City Council - workshop

Good morning. Call to speak in order for the record is June 22nd, 2026 at 8 a.m. We'll begin this morning's City Council Budget Workshop with roll call attendance.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Councilman Kavner.

Here.

Councilman Taylor.

Here.

Councilwoman Strader. Here. Councilman Whitlock. Here. Councilwoman Little-Roberts. Here. Councilman Overton. Here. Mayor Simison.

Here. Next up is adoption of the agenda.

Mr. Mayor.

Councilman Overton.

No changes to today's agenda. I move we adopt the agenda as published.

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

Aye.

Opposed, nay. The ayes have it, and the agendas are agreed to. So good morning, everybody. I thought that when we were going to do our roll call that maybe we'd all do a joke in good nature, but I couldn't come up with one. So I forego that lovely part of the conversation this morning. But we are here this morning after beginning our work as a group in March for where we are today for our conversations. I know Todd's going to go over a little bit of history, but I just want to start by saying thank you to everybody for getting this to where we are. Those early conversations, I think, sometimes set an idea about where we're headed. And I think that that was true in this case because basically what we heard and experienced through those conversations was costs are going up. you know, in those base budget elements while we continue to, you know, come out of our year five in COVID. We've got some pretty good trend analysis in this time and most of the budget line items. But unfortunately, the cost component is something that can be a challenge when our vendors just charge more for the same things year after year after year. I think that's unfortunately what a lot of those base budget items showcased in these conversations. That ran into the unfortunate revenue numbers that kept coming back through different parts where you are down about $700,000 and from some changes in law that will be forthcoming actuals from other areas. And if you throw in the amount that we would have otherwise received from 389, it's about a million dollars down. Doesn't mean we did not get money. We did get additional revenue as well in this proposed budget from new growth. And so, but we had to use that revenue in this budget to really kind of cover our ongoing operational costs as costs have come up along with some of the other items that we'll go through today. So it's going to be a quick morning in a lot of ways with the presentation, but I don't think it will be a quick conversation or a quick decision on anything. So what we hear today, whether that's decisions are made today or we're going to come back and make future decisions, time will tell on that as our conversation goes. But this is the conversation. Best effort of the team to tell you what we think we need to do to keep our city moving, not just for FY27, but 28, 29, and 30. You know, continue to move the ball down the field. So with that, I'm going to turn this over to Jenny and let Jenny kick us off from here.

Good morning. Thank you. Thank you everyone for being here today. I want to echo Mayor's thoughts on thanking everyone, especially department directors and staff. The proposed budget in front of you today represents months of planning. So today's purpose of our budget workshop is to discuss some key assumptions, hear from departments about their budget requests, and then we will provide an opportunity for questions and dialogue. So throughout today's budget workshop, we encourage you to ask questions, ask for clarity. We have the subject matter experts here to provide insights on any of the questions that you might have. If any topics that arises during today's presentation that requires more in-depth discussion, we would like to add them to our parking lot. And then maybe after the presentations, we'll circle back to those topics. And for any questions that require more research or follow-up, I will notate them and circulate back your answers after the budget workshop. Lastly, when you hear from department directors on their budget workshops, they are in the order of the budget book, so not necessarily the priority order. So a couple of housekeeping items. Since we published our budget book in May, we had a couple of changes. Our iCurrent premium actually came back. The estimate had a correction that had an $18,000 increase impact for our proposed budget. And then our fire department had a title change to one of the budget requests that you will hear later on today. It is affected on page 161. So the title became just Battalion Vehicles instead of Battalion Chiefs. With that, we have a full schedule. This is just some earmarks that we wanted to follow the order. And then brakes are fluid. With that, I will hand it off to Todd.

Thank you, Jenny. Good morning, all. Good morning, Mayor, members of the council. Again, just want to thank you and all the employees of the city that helped us get to the budget where it is today. I'm going to go over a few slides of what we're going to call budgetary assumptions. We're going to talk about property taxes, you know, the data that we utilize to generate the revenue calculations. We're going to talk about some city revenues and some expenditures that are inside this budget proposal that you have today. And I'll give you some opinions and thoughts on what I believe today and tomorrow, concerns that I have for the city to manage going forward. So the first item we're going to talk about are the budgetary assumptions within the budget that you have. Again, this data is inside the budget book itself, so nothing new here. The property taxes are really controlled by Ada County. They inform us of these data points. The one lever that we have as a city is always known as that 3% allowable. In this case, the budget proposal that you do have in front of you does have a recommendation to you, council, to take the full 3% allowable. The 3% allowable is $1.6 million for fiscal 27. Ada County has informed us that our new construction and new annexation values, and these are new property tax revenues that we get ongoing. They inform us of this value. New construction came in at $1.2 million and all new annexation came in a little over $44,000. So both of those new revenue sources are inside this budget. Also included in this budget is a request for council to consider taking 1% of the foregone balance that we have right now. The state does allow cities to claw back 1% for operating ongoing needs. So this budget does have a recommendation to you to request 1% of the clawback of the foregone balance, about $500,000. And the projected levy rate you can see there is going up a little bit from our current levy rate, which is 197 to 198, so very modest adjustment there. But we wanted to present to you what the budgetary assumptions are for property taxes are. Again, Ada County controls the construction, new construction, new annexation. We presented to you a 3% and a 1% foregone allowable request inside this budgetary request for property taxes. For the revenues for non-property taxes, We did increase our...

Sorry. No problem. I'll go back to that one slide.

Yes.

The projected levy rate, does that include with the public safety levy that was passed?

This is inclusive of all... Yes. The answer is yes. This is inclusive of everything we know of today for property values and property revenue sources.

Okay. So really, in a lot of ways, just... People's property tax will be similar based upon what – depending on what their house change, house value change would have been because the levy rate is very close despite that occurring.

Again, I would be very careful in saying anything about the property because it has to do – value of property has way bigger impact than what we do on the levy rate.

That's why I'm getting to the – Property that values what's going to impact people. If there was a change in their property value, that may be where they see the biggest change with this current status.

Historically, that's always been the case. Yeah, I would agree with that. But yeah, keeping the levy rate flat, that does put most of the change value then on the value of the home because you or the city didn't change the levy rate much. You're correct, Robert. Okay, that's just... Thank you. So stepping aside from property taxes, we look at other major revenue sources here at the city. Water and sewer sales, we increased by 2%. That's based on our annualized account growth that we track here at the city. So we have an average. over the last 20 years that we see an annual account growth so that just follows our trends there the next item is development revenues again this is based on our growth committee the growth committee has the cities continuing to grow just at a declining rate again so we're still growing just not at the paces that We had experience five, six, seven years ago. So we did reduce development revenues based on the growth committee's projections. Sales tax revenue, 9.26. Again, this looks pretty big because in 2026, the data that we had 12 months ago showed a much... I guess, much more conservative value that we got from the state. So again, this is kind of an adjustment to the sales tax numbers for 2026 are stronger than what we had 12 months ago from projections. So I'm just trying to, I guess, correct the more conservative adjustment that I did for this fiscal year. So that's why you see this at 9%. The numbers are stronger than what was projected 12 months ago. And then the last number is liquor revenue. Again, shouldn't be too much of a surprise. We've been sending you emails about what we are hearing from the state. Again, liquor revenue as they continue to change legislation and the consumption of liquor. We're showing that as a year-over-year decrease for liquor revenues again, but we did try to share that in an email about two weeks ago. So these are the other major revenue sources that we wanted to touch on. Again, within the budget, we did work with the Parks Department, Golf Course. They have a lot of revenues over there. We worked with them. They're continuing to increase their expenses and revenues accordingly. So both of those went up in relationship to each other. But we don't track that on this particular slide. These are the other major revenue sources we wanted to bring to your attention. not for the 2027 budget again we tried to share individual emails on all those items separately before this meeting so you had the information ahead of time other budgetary assumptions now i'm going to go into expenditures Healthcare, again, this is not new to you guys. Again, I've been working with other agencies. I've been working with some non-city professionals in this environment. Right now, you have 13.5% in the budget that we presented to you. You can see the value of that for the city. It's $1.8 million. I asked the other agencies, I asked the professional and the industry, you know, how does this feel? They feel that this is correct, and Part that's scary is they feel that this is the number that will probably be for the next number of years. That's the unfortunate part. Years past, we've had 4%, 7%, 6%, 8%. The people are talking, this is not a one-time blip, they feel. So again, not until we get until next year, but again, I think we need to set our expectations that if the industry experts are saying, this is not a one-time blip, we as a city need to make sure we manage now according to this, not what we've historically done, which is 4, 5, 6, 7, 8%. You can see the value there. It's a big number. If we get 10% or 13% again, for the next couple of years, we're looking at 1.3, 1.8 every single year. We'll have to manage those accordingly every single year, but just, I think we need to set the table correctly that if the industry is, experts are saying what they're saying, we need to make sure we adjust our mindset that this is the new norm possibly. Historically, the city has experienced since going self-funded about an 8.5% annualized increase in healthcare. That is what we have tracked annually. This 13.5% is a Gallagher professional industry expert guidance to us. But just want to let you know, just try and set the table that going forward, I think we may have to adjust the way we look at health care going forward because $1.8 million is a lot. If you remember on the last slide, 3% allowable is 1.6%. I'll make a comment about that in a second, but just kind of trying to set the table, health care at 1.8% costs a living. You know, since we've added two fire stations, we've added, you know, safer grant. We added nine percent of personnel for police. We're looking at possibly adding prosecution services. Every time we increase that wage number, three percent of a bigger number gets bigger. It's just math. And we have increased that wage number year over year over year. Now you can see what 3%, which is an industry average for cost of living adjustments. Make sure we stay up with inflation. I think the 25, 40-year average for America is inflation is at 2.5%. We should always expect 2.5% inflation for the United States of America on average. That is what the data shows. This number here shows 2.76. So if we know that 2.76 equals 1.6 and wages usually don't go down, I can guarantee you that next year will be probably a little bit bigger because 3%, 2.76% on a bigger number is going to be a bigger number. Just these two cost of doing business factors, healthcare and wages, that gets you at, I apologize, a step plan. We also have a step plan, which is part of the program. I call that about 300 grand. Getting a state plan will continue to be about $293,000 a year going forward. That gets you to, if you add up those three numbers, $3.7 million. We haven't even discussed anything yet. And these are things that we want to always have in place. We're at $3.7 million. That means this team over here needs to find you $3.7 million in new revenues every single year. The state's taking a little bit back every year. Our sales are going down a little bit here, which is fine. But again, I know I'm not setting this up for the roses, and it's an amazing thing. But again, I think we have to understand that I think Robert nailed it. Costs are not being increased by us. They're being increased by others, and we have to now figure out how do we manage these costs. $3.7 million is a big number. The one lever that you all have is the 3% allowable, which is $1.6 million. You can see the $1.6 million doesn't even cost our cost of doing business in healthcare anymore. Luke, you may want to close your ears on this one. I highly recommend that, again, you hear from me every year, take the 3%, take the 3%, take the 3%. I'm going to tell you, I don't know how we're going to fund this if we don't take the 3% every year. I don't know where we're going to find you $3.8 million of new revenues every single year to make this happen. I'll stand on my soapbox and say 3% has to be for cost of doing business at a minimum. I'll let you know, just like I have in the past, foregone, we've gone, we've not taken the full 3%. We have a nice balance of $4 million. Recommend taking the foregone. I know it's not great for the tax function, but if we don't make changes to how we manage these expenses, I need to ask you for the revenue sources so I can help try to fund these things. We have time. We can still make some changes. But these are just two little simple, not simple, these are two factors, probably the biggest factors that we have of cost of doing business here at the city. And you can see what numbers they are. As we continue to increase wages, wages are now higher than property taxes, 3% on a higher number. Again, 3% on the wages is always going to be bigger than 3% on our property taxes. We crossed that line about five years ago. We're always now going to be behind the ball where we can't just say 3% of property taxes will cover 3% of the wages. That line was crossed five years ago. The number just keeps getting bigger. Again, I'm, Not trying to scare you, but I am trying to scare you, I guess you could say. The numbers are real. The factors of this cost of doing business is real. And I think we need to make sure we start thinking about a different way of managing these expenses. Don't have the answer for you today. That is not the discussion for today. It's more of a, hey, just FYI, the expenses are here. You're experiencing them at home. Many of you run your own businesses. Your experience is there. No different here. Not trying to scare us, but, again, the numbers are real. The numbers are big. I'm hoping we can figure out medical and health care and hope the world can figure out health care, but that 13% is a scary number. But, again, that's the assumptions on the expense. Not to scare you too much, but let's move on from that. FTEs, this budget does have some FTEs involved in it. Again, this year we have 10 prosecution team members inside this. We have one water and one public works employee for a total of 12 FTEs in the budget that was proposed to you. Again, as you add 12, the wage number goes up. I guess what I'm going to tell you, it's going to cost more to... feed that number with a cost of doing business factor. And with that, I think I am now done with the assumptions. I'll hand it back over to the team. Before we go on, counsel, any questions on any of those items yet?

Okay, Jim. Oh, Councilman Schroeder.

Thank you.

