instead of being on Highway 69? And if so, when is that road actually built in the process?

Mr. Mayor, Councilmember Taylor, another good question. So this road, that on the south side, that road would be completed with phase one of the improvements. Again, Sonia mentioned one of the conditions was to actually complete that road prior to occupancy of the first multifamily buildings. So the intent is to have that south side done with the south side. And again, this is all part of the STARS agreement as well. It gets kind of paid for with those dollars. And then we're proposing a second phase. This is actually phased out, so you can see it. Green would be the second phase. That would be what's included with phase two of the STARS agreement. We've got some stuff to work through with ITD still, but that's the idea, is that when that When that north phase comes in, the grocery anchored center, then that gets constructed, that backage road gets constructed with that. So they kind of come in with the development.

One final question, Mr. Mayor.

Mr. Taylor.

On the STARS agreement and sort of that anchor grocery store, how much other retail is kind of in this development? Because it seems like what I am recalling real quick, a lot of office space, not a lot of retail. So it seems like your sales tax revenue is primarily generated by one entity, the grocery anchor, but not a lot of other sales tax generating kind of services. properties there, but I want to make sure I'm understanding that correctly.

Uh, yeah, Mr. Mayor council member Taylor, another good question. So we've got 150,000 square feet of retail of which 63,000, again, these are kind of rough, you know, it's not, it may not be exactly this, but generally 63,000 out of 153,000 will be the grocery anchor. Um, we didn't want to program too much retail into this because we we wanted it to be the right amount and the right amount meaning it meets market demand or market demand when the surrounding area is built out um you know our project including some of the subdivisions quarries to the west that kind of stuff um so that's why we chose that amount

Council Governor.

Ethan, always appreciate your enthusiasm for your projects. I got a lot of questions about this project, but I'm not quite sure if tonight's the right time for that. I don't think this application's ready for prime time, but you... You wanted to take some questions. And so there's at least one that I would like your insight on. And, you know, a denial from staff, denial from planning and zoning, we take those serious. And I think you took it serious too, because what it appears to be is some attempt to address the concerns that you heard from planning and zoning. How do we know that those concerns from the planning and zoning commission were resolved without giving them that opportunity to weigh in?

Mr. Mayor, Council Member Kavanaugh, great question i think it's a it's a very fair question i don't know that the planning and zoning commission um would say right now like oh yeah this is great i what we're hoping for is for city council who is the body to actually makes the decision to look at this standing on its own two feet and saying, does this comply with the comprehensive plan? Does this comply with the goals of the city? Does it comply with the development ordinance? And I think between staff and city council and me answering questions about the development, we can provide the tools for you to do that this evening.

Mr. Mayor, I don't think I'm going to have any additional questions tonight.

Okay. I'll have some questions, comments for consideration. My first is staying on the road. Since the road can kind of be done with the SARS agreement, but it's on property which you don't own, how much of that road is contingent upon this council taking action on an application? Or irregardless of whether or not a council approves that, do you have the rights to build that road?

Mr. Mayor, that road is within our development application as something that is at some point required of us. We've worked pretty closely with Corey Barton, the landowner, and Trilogy Development, the development group to the west, to coordinate the construction of that road. That is essentially planned exactly where their proposed collector is. I mean, it is their proposed collector in their plan. Your question is, what if either that or this don't get approved? I believe that's your question.

What if it doesn't get approved? What if he says, yeah, I don't want to develop. I don't want to annex. I don't want to bring this forward. Can you still build the road? Do you have the rights to build the road? Or...

It's a great question, Mr. Mayor. We have spoken with him and we have gotten to a point where there's kind of a mutual agreement that this road will happen. We don't have a formal agreement, but if that is something that is requested by this council, I am sure we could get that. Next time, you know, if there, if this doesn't get approved tonight and that's what's stopping it, we can absolutely get that agreement because we do have a good relationship working together. And we've had, you know, handfuls of meetings about this. So about this very road. So I think we could absolutely provide that surety for you.

Yeah. Okay. So at least give you my two cents on some of this. It was interesting to hear that staff basically said, bring these all back together as one. which I think is great, but then we also have the component that says an arterial bifurcates them to not be considered as one in some regards. I've said this to staff. They know where I am on this issue. I prefer to look at the picture, the full picture, and not be tied to one individual parcel. So, for me personally, I can look at this holistically and say, do I think this meets the intent on both as one unit, despite the fact that there's an arterial separating it. But without that connector road being in, to me, it doesn't. Because I think that that's what provides the safest connectivity between the two parcels. So without it, then it almost says, how does each one stand alone or not in relation to the compound from my perspective? And so I think that's, to me, that road connection is important without putting an affirmative obligation that council has to approve that project in the future for that road to be built. Because I don't think that's fair to you and I don't think that's fair to council. I don't think that's fair to the expectations of the project that doubt shall annex and approve so said road can be built to allow this to occur. So that's just on the macro side. level from my standpoint. I do love the fact that once again we're seeing someone talk about a SARS project to get long-term transportation solutions along this corridor and the service that it provides to this area which is growing and the relationships that you have with others to the south that are trying to build their buildings and get access to utilities which i don't know how much of this project is contingent upon that that's not relevant in this context but to me those are all i think an important part of it I'm not asking for a response to any of these questions. They're just out there. One more, then I'll let you go. The one question I did, I kind of threw in there. You talked about reducing the land mass and the residential just equates to not being able to... I know you reduced some, but you can continue to reduce to meet the thresholds. What I've heard you say is you're not going to do that. That's how I interpreted your statement that we can put in more other uses down here. Because I actually like, personally, I like the layout that you had of the previous version better from a holistic layout. Here, I feel like we're shoehorning in a couple of office buildings just to, again, meet the intent of the three compared to anything else. But I'm not sure I agree with your statement that says, no, you tell us less space and we're just going to leave our density at the same level, no matter how small you get us to, because that's the density that we think we're going to do, even though we're over the number. So I'll let you unpack everything I said as you see if there's a question or comment or otherwise, but just unpacking my comments, the positives, the challenges, and the perceptions. I'll leave it at that.

