Council - Special Meeting

Fish, you're elect.

I got your voicemail.

Okay.

Get some vitamin C.

Hey, I've had six kids, and I've had six teenagers at one time.

It's awesome, and still. You know what I mean.

I guess I do. And they're like...

OK, so good morning. We're going to call the meeting to order. And if you'll stand for the invocation and Pledge of Allegiance led by Councilwoman Scott.

Heavenly Father, once again, we're so thankful that we have the freedoms that we have in our country, in our state, and in our community. I ask that you would give us wisdom today and that your presence would be with us, that you would guide us, that we would be good stewards of our city and our financials of our city, Lord, and we trust you for guiding us. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Clerk will call the roll.

Griffin. Here. Collingham. Reynolds. Here. Bills. Yes. Singula. Here. Skagg. Here.

Trying to figure out our feedback. Somewhere we got a PC that's open or a phone or something going. We got feedback going.

Thank you.

Well, we've been informed and I would say politics are at work. So Uber has provided us communication as of this morning that their senior leadership has said they are not coming to Nampa and they are going to support BRT. It seems the politics have gone thick. And so at this point, Mark, we're gonna suspend any presentation because Elaine, your presentation says you can do all kinds of things that we haven't been presented with the last two years. And so now, walk through this that you can now provide these services is almost offensive for me personally and uh so mark if you'll if you'll share a little bit what you're going to share council will be your decision if you want to hear the vrt presentation at this point i find it interesting or certainly what's transpired coming forward and then we'll have to deal with the issue budget-wise what's actually going to be workable for the city of Nampa. And of course, the other eight cities of the community will be exploring their own information as well. We're certainly going to try to provide that information and keep this a public, regional situation. Mark?

So just for clarification, President, did you still want BRT to present their item as was originally planned? And then I could follow up with the research that I did with the three cities that I communicated with directly regarding Uber. That's how it was originally planned.

I know what the agenda originally was. I've gone through the packet and seen everything. I'm quite surprised that the offering from which is a change from what we've been asking for. I understand that. It's just amazing, though. We didn't get there earlier this year when we had asked for it. But the fact that we arranged for a competition to come in, it's amazing how the change is presentation-wise, from my perspective. and and so i'm disappointed that we don't have uber coming in to do their presentation so that we can make a informed decision i feel like we're being tied to a one approach group again and while you're making the adjustments um it's just difficult for me so i'm i'm probably saying too much and too much comments and so mark i need you to uh do your presentation and council, you can decide if you want to see the VRT or if you've already looked at their packet.

Okay. Duly noted. We will proceed.

There are ways to go. You're almost at the bottom on the presentation.

I only had a few slides, though. Okay. Dilek, can you open that up to the slide?

I mean, candidly, Mark, if Uber is pulling out, do we even need your presentation on the Uber and how they do?

I think it's useful information. We did put a lot of work into the data. I think it would be helpful to you.

President.

Yes.

So all Uber would do apparently would discredit what VRT has to say.

One more time.

I said, would your Uber city transit program force to step up to the plate. Otherwise, I don't know that I need to hear about Uber.

Council President, if I could. Within his slide deck, he's going to be showing us scenarios in which there's partnership with the current system, as well as in addition to Uber. So I think it could be relevant for the discussion of if we maintain fixed routes with VRT and then partner later on with the Uber, which it sounds like that's the direction that they're wanting to go, but I think we're all kind of thrown off as of this morning.