Just a comment. I mean, structurally, we have an issue, right? I mean, if you don't mind, Todd, if you could go back to the revenue assumptions. This is pretty brutal math. I mean, so that's $2.8 million between a 3% allowable and new construction. You have a little bit for new annexation, but we're just not covering the inflating factor in our ongoing expenses. And it is a real concern. And I'm glad that you... made, you know, candid comments about it for us to appreciate. And I don't know what a great solution to that dilemma is, though. It really requires structural change, either to our health care approach or to something else. But I just want to say thanks for being candid about it and being upfront about what the issue is.

I appreciate that. Thank you.

Yeah, and I would say that if you move forward to the other ones, we do control all those. We may not like the answer, but we control all the issues on that. And unfortunately, if things don't change, and if this year's the year we have to start, this is where we have to start those conversations, either in the benefits we offer, expectations on cost of living, or the step plans we put in place. Any of those three are the things that we can control or start dropping Microsoft, which, you know, I mean, those things we either can do or can't do are different. But so it's unfortunate, but that's the conversation, whether it's this year or next year. You're not wrong, Robert.

Okay, Ricardo is actually going to go over what is currently in our high level overview of what's in our proposed budget.

Good morning, Mayor and Council Members. I'll be going over our budget overview. Some bullet points would be total city budget, general fund, and then enterprise fund budget. For total city budget, citywide revenue has decreased about 6.2 million or 3.8%. as compared to current year fiscal year 26. You can see more details on our budget book on page 65 or our total city budget total expenditure. You can follow us on the budget book page 66. Total city expenditure decreased by $97 million or 39% compared to current year fiscal year 26 budget. major projects in fiscal year 26 that are not included in the proposed fiscal year 27 budget are community center construction, fire safety center for the community center, filter upgrades project, the tertiary filter upgrades, Canada lift station constructions, Aeration Basin, Retrofit, and Settlers Park Expansion. For our general fund total expenditure, you can follow us on budget book page 70. Major budget requests within the general fund that are proposed is Downtown Meridian Parking Garage, Fire Station Remodels, Prosecution Team, and Pathways Connection. For our enterprise fund total expenditure, you can follow us on the budget book on page 237. Major requests within the enterprise fund proposed budget are water main extension adjustments, old UV channel upgrades, hydro clones, North Black Cat lift station pump upgrades, and Oaks lift station upgrade. With this, I stand for any questions. Any questions? And I'll hand it over to Todd.

Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you, Ricardo. And the last slide I'm going to work on is talk about projections for our fund balance. Within this budget, as we presented a couple weeks ago in an email, the base budget for fiscal 27 as presented to you, again, is underfunded by $2.6 million. So this is the fourth year in a row that we have not been able to I guess, quote unquote, balance the budget with ongoing revenues versus ongoing expenses. We are utilizing fund balance to balance fiscal 27's budget. And I believe I'm going to pull up the presentation. This year, as presented on page 12 of your budget book, The use of fund balance for the general funds in itself is $5.3 million. Again, we are looking to use $7 million out of the capital improvement fund, $498,000 of the public safety fund. We're adding to the impact fund. And then the general fund we're using $6.8 million. When you add all that up, it's a use of $5.3 million. The Enterprise Fund will be adding about $10 million to their fund balance. The Enterprise Fund continues to practice the save before you spend, so we put the monies into the bank so that they can utilize it at a later date. But again, back to the general funds itself, again, we are asking... YOU AND THE CITIZENS TO APPROVE 6.8 MILLION FOR THE GENERAL FUND. SO IF WE LOOK AT FUND 01, THE VERY FAR LEFT COLUMN, THAT 6.8 MILLION AS PRESENTED IN THE BUDGET BOOK, THAT IS WHAT WE'RE REQUESTING TO BALANCE THIS BUDGET. AGAIN, THE BASE BUDGET WAS SHORT 2.6. THEN WE HAD SOME OTHER EXPENSES OF ABOUT 4 MILLION TO GET TO THAT 6.8 MILLION REVENUE SORT OR USE OF FUND BALANCE REQUEST. going to quickly show or talk about this slide itself. The top line is what we finished fiscal year 2025 at per the audit, per the approved report. The 01 fund finished at $12.1 million of available fund balance. Again, this isn't your total fund balance. This is what we consider available to you to make management decisions for funding projects A, B, and C. In 26, you did propose to utilize fund balance, no different than we're here. Right now, if we close the books, actually as of last Wednesday, if we close the books on Wednesday for fiscal 26, we're at a usage of $8.781 million. We're hopeful that number gets down to $5 million as more revenue sources come in because we don't get all our revenues every single day. But again, I'm just using actual data to paint this picture for you. If we close the books as of today, you would have $3.3 million available to you as a legislative branch to utilize funds. As discussed on the budget book, we're asking you to approve $6.8 million. To balance this budget, and you can see the math then puts us in a deficit of $3.4 million. Fund seven, as I discussed, we're adding money. So that second to last line item, fiscal year 27 budget, we're adding money. So that's a restricted money source. So we can't really touch that. That's already been spoken for. Your Fund 8, which is your public safety fund. The presentation as what's presented for 27, we want to utilize 498. So that leaves you about $4.4 million. Fund 20 is grant. That's, again, spoken for. And then Fund 55, again, as presented in this budget book, we are asking for $7 million to utilize for a budget request, and that will put you down to $4.6 million. The number that's most concerning to me is that Fund 01, because that's in a negative position. Again, we're hoping that the 26 actuals come in better than the $8.7 million. Again, I'm just trying to paint a picture. We believe we will still be in a positive position. We believe the revenue sources and expenses We'll come in and cover the expenditure sides. But again, we will keep you aware of this situation. Again, we need you to know when you cross that line. But again, as of today, if we close the books, that's where it's at. But again, we are asking for $6.8 million of use of fund balance for fiscal 27. But again, just a number that we haven't really had to kind of look at much over the last 15 years. First time I think I've ever presented this slide this way to you over my 15 years of presenting to you. But again, it's just a different day, different time. And I believe I do need to present to you the fund balance concerns. But again, just wanted to let you know, this is our projections. The top number is true. That number is audited. That number does exist. Again, we do have some other operating emergency reserves. They're there by policy. Again, it's the policy that we wrote to you about seven years ago, eight years ago. We've always adhered to it. Again, I continue to recommend you adhere to those policies, but we can discuss those if we need to at a later date. Just wanted to present to you what the fund balance projections look like with the use of fund balance requests in 2027's budget. Again, stand for any questions. I believe this is the last slide for our assumptions before we hand it over to the subject matter experts on budgetary requests. So we stand for any questions. Thank you.

And Todd, if I could just add to that, from my perspective, because a lot of why the fund balance is going down is there are replacement costs. That's what we're pulling from is to replace things. So that's what the foregone request is for, that the foregone is not to support a higher increase for employees or something else that is designed to start working on stuff for the replacement. And so from my perspective... between when MDC sunsets and the foregone, you know, that's over a million dollars that can go towards that replacement cost to start whittling us off of that element. That's how I'm viewing these two items. Not to say there can't be other ways to accomplish it, but just so you understand, the foregone is not to increase our current operational expenses within this budget. It's to help little way at our replacement costs moving forward along with that. Any questions for Todd on the on those items on the fund balance at this time.

Not on fund balance but again going back to the budget assumptions and just looking at the number of 44,000 for annexation. Can you paint me a picture of a timeline? I mean, we've done quite a few annexations looking forward to a number of projects that certainly will be taxed at a different rate once they're built. You know, I look at bare land and new annexation and 44,000 and say, okay, at what point in the future will that have an impact on your top line there of the allowable 3%?

I appreciate the question, Brian. Unfortunately, Annexation for the city of Meridian is very nominal. They rotate that value into the new construction. So historically, I'll go ahead and give you just five years going backwards, $44,000, $42,000, $57,000, $22,000, $44,000, $47,000. New annexation is not our moneymaker by no means. So what they do is they automatically roll that when the Whitlock family turns their farm into village number three. It goes into new construction. That's where you're going to see that number. Unfortunately, new construction continues to go down, down, down over a year, over a year, over a year since our pinnacle numbers. Again, we had some great years there for the city. But again, we're still growing. But the annexation, I don't think you'll ever see that number again. deviate from fifty thousand dollars a year forty thousand it's the new con they just throw the number in new construction um so like yeah i'll leave it right there so unfortunately that is not a number that you want to lean on in my opinion that will not be a revenue generator it's going to be about 20 20 to 50 000 a year mr mayor follow-up and and i i get that i um i guess the question is where

What's the timeline when we do see then the new construction increase or the 3 percent, you know, homes that are built and being added to the tax rolls?

Well, I do believe that we are seeing that now. Again, we did increase our new construction one point something million. I think the difference is we got used to such amazing growth. Again, we're still growing. I think any agency in the state of Idaho would go, I love those growth numbers. So we're still very healthy on a growth standpoint. We just got used to some pretty big numbers five, six, seven years ago. I think, you know, during, you know, Robert and I are doing our peak. We were generating $4 million in new revenues at some point in time, but when Robert and I were here at the city, we're not, I don't think that will ever happen again for the city. Well, it may, but again, if it does, we'll manage that accordingly. But I don't think, I think those days are behind us. You're seeing still strong growth numbers, very healthy for the city. We just got kind of used to $3 and $4 million every year. That's just my opinion.

Mr. Mayor.

Councilman Schroeder.

Go forward one slide, please. No, I'm sorry. Where's the 3.8 million? Oh, that one, yeah. Thank you. 3.7 million. So, Todd, so I just want to make sure I'm thinking about this the right way. So is this health care number and this COLA number, inclusive of like pro forma for the new headcount requests that are in this budget? Or are those excluded from these numbers? Like for example, healthcare, is that assumed fully loaded healthcare for 10 prosecutors, for example?

You're confirmed.

Okay. If you, okay, I'm going to have probably some information requests for you later on. Okay. Just because I'm trying to, what I'm trying to wrap my head around is even with All available sources of revenue, even foregone, that's $3.4 million. Yes. So even if we did not hire, for example, or earmarked, say, 10 prosecutors, could we get to a point where we're at least getting back into balance with covering our ongoing? It looks really tough to me.

Very tough. And to help you do your math, you're probably going to start doing these math. We're budgeting, Jenny, is it about $20,000 per person? So we, the city on average, we budget $20,000 per employee. So if you have 10 prosecutors in this budget, there's your 200 grand. So again, the number's not going to be a lot, but so if you take the 1.8 minus 200 grand, there's your, if I don't approve the 10 people, you're at still at 1.6 million. If that helps you do your math.

Yeah.

And I think that we just, when we get to there, we'll have the conversation. It says 10, but Levy is covering some of those. Your contract, which is also in this budget, is covering some of those. So if you took out, your number's more like three. When we talk about what we're actually increasing in terms of ongoing operational costs for covering those positions. We can debate whether it's three, whether it's four, but that's roughly the number that you're really at when we say 10, at least for the purposes of this, so long as we leave the contract from, but with the contract from Boise, that does skew the numbers 100% all the way through this budget by having both of those included for the full year. Okay, are we ready to bring up Public Works and talk about something fun? All right, Lorelai, you're up.

All right. Good morning, Mayor and Council. Promise to make this fun. I mean, how could you not talk about hydrocyclones and not have that be fun? All right, so our first request is for a, this is one of our two FTEs that we're requesting, and this is a regulatory compliance manager. This would be a new position for Public Works that we've been planning for for some time. This position is dedicated to maintaining regulatory compliance for the whole Public Works Department, water, wastewater, environmental, and it's focused on significant regulatory requirements that we face for the utilities. Those requirements continue to grow in complexity and become increasingly complex and stringent. We're looking for a dedicated specialized resource to ensure the city remains in compliance with all of its permits and state and federal regulations. Another really critical piece of this position would be tracking and monitoring the impacts to our utilities from ever-changing state and federal regulations. We've added significant resources to our operational teams over the years to get ready for our new facilities, our new permits, and now it's important for us to also add to our administrative team to make sure we continue to maintain high levels of service and trust in our regulatory compliance. For us, the cost of noncompliance is significant. The next request in the main public works admin is for the sewer master plan. And so while this is for wastewater, it's held in this budget because the engineering team will be completing this. So this is the first year of a two-year project. And this is required by DEQ every five years to update our sewer master plan. Really what the important thing that this plan does is it allows us to determine sizing for all future sewer lines and model any potential sewer capacity flow issues. It also updates our sewer model, which is really important for us as new growth hooks to our system to make sure that model is up to date to model the demands coming into the system.

Mr. Mayor.

As well as Shader.

Lorelei, do you want to just get questions as you go through each request or wait till the end?

Let's do each request. Okay. So I'll slow down.

So the Regulatory Compliance Program Manager... So I guess your opinion is that we've reached a level of complexity around regulation and with the assets that we have that we really need this. My question was going to be, can this position be a little bit more versatile in the sense of... It feels like someone who's trying to deal with regulatory things might find regulatory opportunities as well, like grants or new programs. Like, is that envisioned as part of this role? Have we ever had this position before? Help me understand how we covered this function previously. Sure. Great question.