Mr. Mayor, thank you for those comments. They're actually very helpful in helping us understand your position. It's like really instructive, frankly. So thank you for that. Just to touch very quickly on each. First was about the importance of the collector roadway to the project. I understand those concerns. I also want to mention, you know, we're proposing a utility connection underneath that collector roadway. We've spoken again with the developer to the west, and it's all been kind of discussed right and like we feel comfortable enough with those connections both the roadway and the utilities to put this before you this evening as something that we can do we can do with stars we can you know provide those connections and an understanding that if we can't do that that's on us and this project doesn't happen we're fully aware of that possibility. The next thing I wanted to talk about a little bit was the utility connection with neighbors to the west. The neighbor to our south has been in the past unwilling to extend sewer through their property. We worked with ITD to extend sewer around their property. Again, that's already been done. You know, it's happened. There's no going back. I mean, that's one of the reasons we'd like your approval here. There is a public sewer main that runs, you know, there's an easement that runs through the southern end of our property to serve the property to the west and Stonehill Church. So, you know, for what it's worth, that's happened. That's there. So there's no more kind of blockage of the development of that area by a single landowner. Just wanted to just outline that so everyone's clear. It also allows us to service our development with sewer. So kind of multiple benefits there. Finally, wanted to address the multifamily component on the southwest corner. You mentioned that as the multifamily area gets smaller, It sounds like we're not gonna do anything different than what we're doing. We would have to take another look to see if the project would go, would work if we lost residential units. I guess the point that I'm trying to make with this statement about the math though, is that if we reduce the size of the residential area, even if we kind of correspondingly lose units, the density remains the same. So we would have to not only lose units in proportion to the amount of land we're losing, but also above and beyond the amount of land we're using, kind of double loss. units, double these units, to then make the density on the southwest corner under 15. I was kind of merely trying to explain a math equation, not really kind of trying to say we're unwilling to do that. Although, if we were conditioned to do that, we are unsure if the project would actually work. We would need to go back and look at the pro forma and see what we could absorb.

Mr. Mayor.

Councilman Taylor.

This might be a question for staff. Am I correct? I'm just kind of repeating myself to make sure I'm correct. If we didn't have Amity Road and the project is laid out as it is, it would qualify holistically as a mixed-use area. It would meet all the standards. I guess I'm because we the problem is Amity Road cuts it. Right. So they're trying to be trying to find a way to satisfy the demands of a mixed use development. But. Kind of being cute here and trying to they're asking us to look at both areas collectively and ignore that, you know, Amity Road, the safe Amity Road wasn't there. It works with our comp plan. Or does it?

Mr. Mayor, Councilman Taylor, Council. Yes, if the arterial road wasn't there, it would qualify as an overall joint mixed development. However, the comprehensive plan specifically states that they have to be considered two separate projects because of that arterial street. So it's a very big detail.

Then Mayor and Council, just to give you a little bit more context behind Ethan's statement of coming together. At the time that we started discussions with the applicant, the mixed use standards were different. They weren't the current ones that we have, so it was really just a timing of when the application was submitted. The applicant got caught up submitting after the complaint and the mixed use changes had changed. And so the application was submitted. So we had to evaluate it under the new mixed use standards, not the previous ones that didn't really have that specific requirement. So that's why when you see a slide saying staff said bring it in, because you're right, at the time, the comp plan, we want to see that. The other piece of the comprehensive plan though, even though you have the arterial, the comprehensive plan says still look at the larger mixed use areas. So again, it's a guide, the comprehensive plan is a guide, but the intent is, to Mayor's point, is without the collector, we don't want people crossing arterial roadways to get to the services They need to be standalone so that way it makes use of it to be integrated so everyone can stay there and have services provided in that general area and not force people onto arterial roadways or state highways when they're in close proximity to those services. So that's really the premise behind why we put that requirement in the comprehensive plan or that guideline in the comprehensive plan because we wanted to make sure that they could function separately. So again, it's really a situation where There was a lot of moving parts with this development. The applicant's been working with the property owner to the west, to the south, everyone around them trying to get utilities figured out, annexation path, all of these things. The church, I think you're aware of Stonehill Church, and it's even farther to the west waiting on utilities. So, again, a lot of moving parts, which took a lot of time, and it just, unfortunately, the applicant did get caught up in doing all of that extra work, trying to make sure that they could address a lot of our concerns and still work with the adjacent property owners.

Well, we'll see if there may, I assume we want to take testimony if anyone else out there has some. So, okay. Thank you, Ethan. Mr. Clark, anyone want to sign up for a testimony to sign up?

Mr. Mayor, yes. Cooper Sharp.

Okay.

Good evening. Say your name and address for the record.