A little bit. I think the information would only help, so I'll present it. It'll be rather quick, and then we can move on. Okay. Sounds good. Thank you. So, as you know, Senior Director Development Services, Council President, Council Members, good morning. A couple of months ago, Councilman Griffin and I met with Uber. Uber is a transportation network company, also known as a TNC. and to learn about how they are partnering nationwide with agencies to provide alternative or complement to traditional transit service. John Kuhn, who was supposed to be here this morning, was going to provide further detail on those various programs and then following his presentation, I was going to provide details on the three agencies who are currently in contract with Uber, who I personally contacted to provide subsidized transit services in their communities. So Bloomington Transit in Indiana is a separate entity that provides transportation services within the city of Bloomington, much like our fire district is here in Nampa. Bloomington has a population of about 120,000 people, 40,000 of those are students at Indiana University. So it's a college town, about 20 square miles in size. They utilize Uber to provide late night subsidized service from 9 a.m. to 12 midnight in lieu of fixed route service in specific areas. They found that running fixed routes late at night in a certain part of the city was simply not cost effective, so they decided to go with Uber to provide those folks with transportation from home into work and to other places late at night. Bloomington Transit spent about $250,000 last year on Uber services. This program is supplemental to several fixed routes, microtransit and paratransit service, so supplemental to a much larger transportation network. The way it works is the user pays the first $2 of the ride. The agency then pays the next $12 and anything over is paid for by the user. So a $12 subsidy by Bloomington Transit, which staff indicated pays for the majority of rides within those designated areas. Average cost to the city was $8.30 per ride last fiscal year. As I mentioned earlier, Bloomington Transit provides a large transit network, includes paratransit service at about $14 million last fiscal year. $3 million was actually invoiced to the city of Bloomington for those services. Here's the difference when you have state transportation dollars in addition to federal transportation dollars, you get a much larger network in a city like Bloomington. In fiscal year 2025, Bloomington, through this part-time Uber service, provided 30,000 rides to the community. Some things they noticed is that Uber only takes credit cards, so cash is not accepted. But in general, they are very satisfied with the partnership, and it was definitely a cost savings over running fixed routes through these service areas late at night. Next was Tolleson, Arizona, where the city, not a transit authority, has a contract with Uber, smaller town, 10,000 population and six square miles, but as part of the greater Phoenix metropolitan area and during the day has 35,000 people living and working in that town. The Uber program there included service within the city limits, plus over 40 destinations outside the city limits. Program runs 365 days, all day, all year. I will note that the city also contracts with lift to provide service within that same program. The service is supplemented by a fixed route, which is provided by a regional transit authority and provide service to Phoenix and other cities east and west of Tolleson. In fiscal year 2025, the city budgeted $450,000 for the rider program. Everyone, resident or not, can use the service. User pays the first $12. The city then subsidizes the next $15, and then anything over that is paid for by the user. Rides must be within the city or approved outside destination. Like I mentioned, it was 40 of those locations. So either initiate or return to the city. No limit caps on rides per user per month or per year. Average cost of the city per ride was $9.15 for fiscal year 2025. Tolson does pay an additional $150,000 to provide paratransit service. Also, the city pays a regional transit provider for the fixed route at $643,000 for the upcoming fiscal year. So about $1.2 million for all the services, including the Uber. The city canceled their local commuter bus service in 2022. They replaced it with this Uber lift program. And since then the ridership has increased over 50,000 rides this fiscal year alone. So 95% satisfaction rate also within the city based on a recent survey. Third example was Kyle, Texas, a town of 65,000 residents, about 32 square miles in size, about the size of Nampa, located 25 miles south of the large metropolitan area of Austin. Kyle contracts with Uber for transit service at a budget of $800,000 in fiscal year 2025. Here, the user pays the first $3.14 of the ride. Side note here, Kyle, Texas is the Pi capital of the world, so they use the Pi constant 3.14. The city then subsidizes the next $10. Anything over is paid for by the user. All subsidized rides are limited to within the city with exception of two outside designations, and that's the airport in Austin and a VA hospital, which is located outside of the city limits. In these cases, the city subsidizes 50% of those rides, but only two rides per month per user. All other rides are limited to 10 one-way trips per month within the city. Average cost of the city is $12.30 per ride last fiscal year. Kyle, like other city, also pays a vendor to provide paratransit service at about $175,000 per year, and there are no fixed routes at all within or through the city. Since inception, the Uber program went from 4,000 riders in 2021 to 65,000 riders in fiscal year 2025. Kyle is very satisfied with the Uber program. They completed an analysis last fall and compared to a hypothetical fixed route bus service, And on-demand microtransit service, there was a 33% and 60% savings, respectively. Part of that analysis, too, there was a public outreach component that yielded mostly positive feedback on the Uber program with an interest on increasing funding and requests for more destinations outside the city. One thing I'll mention that in all three cases, the average wait for an Uber ride was less than 15 minutes. So... Just quickly here. It's kind of the high-level benefits to an Uber Transit program. It is on demand. It can be 24-7 if you want it to be. Curb-to-curb service. City pays subsidy per ride. So you only pay for the rides that are actually done. No flat fee agreement. You can customize and tailor the transit needs for the community. You can set your vouchers. You can set your destinations. You can limit the time of day that it's used. limit usage and the best thing is probably it's let's say six months into the program you want to change the subsidy or you want to change the destinations you can change it you know right in the middle of the year if you want so a very flexible program and then there's some local employment opportunities for people right so be more uber uh drivers needed so people might take advantage of that Uh, some of the challenges, uh, city would have to, uh, at least have a part time position or 50% of someone's time would have to be dedicated towards staffing and administering the contract and maintaining the website and so forth. So probably looking at about $45,000 with benefits, uh, per year to, uh, to actually administer the program on the city side. If you don't have a smartphone or bank account, Uber does have a call to ride option, but they charge $5 per ride on that. Safety and liability is a concern. There's many mixed reports out there concerning the safety. of how the drivers are vetted, background checks, and all that sort of thing. Another thing is that too many, not enough restrictions. If you make the program too strict, then you have low adoption and less impact. If you make the program too loose, then there's an increased cost to the city. But at the same time, that's because of the ridership goes way up. And possibly no fixed route service, too, if you only went with the Uber option. HAB-Jacques Juilland, Here just kind of a scenario analysis, we put together, if you had a subsidy of 15 bucks you could you could provide a maximum amount of 26,000 rides 850 then you could provide up to 47,000 rides of course this assumes that everybody actually uses this program. HAB-Jacques Juilland, And here's i'll give kudos to Sheila Christiansen for putting this together. Took some time, but for example, what is the average cost for an Uber transit ride within the city? If you live in the north side of Nampa and you wanted to go to St. Luke's, it would cost you about $12 for an Uber ride. If you lived in the south side of Nampa, it would be $20. Let's say you wanted to go to the DMV outside of the city limits, it would cost you $18 from the north side of Nampa and $22 from the south side of Nampa. So this was a tool that could be used to actually tailor the program if the council were to choose to go that direction. That ends my presentation.