So we have not had this specific position. position. Really, currently, these duties are being shared by myself and a couple of other key members in public works. And it's just becoming a larger, more complex thing. And as some of us with this specialized experience go into other roles, it's kind of leaving a gap where Somebody, you know, we need to get somebody trained and in these position in this position so that they can manage these permits. You know, these are 100 page documents and the federal code of regulations, making sure that we're meeting every single piece. I think to your question on additional grants or opportunities, I think potentially I think first we would see how. this role fits, you know, and I think there'd be some significant training, finding somebody that has that comes in with all of these skills will be interesting to see if we can find that right off the bat. But I think there is potential to grow this position once they have the basic duties.

Thank you.

Okay, so those two requests were in our main public works admin division, our next few requests are in our water division so this is our second FTE for this budget. And this one is. basically going to be added to our meter services group. So as our system continues to grow, we add additional valves, hydrants, meters, and main lines. So we need to also add additional staff to keep up with that level of service. So currently our meter service group has five FTEs that maintain over 48,000 water meters. Part of that also includes replacing nearly 2000 water meters a year and installing 2000 new water meters a year. Just as a note, you know, we've added staff to our operational groups year over year kind of incrementally. Our next water FTE after this year is not planned for 2030. Our next request is for a water control valve. If you've been keeping close track, we used to call those pressure reducing valves. But essentially what this does is it allows us to maintain our five pressure zones in the city. It allows us to flow water in and out of those zones to maintain even pressure across the system. So by adding SCADA to these, it allows us to track and monitor when flow is going in between these zones. And so this allows us to add SCADA to two more of those, and ultimately we have two more additional planned in FY28 that also need SCADA. Our next request is for water main extensions. This is an annual request that you see, and this is the projects that we work with ACHD to, while the roadways are open, when ACHD is doing their roadway projects, we use that opportunity to, if we need to extend, upsize, and often move the water and sewer lines when that project is going on. A couple of really important things is that When we coordinate with ACHD, the cost of the project is less because we're not having to cover all of the roadway paving. And it also helps us minimize the amount of road shutdowns in the city since we're working together to open the road once, do all the work that's needed, and then get it back open. So FY27 includes nine projects on some of the major roadways in Meridian, Lake Hazel. McMillan and Black Cat intersection, Meridian Road, Victory Road, Franklin Road, and Fairview. And you'll see a similar request to this on the sewer side. And our final water request for this year is well 33 at bridge tower, so this is the first year of a four year project. And this is to design and construct a new well in the Northwest area of meridian which will supply water to zone two and this first year is for site evaluation and initial design of the test well. So any questions on the water requests.

Mr mayor.

Councilman walk.

Or lie I noticed from the budget book to the slides there's just a slight variation in the ongoing cost and the one time costs for the two employees. of a couple thousand dollars moved out of one time costs and into ongoing so is the number that's being requested in the slide or are we working from the budget book.

I would have to defer to finance on that one.

I'll go ahead and take this, Brian. We'll go ahead and get you. That way you can go ahead and get this. We'll get you an answer to give you the final, final, perfect, perfect number. We apologize about the error. Thank you.

Okay, jumping over to wastewater. Our first request is another one that you see pretty routinely. This is for the cleaning of one of our large anaerobic digesters. These are on a routine every five-year cleaning. This is a pretty significant project, which involves draining and cleaning grit, hair, and debris from these tanks to improve capacity and help extend the lifespan of this equipment. So each of our digesters are on this five-year cleaning cycle. Our next request is for critical equipment at the wastewater plant. This year specifically, we're requesting eight cutter blades for our lift stations. These are blades that are located. It's a type of impeller that we put in our pumps that helps break and chop up rags and prevent clogging. It's pretty significant for us when our pumps get ragged. It can cost money. between 5,000 and $8,000 to repair those. So these, um, impeller blades help us, um, reduce that pump damage. This request is for hydrocyclones, so this is the first year of a two-year project. This is a pretty neat project. So essentially what we'll do is this first year allows us to design and pilot the hydrocyclone technology to essentially let us know what size of hydrocyclones we need to implement. So what hydrocyclones are is they help settle solids from the clarifiers. So they basically act like a mini clarifier. They just work more efficiently. And so they will help offset the need for additional secondary clarifier capacity for several years. So to construct a secondary clarifier is about $5 million. And the hydrocyclones we're estimating will be a little over $2 million, saving us almost $3 million in costs. Our next request is for our North Black Cat Lift Station. And so this is a planned upgrade to upsize one of the three pumps at the North Black Cat Lift Station. So a couple of things. The pumps are at the end of their useful life. So they were installed in 2009. So they're almost 18 years old. And then it also, by upsizing the pump allows us to increase capacity at this list station. So when we build these, these big lift stations, you'll see, we designed them for future growth and we just put in a new pump and it allows us to increase the capacity. And our next request is for a similar upgrade, but at the Oaks lift station. So this is a little bit north of that lift station. So again, another planned upgrade that allows us to upsize that pump. These pumps were installed in 2014, so they're 13 years old and essentially will let us continue to serve the growing area in Northwest Meridian. And this is the companion to the water line extension. A little bit less on this request just because there's less need on these anticipated projects of moving and upsizing the sewer lines for these ones. But again, the important part is working with ACHD to help minimize costs and then also minimize impact to the citizens and traveling public. And our last request on the wastewater side is to upgrade our old UV channels. So this is a two year project that will upgrade our UV technology on our oldest two channels, which were installed in 1994. So this technology is now obsolete, which is making it harder and harder to find parts. And the manufacturer is no longer going to be able to service this equipment. So UV is a critical process for us to meet permit compliance. And this new technology, the new UV bulbs are more efficient. So a couple of good improvements in upsizing those or changing out the equipment in those UV channels. And with that, those are our enterprise-funded requests.

Councilman Taylor.

Thank you, Mayor. Lorelei, the hydrocyclone technology, it sounds like we're piloting it to understand it. Is that new technology in the industry, or is it just new to us?

Good question. So it's newer to the industry. It's not unproven technology. City of Boise is currently installing some of those. It's definitely new to us, but it's been around for multiple years. I wouldn't say it's, you know, cutting edge, like we're not sure it's going to work. We do know it'll work. We just want to make sure that we get the sizing right.

When you say sizing, just in terms of the size of equipment that's required to work within the system that we have, is that what you mean by that?

Yes, so the size of the reactor and then also the number of reactors that you would need to put in. But we've done some initial evaluation, and that's what that initial $2 million number should be sufficient. But the good thing is as we pilot these, we can actually then transition them to full-scale operation. So it's not a sunk cost, I guess.

So then just the last question on that, does this just, would it serve to replace any additional anticipated capital improvement costs that you expect in the future? Is it sort of a new technology to apply or is it just going to extend the lifetime use of some of the equipment we have? Just give me a sense of like what's the big value here for what you're using it for?

Yep so good question so essentially what it's doing is it's buying us capacity, so our next bottleneck for flow at the treatment plant is in our secondary clarifiers. And so, by installing this we can defer additional clarifiers for several years if we don't do this, then we would need to pull forward in our CFP an additional clarifier at that higher capital cost.

Council additional questions for our way at this time. Thank you very much.

Mayor, Council Member Locke, I have an answer for you regarding the differences between ongoing and one time. So in your budget book, for example, this water operator in your budget book, we have personnel and operating costs. There are certain operating costs that are ongoing. So that's why you'll see the ongoing costs of 101 here versus in our budget book there are two different aspects of the expenses that doesn't say ongoing or operating we just give you personnel versus operating so they're different categories certain operating expenses for this position are ongoing that's why you'll see the ongoing differences but the total request is the same okay thank you so council i know in our

preliminary itinerary, it was to take a break at this point in time. Is anyone feeling the necessary to take a break right now? Okay. Then we will just keep moving on. I see Mr. Miles coming up.

Good morning, Mayor and Council. Trying to think of some levity, but nothing since Monday morning, like 8 a.m. budget meetings. So thought about this request. You know, this is one of those that I know will be challenging, but I think is important. And it is a little bit hard to, I think, to Councilman Taylor's question previously to Public Works, how do you quantify what the long-term benefit will be? But ideally, we do believe that we will see system optimization in our permitting system. Can't quantify what exactly that looks like without going through this effort. More than in the slide, it says more than 12 years ago. I think we implemented a sell our permitting software back in 2011, 2012. So going on 1415 years now, we've never stepped back and taken a full forensic look at how's the system working where the workflows going? What are the steps that are creating challenges for us? where are the things where we can find efficiencies? So that's what this request is for us, $45,000 one-time cost to have a consultant take a look at our system, which they regularly do pieces and parts of this, but we're asking them through this request to look at the system overall and give us some recommendations on where our workflows can see optimizations going forward. Again, I can't give you a big picture that will save X number of days today, but I think that is the intent and I see that as the expectation. So working with IT department and our community development department, that's what this request is for.

Mr. Mayor. Council Chair.

How did you arrive at this, I guess, estimate? Did you identify a consultant that typically does this? Is it in-house with a consultant? Like, how does it work?

Yeah, Mayor, Councilwoman Strader, we talked with a consultant that we regularly use for ongoing maintenance today and sort of got a best guesstimate of how many hours this type of work would take. And, you know, software costs can go anywhere every day. So I stand here in front of you say, this is not if approved a final cost, this is to take a look at what are the improvements that could be made. And there would be, we would reconsider any future costs to say, okay, if we want to implement any of these, how much would that take? Can we do it in house versus needing a consultant? And if a consultant, what would that cost? So there would be more beyond this. But again, this is sort of a starting point to help us take a kind of base look at the most important systems.

Mayor.

Councilman Taylor.

Dave, you've spent a lot of time following the legislature's desires to find third-party inspectors. And I see this as part of a bigger conversation. I'm not sure if what the software you have here relates to any of the recent changes in the legislature. But I'm kind of curious, is this going to help you track things beyond just permits? Is it... And do you see it helping the city kind of maintain, you know, really first position in terms of doing all this stuff instead of having third party entities come in at a request of a developer, you know, applicant?

Mr. Mayor, Councilman Taylor, I think yes, ultimately, you know, these types of efforts. If you look at our workflows, it's one thing to say I submitted as a developer, I submitted an application and at the end of the process, I get a permit. There's thousands of steps that go in between that first action and that last action. and many of them are behind the scenes in the computer system that says, you know, make sure that this script grabs this person to tell this thing to happen. So ultimately, yes, I think it'll help us streamline our business, keep us in first position as a provider in the Valley, number one, but also I think as we look at our people and our systems, this helps us continue that work and achieve the timelines that the legislature feels they need necessary to impose this.

Yeah, because it seems like sort of determined set timelines for getting things done is becoming a bigger and bigger conversation about affordability housing and, you know, what can the legislature impose on us to do those things. And so it seems like you're suggesting that this is going to be helpful in getting more concrete timelines on getting permits and things of that nature.

Mr. Merrick? Yes, I think so. There's two ways to go about it, right? You can set a deadline and say everything has to get done in seven days, and we're still here standing in front of you saying we need to fix the system to meet seven days. Or we can look at our system proactively now and say, how do we continue to improve our systems and our processes?

Thank you. Thank you.

Good morning. I'm going to start off with a joke since we haven't had any yet today. Why do programmers like dark mode? Because light attracts bugs. Got to have something on a Monday morning. I mean, come on. Good morning again, council members, mayor. This budget request that you have before you is an IT budget request for communications infrastructure extensions. This is similar to what you've seen in the past years, where we are seeking to expand our communications infrastructure, fiber conduit in the ground, et cetera. Currently, we continue to rely on leased lines, so this is our efforts to expand build where we can, leveraging ACHD projects, city projects where we can, and build out our fiber network so that we can continue to connect city facilities together for that infrastructure need. So we have a few projects outlined specifically for these funds, and that includes projects, again, related to ACHD projects, Ustick from McDermott to Black Cat, Locust Grove from Victory to Amity, Stoddard Road from Overland to Victory, and Locust Grove from Parks Landmark Facility to the Police Department. Those are the specific areas that we're targeting with these funds. But as you probably realize, ACHD projects, other projects, have pretty extended timelines. So when the funds actually, you know, come up for a need, it really depends largely on those projects and those timelines. So with that, I'll stand for any questions.

Council, any questions? I think Kendall forgot that we were doing budgets today. She actually had the doctor's appointment. So I'm just going to go ahead and present this one from here, if that's okay. And this is really to meet Council's expectations in a lot of ways. As you all are aware, we've had it in our CFPA plan to do a parking garage for the long-term benefit of our employees as well as those using City Hall. And as the project to the west of us moves forward, it's anticipated that we will be a partner in a project that allows for us to own parking stalls in a project. $14 million is the ultimate cost that we anticipate. It would be great if it comes down from that. And that includes general fund money, enterprise fund money to achieve that goal. What we don't know is the timing of anything. That's to be seen. And based on previous conversations with counsel, especially on large dollar items, I understand not necessarily like to do budget amendments. And so I wanted to try to put something in there. A, so our... development partner across the street knows what our interest and commitment is. And that can be done verbally. It doesn't have to be done during a budget amendment. But also just to highlight that this is where we anticipate at least $7 million of our general fund dollars going. Not knowing fully what the costs will be, there will be enterprise funds that will be part of that. There will likely be some other additional costs. But so that these funds don't get Utilized for other purposes as well. So we understand the the full impacts of the conversation So that's what this one is here to symbolize and you know Todd and I've talked he's I think advocated for not putting this year's budget because it just might be a carry-forward I understand he's probably had similar conversations with you all to me and it doesn't matter where it goes so long as I don't get in trouble from Council if I bring a bit mid-year budget amendment at some point in time for a request. So I'm daylighting it for you now. How and when and where it goes, I'm not... one way or other concerned. But I just don't want people to be surprised if and when this conversation comes forward, whether it's November of next year or same time next year. But it will be some time within a year from now where we will need to, in my mind, have a commitment or not to do this project. And whether or not you want to have funds identified for that commitment at that time in our budget, or not is the question. So with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have.