Cooper Sharp, 3578 South Falconers Place, Meridian, Idaho, 83642. Good evening, mayor and council members. I'm in support of this project and voicing my opinion as such. I live approximately two miles to the east on Eagle Road and off of Amity. We had a very similar project that developed there on the corner with Albertsons with some retail pads and some townhouse multifamily behind it. Since that has gone in, that's very much impacted me and my family's life in that area. Living on the south side of the freeway, there's not a lot of restaurant shopping anything we got to go to the north side and crossing the freeway is horrendous especially on eagle road so bringing this type of development to the south side of the freeway within proximity for us we see it as a very beneficial add to our community and the offering of our lifestyle and well-being in that area. A lot of times, having kind of the experience of seeing some developments in the area, a lot of times it's a chicken and an egg thing, right, of, you know, which one goes first. From what we've heard and seen, the applicant has done a tremendous job of working with all parties involved, including, you know, future projects and... We see it as a well-being or a movement from the applicant to try and make it work for everybody's well-being. We feel like it's, you know, my family feel like it's a great add, an asset, and as such should be approved. So I just want to voice my support of the project and recommendation of approval. Thank you.

Thank you. Counseling questions.

Mr. Mayor.

That's one of little Roberts.

Thank you so much. I appreciate you coming to share your experience with us. Would you mind sharing what other amenities or businesses that have grown up around that Albertsons that you and your family take advantage of?

I'd be remiss to say that we don't go to Jersey Mike's about every week. Don't want to admit that, but Jersey Mike's, the restaurant that just went in on the corner, the steakhouse. My wife occasionally goes to the Pilates studio that's right there. There's a bank right there that we frequently attend to withdraw cash. So very, very impactful for our family of, you know, minimizing. Again, we live, you know, not very far, less than half a mile from Albertsons, but we drive, right? Very rarely do we walk, but we drive there and those amenities have greatly changed our lives. that we spend in a car from having to go to the other side of the freeway or up anywhere on Eagle Road.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Mr. Mayor, that was everyone.

Is there anybody else that would like to provide testimony on this item? If you're online, you can just raise your hand if you're sure. Will the applicant like to come forward for any final comments?

Thanks, Mr. Mayor, council members. I would just like to say, if the collector road is a sticking point, and that is something you would like to see built, obviously, with the first phase, first, you know, commercial, whatever John Potter, condition you feel is appropriate we're willing to agree to that sort of condition, we have a great relationship with the Jason landowner and I just wanted to put that on the record to just say you know we we can agree to that sort of condition, if that makes the. John Potter, makes it happen.

John Potter, counseling additional questions comments. John Potter, Okay, thank you.

Mr. Mayor.

Councilman Little-Roberts.

It's my understanding that our choices are denial, continuance, or... Send it back to planning and zoning. And I know we've gotten a lot of questions answered tonight, but I think I would feel better if we sent it back to planning and zoning. I don't know that we did get all of their questions answered. And I just think there's been enough changes that it needs to go through the process. And I'm throwing that out there for discussion, not making a motion until I can hear from some of my colleagues.

Mr. Mayor.

Councilman Kammerer.

Question for Bill or Sonja. When a remand occurs, if the council were to send this back to planning and zoning, what level of staff analysis either continues or begins again in light of that remand? Is a new staff report generated? Is it a continuation of the existing staff report? Give B&B Council a little flavor about what that process is from a staff standpoint.

Yeah, Mayor and Council, Councilman Kavanaugh, I would update the staff report fully so that the Commission and Council could see where they're consistent and where they're not with the UDC and the comp plan.

reason it wasn't updated this time was because the commission didn't see those revised plans so i didn't mess with that document mr mayor sony i i completely understood kind of the reason why i just yeah i want to make sure from my standpoint that if that occurs they get kind of a fresh document that outlines kind of here's where there's what's changed okay thank you Mr. Mayor, just for commentary, I agree with Council Member Little-Roberts. To me, I think, short of a denial, I think a remand is the only other option that I would feel comfortable with supporting this evening. I appreciate the applicants coming from, but the fact of the matter is we have a process, and I have too much respect for the Planning and Zoning Commission to say, sorry, we're going to handle it here. You know, if... It's staff and approval, Planning and Zoning Commission in denial. Maybe there's an opportunity, and it's only a couple of issues that we're working through. I think there's a narrow path, but there's a lot that's changed, and I think there's a lot of questions out there that still need to be answered.

Maybe a question for staff from their perspective. I'm going to ask you to go into the head of the Planning and Zoning Commission. From the changes that were done, do you feel like they were getting to the heart of the Planning and Zoning Commissioners issues and i i said that in the context of like when you when you look at this project and you have an arterial road separating it is planning zoning commission ever going to say yes when you have an arterial road separating the project or even if they like it are they going to still recommend dial we're going to be back here with another uh reconsideration conversation i'm just you know i should curious yeah i i can offer my two cents and bill can follow up um

You know, the Commission and Council has adopted our comprehensive plan. The comprehensive plan specifically states it can't be considered one project for that reason. So I personally don't know if they would or should change their recommendation on that. They had recommended denial for inadequate integration between residential and non-residential uses. It's changed some. I'm not sure it's enough. lack of prioritization of pedestrian mobility within the project, they have submitted an updated plan that does show additional pedestrian mobility. And existing open space, as proposed, fails to serve residential and non-residential users adequately under the comprehensive plan. So those are the main things, just to refresh you on why they recommend denial. Again, some of those things have changed from staff's perspective. Not sure it's enough to meet the... policies in the comprehensive plan. Thank you.