Council, any questions for Mark? Council President, would we by chance be able to receive the correspondence or read into the record what the rep from Uber had emailed us this morning when they had confirmed they weren't coming?

Yeah, we'll do that here in a moment. We'll just... At the present is questions on Mark's presentation. So Mark, is it doable to tailor something in the future as far as some way there's kind of a balance so it's not a further cost. In other words, regardless of person's location in the city, do you end up trying to create something that same cost regardless of where you live in the city for certain issues you need to get to or travel to? Did you see any of that type of a program out there?

Out of the three agencies that we spoke with, they pretty much had just a general voucher. So the subsidized, each ride was the same. Problem is, is that if you start getting into too many nuances, then it's too hard to administer the program properly. So out of the three we talked to, one subsidy was set, the copay was set, and you get to where you get based on that.

Okay.

Yes.

Mark, so how do you scale an Uber program as far as... let's say we're gonna fund it with $500,000. When we get to that point, do we just shut off the rides or is that what happens?

We spoke to Uber about that and that could be definitely an option. So once you got to the 500,000, then you would simply not have the subsidy any longer. The three agencies we talked to enjoyed the program so much that once they got to their budgeted cap, they just continued to offer the rides and then would do an amendment at the end of the year.

And did you get a price from going from, like, say, CWI to downtown Boise?

Yes. Well, let's go back here. So we do have the airport there, similar distance. That's 33 and 45 in Boise.

Thank you. Mark, thank you.

President Mills, would it be possible for me to address you guys?

Yeah, I'm just thinking through it, Elaine. Morning's a curve ball for me. What's that? I say this morning is a little bit of a curveball. Well, it's a curveball for me too.

If you think that we organized this, we did not. I was as surprised as you are. I hope you know that.

Well, I appreciate your words to, you know, because somewhere something doesn't make sense based on them putting together a proposal, wanting to be here, actually flew somebody in who stayed the night and got the word, nope, Uber will not participate with city of Nampa. So somewhere in there, there feels like there's politics and from we're going to keep the federal monies, we're going to keep XYZ involved and Uber potentially is being told you'll get penalized in other cities if you go in there and disrupt the program. That's how it seems to me at the moment in the last 20 minutes.

Even if that's true, I did not have anything to do with that. I hope you understand that. I came here honestly hoping to have a conversation about how we can do better.

Okay. Council President? Yes. I know we asked... to come back with some different options. And that's what they've done based on our request. I know that Elaine has missed an Amtrak board meeting in DC to be here today. I think it would be respectful to let her speak and not speculate that the politics came from anything to do with VRT or anyone else from this diocese as far as that goes. But I think it'd be respectful to listen to what she has to say.