Mr. Mayor. Councilman Overton. More of a question for you and for finance, because it looks like there's a couple of ways it's going to be done. And again, it depends on the level of commitment from this council. we do this in the budget for $7 million, then it's there. It's committed, and it may or may not be needed within this budget year. The potential issue, if we say we wanted to commit this money and not have it in the budget, but earmark it, commit it for this project, just a tactical discussion, are we... concerned that we could end up with a council makeup different from what we have now that would not support that coming forward as a budget amendment in the future. Because we want to make sure that we're showing that level of commitment that we want to go forward with this and what the best path forward is. Is that the risk? And Todd, I would ask you if that's the risk. If we say, hey, we don't want this in the budget this year because there's a chance it won't be expelled during this budget cycle. But what are the worst case fears if this council says we want to earmark or commit those funds?

Fair question. And Bill can correct me on this. Every year, the six of you get the right to decide how money is spent. So let's just say you did approve this budget. We put it into the budget. And as Robert said, we carry it forward next year. Next year is a whole other budget. You have every right to go, Todd, that carry forward is $7 million. Please remove that from the budget. That six has every right every year to determine what the money is for. So there is no guarantee for anything because it's based on the six of that fiscal year. Even if you took a different approach of going, hey, we would like to restrict these monies in our fund balance. Please put it into books, da-da-da-da-da. Again, the legislative branch, the six, every year has a right to determine, I want monies restricted or not restricted, committed, not committed, assigned. The six every year get to determine—that's why we do the annual budget— Every year, you six get to determine. So there is never a guarantee to the decisions you make today unless there is a steadfast contract written somewhere that, hey, we have to do X, Y, and Z. But there's usually a funding clause in all of our contracts. Because the six of you get to determine how your funds are spent on the annualized basis. So is there a risk? There's always a risk. Because the six always determine on an annual basis what the budget's going to be. Not sure if that helps make you feel better or not. But Bill, I think I got too far off on that.

And that's been my impression. You know, until a contract is signed and funds are spent, it is just a placeholder. Now, this is not guaranteed that anything's going to happen. There will have to be a contract that would come before council at some point in time, whether that's... I mean, we won't want to do a contract before they start the construction, because they're not going to build us 300 stalls without a contract. If that's what our number ends up being. So there is a typically we don't enter contracts without funding. So you're we've had this conversation that we've talked. I've gone back and forth like, well, they're not going to have to pay them for two years. Right. But council is not going to listen to our contract if we don't have the money. assigned for it. So are we going to have a contract in the next year, or next 16, 18 months? I think the answer is yes, personally. Todd can disagree with me on that, but I think that we will 100% have a contract for that unless we back out and say we're not going to be part of it, which is an option. And so that's really the question mark, why there's Some money in here, not all the money. There will be a budget amendment that will happen with this or either a mid-year or next year budget request to fulfill the amount when a contract occurs. And I think that's kind of the chicken and the egg that Todd and I disagree on. It's like, yeah, I understand it's not going to be built. We're not going to take possession. But just like employees, we can't put employees out forever. higher, if there's no funding, we can't assign a contract if we have no funding. Bill, am I correct on that one as well? So, within there is the answer at some point in time.

Mr. Mayor.

Councilman Schroeder.

Where did the 14 million estimate come from? Can you remind me kind of where we came up with that figure?

Mr. LaVoy, this is, I know, in your group.

Great question, Liz. Let me go into the CFP. I'll go get the details in there. Follow-up, answer yes incoming.

In general, I know it's working with your friends over at CCDC on the cost per stall, which it could be much – I can tell you this. Of the parking garages that are contemplated, all of them have very different costs. So it is, I think, a high-end – SWAG-based bond, even what I've heard recently, the cost of parking stalls has gone down and construction costs have gone down a little bit. So I do think it's high, personally. But...

Go ahead. Thank you, Mayor. So it looks like it is a conversation that we had with CCDC February 28, 2024, $35,000 per stall. So February 8, 2024 is when we last talked to them at $35,000 per stall. And in this request, we had 400 parking spaces. So 400 times, do the math. But again, it's Robert stating, if there are new numbers, we've not, again, if they're higher or lower than $35,000 install, we'll do the math. But the contract is that Robert talked, that's when we'll do the math of the real math, just figure out what is the real number. But those numbers are from 2024 when we worked with our partners in CCDC on what they were constructing us per stall at.

And 300 is the number that we're targeting, not 400 at this point in time. So this, in theory, represents a majority of all the general fund dollars, but not the enterprise fund dollars or any other little amount that might be needed to bridge that gap.

Do you feel like the do you feel like having a budget line item that's approved helps to facilitate the project and creates like the opportunity or do you feel like we can easily come back to the budget amendment and accomplish the same thing.

Personally, I prefer to go into a conversation knowing that we have dollars committed. I think it does speak better to our partner. Secondarily, it depends upon what this council up here states for our partner and for myself. Bless you. I don't like to represent the intentions of the council, even though we all have to do that sometimes, right? It's part of the process. But it's much easier to say I've got... money in a budget to work on an outcome, then I need to go back to council with details on what that is in the future. And we're going to do that anyways, don't get me wrong. So, but yes, I think it's better for the purposes of our partner to have something identified for the project.

Mr. Mayor.

Councilman Schrader.

And maybe a question for, bless you, our city council president and yourself. How do you guys want to run this meeting? Do you want to vote on individual items, move them to the parking lot? How do you want to facilitate getting through our meeting today in terms of process?

Mr. Mayor.

Councilman Robertson.

I wouldn't mind taking these items if we think there's just going to be a few and moving them to a parking lot at the end, and we address those then so we can continue through with everybody we've got.

Sounds good.

I assume this would be something we'd talk about later. But again, I'm okay either way, as long as you all are okay either way. But if there's no desire, we should have that conversation now. Because that at least represents, I think, as was discussed, unless something dramatically happens, this is the team for the next 18 months, which is at least going to put something in motion. A different team could come in 18 months after that and stop something in motion if nothing's gone far enough. But we should at least know whether or not there's an impetus or desire to do this or not.

Mr. Mayor.

Council Member Roberts.

On that note, I definitely support the project and things, but I don't know where my comfort level is with information. I don't feel like we've fully vetted out how a parking structure could be paid for. And maybe on your side, you have, but I don't feel I'm not at my comfort level yet there. And plus, in my knowledge, we haven't discussed ongoing costs and who would be taking care of all of ongoing costs. And I think given our budget and not looking like we're going to plant and have a great money tree anytime soon. I think any ongoing costs that the city's going to absorb anytime soon, I think we need to figure out what that potentially is and keep that in the back of our mind as well.

And it's all part of the contract that would come back. All those details would be clearly identified for full consideration at that time.

Great. Thank you.

Okay. Next item.

Okay, so this request is for energy efficiency upgrades. So this kind of complements the energy efficiency study presentation that you guys heard last week. So this is our estimate to complete all Tier 1 projects that were identified in the study. And as a reminder, the Tier 1 projects are projects that have strong ROIs within a couple of years. So we had originally in our CFP had a couple of projects identified for City Hall, HVAC recommissioning and LED lighting. And those actually, it was a good thing we waited for the study because those ended up being Tier 2 and Tier 3 projects. So we had $120,000 in the CFP plan for that. So this is actually a decrease in what we were planning to spend. As a reminder, we're looking to balance our team's ability to complete projects. And then our study was just that it was a planning level study. So before we do any of these projects, we want to validate the assumptions that are still correct, that the costs are still what the study anticipated. So there's a whole host of small improvements that have good savings and have that ROI within one to two years. And our next request is for street lighting. So we have three street lighting requests this year. So this one is a request on, so ACHD is gonna be working along Stoddard Road. So this is our opportunity. So they're widening Stoddard Road between Overland and Victory. And this is actually an area that we have some underserved needs. So we need to add lights to meet our current standards. And this is a particularly important one for us Because it's a busy road that intersects both a park and a school. One of the good things in partnering with ACHD is that they will pay for the installation if the city pays for the lights. So great opportunity there. Our next request is the annual request for our LED conversion on our street lights. So just a little bit of note on our progress. We currently have a little over 2600 HPS lights remaining. That's about 27%, meaning that we've converted about 73% of our system to LED through our efforts over the last few years. We have about, if our funding remains consistent, about five more years and we'll have the whole system converted. We were asked in our energy efficiency presentation about the ROI on streetlights, which is currently sitting at about six years. And that is why our energy study didn't recommend necessarily accelerating the conversion, but also recommended keeping it at our current rate. And then our final request on streetlights, this is also our normal annual request for new lights for underserved areas. So we normally have a $100,000 request. You'll see $63,000 here, and there's the companion $36,000 in the base budget. This allows us to install between four to six new lights in the city per year. take care of our underserved areas. We've developed a 20-year plan to tackle those if we maintain our existing funding levels and FTE levels, with the assumption that once we're complete with LEDs, we would transfer that money that we've been spending on LEDs to do new lights.

Any questions for all on these items? Mr. Mayor. Councilman Overton.

Not a question more than just a comment about the whole streetlight project and all the different phases we're in. We want to make sure we don't overlook the fact that those high pressure sodium lights that we're replacing do not do the same job as these LEDs when it comes to lighting up an intersection. And part of the thing that we identified in our intersection safety task force early on was how much safer those can make some of our most critical intersections across the city. And I'm fully supportive. I know it's expensive, but once we finally get to that, I think it's going to be good for the city as a whole. And we could say goodbye to the high pressure sodium lights. That'll be a wonderful day.

Thank you.

Thank you. Good to see you. Thanks for pitching. We do have the chief on online as well. I am here.

Good morning, Mayor and Council. I appreciate the opportunity to come before you today on the fire department's requests. First request is some additional fire station computers. So when we built stations six, seven, and eight, we added a fourth workstation for the firefighters, but stations one through five have historically had three workstations with the additional firefighters from the SAFER grant that have been continued on through the levy. We are gonna need an additional one computer per station at stations one through five for that fourth firefighter to do reports, ongoing training, things of that nature, maintain their certifications, and complete any other computer work. Annual department physicals right now, all line firefighters are required to have a department physical every other year, and we are looking towards having them have their department physicals every year. With that, the cost is, as you can see, $39,000 and some change. A lot of this does focus on early detection of cancer, early detection of any cardiac issues, early detection of any health issues. blood work, things of that nature. So we are looking to correlate with the standard NFPA 1580 that does recommend annual department physicals. And so this is the cost associated with doing that. It is part of what we are discussing in current labor negotiations as well to get it in the contract. Fire station remodel, as you're familiar, we are currently remodeling station three in this current fiscal year. And we're looking to now move to station two next fiscal year for the remodel, 2.5 million. The biggest focus of this remodel is really around health and safety of the firefighters. and ensuring that we are meeting industry best practices when we come to health and safety standards with the bunker gear and some of the workout equipment and increasing some of that carcinogen exposure avoidance. And then, as was mentioned at the beginning of the presentation for today, the battalion chief's vehicle, a one-time cost. So we have looked at with... Human Resources, the reclassification of three captains to battalion chiefs so that we can stand up a second battalion chief in the city. And with that, we do need a vehicle for that individual. And this would be something we're looking to have accomplished in the next fiscal year. So we would want a very similar vehicle to what we currently have for our current one battalion chief every 24-hour shift. We would have a second battalion chief located in More than likely the north end of the city right now we're kind of centralized and we'll need that vehicle moving forward. With that i'd stand for any questions.

Thank you, she better for counseling questions.

Thank you.