Mayor and Council, I'm happy to kind of give you piggyback, too. I think you guys are aware that Commission, the waiver to state highways 69 or meridian road is your purview so again on on occasion planning zoning commissions have supported that or recommended that you support that request so that's um that's one thing that it's it's your body your purview to to review that and approve that i think sonia did a great job of kind of capturing what the commission uh stated but again to your point mayor they they could say we think you should look at this they can't say do it they could just say our recommendation is it is a single project if the applicant does x y and z extend the collector road uh like sonya was mentioning is the has the pedestrian network increased enough to get them to say that it is better integrated Keep in mind, mixed use is not just about vehicular traffic. It's about getting peds and bicyclists through the site too. And so when we see a large sea of asphalt through a parking lot, we have to make sure that pedestrians can walk through that as well and bike through that and not get hit. So there's a lot of policies in the comp plan under the mixed use standards that speaks to minimizing conflicts when these things integrate. And I think To the applicant's point, I think they've done better, but I don't know if they've done better to satisfy the commission and whether or not that would sway the commission's decision. I don't believe the commission spent a lot of time discussing the segregation between the arterial. It was really those things that Sonia was mentioning, is making sure that it does function and integrate better so it is more cohesive, understanding that not each site is going to have more than the other. I think one thing that I brought up during the Planning and Zoning Commission hearing was the fact that we're lessening density on one side in order to pick it up on the other. And to me, that didn't seem right to do that. It didn't say we're going to do 20 units to the acre on one half and they do 10 on the other and say we're 15 across the board. Because again, that has different impacts. One side of the street has to deal with a higher density than the other side, which again, I understand the applicant's perspective knowing that they're pursuing that STARS agreement. We don't know those things. We don't know what all goes into drafting a STARS agreement. We just get that information. So At least hearing that information and maybe even sharing that with the Planning Zoning Commission, I think that's some benefit to that. Because, again, we have to weigh that, the common good for the community. And if that's something that's necessary to get these things moving forward, then I think to the mayor's and the council's point, I think it's worthy of getting input from our commissioners.

Just for the record, I didn't say we should get input for the commissioners, but some of the council did. So, yeah. Mr. Overton.

So I first looked at this and saw the changes. And the first thing that came to me is that the changes to me look to be significant enough that this was worthy of being remanded to planning and zoning. But I think another important thing has to happen when it goes back to planning and zoning is whether what the applicant takes is exactly what we've seen tonight or whether it's another iteration when it goes back in front of planning and zoning is in this application. I don't know how I would be able to say I'm okay with anything if we don't have ITD at the table to bring forth The roadway issues that have been discussed here tonight, we always have and usually have ACHD on the phone ready to help us as we work through a project. But in this case, considering we're talking Meridian Road and the level of service that that road attempts to provide today, I think it's important both at the P&Z level and at a future council meeting that ITD is in the house and able to answer questions specifically addressed to them on how this process would work.

mr mayor that's one of the roberts if we're ready for a motion i will make a motion that we remand it back to planning and zoning second i'm sorry do we close the public hearing do we already do that okay sorry

Right. So I have a motion and a second to remand this back to plan zoning. Is there a discussion on the motion? Yes, ma'am.

Councilman Taylor? Share some thoughts, maybe as much for the benefit of the applicants. I think that what Councilman Overton said about looking at it, I think there's a lot of issues that are still going to be worked out with this. For me, that connector road is important in being there early in this process we don't want to be pushing people out on highway 69 and down and across and so i think that interconnectivity is pretty important to to looking at this i i understand what the comp plan says and um i think that's important that we follow that because that's what provides some consistency here but um so i don't know what pnz may come down even yet with a revised plan or some updates, but I think that connectivity on that, was it her, my, I'm not sure what the road was. I think that's really important that that's earlier in the process. So I'll be supporting the motions tonight, but I just wanted to share that so that the applicant has some additional feedback.

Any additional comments? Staff knew anything else? Okay. If not, go call the roll.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor Kavanaugh, Taylor.

Aye.

Woodlock. Aye. Little Roberts. Overton.

Aye. All ayes, motion carries. The item will be remanded back to planning and zoning. And I imagine we'll see you back here at some point in time one way or the other. But hopefully it's with a positive from everyone involved. Okay. Council, do we need a break before we take on the next thing or are we good to go? Okay. Well, with that, then we will move forward with item four, which is a public hearing to consider adoption of the Ada County Jail Development Impact Fees Ordinance and the Ada County Emergency Medical Service District Development Impact Fees Ordinance authorizing the imposition of new county-related development impact fees. And we will open this public hearing with staff comments from Mr. Starman.