Council President, I think it'd be worth hearing the presentation as well, and then we can decide the amounts or have a discussion about the amounts thereafter.

I concur. My apology, I'm just throwing a curve, and it just doesn't smell good.

I understand.

It never passed the smell test for me, and so consequently, it's... I jumped the gun in saying that you weren't gonna present, my apology from the bench and personally. And so council is correct in that you've got a presentation and we should hear the changes that you're proposing. So you're welcome to come to the podium and present your presentation. If we could unwind the clock 30 minutes, we'd be in better order.

And there's much of this that may or may not be relevant at this point. So first of all, like I said, this is as much of a curveball for me as it is for you. I expected to be here to talk to you side by side with Uber about possibilities for how to work together or not. And but still excited to be here. You know, council member Bill, she said, Gosh, this is so different from from what we saw in February. And you're right. It is not because we were trying to keep anything from you in February, but because in the four months since my staff's done a lot of work based in part on what I heard in February, we need to do better. And that work I've never been satisfied with the on-demand system that's here. Remember that that on-demand system didn't come because VRT came up and said, hey, we have this great new system. It happened because during the early pandemic city of, I think actually right before the pandemic, the city of Nampa said, we don't have enough money. What can we do with the money we have? VRT at that time, based on early, early, knowledge of how on-demand work said, well, we can take the vehicles we already have, the drivers we already have, and do this other system. And they did. And it was an experiment. And as I've been learning since, lots and lots of transit agencies around the country were experimenting with the same thing and trying different ways to do it. I inherited that system. I've never thought it was a great system. It runs on CDL drivers and large vehicles, the cost per hour is way too much. The ability to go curb to curb is not existent. And so I've consistently been pushing staff to find a better solution. After February, when we talked to you, it became clearly apparent to me that we had to change. And so I didn't bring, we didn't bring it in February because we hadn't quite gotten there yet, but we are there now. And so what I'd like to show is that we do have a new service model.

And please go forward. Okay.

So one thing, and it's not that Uber doesn't care about these things, but they're not local. You can't call the CEO and have a conversation. You can't call the planner and say, hey, this isn't working. We are here, we care about the system, we care about the writers. I think all of you know that I care about the city of Nampa. I've been talking to you about other budget issues because you are part of the region that I love and I want you to succeed. And so does the rest of our staff. We have a vision that probably does in the end, have TNCs as part of that. Transportation, especially public transportation, is a continuum. And where you are on that spectrum depends on what kind of service works best in that particular thing. You just heard that various pieces, various parts of the country use Uber or TNCs differently than other parts. based on where they are in the system. You are the third largest city in the state of Idaho. You are the urban center of Canyon County. As such, everything I know about transportation tells me that TNC as the core would not be the best solution. TNC on the edge is absolutely something that we should all embrace. And so our vision is to expand public transportation in a way that doesn't just serve Nampa but serves the whole region, connects you to the region, connects the region to you and in addition serves the people in Nampa to move around within Nampa. We've been a partner for decades. We've tried to be really responsive to your needs and we've looked hard every time you've asked us to do something different to come up with something different. And we will continue to do that with you. We'll be that partner. So what is this new service model? As I noted, I've never been a fan of the old service model. It happened because that was what was available at the time. It is too costly. It has limited availability because of that. And we have just too few vehicles and too high cost and not enough riders. So as we've looked at it and also understand that the transit world is moving really, really fast today, as is the TNC world. These are all new disruptions. And over the last year is this model is finally proving itself with all of the cities around the country that have begun to experiment with how to do on demand better. Idaho falls and twin falls use a model very similar to this. They're smaller cities than you, and that's all they do, but they're both finding that it's getting close to being time to also have a fixed route along their most traveled corridors. What they have are smaller, more nimble vehicles, non-CDL drivers. They still get a living wage. Most of them, they do make more than most Uber drivers, but they don't make as much as our CDL drivers. It's a turnkey contract. we VRT would contract or our contractor would contract with this agency who would provide all the vehicles and all the drivers and just like Uber, manage that system. What we would provide is the customer service. That's another thing that I think if you went with this other model, you'd find that your clerk's office would be inundated with phone calls. People like to talk about how they're getting around They have questions, they can't call Uber. So they're gonna end up calling somebody. Right now we handle 92,000 calls a year. We think about 30,000 of those come from the city of Nampa. And we will continue to do that. So this new model has lower cost per hour. It increases availability. We would supplement that capacity with a TNC because we have peaks. And if you, just like anything, if you staff up for the peak, then during the non-peak you have too much, right? So you'd use TNC to cover those peaks. You'd also use TNC to cover the edges. Mark talked about the various distances that people need to ride here. And if you're trying to create a ride that works to pick up a number of people and you have to go way out to the edge, then it makes that ride not very efficient. So TNC would provide those. We think overall between the two, it would be a cost per boarding on par with a TNC alone. And the beauty is you'd still get access to the fixed route system. You'd still have our management. We'd manage the procurement. We'd manage the contract. We'd take the phone calls, all of the things that we do today. So remember that we built this based on what I heard in february which is what can you do with what we've got today how can you provide more rides for the money we're providing today so take this as the maximum and if we were if you are able to afford the maximum we can provide a lot more rides for your community we can do it we think a lot more efficiently at a at a cost per boarding that's really on par with the Uber that you might go with. There would be Saturday service, which you don't have today. And there would be boardings, obviously, on the TNC and those peaks and on those edges.