Good morning, Mayor and Council. It's my pleasure to present to you our budget request items for FY27. The first item up is a new 15 passenger van for our recreation division. The existing van that we use is 16 years old. And while it's still usable for us locally, it's becoming unreliable for the longer road trips. It's in poor condition. It loses power on the hills. It's intermittent with its AC. We use it for senior trips like the whitewater rafting, McCall Winter Carnival, Starlight Mountain Theater. We also use it for youth programs. Our outdoor adventure camp sells out in about five minutes when we open it. We know there's demand for more. And so we would like to keep our existing van for those local trips and use this as an additional one to help supplement that. This is an optional one, but it's one that came up when we were talking about increasing our fireworks for the America 250. But... As we were presenting, the discussion was, do we want to do more on an ongoing basis? There was discussion that we do have one of the smaller fireworks shows on an annual basis. And there's nothing magical to the 15,000 number. It's roughly the number we currently spend. But if we want to do more, we could do 5,000 more, we could do 10,000 more, we could do 20,000 more. But we currently spend $14,000 um between us ten thousand of the city's funds go towards it um towards the fireworks uh the and then seven thousand from the speedway four thousand of theirs goes toward the big aerial show and three thousand is inside the speedway ground show this budget hasn't changed for several years costs are increasing so every year we do a little bit fewer fireworks for the same budget. And we wanted to bring that conversation forward to say, is this something that we want to increase in our budget moving forward? And I do have, we've talked about it earlier, but I do have numbers from other cities, if that's of interest, but I figured we just want to focus on ourselves for now. The next item is purchase of a midsize tractor, which would do a variety of tasks for us in both the parkside and the golf course. You can see a list of it there. It includes aeration, where there's three deep tying core and slicing, top dressing, fertilizing, ball field lip removal, vac work, overseeding, warning track material installation. There's lots of things that we would use this piece of equipment for. Like I said, we would share it between both parks and the golf course. There is a need for it out there. And as we continue to grow a park system, the need only increases. The Settlers Park expansion operating, the project itself is already underway. We talked about this last year that we would hold off the operating costs until this year for the park itself, and we would hold off the operating costs for the community center an additional year to FY28. But this one is coming up. It is the number that's been talked about and anticipated. These are the operating costs for the park portion, including the seasonal labor and then maintenance for everything from the parking lots, the dog park, the turf maintenance, landscape, etc. And that project, we just walked it last Friday and it's moving along well. Linda Road Overpass is also one we've talked about before. This is for the median landscape project. That project is going out to bid this fall by ACHD. I do think it's worth noting that there's no contracted cost available yet for me to base this request on this is the best estimate we have available from the engineers as you'll recall the art elements were already funded last year they're currently under construction they were funded through the public art funds we call maps meridian art and public spaces this would be the landscape and irrigation portion of that overpass project Pathway connections. This is one we talk about every year, and we have two projects proposed for next year. One is to construct a bridge, a pedestrian bridge over the Ridenbaugh Canal near where it crosses Meridian Road in South Meridian. We have pathway on both sides, and there's a missing connection to get across it. People currently have to walk around the the vehicle bridge on a wide shoulder and of Meridian Road, Highway 69 there. Knowing that an eventual widening of that road is coming, this would be placed in a location that would work in the future if and when that road widening happens. The other portion of it would be THE RAIL WITH TRAIL CONNECTION, THE PHOTO ON THE TOP RIGHT IS THE RECENTLY PAVED SECTION. NOT OFFICIALLY OPEN QUITE YET BECAUSE THERE IS SOME LANDSCAPE, SOME OF THE SHOULDERS AND THINGS ARE STILL BEING FINALIZED, BUT VERY SOON IT'S OPENING. AND IF YOU LOOK AT THE BOTTOM, I'LL TRY AND USE A MOUSE, THIS IS JUST AN IMAGE OF That section from Meridian Road would be over here and Linders on the far left. Sorry, this mouse is... moving quickly but linda road the red the red line here is the new section of rail with trail it's about to open there's a desire to see it continue all the way to linda road and we've identified six different easements that we would need to secure to get that pushed through to linda road it looks doable so we would propose some easement acquisition and some design to get that right of way moving forward for a future construction project. And then you stick road. We had one last year with this same title, three miles of landscape medians. We talked about we're coming. Two of them were funded last year in the current fiscal year, which were 10 mile to Black Cat and Linder to 10 mile. This request is for the third of those three miles, which is Black Cat to McDermott. again i just feel it's necessary to point out this is an engineer's estimate and the project is not yet bid by achd but is going out and we expect to expend these funds uh in the next fiscal year so it's part of this budget um it's on that's on par with the the same request you made last year for the other two miles and that's the end of my presentation and i'll stand for any questions

Mr. Mayor.

Councilman Taylor.

A quick question on the trails. Are those easements on the individual properties that you would need to acquire, pay for, or is it on the railway?

None of them are in the railway. Some of them are Nampa Meridian Irrigation District. They already have an easement there, and we would just be working out a license agreement. Others are more complicated. There's one out-of-state owner that we need to work with, but they're all private individual properties, none of them within the rail right-of-way.

Okay.

And that's a quick follow-up. Have you already had some conversations to get a sense of their willingness here? Do you anticipate any trouble? I mean, we're kind of curious where we are in the process because I'd hate to commit that much money without a sense that it's going to kind of work out. So I'm just curious where things might stand in terms of your conversations you've already had or what you expect to have to have.

Yeah, yeah, Kim's been reaching out to the property owners there she did finally have a Was able to connect with the senior living center, which is owned out of state but operated locally So we have to deal with an out-of-state odor. They actually seemed favorable We are we bring it forward because we do see it as very possible to get through There's one section where it would go through a drive aisle of an existing development that went in before setbacks or requiring easements for future pathways was required years ago. But it seems to be more of a design challenge than a willingness challenge.

Thanks, Steve. Chief?

Mayor, members of the council, the only thing that we have is the prosecution team. 10 prosecutors, 3 vehicles for an ongoing cost of $1,170,624. One-time cost of $351,583 for a total request of $1,522,207. And that's the initial starting structure of the team. I think that City Attorney Nary can talk a little more in depth in this. I know that he's been here before you in the past couple of weeks discussing it. And with that, I'll stand for any questions that you may have for me, probably more for City Attorney Nary.

Yeah, I don't know if someone thought they were being strategic by putting this under the police budget, but I don't think it worked.

I was a little confused myself. Yes.

Mr. Nehme, would you like to expand on this? We've already had some conversation. I know this is going in the parking lot, but yeah.

Well, I guess, Mayor and members of council, we did talk about this a few weeks ago, and we did take a pause. You have your budget amendment on tomorrow as well for discussion, but obviously driven by today. Again, we've kind of laid out some of our timing and our timeline and trying to move this forward and get it expedited as quickly as possible. And that's where the numbers come from on the number of people. The team of 10 is considered seven prosecutors, so seven attorneys and three support staff. The vehicle numbers may change as we kind of flesh this out, but that's really the biggest cost is going to be the personnel. I can stand for any particular questions you have, or if you want to know why it's in the police budget, I'm sure I can answer that too, but that's up to you.

Mayor Mrakas, Mr mayor comes here, this will be a long conversation, so we probably just put in the parking lot and return to it later okay. Mayor Mrakas, Thank you.

Okay, Mayor that concludes our department presentations would you like a break at this time or go straight to the parking lot there's two items in the parking lot at the moment.

Let's go and take a 10-minute break, a 15-minute break, and go from there.

Okay.

Sorry, some people are really enjoying their coffee a little too much on that delay. But we'll go ahead and come back from our break. And first, I know we officially put these two items in the parking lot. Are there any other items from the morning that people would like to bring into this conversation at this point in time, at least from the presentation items? Just so we... Councilman Schroeder.

I think it's kind of interrelated, but certainly the foregone, I think, is kind of wrapped up with all of this. I don't know if it needs to be a distinct item, but I definitely think we'll be discussing it.

Yes. I had no doubt on that one. All right, so let's start off with the parking garage. And I'll just kind of reiterate my comments that I made earlier. I'm not predisposed to when money goes into a budget. I just want to be respectful of what the council's expectations are as best as we can, knowing that, again, once the contract is signed, you need to have money. that's the time when that this dollar figure will be uh finalized this is this is what i believe is to be the general fund largely the general fund portion of what this ultimately will be as mentioned 300 not 400 is our target point um but that's what this number represents uh there will there would be a budget amendment here regardless uh... one way or the other uh... so that will have to happen so it's really how would you like to proceed in the in this conversation more so than anything else and uh... this is also under the uh... uh... unknowing that we have right now is a general conversation from a developer about that plan and a proposal without anything we've actually been submitted otherwise but not going to submit the project until they know if we're part of it because if we're not part of it it changes their project so it's all kind of related mr mayor councilman taylor maybe i kind of feel like i wanted to share some bigger picture thoughts on this whole parking discussion in downtown meridian

I think I've said this before. This is kind of like the opening pages of the final chapter of what downtown reading is going to look like over the next as it takes shape over the next 510 years. I think, though, I'm not even sure this is the opening pages. This is like the opening sentence of the opening paragraph of the of the chapter, and we're still trying to figure out what it is. So there's so many details. yet to be understood by us, but also by those who took possession of this property and have presented a plan and are working on it. There's still a lot of projections. There's no concrete numbers. But I think collectively this discussion has been happening for many years, not just those up here, but those who came before us, other partners downtown, the Chamber, business owners, MDC, on and on. So I think I've seen all those things kind of move towards the idea that to have a vibrant downtown Meridian, it's gonna require an adequate parking solution. We don't have a parking problem now, but that's because that's what we have today. The future we envision downtown is gonna look a little bit different. So I don't know where all council wants to go. I still don't even know where I wanna land on this. I do know that this is an exciting conversation that we're beginning, but there's a lot of details to kind of fill in. So I think that I'll just say this. What I think we want to indicate or sort of demonstrate is that the city wants to make this be successful. And we have some needs that we want to try to take advantage of the opportunity to capture. How we do that and the timing when we do that, I'm not even sure I have a specific idea what's the best way to do it. But I just wanted to kind of share that, like, we're so early in the process, there's so many questions, but I think it's important that we show a meaningful movement towards getting this figured out. That said, I, well, I'm just going to pause there.

Mr. Mayor.

Yes. Hello, Roberts.

mayor um i concur with councilman taylor that i think there's just so many unknowns right now um and i will just say it in all honesty i would like to see it pulled out of the budget and do an amendment if we need to at a later date and get a lot of the questions and it sounds like i would even like to see the contract before we make a financial commitment because it sounds like a lot of the questions i have are going to be answered in the contract um like who's going to take care of it who's responsible for ongoing costs all of that um you know how long is the contract with them do they have the opportunity to sell it i mean are we going to have a 50 ownership how is all this going to work for us to put up this kind of money mr mayor welcome sugar

I'm a little bit, I guess, flexible on this one. I do feel like if you feel that having this in the budget helps to facilitate and shows commitment on the part of the city, it doesn't obligate the council to sign a contract. And that's really where I agree all those details would be ironed out. I think I view the potential of what this could, like this is really a catalyst and the potential I think that could come from it in this area is really tremendous. So I'm more open to, I usually don't actually, I'm usually not open to this, but I think in this one instance, I would be open to approving it in the budget with the understanding that we're only going to expend the funds if we see a solid contract that aligns with our expectations. So I could go either way, but I'm a little bit more flexible on this one.

And to those points, I mean, yeah, there's going to be presentations. There's going to be, you know, there'll be a presentation about people about all these type of things before we get to the contract. So you're not going to get a contract until here's how it's going to be outlined in terms of who's going to own what, you know, who's going to maintain what. It's going to be a third party, all those things. And then ultimately the contract will be the, where all that information resides. So, you know, there will be no decisions about anything until there's plenty of input on these things that we're talking about. So, I mean, we're 100% correct. It's early. We just, you know, the question we just need to answer is, do we think this is still a viable way for us to provide for long-term employee parking as the base conversation? What it means beyond that is the secondary part of that. And that's, for me, is absent us building our own garage on property, This is the best way to achieve the long-term that makes our property available for other uses besides surface parking long-term. And that's the outcome that I think is the best for our city long-term. Mr. Mayor.

Councilman Overton.

My words aren't original because Councilmember Strader said it perfectly. I can go either way on this, on how we do it. But I do have to admit that making this part of our budget shows, I think, a higher level of commitment to that developer moving forward. But it doesn't lock us into anything until we know the rest of the information and what a contract looks like and how this is going to develop and what that timeline is going to look like. But I do think it's important with this size of a project that we show that level of commitment. So I'm good with it staying in the budget. I'm good with it if I knew that we could earmark those funds and be committed to it down the road. I could go either way, depending on what the majority of council agrees to. But I could definitely see the advantage to a developer in seeing us commit to that today. saying that we want to keep that in, being a powerful statement.

Mr. Mayor.

That's my walk.

Along those lines as well, I think we want a seat at the table, and I think we want a seat as close to the head of the table as we possibly can so our voice is heard and our influence is felt. How do we get that seat and have the most influence? I guess I would... would fall on the side of the fence of keeping it in the budget it shows a positive vote by this council to to say yes we are committed and we want to be at the table we want to be heard we want to be part of this it's important to the future of our downtown so I guess that's the side of the fence that I fall on is is keeping it in the budget mr. mayor else we ever

I guess I look at this as a, the end result is the same. It's just really the path that we are taking. Anytime I hear from my colleagues and kind of urging some, taking that step back before we take the big step forward, I'm largely supportive of that. I think Council Member Little-Roberts brings up a good point of like, just getting an opportunity to kind of review what the potential contract would look like. So we're going into this eyes wide open. And I don't think that there's, any of us that are going to blatantly change our mind. I think we're all here in concept. I don't want our, I think, beneficially cautious approach to hurt us, but I'm not hearing that from you at all, Mr. Mayor, that if we're If we bring this back as a friendly budget amendment someday down the road, and we're all here, that we're going to hopefully continue to remain really friendly on this budget amendment. So I think that's probably the spot that I would feel more comfortable. But I really appreciate, Mr. Merritt, because I think you touched on something. This body has been pretty reluctant to say, hey, why are we taking on these big dollar budget amendments mid-year? They should become it as part of the budget process. And now I recognize I'm the one saying, boy, maybe we would like to see this one as a budget amendment when it's needed. I think for me, part of that is just because we don't have a lot of stability about the timing of when these funds are going to be needed. Mr. Mayor.