Thank you Mister mayor members of Council pauses to moment Chris are you able to bring up the power point. Thank you sir. I'll go ahead and start without the PowerPoint. We'll catch up later. So you, just as a refresher, council members, Mr. Mayor, we did a fairly in-depth update for you about two months ago on April 14th and spent a pretty good chunk of time talking about this topic. I'm going to try to keep my remarks a little more brief. Since you just had a recent presentation on this, I'll try to keep my comments relatively brief. When we conclude our discussion in April, I think I can just in a very brief way summarize the council was supportive. We want to partner with the county. We do view the county as our partner and we do. I think the council has articulated that a philosophy of growth should pay for growth. Your direction to staff at that time was to proceed with drafting ordinances as well as drafting. the agreements, interagency agreements necessary, but you also said at that time that you probably were not yet ready to schedule a public hearing for this purpose. And I think the main concern, perhaps the only concern at that time, was the issue of timing vis-a-vis other cities in terms of adopting ordinances and some potential risks there. We have had discussions in the past about uneven playing fields, but I think in particular the concern in our April discussion was There's a hypothetical where, you know, maybe four of the cities, five of the cities participate, one or two do not. And what does that, what might that mean? And we had a conversation about that likely means that at some point the county would need to update its capital improvements plan. Its plans, plural, would also need to update its fee studies and the fee may change. So we don't know if that's a linear relationship. If you reduce the service area and reduce development that's happening it's not clear whether the fee would be the same would it be more would it be less and it was concern on you know rightfully so on the part of the council is do we get into this start collecting fees and then have a an issue like that so I think we have a resolution to that issue tonight and that's why we did schedule the public hearing to give you an opportunity to advance this topic and so I think it's a solution that works for everybody We work collaboratively with our county partners. Their legal counsel has reviewed the language. The county's chief operating officer has done the same and is here tonight to speak, to answer questions you might have relative to the county. So I'm going to go through the PowerPoint very quickly. It is a public hearing, so importantly, it's an opportunity to hear from the public as well and to get input from your constituents as well. As a reminder, the original proposal that was the original studies and fee proposal included three different countywide impact fees, coroner, EMS, and jail. You know from previous discussions that the coroner topic has been placed to the side. The county, I think, still would like to pursue that idea at some point, but after it makes more progress with the legislature to provide some clarity around that topic. So tonight we're talking, as we have in the past last couple discussions, we're talking about EMS and the jail. You also recall from we've been discussing this topic for some time now and actually took some concrete steps in 2025 to help advance the topic and, in particular. It sort of outlined implementation plan and have essentially completed the first three one was to approve some initial limited intergovernmental agreements that would kind of. to the point we are now and that's been successful that's why we're here chatting this evening. We also at that time or in that time frame of 2025 approved the capital improvements plans for EMS and the jail and you also amended the city's comprehensive plan to include those CIPs as well. That was accomplished last year. And then we paused until other cities were able to make more progress. And I'm happy to report tonight that I think that has happened. We're not 100% to the finish line, but others have made more progress. And I'll give you a fresh update on that in just a moment or two. So really our last step in this process and the purpose of the public hearing tonight is to really want to continue to help our partner with that you know, with these fees, the impact fees and that philosophy of growth should pay for growth is to conduct a public hearing and decide what you ought to hearing from your constituents, whether you wish to proceed with the necessary ordinances and agreements that would enable that to happen and authorize that to happen. quick update from last time. I'll just recap for the public as well. But at this point in time, Star and Eagle and CUNA have finished their processes. I believe Eagle and Star in particular have been collecting the fees for a few months now, perhaps a bit longer. CUNA just recently adopted its ordinance. There's a 30-day wait. And so either they're right at that point or maybe they just started to collect fees, I didn't get the exact date. But CUNA, if they haven't collected fees yet, they're about ready to do so and they may have been doing it for a week or so. Garden City has introduced ordinances for first reading, but I don't believe they paused their process as well. But I've been chatting with their attorney, the city attorney for Garden City. I believe they do intend to move forward, particularly if Meridian does the same. So I think Garden City has started the process. They paused. and will likely proceed soon. With respect to Boise City, perhaps Mr. Rutherford can give us an update on what he knows. I'll say I spoke with one of the lead attorneys from Boise City last Friday and indicated they're still interested in working with the county, that there's a desire to do so. Not a lot of tangible results quite yet, so I didn't get the sense it's going to happen tomorrow or next week. but i also didn't get the sense that it's it's not going to move forward either and perhaps mr rutherford has some some intel some insights on that that might be helpful to us if that's of interest to the city council tonight But we are, I guess, to go back, I think we are close to probably having five of six cities and they're getting very close to the finish line and Boise City at least still indicating a desire to work with the county on this topic. In order to address that concern, however, from our last discussion about the potential risk that Surrounds the topic of if all cities do not participate, is there a possibility of fees being too high too low refunds, et cetera? Collaborate with the county on some language that would, I think, address that topic for the city council to your satisfaction and really something kind of consistent with what we've talked about previously is to. be as helpful as we can to advance the ball but also wait till all the cities are ready to implement and so we can all kind of do it together in a sort of a cohesive way near in time and that makes i think sense for the development community and for all of the cities as well So the solution or a potential solution is you have the ordinances you have before you today have this is an excerpt from the jail impact fee ordinance or similar language for the EMS ordinance as well. But essentially by ordinance ties the timing to we would adopt the ordinances. They would go into effect. The two ordinances would go into effect 30 days after adoption. and publication but then the actual fee implementation would be contingent upon all the other incorporated cities in the county adopting the necessary ordinances and agreements to implement and collect those impact fees as well. So essentially we would do all we need to do and the ordinances would be approved and to use that expression on the books but the last step would pause until we have everybody on the same page. That's also helpful, just parenthetically, we haven't talked about this previously, but I know for your staff, that's helpful as well because, you know, we collect impact fees now for ACHD and we collect impact fees for the City of Meridian, and so we have You know, a basic framework in place to do that. But this type of stuff, the devil's in the detail. And so the programming is required for different computer