Excuse me, President. May I ask a question?

Sure. Yes.

So according to these numbers, this is 20-25 numbers, the NAMPA boardings are 31,400.

I'm sorry, the 2025 numbers, we had 31,000 boardings in Nampa and we expect with this system, we'd see 118% increase. Is that? Okay.

Oh, I see. Okay. Cause I thought those numbers are awful. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Sorry about that.

I was reading that.

The estimated numbers that you, you think would. Okay.

The reason I was reading that incorrectly is overall in Nampa, there are about 30,000 rides. If you count beyond access, fixed route and everything today, we think just with this, the, uh, on-demand system would, would grow this much.

Follow up president. So, uh, each rider, uh, Let's go with this number, $31,400. Out of each rider, the City of Napa pays you a certain amount, and then the private person pays an amount. How much do you get from the government for each rider? Some federal grant or whatever you have?

You're putting me on the spot. I can get you that number. Canyon County, we're able to use some of our federal funding for operating. The rate is 50-50. We don't always get to 50-50. So I hesitate to give you a pure number.

So it's safe to say that for every rider that you have,

not only you're getting it from the local but you're getting from the federal government as well sure okay that's that's one of the i think advantages is that we can bring federal funding and augment what you all could provide okay thank you yeah um if you went with the whole package in addition you get the fixed route we also are seeing a tremendous trend on fixed-route for increased ridership. I know Councilmember Griffin wrote 42 years ago before we changed it. Since we've changed it, we've seen a tremendous increase in ridership already. The trend now is continued growth, 27%, without any addition. But with the TNC and with additional rides on on-demand, we actually think this trend will go even more than this. We tried to be really conservative. Additionally, right now with gas prices the way we are, we are seeing people move toward transit because it's a much more affordable option. We expect to see increases in this. I know there's a lot of talk about, but it's not very many people, and look how much money we spend. First of all, it's scalable. More people can ride for not more money, but secondly, think about a subdivision that serves 300 people, the cost of the roads for that subdivision. the cost of maintenance every day on those roads. And that 300 number, if you put it in context with how much we spend on transportation for people in general, it really isn't that high. If you also recognize that those are people who otherwise probably wouldn't have a job, because if you look at the number of boardings versus the number of people who would ride, it tells you they're riding every day, which means that those are folks that might not be employed if it weren't for transit, and how much does that cost the city? And then the final piece of it is all of us spend On average $17,000 a year per house household ourselves to travel and so we're asking the private part of the system to spend much more than what you're spending in order. to be able to travel and that's what's making it hard for many people to stay employed or go to their various medical needs or whatever they are because of that cost. So I know it sounds like a lot for not very much, but if you put it in context with how much we spend per person on roadways, it's actually not very much.

Council President, questions? Sure. Elaine, is it safe to say that per rider, instead of $17.83, it's actually $30 that you're receiving from the city and from the local and from the government with three-year grants?

Say that again. I'm sorry.

Okay. Is it safe to say that with your $17.83 that you're getting plus from the federal grants that you're receiving, each rider actually costs $30? So your numbers would be increased with that amount?

If the 50-50 holds, yes.

Okay. And that would change based on the route?

Yeah. Well, partly, and it would also change. So here's the other thing. We could grow ridership on this tremendously without any more cost to anyone. And then the cost would go down for a ride, right? And that's what we're predicting will happen, given conditions right now, given the fact that we already have a trend toward ridership. Our vehicles are accessible if you go with Uber and you still want accessible.