Pastor Taylor. I could ask you a question maybe in your perspective. Do you think having the money in the budget helps the city... dictate more about what we want to see as opposed to be dictated to about what we're going to get? Or do you think it matters?

I don't think it matters. I think, you know, ultimately we're going to have a partner in this project that's going to, at least from my conversations with them, they're going to work with us to achieve achieve an outcome on it. I think the main thing is the words from this council is what matters more than anything else so that they understand where we are. Because I don't think they don't want to invest $1 if we don't have any interest in having 300 parking garages as a number in their project, because that's money and time wasted on them. And that, to me, is the key component to this, is showing that we are in As far as we can, which is to say, here's the money that we're willing to spend with all these caveats about that are yet to be answered. That to me is the biggest element. And I just, I don't want to put this council's, I can bring it. I don't want to have to say I can bring a budget amendment back later. And I think I'm going to, I think they'll all be there. i'd rather say they put the money in the budget let's let's design a project let's get to the the details and see what that works and again if we can't make it work we can't make it work and that's when that's the time to to step back um but that's where i i see this more than anything else and i appreciate that one of my uh

constantly recurring questions that I have about this as we contemplate all of the big picture stuff is ensuring that, I think Councilman Whitlock, I like the way he put it, that we have a seat at the table here, because I want to make sure that we are able to dictate what is in the best interest of the city and that we get that, not that we're told, hey, here's an opportunity if you want it, but it's going to work with whatever they have. And I agree. I think we have the right development team is indicated they're willing to work with us. on this, but that's kind of my biggest concern is as long as the city is able to be in a position where we can indicate our willingness to be part of this project, but that we're also going to be able to get the outcome that we want that serves the citizens. Well, I mean, these are, this is a lot of taxpayer money. I do think it will spur a lot of economic development downtown. It'll be very helpful for, for the city longterm and, But I just want to make sure that we tie money to certain performance metrics, things like that. That will come in the contract. I know those are details that will be worked out later. I agree. I prefer not to do big budget amendments later. I think it's more transparent to citizens. If this is what we're going to do, then this is what we're going to do. And Councilman Kavner said it well. If the end result's the same, I'd rather indicate the direction we're going as opposed to, you know, March or April or next June or whatever, coming back and saying here's a budget amendment of $7 million or $8 million or whatever it is to get this done. I know there will be a budget amendment anyway because we have a lot to do. So, I probably would defer to, if this is what we're gonna do, then I would rather be more transparent and say, let's put it in the budget and have that discussion and let the public come in and weigh in on it when we have those public hearings.

And maybe in this one, I think we'll even know more by August, you know, where conversations will have occurred. And you can always pull something out if we get to that point in time and things have fallen away, but it gives us a couple more months to have conversations that maybe write the second sentence of the first paragraph of the next chapter.

Mr. Mayor, if I'm the only one that's holding out on leaving it in the budget, in order for us to be a united front, I will happily leave it in the budget, knowing that the information that I'm looking for is coming and trusting you that we will get that information.

You will. Guaranteed 100%. Okay, so for now we'll leave that there and see how that progresses over the next couple months to see if it survives August. But we won't consider another conversation, not saying we can't and there may be, but we'll consider that there does need to be another conversation about this item until that point in time. Okay. Item two, prosecution team. So Todd, do you want to... I asked Todd for a little bit of information just to share, just so we can understand the... The current cost request of this item, a little bit more cleaner.

I appreciate it, Robert. The address, the question number one, why was this under the police department? So prosecution costs are a police department expense. They're not a HR expense, a finance expense. So we currently have the Boise prosecution expenses under the police department. So this cost, Staff will reside under what we call the police department because they're serving the police department's needs. It will just be managed by a different director, not the chief. Can we have that in various? Lorelei manages different divisions under different funds. I manage different divisions. Management, that's a different story, but we have it under police because that is the true house of the cost, and we try to associate the cost to the house that it belongs to. So to help you understand – sorry, Tracy, to put you on the spot there. But it sits there because that's where we're going to put the expenses. So there's going to be a new division within the police department. managed by bill but again we can work on that part so as well answer that number one number two the the data that you have on this presentation so this presentation is present uh... the budget book is presented thirty days ago to you we presented I guess we did present to you a prosecution presentation after we issued this book. So again, Robert said the number seems a little low. He's 100% accurate. So we left the budget book the way the budget book was presented. What the team presented to you during that one workshop is a little bit different. So the most current model that we have presented to you, which was presented during the workshop meeting, Right now this says ongoing whatnot here. The current payroll that we have projected for 10 individuals is going to be $1.4 million. That's your total payroll. Your total ongoing cost is $200,000. So call that $1.6 million of ongoing right there. So your ongoing is at a minimum $1.6 million. The one-time costs to bring this 10 FTE team up to par, we have 351,000 in one time. So as we presented to you a couple of weeks ago, The total budget needed to make this occur year number one is going to be 2.0 million. So again, we did not change your presentation because we wanted it to be true to the budget book that we presented to you 30 days ago. We just happen to have a presentation to you between the two, which. change the devalues because we got better data at that better time. So again, just to reiterate, the total payroll is 1.4, total ongoing is 1.2, that gets you to 1.6, one-time expenses at 300,000, total budgetary requests will be $2 million if we wish to move forward with this 10-person unit for there. As a reminder, the citizens did provide you $498,000. Let's round up to $500,000 in property tax revenues via the levy vote. So we got $500,000 there. The current contract we have slated for Boise is $852,000. So you have that available to you. So that's $1.3 million. So if you did the math, $1.3 million, we talked about the ongoing is $1.6. So you have a deficit of $300,000. We're going to be using $300,000 of one-time expenses. So you add the two up, it's $669,609 is the shortfall that we're looking to have funded via other revenue sources. If we were to move forward with this 10 and three. So again, wanted to update you that the slide represented the budget book because the budget book was a snapshot in time we presented. So again, things are always moving. But again, I just wanted to clarify that Robert was correct. The number was seemed different than what we presented, which is true because it was a point in time. So the current number, again, we can try to quickly update the slide if you wanted to. But again, it's going to be 1.4 payroll, 200,000 ongoing, call it 1.6 ongoing is your needs. And then your revenue sources are about 1.3 million. I hope that helps because things have changed, unfortunately.

So Todd, how does that impact the bottom line of the budget then? So is this saying that we're short $400,000 in ongoing revenue if you were to implement this under what was presented by the attorney? Or is the money in this budget that reflects the $1.6 million ongoing cost? Which number is in the budget?

The number in the budget is going to be the number that's on the screen. On the screen up above you, correct me if I'm wrong. The CFP or the value in the budget should be what's on the presentation in front of you because the number that I'm giving to you, I don't believe we got that. We did not get that in your budget book presentation because that was over 30 days ago. This was, so again, I think, let me double check for you. But if we implement the new numbers, we will be farther behind your correct, Robert. I would agree with your statement 100% because these numbers are new compared to what we did 30 days ago with the budget book. We can triple check that though for you.

Mr. Mayor.

Councilman Schroeder.

Just in the spirit of brainstorming, just talking out loud. I think we're all aligned on the destination of where we want to get to. I feel that very strongly from everybody, from the council, from the mayor. We want our own prosecution team. It's really important to us. I think this might be one of those areas where we want to come back a little more to the save before we spend philosophy. And I think taking our time, there is a cost to that. We have the contract with Boise. There's some uncertainty around that. But it also takes time to hire good people. And just thinking out loud, you know, the voters gave us about half a million dollars in our levy for this effort. Maybe we could use part of that to do the first two critical hires, like a lead prosecutor and a support person or whatever Mr. Neri thinks is the most essential that he would need. It can take six months to find a really great leader, you know, so that could be that we take our time, we find the right person, and then that person has the time to make a plan, continue discussions with the Ada County Courthouse and the magistrates and really get a solid plan together. We could earmark anything that's in the levy that we're not using for those first two hires, set that aside. We already have the amount of the contract set aside, and then we could next year hopefully fill in that gap. But maybe by taking a little bit more time, I think we could do this in a way that, at least to me, just would feel more fiscally responsible. I am really concerned that we're having trouble meeting our ongoing expenses around health benefits and COLA. And it just feels to me like if we let that trend continue, we're setting ourselves up and we may not be here, but we're setting the city up for a big problem in the future. So that's just my initial thoughts, completely supportive of the prosecution team. I think we're aligned. We want to get there, but I just would personally feel a little more comfortable taking more time to get to that spot.

Mr. Mayor. Council Member Overton. Those were excellent points by Council Member Strader, and I'll play a little bit off of that. When we're talking about the newest presentation that we had that was a $2 million number, just want to make sure I'm looking at both of you, not at the same time. That represents the change in court calendar that happened during the time we were getting our public safety levy approved by the voters. The original numbers, and I believe God would ask you, is the 1.5 in this budget book reflective of our original numbers based upon the pre-existing calendar that we had before it was changed by the courts? And the reason I ask this, because that's half a million dollars, is because we have a pathway forward for a prosecution team. We have a commitment from the public that they support us doing this. And we have a situation where our current journey is in a contract that has a certain way that they dispose of our cases. The other half of the cases in the county are handled by Ada County and contract cities that they handle, and they have a substantially different way that they dispose of cases. And because there was such a huge disparity, That was the main reason when we met with the courts on why they changed the calendar that affected all of us, not just City of Meridian, not Boise, not Ada County, all of us were affected by this new expanded calendar to try to spread out the caseload. What they've done, unfortunately, and this is where I go back to comments that Council Member Strader said, is they've taken our pathway that seemed to be pretty straightforward, And they just put a big block, like the world's largest speed bump in front of us, that we've got to figure out how do we get across that speed bump and effectively get our prosecution team. Because I think what we want to do is we still want to reach that goal with a lower amount of money and have the courts go back to the scheduling system we had before. And that was our initial request when we met with them is to try to get back to that court schedule. They liked our idea. They're not committing to it because we're not there. And I think we do have to step back and do this slowly. I think there's more questions that need to be asked because we have a commitment from the voters. We have a commitment from our people. We have a commitment from our council that we want to move forward on this, but we need to make sure we do it right. And I'd like to make sure that I'm not ready to say, take this out because it's where we want to go, but I think we've got to, in the next month or two, ask some serious questions on where we can go and how we can get there. and we'll know a lot more before we get closer to the final budget on what we can do and what we can't do moving forward into fy27 because i'm concerned with the two million dollar budget i don't think that's realistic of where we want to be i think that puts it out of reach I don't think that's fair to the rest of the city that, you know, all of a sudden something we said was going to be this much money is over half a million dollars more. I think we need to strive to get back to where we promised, what we wanted, and see if that pathway can be brought back.

Commissioner, do you want to first answer that? Because the nexus between what it was to the presentation was not just about... there was an increase in the market and other components that drove that number.

It's my recollection. Yeah, Mr. Mayor, members of the council, we've had these ongoing discussions in the prosecution team for many years, and we had modeled that, again, as you stated, Council President Overton, based on the way the court structure was set up and what the cost of the services that were being provided by our contracting agency, the City of Boise. So we had taken those models and had tried to truth them up each year a little bit. We'd adjust them slightly for inflation and some of the market and such, but Right after our levy was approved, we met with the court a year ago, and that was when they made the change to their calendar based on the information you just provided, that there was what they felt was a disparity and an imbalance in their system, and they wanted to change that system. So for lack of a better term, but I mean, they sort of moved the goalposts on all of us on how it could be accomplished in the way it was previously planned to be accomplished. And on top of that, the marketplace evolves as well, as all of you know. And to give you a snapshot, a very anecdotal snapshot, but we currently have a position in our civil division that's open, that we have had open now for three weeks. I had seven applicants for that position, one withdrew. I had six applicants. Of those six, three are not qualified and don't meet our minimum qualifications, so I have three. It is a very challenging market out there we are also trying to deal with. And one of the concerns, as I brought to you a few weeks ago, is because we don't have a existing bench of attorneys, we are also looking for attorneys that have some experience in the market today. that will change the dynamic of what we're looking for. And I know one of the things that all of you have to balance, as you've heard, is what is helping fund this is both the levy, anticipated revenue, as well as the drop-off of the contract that we currently have in place. And all of those need to somewhat align to a particular point to then end one and move on to the next one. And the challenge I think you all are addressing here, which is concerning, is we're having to do them almost simultaneously. So we've had changes in the court calendaring system, which has changed our personnel dynamic that we need to properly manage this caseload. We've had some changes in the marketplace on the hiring of personnel, which we don't know yet how that's going to work. And secondarily, and we don't know what the market is going to be on the personnel that's available. And we're also trying to align with a contract at the same time we're having to hire people to fill that contract need. So there definitely is a lot of levers to move here. So I understand the concern the council has on trying to figure out what's the best timing on all of these things. And I wish I had a crystal ball to tell you, and I don't. We will do everything we can to bring it forward as quickly as we can. Obviously there's a lot of factors I can't control in that, none of us can, but we are certainly recognize that there are more challenges that have occurred since this conversation on the levy occurred a year and a half ago than we have today. And we've learned more. And as Council Member Overton just brought forward, we have more to learn. I mean, there's still more information to have. So the timing issue is really a challenge and I understand it. And again, I wish I had, I mean, to be honest with what Council Member Schroeder said, when I've had this conversation in the past, both with, with Mayor Simison and Mayor DeVere, I had always said the best way to do this is hire the people to run this team first and build that team around them. That's the way to do it. And that's in an ideal world where we're not talking about budgets, we're not talking about personnel, we're not talking about contract, we're not talking about any of it. Just what would you do to build a team? How would you do it? That was always my vision on how you would do it. But there's other challenges and that's just a piece of it. So I I wish I had an easier answer, but I mean, there are certainly lots of things from both the public's perspective to understand on why this is more challenging than we thought it was a year and a half ago, and we're still working through it. And we'll get there. We all want to get to the same place. We all have the same objective to get there. We do think it's a valuable service we can provide our citizens. We just need to do it in the right time to make it work the best for everyone.