applications, changes to processes, discussions with our counterparts at the county of how this is going to work on a day to day and logistical basis. A little bit of time to work through those issues would also be helpful, quite frankly. So this is primarily to deal with the issue we talked about back in April, but there's a side benefit that it provides some additional time for to kind of do the logistical type work behind the scenes that make that all work. As the mayor indicated, we opened the public hearings tonight. So since this is a public hearing, it's been advertised as such. There are basically three topics or subjects of the public hearing. The proposed Ada County Jail Development Impact Fee Ordinance, the proposed Ada County Emergency Medical Services District Development Impact Fee Ordinance, and then related to both is the actual fees themselves, which are covered by a different section of state law. And so all three of those topics are covered by this public hearing. We'd love to hear from the public and from our constituents on their thoughts about this concept. as a refresher this is um we talked about this previously i'll just maybe just use the first number for both but the uh cost in terms of uh the proposed fees that are before you and the subject of this public hearing uh depends on just as we for the city of meridian for our impact fees we have different categories of residential or multi you know single family multi-family retail and so forth the county when it did its analysis and fee study did a something similar they have some different categories some categories we don't use today but a similar methodology the proposed fee I'll just talk about the sort of the equivalent residential unit or a single family unit is proposed at 516 dollars per single family home there are other figures as you see on the screen for other categories of use including non-residential uses as well And then for EMS, the comparable fee is $175 per single family home. And again, other fees for different categories that kind of stem from that base calculation. to the extent so you'll I'm just going to sort of lay out the framework here this is the public hearing piece we're not ready to act on any of these things quite yet but I just wanted to tell the complete story while I had the opportunity to do so and then I'll step away we'll have our public hearing I can come back and talk about these more if you'd like but to the extent after hearing testimony tonight and having you're just questions answered and deliberation if you choose to move forward next steps would look like what's on the screen before you now want to be to introduce the I'm just going to truncate this description for eat to save a few words we'll do we'll introduce the jail impact fee ordinance by first reading by title only dispense with the full reading and approve the summary for publication do the same for the EMS ordinance our recommendation just to um out of abundance of caution we recommend that we do all three readings so first reading this evening if that's your desire second reading um next week and then third reading your first meeting in july um so uh quite frankly, the state statute that deals with this aspect within the Development Impact Fee Act is not as clearly written as it should be. So just to make it out of an abundance of caution, our recommendation is to do all three readings just to make sure that it's, you know, there's no questions. Next we have two interagency agreements for these would essentially be successor agreements to the ones you approve in 2025. These are the agreements that between the county is agreement 1 and the district is agreement. Number 2, that basically lay out the contractual relationship that the city will collect fees on behalf of the county and or district. This is how that's going to work and so forth. I will say parenthetically, this might be a question or topic of discussion for you. After working with the city's finance department and talking with our CFO, the agreements do not contemplate charging a fee to the county for collections although i think the county would be willing to entertain that and they have an agreement that sort of allows for that the rationale for that was twofold i think or at least twofold one is that with respect to achd we collect fees on achd's behalf and we do not charge a fee That's part of a larger arrangement, however, where both agencies work together. So the concept was we don't charge ACHD fees and they don't charge us fees. So we're trying to be consistent. Secondly, our chief financial officer thought particularly for ongoing costs that once the programming is in place and the processes are in place, that really the ongoing cost is not – of great substance and so for those reasons the recommendation was not to include a fee but you may have some different thoughts about that i do want to say however just for full everybody has full information to make good decisions there are some upfront costs to the city that um and we don't have a good grasp what those look like yet but there's gonna as i mentioned there'll be um programming costs to amend or to modify Um, our existing programs, some of that will be done in house with city staff. So it may not be a hard expense, but there's certainly a soft cost there for city staff to do that. Um, we don't have great numbers that are just to give you maybe a sense of order of magnitude in a discussion as recently as this morning. Maybe the thought was you were talking about the tens of hours, like, maybe up to 50 hours of staff time to programming time to do that. And then with one particular application, which I, that's not my field of expertise, and I don't even recall which it was now, but for one program in particular, it may require some assistance from that particular vendor. But the thought from our IT director was that would not be a substantial cost, but less than $10,000, maybe substantially less, but probably no more than that. But I do want you to be aware there are some implementation expenses that to step into this and make some changes to our systems particularly on the IT side there's going to be some upfront expenses right now that's not contemplating the agreement again the county may be amenable to that that's important to the council but uh just want to kind of flag that for you as well To the extent you did those things tonight or in the near future, the idea on the intergovernmental agreements in particular is that we'd be first to say yes. We then transmit those after the mayor's signature. We'd transmit those to the county and to the MS district for their approval and signature. And then the implementation date for those agreements is intertied to the implementation date of the ordinance. So the agreements don't become effective until the ordinances become effective. They go into effect at the same time. As I mentioned, we recommend doing all three readings by title only to weigh the full reading. And just the way the calendar falls this month, we have a fifth Tuesday that you all likely will not be meeting. So we'll do the second, if you proceed, the second reading next week, and then a third reading on July 7th would be the likely timeframe. We then publish as we do. We recommend a summary because ordinances are quite lengthy, I think 23 to 24 pages per ordinance. So summaries would be helpful in this instance. That's something you can do by a majority vote. The ordinances then under state law, once the ordinances have been adopted by this body and they've been published, they would go into effect 30 days thereafter. And as I mentioned, we had that timing issue at that point where we would not, the ordinances would be adopted and on the books, but we would not be collecting the fee until that timing issue was resolved I spoke about earlier. So that's a quick one through. I mentioned that Steve Rutherford, the chief operating officer of Ada County, is here. I'm sure he'd be happy to come to the podium and answer questions you have. And I would invite Steve to come up if I missed anything important. He can come supplement anything I missed as well. But at that point, I'll pause. This is a public hearing. So I'm happy to answer questions you have now. But you may want to hear from the public first. I'm at your pleasure. Whatever you'd like to do.