I have another question. Oh, sorry. However, the cost will change depending on the location you're going to, right? If you stay in Nampa, the cost will be different than going to Boise.

On the on-demand, yes. On the fixed route, the fixed route goes where the fixed route goes. So the cost on it is stable.

Okay. Council President, I have a few questions too. If you could go back a slide, please, Elaine. Sure. So the similar to what Councilman Rodriguez had stated prior, 21,700 is the number after the 27% increase, correct? Yes. Okay. When we say boardings, is boardings a unique individual getting onto, what does a boarding mean?

It means one person getting on or off. On and off, boarding and alighting, they go together. It's a trip, that's been a trip, right?

Steven's shaking his head.

Councilmember Griffin, we've had a lot of conversations about ridership. We tried to simplify that just by saying boardings. So a boarding here is any time somebody gets on the bus.

So one individual. So we're saying 21,000. I know each day you can't say it's a unique person, 21,000 residents, but it's somebody physically getting onto a bus. Yes. And is that running five days a week currently? Or is this with seven days, five days a week?

We would not increase the service on this today.

Okay. Cause I just, I'm, I'm doing it once again, I think we're all thrown. So I'm just trying to find, uh, the value. If we take even the 27% increase, that's still only 83 individuals boarding a day. for city of Nampa, that's 120 some odd thousand. And then way I calculated that 21,700 divided by 261 weekdays is 83 a day. So currently we have 60 after the 27% anticipated increase, it's 83. Am I close to the mark?

When we talk about individual riders, we have looked at the, we don't, we don't have scan faces or, keep track of individuals when they're getting on and off the bus. So what we've used is we use their fares. So if somebody's and again, if you're paying cash, we don't have any way of tracking that. But if you have a pass, we can talk about how many times we see that pass and how many times we see that pass over, say, a month period. So we when we have estimated the number of individuals that are using the fixed route, we use that ridership information to get a sense of how many times are we seeing the same person getting on and off or using their pass on and off the bus. Based on those calculations, if we had 21,700 Nampa boardings, we'd have about 300 unique individuals. And the way you get there and the way that number is higher than what you're expecting is because you have individuals that don't ride every single day. So some of those daily riders turn over throughout the week. Additionally, if we're talking about individual riders over a period of time, if we're talking about a year, you might have riders that ride in the summer that don't ride in the fall or vice versa. And so when we talk about an annual number of 21,700 boardings, We use that information about fairs to estimate the number of unique individuals. That's how we get something that is higher than what you're talking about. But yeah, it's about 300 or so unique individuals that would be in Nampa using the picture.

And 83 a day is the number of people per day, yes.

So more writers, more unique writers. Is 300 the total amount? or it's 300 additional to what we currently have. How many unique riders in Nampa use the bus?

Yeah, again, the way to read the slide is we're saying there's 27% increase over 2025, which would result in 300 unique riders.

So out of 130,000 people, 300 use the bus.

on the fixed route system, yes. Regularly, yeah.

Remember, this is only in the fixed route part of it, and remember that service in Nampa is actually quite limited.

And it might sound like I'm trying to do gotchas. I frankly am not. I just want to know when I'm not inaccurate and when I state, oh, there's 21,000 people from Nampa that use the bus or 300, and that delineation helps me understand these numbers. One follow-up, Council President, if I could.

Yes. And if you'll look at the route here, you'll see that there's really only three stops in Nampa on that system.

Elaine, a question if I could. This package is being prepared, and I know we'll get down to the final numbers. You're giving two different sets of numbers. Is there options to just maintain fixed route or just maintain microtransit?

There is, and I realize you're in a budget situation. We wanted to show you the full numbers for all of this so that we could then have that as the starting point if that's the direction you decide to go.

Thank you. At the same time, we're under the press on the dollar side, so mentally in doing the preliminary budget work, uh i've been at 400 000 is where we got to get to in order to free monies up to handle other issues and so uh your breakout candidly helps and understand that so i appreciate that um and and so it may be that we're It's not full service deal, so to speak, or full sign up on the VRT. It's here's what we can do, and we're going to choose option, you know, fixed route or the other option, and that's what we're able to do, et cetera.