So in my thinking here, kind of having had many conversations on this topic, kind of moving forward, from a dollar standpoint, if you just look at the amount left over from the levy for prosecution, that is the amount that makes sense to hire two, maybe three people, you know, that lead and other things. And I think that that's what should happen. B, in my mind, in the FY27 budget, the expectation that we hire those people to continue doing that process. When you look at the others, you can value proposition, the Boise contract, $850,000. How many of those prosecution or team is that? Five? five people maybe and that so you at the end of the day you're talking about two or three people uh under this budget number i'm just so we're clear i'm not in favor of putting a two million dollar number in this budget i think this is the number that we talk about for fy 27 as our number. And what can you do with that? Levy dollars. Otherwise, you're not going to hire the people until you find that transition point away from the contract. So we can understand that those aren't going to happen. Is this a placeholder in the budget in some regards where you are putting in, you know, under this number, this was just the levy and the contract? That's what this number was. And we do have money in the base only for three months of the Boise contract. So you need this number in the budget to extend that contract beyond this year or beyond the three months. And the three months that's in there right now is almost the money. So my recommendation is that you leave this in as stated, whether or not you want to do the one-time cost, but I think you do. If you're going to hire the lead person, They might need a car to get around in that role. And some of these other things that we understand, though, we won't be hiring any beyond those two until a further conversation happens with council at a future time. And if you don't want to authorize any more than two positions, that's fine. I just wouldn't change the budget number because it either – to put in a full year of the Boise contract into it and the numbers, but it's going to be about the same once all said and done from my rough math.

Mr. Mayor.

Councilman Schrader.

I think maybe it would be good to chat with finance really quick about that. So if we took that sort of an approach, so we said, okay, we want to take the half a million dollars for round number purposes from the voters, and we would like to, out of that, hire two positions this year, like a lead prosecutor and maybe another position, whether it's a support person or whatever, Mr. Neri thinks is most critical, then I assume at that point, we would build into the base budget should already be in there our ongoing contract. And then on top of that, if we haven't fully utilized the levy funds that we could like earmark them, or you could otherwise designate them as for that purpose. How does that? How does all of that math reflect back into the ongoing cost on this slide?

I'll try to do my best here. One total budget for the general fund, I just need to reiterate, restate that we budget in one large bucket, general fund. So just because the citizens gave us $498,000, it's part of the whole budget. So again, the budget's already at a shortfall position, so I can't really earmark a certain dollar amount because... State statute we don't again. We don't do that here at the city again. If it's a different process where you now don't want me to give certain money to certain departments. That's a whole different philosophy. We'll have to manage. You have 498,000 dollars in the budget that's presented to you. So we have that so. Right now we have 1 point. Call it $1.5 million in the budget for prosecution. You have $852,000 for the Boise contract, but only at three months. So take that number, divide it by 12, multiply it by three, whatever that number is. Right now in the budget, you only have three months for the Boise contract in its position.

Using one-time funds. Correct.

Right. Yeah, correct. So again, so we have the 852 plus the 500 call 1.3 million. You have $1.3 million in the budget right now. How we spend it is up to us. Robert's not wrong there. If we wish to say 852 is going to the city of Boise because that's what we're going to do for the next 12 months. $350,000 for two people, whatever the value is. That gets you to $1.1, $1.2 million. Then you have some excess revenues that you'll be able to just put in your savings account so you can utilize later. So your math is not wrong. So however you want to slice it, but again, if you do put this budget as 10 people, I'm now putting 10 FTEs on your books, which is a lot different than two FTEs. So again, numbers-wise, it doesn't have a factor, but from a FTE standpoint, big difference.

Healthcare.

Oh, big difference in all those factors, 100%. But the numbers-wise, yeah. It foots out based on, he penciled it out. He's penciling it out correctly.

So the number is $320,000. The difference between the contract and the ongoing cost is listed here, which is just about the right amount of money for two positions. for that lead prosecutor in a secondary position. Maybe not fully loaded, but that number, that's in another place currently. So if you leave your ongoing costs that you showcase here, you can pay the ongoing for the full year of the Boise contract if necessary, as well as higher two positions with that number. Whether or not you need the one-time costs here, and you can take the one-time costs out of the current budget for the three months of the Boise contract. So that's... Ultimately, it doesn't change the bottom line of what's presented to you. If you leave this in with only the funding for two positions at this point in time, it just saves you on the ongoing one-time expense or the one-time expense for the contract and maybe some stuff in the healthcare costs or others for those eight other positions that technically would not be funded. Mr. Mayor. Mr.

Chair. Mr. Mayor, members of council, the one thing to consider, and whether that's the one-time costs or how you want to do that, but one of the things we would likely do is look at the software costs. There's a six-month implementation time for the software anyway. That's a time period that we could begin that process. So we need that on board before we hire the rest of the personnel anyway. We're going to want that on board at some point with the new, even the people that are in charge of this team, we're going to need that. So we're going to probably want that, whether we do the office remodel now or later, that we could deal with two people on a short-term basis and do the office remodel either in this budget year or the next year. So those issues we can do, but that's probably the one fixed hard cost that we may want to consider in this, whatever the budget number we end up with on that. But that's the only one I can think of besides the personnel.

Mr. Mayor.

Councilman Schroeder.

I just have a couple questions for Bill. So I was just curious, like from your perspective as the leader of the legal department, what would the first two hires be? Obviously, it seems like a lead prosecutor makes the most sense. Who would that second individual be? And then does it make sense from your perspective to include an office remodel in here? Or would you rather get that person in here, give them a chance to get settled and include their kind of input into that process?

So Mr. Mayor, Mr. Council, Council Member Strater, the lead prosecutor would be the first person we would look to hire. I do think the second position, now whether that's simultaneous or within a month or two, would be the person that's going to be in charge of the support team. Because again, there's a lot of lift on that side that attorneys don't do that we're going to need that person to do. So whether that's at the same hire date or fairly close in time, that would be what I would always anticipate it. On the office side, from talking with public works, most of the office or almost all the office work we're talking about and basically us moving to a different office in the building, a lot of it's going to be timing. There's not a lot of construction to that. It's going to be purchasing walls and chairs and furniture and things like that, but there's not a lot of construction. So the timing can be done. At a later point, we did anticipate potentially if we had to, where could we locate those folks? And we have found either temporary housing either in our current office facility that we have here in this building or at the police department. So we have some flexibility on the office space that it doesn't have to be done right away, or we can at least flesh that out a little bit more. Like I said, I think the software is probably the most key component just because of the timing it takes to implement it. Mayor.

Councilman Taylor.

So lots of questions maybe pertaining to what the court calendar will may look like or how it may change based on some of the decisions that we make here and how we move forward. We're throwing out a lot of different scenarios about how maybe we move forward right now if it's If it's not 10, if it's two, it's still at the 1.5 and, you know, a lot of moving numbers. One thing that I don't, we're still at a shortfall with, I think, where we're at as we look in the out years, right? We're still needing to kind of build up the budget around that to support whatever the final number is. And I'm getting the sense we don't know the final number yet because we're still kind of, working that out, and it would be great to bring in the lead prosecutor who has experience to understand what the team looks like and what the needs are. And Councilwoman Strader said, outside of her comments here, you know, we've always adopted sort of the save before you spend approach. I guess maybe I'd pose a question to Mayor and Council, and this would be a bit of a departure from your plan as you presented, Mayor, with the foregone, Does it make sense to still build the plan as we collect new and updated information? But can we take whatever revenues we have remaining from the levy, you know, almost $500,000, maybe we still hire a few people within that, but the revenue from that, and then take the revenues from foregone and dedicate it towards building the base budget we would need, which I think was going to take us a few years to sort of get that right to make sure that we have a sustainable fiscal plan for this. Because I think I'm missing, could be missing some details. I don't feel like we quite have a fiscal sustainable plan yet. And I think it's because there's still a lot of details we don't have. But I don't see the numbers matching up with what we think we're going to need. Based on some of the conversations at the outset this morning, I just feel like that I have real concerns about where we go strategically with that. So I would pose that question, would we consider dedicating the foregone that we may take this year towards specifically building a base budget for a prosecution team? And can we do that?

Yes, yes. Because ultimately it's all going to be the same place. That's the way I view it. Whether we put the money in to help cover our replacement costs and other things from fund balance or this. The key to me is we may not like it, but if we can't replace something, we can't replace something. That is a one-time cost. Any ongoing revenue first and foremost should help achieve the ongoing and so in your context yes the foregone to go towards prosecution makes as much sense as anything else um compared to you know replacements of stuff but we also understand that replacements have to happen you can't run a computer forever right it's just impossible to do from my experience unless we get into computer rebuilding programs um maybe so yes is the short answer And you could do the same with when the urban renewal district sunsets. It could all be put towards this outcome to achieve where we're going to be because that's where it should belong. But, you know, I'm trying to stand up for our CFO where he's correctly identified replacements have an ongoing cost. And that's what we are trying to build back into this budget so that we can effectively replace things for our employees as well.

But yes. and Mayor, I appreciate that. And I think in some regards, as I'm trying to think how we explain to the citizens of Meridian where we went and asked them for money, they graciously said, yes, we will do that. But that money doesn't correlate directly into the full plan. It's part of the equation. For me, I think it's helpful to show the citizens how we're going to pay for that plan. And again, we don't have all the details of what the prosecution team is going to look like in the timeline, but I think it is helpful if we say, all right, if we're going to consider taking some foregone ongoing revenues here, I'd like to say what it's for. I know you're, you know, you presented, this is for replacement costs and I don't disagree with any of that at all. I understand the money's coming out of the same pot of money, but to say, to show the plan to the citizens. This is what we're asking. We asked you for some money. You gave it to us. And here's how we're going to pay for the rest of the plan is very helpful for me in understanding how this is all going to work because, again, I think we're all aligned with where we want to end up getting there. And we're still trying to figure out these first few steps, what it looks like. But I'd really like to present a plan that has shown how we're actually paying for and being fiscally responsible with when we're asking for as much as we possibly can from people. I want to show them how we're actually going to use it.

I'm perfectly okay with that personally.

Just as I'm sitting here absorbing all this, whether we move slow or fast, we're not dipping our toe in the water here. I think we're in the pool at some point. To Bill's point, you've got to buy the software. To Councilman Strader's point, we probably need to start with the key people and bring them on. To me, I think we're in the pool now and we're moving forward. And I'd be totally supportive of what Councilman Taylor just said. Let's show the people how it all pencils out and how we make it work. Again, regardless of whether it's two to start with or we can figure out, okay, we need to do office space for a total of 10 and get three vehicles? Those are questions that can be answered downstream, I think. But we're in the pool. We're in. We're committed. And I do like the thought of being able to say, and this is what we anticipate it will cost, and be able to move forward. And here's where the money's coming from.

So if I'm taking what the items on the table that might look like, leave this in the budget, but reduce the authority to only hiring two people instead of 10. Take the one-time prosecution three months out of fund balance so that goes away for the year. And if foregone moves forward, apply those funds towards future prosecution expenses. And we will know more at some point in time in next year after we hire a prosecutor, if we are able to and can hire prosecutors. Mr. Mayor, I think you're also...

I thought I heard the software.

Yeah, so that's why I was talking about leaving all the one-time costs in here that would be needed at some point in time and that they could determine how, whether that's the vehicles or anything else. So I would leave these one-time costs in. It's the one-time costs that are not showcased here in another place for the three months of Boise prosecution that are the one-time costs I would say take out.

Mr. Mayor.

Councilman Taylor.

I might ask a question, also just looking at agendas for tomorrow night, the budget amendment. Is there a need for a budget amendment for tomorrow night if we're moving towards what you just articulated, which is why I think we're seeing ourselves coalesce around? Because as I see it, and I'll just say this and then love your comment, to me, I saw the budget amendment as the... Let's get rolling all these changes. We're going to get started. I don't feel like we're quite there yet, but is there a need for a budget amendment tomorrow night based on what you just articulated as sort of the consensus we seem to be evolving?