Thank you, counsel. Any questions for staff? Thank you, Kirk. Mr. Kirk, do you want us to provide testimony on this item?

Mr. Mayor, no.

Okay, is there anybody present that would like to come forward and provide testimony on this item?

A fine resident in County of Sloan. Mr. Mayor? I'd love to hear from them. Members of the council, Steve Rutherford, Chief Operating Officer for Ada County. That's 200 West Front in Boise, 83702. Although I'm a Meridian resident. So thank you very much for having us back to continue this discussion. We are very appreciative in terms of an update. Eagle and Star are collecting at this point. CUNA is finished with the process and we are currently in the process of adopting the intergovernmental agreement. We got in a little kerfuffle and so they sent the wrong one over. So we have to get our board to approve that and then they'll be collecting. Garden City let me know tonight that these trying to get this on the subject on they've got a second and third reading to finish of the ordinances. Or next week, we'll see. But he was pretty interested in following Meridian as soon as possible. And then some good news on Boise, the remaining city. I got an email from a mayor's chief of staff, one of the mayor's chiefs of staff, last week. And we have a meeting next Thursday with their planning staff, a couple of their lawyers, their finance people, similar to the conversation we had with Kurt and Lavoie not too long ago. Actually, it was a while ago now. So I think it's progress. I have talked to the development services director and she said, you know, it shouldn't be too painful. I do think they're going to want some concessions. They have, as I've mentioned before, they've been interested in an exemption for affordable housing. And so we've contemplated that for some time. And there seems to be some interest in ADUs as well and an exemption. And, you The Commission's willing to work through that with them because you know ultimately I think the goal is just to get this adopted countywide and we're encouraged By the recent communication from the city, so I'm happy to answer any questions you have About these impact fees, but we're again really appreciative for the invitation to come out Thank you counseling questions

Mr. Mayor. Councilman Overton.

Steve, are you okay with the language in our agreement that we will hold ours until all the cities are ready to go?

Mr. Mayor, Councilmember Overton, uh, I guess a couple of things. Yes. To start out, yes, that's absolutely fine. Ultimately, we're interested in all getting to the finish line together, and everybody's at a different pace. The idea that we're all going to cross the finish line at the same time, it became really impractical and unworkable dealing with mayors and city councils all over the valley. So that is absolutely fine. Like the mayor told me, about a year ago, maybe 18 months ago when I was standing at this, why are we still talking about this? Development's happening and we're losing funds. And so there is some sense of urgency. I think if the chair was here tonight, you'd hear that, but we completely understand because it gets weird if one of the cities either delays or decides not to do it. So just again, grateful for the action, at least that's proposed tonight.

Yeah, and I'll just weigh in on that topic just from a very practical standpoint. I'd be in favor of doing this without it to move it forward and start collecting immediately because, frankly, five of the other six cities, we're a majority of the development in the county under that scenario with our partners at CUNA and STAR and ourselves bar outpacing our neighbor two. The west of us so well, there may be some concerns over what happens if someone doesn't. All of us put together to me alleviates those concerns at a higher rate them waiting for the other two maybe happen, or maybe not happen, my personal opinion. A digital questions for Steve Steve appreciate it Okay, thank you. Is there anybody else that would like to write a testimony on this item, either in the room or online? Kurt, any final comments from staff on this item?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, council members. No additional comments. I'm happy to answer your questions you might have. If not, I'll let you take care of the public hearing, and I'm happy to stay at the podium to talk about your next items on your agenda, the ordinances and agreements, but we'll take care of the public hearing first.

Okay. Appreciate that. I will just say this. I did hear today for the first time from Director Miles about the potential costs for implementation. I am under the impression that these are soft costs. And I frankly think that even if they weren't, they're a small price to pay for our residents and taxpayers compared to the hard costs of paying for these out of other property tax if we didn't have impact fees overall, generally. So, you know, so we're prepared to move forward as we see fit to achieve this. I said, even if we got to just take a check, we can figure out a way to take a check from somebody to pay these that we take so long to get our, our system moving forward cost effectively. That have any motion to close the public hearing?

Mr. Mayor, before motion, I recognize the public hearing can be closed, but we have multiple readings on this. I recognize that our friends in the media just left, but a change in a shift like this, I would be more supportive of keeping the public hearing open through the various readings in case someone in our community wanted to weigh in and provide a perspective. So just for consideration, I guess. Thank you.

Mr. Mayor. Councilman Robertson.

I'm in agreement with that line of thought that we leave the public hearing open through the third reading. So do I have a different motion?

I think that was a motion. At least I heard it as a motion.

Mr. Mayor. I have a motion that we keep the public hearing open. Does it continue the public hearing?

Continue the public hearing. Next week?

Next week.

And motion second to continue the public hearing to next week. Is there discussion on the motion? If not, all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed nay. The ayes have it. The public hearing is continued. And Kurt, we know you won't be here. So we don't expect you to come back and be present for the next two

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Yes, actually, this will be my last, likely my last city councilman. Actually, my last day with the city is next Tuesday, but I told Bill I have a hard stop at 5 p.m., so I won't be here at 6 p.m. But it's been a pleasure to work with you all for the past several years, so thank you. I was going to mention two things, or at least one thing, and then we'll, if you like, we can transition to first reading of the ordinances. My recollection, I'm very comfortable with continuing the public hearing, my recollection is the state statute specifically allows you to do your first two readings before you complete your public hearing process, so I think THAT'S A GOOD POINT. I THINK IT'S PERFECTLY FINE TO I THINK IT'S PERFECTLY FINE TO CONTINUE THE HEARING UNTIL NEXT CONTINUE THE HEARING UNTIL NEXT WEEK AND KEEP IT OPEN. WEEK AND KEEP IT OPEN. THAT'S FINE TOO. THAT'S FINE TOO. THAT DOES NOT PRECLUDE YOU FROM THAT DOES NOT PRECLUDE YOU FROM OFFERING THE ORDINANCES FOR OFFERING THE ORDINANCES FOR FIRST READING THIS EVENING IF FIRST READING THIS EVENING IF THAT IS YOUR DESIRE TO DO SO. THAT IS YOUR DESIRE TO DO SO. CHRIS, I DON'T THINK WE NEED TO CHRIS, I DON'T THINK WE NEED TO PULL BACK UP. PULL BACK UP. PART OF THE POWERPOINT WAS SOME PART OF THE POWERPOINT WAS SOME ACTION IT the two ordinances listing consecutive. I think the jail was listed first and I believe the EMS ordinance was left listed second. I'd recommend two different, you know, two different actions on that. But if you're so inclined, you can offer those ordinances by first reading and we can proceed accordingly.