I appreciate that. And I'm glad you recognize that we're trying to figure out how to help you. We do have accessible vehicles. If you were to choose to just go with a TNC, you'd have to figure out something for the folks who can't ride in a regular vehicle. That would be a little extra cost. We have bike racks. Because of that, people can ride to the bus and then get on. With the on-demand system, we'd have to determine whether or not we'd still allow those bike racks. Audio announcements. Again, people who are visually impaired need those kinds of help. so that they know where they are, how they're getting what they need. We're working right now on Braille bus stop signs so that people can access the system that way. We have people who are trained to work with disabilities and we have information available in multiple language and we have this concierge booking 92,000 calls a year. So we provide thousands of trips to Nampins every year. We do this in a way that we know we can do better. We know that we can do an on-demand system that's more responsive than the one you have today and cheaper to run, frankly, per ride. We have tried to be a valuable infrastructure partner. I know there's some questions about that, but in that partnership, we've helped you over some of the shortages you have on trying to keep up with the roadway needs. We've upgraded signal technology. We've worked with you on strategies to make sure that development pays their way. We've done sidewalk and pedestrian projects. We do have an economic impact here. A TNC would have one as well, but it would be much smaller because most of the money from the TNC would go to the shareholders. The shareholders are primarily five big private equity firms, 40% of which are owned with foreign investments. That shouldn't be your decision, but do know that the money that you spend with us does stay here, and we spend it back into your community. There's about a three to one ROI. We know that TNCs have advantages, and in addition to these advantages, we know that the TNC probably has a lower price per boarding So if you had only TNCs, you could pay less for more boardings. But if you have a combined integrated system, the one that we're suggesting, we think we can get the price per boarding down to a point that is good for you, good for Nampa, but more importantly, is scalable, one of the things with TNCs is every single ride costs more money. So if you're successful, then you're gonna be asked for more, or you're gonna have to manage that system. Again, we manage all the qualifications, all of that, and you wouldn't have to. The other thing TNCs do is create more congestion. If we can do more shared rides, we can actually help congestion. And we think that's a really important thing. And then safety is a big deal. I think I need to apologize for using this slide. We used it because this was the cover of the slide article that we're talking about, but the fact of the matter is that TNCs have, for their history, said we don't need to be regulated because we can do that with our app, we can do that with this or whatever. And as a result, their drivers, in fact, have assaulted people. We've never had an assault by a driver, ever. And we have drivers that our FBI fingerprinted checked TNCs are getting better on this. They're trying really hard because they know it's a problem and they're beginning to do better background checks and they're putting features on the app that allow people to report things. We're learning that especially young women have a difficult time accessing that if something's happening. And so it's still a bit of a problem. We have not had a preventable accident in 86,000 miles in FY26. We've never had a sexual assault reported or another rider assault. Transit overall is 90 times safer than a passenger car. The other thing with TNCs is the drivers actually have a higher accident rate than an average driver, in part because they drive more, in part because they're always on a nap, but they do have a different rate. We do in-person driver safety training. They do online training. We do a maximum risk background screen. We do a sex offender search. We look at their driving record for the last seven years. And if they work with children, they require their fingerprint verification at Health and Welfare. All of our drivers drive with children, so all of them have that fingerprint verification. They also have regular drug and alcohol testing. And it's random. So we know that they're not driving impaired. I we've already talked about that congestion benefits, we do think that there would be some and this is what the freeway looks like every day. And if you put more people together in a vehicle, it does reduce congestion. So We know that overall, this is still higher than what you think you have in your budget. We also would note that because of February and our conversation there, we went back and looked at the split between Nampa and the rest of the cities and members in Canyon County. We determined that again, the on-demand system got put together in kind of a hurry. It was based on old numbers and we had never gone back over those. We went back over where are the locations that we're using on that on-demand system, and we lowered NAMPA's share by about 5%, which is 10% overall, comparatively to the other members. That's why this number is lower than what you saw in February. because we did that. So that $53,000 is the procurement, the management, the customer service, all of those things that we do. The service itself is that $728,000 and then capital is a little higher this year. We had talked to you about doing some work at Happy Day and that's what that represents. Like I say, this is negotiable. I would say there's ways to look at doing a new model on the on-demand and not adding service. We're saying if we do the new model because we're not being very efficient today, we can use the same money and add more service. If instead we use those savings as savings, there's a way to reduce that cost. It won't result in the increased ridership that we projected. but we want to work with you because we see, I know it's tough right now. If you look forward a few more years, if we end up with a regional rail system, if we end up with a million people in this region, we're not going to want to have transportation that isolates people in their community. We're gonna wanna have a regional system. So what I'm trying to do is keep the wheels on the bus in the meantime so that we can get to that vision in a way that works with all of you on your budget, knowing that budgets are really, really tough right now. So with that, one last thing. If you do make a significant change, I think most folks don't know this, we are required by federal law to have a public hearing with your constituents about that change. So if you make that decision, without that public hearing, then we're required to have the public hearing and essentially tell your constituents that a change is gonna be made and there's nothing we can do about it. So if you do decide to do a major change, go strictly to TNC for instance, we would ask that you do a joint public hearing with us in the beginning so that your constituents can understand the decision that you're making so that you can hear from them as you make that decision and we're not put in the position of telling them the decision that you made. So that's all this slide is about.