The budget amendment was just for the two people, as I recall. The difference is if you do a budget amendment tomorrow night, we could in theory post this on July 1st to start looking for that lead prosecutor versus if you don't, it's going to go to the normal if these stay in the budget. September 1st is when we roughly would be allowed to. So it's really that's the difference is when do you want to post the position is what the budget amendment tomorrow night is. is more about than anything else. But if you want to wait until August and see if this stays in under this current plan as you guys ponder it, then we'll just delay it for three months. I don't know that there's an applicant that we're looking to bring on tomorrow who's just waiting for this to happen. There could be, but I don't know of that situation. So that's what your difference between not doing it so we could pull it off and wait if that's the council's desire.

Yeah, Mr. Mayor, I think that would make sense for me. I don't know what the rest of council thinks. The three months probably isn't a material factor that really changes where we're going with this. Again, I would probably reiterate, yeah, we are in the pool, as Councilman Whitlock said, but I'm still in the kiddie pool. So I'm okay going a little slow. I'm not jumping off to the deep end yet.

Mayor? Council Chair.

Yeah, I think, I think we're, I think there's some alignment. Makes sense to me. So I guess to recap it, it would be authorization to hire one to two people, building in a full year Boise contract. including the software implementation costs, the office remodel. I could kind of go either way. I really defer to you. If it was me, I'd want to wait until my lead prosecutor was there to kind of weigh in on what they wanted with their space and kind of how they wanted their team set up and the physical environment. I think you get one really good shot at that and we're not going to redo it. So that'd be my only advice on that. But yeah, I mean, I think there's good alignment. I do think... the foregone discussion we're not exactly having explicitly, but it is really tough. And I think earmarking it or kind of designating it does help that conversation. I think it's required either way, just based on our financial situation, as Todd has outlined, where... We can't even cover our healthcare costs. We're barely covering, even if we remove all these positions, we're still like our 3% barely covers our healthcare costs. So we're in a really tough position. It's all fungible, but I do think designating it helps people understand what we're moving toward. I'm comfortable with that. And hopefully once we get, you know, those critical positions in, that'll help really create a solid plan and we're hiring the right people. Taking our time, I think is a right, Great move. And we're going, you know, we're going in the same direction. We're really supportive of you, Mr. Mayor and everybody in the whole effort, just getting there in a, in a measured disciplined way. I think it makes a lot of sense.

Mr. Mayor.

Mr. Mayor.

Mr. Mayor, members of the council, councilor Schroeder, I totally agree with everything you just said. And I would only add on that remodel discussion. My thought would be to have it in the budget, sort of like the mayor talked about with the parking garage. I wouldn't anticipate doing that first. I anticipate doing that last. But I anticipate it potentially in the next fiscal year. So having that available when that time is ready to do that, because you're right, I would like to have that. the lead prosecutor on board to be a part of that conversation. I would like to add too, and I'm not trying to mess up anything, but I do know that somehow things get lost in the ether of these discussions. And people look at this discussion more than they did my presentation from a few weeks ago. But you recall when we did present this, we said, this is based on the current way the court has set it up and the court is comfortable with, but this is no one's sick and no one's gone and no one's left. And I mean, this is the meeting the minimum needs of the court. and our team, but we would anticipate potential future conversations at future budgets of what this team could be or needs to be based on the way the court evolves and changes over time. So there may be future discussions on more personnel and such, but that's not the question now. I just don't want anyone to forget two years from now when we come back that we did bring it up. that that was a future conversation. But today we were comfortable with moving this forward, and I think moving it in the timing all of you talked about would make the most sense.

I'm only going to do this because our dean's been relatively quiet today. That's you. You're our dean. I didn't know if you had any wisdom or thoughts or guidance on any of these items you'd like to, and I don't want to put you on the spot, Councilman Kavanaugh, but.

Mr. Mayor, I appreciate it. I have tried to adopt a little bit more of two ears, one mouth has been maybe untypical for some budget year. It's trying to listen a little bit more. The only piece that it kind of sits with me that I think is important, and I think that's just important for the council to take up, is that when we made the decision to move forward with the levy, we also passed a resolution that said these were the dollars that are going to be allocated, which I think, to Councilmember Strader's point, we want to make sure, and Councilmember Taylor's point, we want to point out to our citizens this is what we're doing with them in a specific manner. So as long as we are doing that, I think ultimately, again, I'm going to be comfortable with this path. And I kind of tend to agree with Councilmember Taylor. We are, I think, just putting our toes into the kiddie pool and want to make sure that we're doing this the right way. So just my take.

So, team, you've heard the conversation. Where are we?

So based on our discussion today, just to wrap up, we had two items in parking lot. One, we're leaving in the parking garage, as is the prosecution team. Action items are we're going to remove our fiscal year 26 budget amendment that is on tomorrow's council agenda. And then we are going to revise our prosecution team from 10 to 2. leaving all full to all one time costs in there and then add in a full year's worth of Boise contract for fiscal year 27. Let us update some numbers and get back to you.

we can definitely do that on a good note again all you're doing is reducing the burden onto the budget so you're in a better position than you were three hours and two minutes ago so again if you're asking where are we we're in a better position from a financial position because you've removed the expenditure of 10 ftes and took it down to two because as it was discussed The citizens gave us 500 grand. We had the 852, so it was 1.3 million. As we described to you, we have a $1.6 million cost on the 10 people. So we're at a $300,000 deficit in that. So now you just remove that completely off the table for fiscal 27. So you're in a better position now than you were three hours ago. If that's what you're asking me, Robert, where are we now? You're in a bitter position.

It was more process related. And do we want to take a 15-minute break, update the numbers to show a thing? Because really what I'm asking is do we need to have the conversation in July that is currently on the books or not? Or are we at a place where most of this can happen in August at this point in time? I think that's one of the process questions to ask if we – Are leaving one in the parking lot and we're reducing this one down to just fund two positions? Is there a reason to get together? Why don't we take 15 minutes, update our numbers, come back, and if there's any deliberation with council to know if we are coming back in July or not during this time frame, that would probably be helpful for you all. We're all going to be here. Some of you I know have to take time off to show up. I think it would be good for you all to figure that out if you think that's necessary or not.

is for all the vehicle replacements.

Correct. 454,000, yeah, yep.

So, which means then that you're probably right that the cost there is the cost that we first bought it. Yep, yep, you're right about that. You're probably right. It makes sense.

Yes, yes.

So I just want to show... Like, here is fire departments request, right? So, again, they've got replacements for computers. They were replacements for extraction tools, but they're not replacing, like, a fire truck this year. So there's nothing that's being proposed. Okay. That makes sense. So. All of the vehicle replacement, like the parks department, they have that tractor they want to replace.

So we would have it.

Vehicle and equipment replacement at the parks, $98,000. So, each located in each of their departments is where the replacements are. Yep. So we, the reason we do this though, is that you had, there was a time where they, you would have a department say, well, this, this vehicle has. 70,000 miles on it, so we need to replace it. We're finding out that everything's in great condition and they drive it 10 hours a week. Well, why are we replacing that vehicle? So we started implementing this replacement request form to give greater justification to the council or the mayor or the department director as to why those vehicles need to be replaced.

All right, council, I think we're...

I think we're ready to get the update.

We'll talk after.

Yeah, this shouldn't take long unless we go into a sideways conversation. Yeah, I know. So I'll turn this over to... Who's going to, Todd? I'll take it. Kind of give a rundown of the conversation or the information.

Thank you, Robert. So we went back to the prosecution file, and per your direction, we have updated our calculations to include two FTEs, as instructed, to include the software costs as needed, both ongoing and one-time, because we're going to need both of them. And we adjusted the vehicle countdown from three to one. So to give you a summary of what your costs are going to look like for fiscal 27, total payroll will be about $294,000 for the two individuals. Total ongoing cost is going to be $148,000. So if you add those two numbers up, that's $443,000. If we recall what the citizens provided us in the tax levy vote, they provided us 498. So the value of your property tax increase that the citizens provided us will cover your ongoing expenses for these two individuals for fiscal 27. We do have some one-time costs that we will utilize, one-time funds, but again, that's part of the software installation and installments and things like that. So just the numbers are 442, citizens provided 498, so in a positive position on funding for fiscal year 27 for the ongoing costs. So happy to stand for any questions or sit for any questions on that adjustment from 10 to 2.

Council, any questions on that item? And then if you add in the contract. If you add the contract together, can you go back to putting up the slide that was originally up there? It showed the prosecution.

Okay. Your contract for Boise, what we have in there is 852, Robert.

852 plus that number. Okay. Of your ongoing, yeah, just so you can kind of get a sense of your ongoing numbers. Generally in the same ballpark. Agreed. For those two minus the ongoing that comes out of the other part of the budget or the one-time revenue that comes out of the budget. Any questions, comments at this point in time on that? Okay, and I understand from conversations that the intention is not to do the July budget workshop. Is that correct? Okay, so with that, next steps on when council can expect to see all this information newly updated, et cetera.

So we're going to go back and republish our budget book so our citizens can have access to these new numbers. Our future meetings, our council requires some council motions. July 21st is scheduled to have our adoption of our fiscal year 27. That's the tentative budget. as well as our final fiscal year 26 budget and then our foregone reservations or adoptions as well. So those three items will be coming in front of you in July 21. Then our public hearing is scheduled for August 11. Then after that, we will quote upon closing of our public hearing, we will have another meeting to approve our ordinance in September. So a few more meetings. Oh, Mr. Mayor.

I think the only other thing to flag is I feel like it's always better to have a conversation about foregone at this point. People have views, strong views, one way or another. I really hate that we're looking at it. I am concerned though, just based on kind of Todd's opening that are even with a full 3% tax increase, we're really not getting to where we need to be. So I'm leaning toward adopting foregone. I haven't completely made up my mind, but I just thought it's worth opening up a quick dialogue about that particular issue now in case other council members have strong thoughts.

And I'll just add in, I mean, we all look at it as we look at it, but House Bill 389 has a $2 million ongoing impact to us over the last several years. When you already deal with the impacts of, you know, levy rate being lowered, which means the dollar amount that you're getting from new construction is going down, combined with the changes in the bill that say you only get a portion of that. That's part of the reason why, you know, if we had filled the amount of new construction that should have been levied prior to 389, we were $2 million cash positive. Very different conversation than we're likely having today about these issues or where we think we're at. So from my own personal perspective, place is we're just making up what our legislature has taken away from us at this point in time. Those are costs that should have been there to begin with. And until they change the law, I think this is You know, we should try to make up at least what we've lost through that law change because I don't think anyone agrees that that law was a good thing. I've not heard one person outside of a city elected body that says, yep, 389 did the right things for our communities and for our budgets and to help growth fund its cost. So I'll leave my comments on foregone there in this context, but that's the context I think that they should be viewed at right now. Okay, well, as of now, the foregone will be presented as part of the numbers when they come forward. Councilman Taylor.

Just reflecting back on the comment I made earlier, you all know how much I love the foregone discussion. But if we're going to take it I'd like to tie it to the public safety component with the prosecution team that makes it, because I like to say we're not just taking the money to help pay for, put it in the pot. I'd like to say this is what it's going to go towards, like there's a use for it. So I know it's still money in the pot, but if we can show the plan, like how we pay for it, it makes the conversation, from my point of view, easier to say and understand better. If I'm going to do this, I'm going to tie it to a public safety need that the city has, that the citizens said they wanted. Because we're adding a new service at a time where we don't have money to add a new service. And so that's a very difficult ask. So again, I'm just reiterating how important it is to me to show the citizens, if we're going to add a new service, that is not cheap. and we're going to show them how we're going to pay for it, and we're going to take as much money as we can from property taxes to help pay for it. I want to make it clear what it's used for. And so I think that's an important, for me, it's a very different conversation than if we're just saying we're going to take foregone to pay for some replacement costs. Others could be in a different place, and I understand that, and that's perfectly fine. From my point of view, that's very helpful as we look at all of that.

And like I said, we aren't adding any other ongoing expense through that. And I think here's how I could phrase that for you. We hire two people from the prosecution team. By January, they come forward with a plan that says, maybe it's what was already proposed for this next year. In theory, if the foregone gets adopted, you would have the foregone dollars that would make sense that you could do a mid-year budget amendment, as well as knowing that the prosecution contract would drop off the following year to fund whatever their plan would be to help set your expectations into that viewpoint. I know Todd's not going to say that's how he can showcase it in the budget, or could, ish. Doesn't want to.

I think that showcasing in a document is going to be very difficult. I mean, because it's a totality of the budget. I think the conversation here is where we memorialize, okay, we're doing this for this and this. And you're not wrong, Doug, that if you put $500,000 foregone, $498,000 from the citizens, we're already up to a million. We have $852,000 from the city contract. When you're ready to turn this thing on live, you're already at $1.8 million, which is a great position to be in so that we can show to the citizens the commitment to X, and we have a revenue source of Y to make this happen. So again, documenting it in a budget book, maybe not as pretty, but memorializing it here in this conversation, I think you are achieving what we're trying to achieve.

Any additional questions, comments, thoughts, or motions?

Mr. Mayor. Councilman Overton. There's no more budget discussion this morning. I move that we adjourn.

Second.

Motion second to adjourn. All in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.