Okay. And with that, we'll move on to item five. Ask the clerk to read this ordinance. First reading.

Thanks, Mayor. It's an ordinance adding the new title 12 called Countywide Development Impact Fees the Meridian City Code and adding there to a new Chapter 1 called Ada County Jail Development Impact Fees that provides for short chapter title, authority findings and applicability and purpose, definitions, capital improvement plan, periodic review of capital improvements plan, intergovernmental agreement with Ada County, imposition of county impact fees and payment, enforcement and collection, county impact fee administrator, and city powers to require payment of county impact fees. County impact fees exemptions, processes for individual assessment, extraordinary impacts, developer credits and reimbursements, county impact fee payment mistake or misrepresentation, fee payer refunds, county impact fee capital projects trust fund, expenditures, budget, audit, and surcharge, appeals and mediation, miscellaneous provisions, punishment for violations, construction of ordinance intent, and providing an effective date.

Thank you. Kelsey, you've heard this ordinance read by title. Is there anybody that would like to read it in its entirety? Okay. Seeing them, we'll move on to item six, which is ordinance number 26-2127. That's the correct to read this or just by title.

In the smear, it's an ordinance amending Meridian City Code by the addition thereto of a new chapter two titled... Chapter 2 to Title 12 called Ada County Emergency Medical Services District Development Impact Fees, providing for a short chapter title, authority findings, applicability and purpose, definitions, capital improvement plan, periodic review of the capital improvements plan, intergovernmental agreement with the EMS district, imposition of EMS impact fees and payments, enforcement and collection EMS district impact fee administrator and city powers to require payment of EMS impact fees, EMS impact fees exemptions, processes for individual assessment, extraordinary impacts, developer credits and reimbursements, EMS impact fee payment mistakes or misrepresentation, fee payer refunds, EMS impact fee capital projects, trust fund expenditures, budget audit and surcharge, appeals and mediation, miscellaneous provisions, punishment for violations, construction of ordinance intent, and providing an effective date.

Thank you. Council, you've heard this sort of spread by title. Is there anybody that would like to write in its entirety? Okay. Seeing none, we'll move on to item 7, which is the Ada County and City of Meridian Intergovernment Agreement for Collection and Expenditure of Development Impact Fees for Ada County Sheriff's Jail on Development Within the Municipal Boundaries of the City of Meridian. Do I have a motion? On this item.

Mr. Mayor. Councilman Overton. Move that we approve the county and city meridian intergovernmental agreement for the collection and expenditure of developmental impact fees for a county sheriff's jail on development within the municipal municipal boundaries of the city.

Have a motion second to approve item 7 is their discussion. If not, on favor, signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Opposed, nay. The ayes have it. And the item is agreed to. Next up is item eight, which is the County Emergency Medical Service District, City of Meridian Intergovernment Agreement for the Collection and Expenditure of Development Impact Fees for the County Emergency Medical Services District on Development within the municipal boundaries of the City of Meridian. Do I have a motion?

Mr. Mayor. Councilman, can you say it that fast? I move that we approve the 80 County Emergency Medical Services District and City of Meridian intergovernmental agreement for the collection and expenditure of development impact fees for the 80 County Emergency Medical Services District on development within the municipal boundaries of the City of Meridian.

Second. I have a motion that was faster and seconded. Is there any discussion?

There.

Councilman Kavanaugh.

If she made a mistake, she'd have to withdraw and do it again. Well done, Mr. President.

If not, all those in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Opposed, nay. The ayes have it. The ayes agree to. Councilman, at the end of future meeting topics? Mr. Mayor. Councilman Cavanaugh.

Not a future meeting topic, but just a quick moment of privilege. Kirk, thank you for your service to the City of Meridian. I know we've got this to the two-yard line on this big project that you and Steve have been working on. Thank you. As one who goes back and watches and reads the minutes of the Planning and Zoning Commission, I just appreciate the guidance and support you've given our Planning and Zoning Commission over the years. They're better because of your involvement, and you will certainly be missed here at the City. So best of luck in your retirement.

Thank you, Kirk. Mr. Mayor. Four more years.

Mr. Mayor, I don't get this opportunity very often, so I do want to echo what Councilman Kavner said. I want to thank Kurt for his time with our office. I've had a long career and a privilege to work with lots of attorneys over the years, two of them in this room, and Kurt is one of the few, and Mr. Rutherford is another one that I've had the privilege of working with and having worked for me that I treasure and value all the advice and work and the value they've brought to me and to our team and to our city and i just want to thank him and i don't get a chance because he doesn't become usually when i'm here so i appreciate it i want to make sure to note that and thank mr rutherford for being here for the county too

Yeah. And I think what you don't see is that everything Kurt does, it's not in this room and in other fashions. And he's been a great in his form, bringing his former profession to light as well for our city as a city manager, being able to bring that into the conversations combined with his newer legal expertise has been a great benefit and value in some of the other areas where he served with the city. So we really appreciate it. And And I'll just say this, Steve, if you're looking for a different opportunity, the city of Meridian will be hiring.

Shots fired.

You've got to take an opportunity when you see it. So with that, do I have a motion? Mr. Mayor, I move that we adjourn.

Second.

Motion second to adjourn. All in favor say aye.