No, we appreciate that. We've had informal conversation, not as a council, but individually, members discussing pathway forward, how to communicate, what to do. So I appreciate that you're bringing it up again, because there is a point of having to communicate to folks, here's what's happening, versus just vote on a budget, and we implement. And people are caught off guard.

Thank you again for letting me speak. And I mean it when I say that.

No, you were scheduled to speak. It was my error. It was my error.

No, no, no. This was a curveball for all of us. And I didn't ask anybody to do this.

I can appreciate that. i'm just looking at somewhere there's some politics and some some issues behind the scenes could be i wasn't trying to come accusatory to yourself or anything it just threw me a curve and i didn't handle it quite well my my apology again oh so yeah no no problem apology accepted i know you're you're you're doing the best you can don't feel bad council president i have some questions for elaine councilman reynolds so elaine uh for the life of me

I still can't understand how a nice individual like you would hold your hand up for this job. I mean, every place you go, you're banging your head against the wall asking for dollars, and I feel bad for you. But thanks for being there and fighting for what you believe in. That's important. So I got a few numbers from St. Luke's. I didn't realize that until recently that, and you would think that I would know, but would have known. It looks like St. Luke's and St. Al's are putting in about $168,000 a piece to VRT. Our community partners are really important to me and the city. And I get that those dollars are pooled to make something have a complete system. And so that's important to know that they're putting in

336 thousand dollars in funds and if i could uh council member uh reynolds that money goes on all to uh our rides to wellness program and specifically pays for rides to and from medical appointments right and it said there was over 17 000 rides provided i don't know if that's just from st luke's or st luke's and alice combined the numbers came from luke's

More than 4,000 of those were in Canyon County. 90% of those were in Nampa out of the 4,000. That's pretty important to know. One of my questions is for partnering. I'm wondering if Treasure Valley Transit could be a partner. I know that they are paid for through Medicaid funds, and I always have said that I think it would be nice if we could share.

They are one of our non-emergency medical providers, so we have subrecipients that we spend that money on that come from St. Luke's, and they are one of those.

Okay. Because you were talking about sharing with the TNC, and I thought, well, maybe we could do that. I'm not comfortable with supplementing a TNC based off, you know, in a private enterprise based off the safety concerns. And I'm questioning whether or not I cramp would even want us to do that. If we had an incident, an Uber driver drives somebody out and then why he's and shoots him in the head. I mean, it's a real concern based off of the numbers that I'm seeing here.

One of the things I can say about that is as a city, if you procured with a TNC, you would be regulated, you'd be limited by state law in what you could ask of that TNC in terms of safety. because we're regulated by the FTA, we can ask different things of the TNC in that contract. And so I do think we are in a stronger position in that contract to make sure that the TNC provides safe rides. We also already have liability through I-CRMP that would cover the TNC. I haven't checked with ICCRMP, but I think you're right to be concerned about whether or not they would do it based on state law and what you'd be able to do in terms of your contract.

Basically, with contracting with VRT, we put the onus on VRT to carry that liability. And I get that Uber has liability insurance as well. But their numbers are high, 36 fatal physical assaults, 153 motor vehicle crash fatalities just in the last two years, 2,717 reports of the most serious categories of sexual assault, and over 400,000 sexual misconduct complaints. You know, I look at that if it was my son or daughter or grandchild or whoever, that's unacceptable. One is too many. And so that's why I question about maybe partnering with Treasure Valley Transit. We see them around Nampa a lot. They provide those ADA rides. And I said we could figure out how to partner with them.

Council President.

Yes, sir.

I must have missed in the packet. if Councilman Reynolds could tell us where he got those numbers regarding the contributions from the hospitals, just I'd like to see all those things and break them down. Was that within our packet, Councilman?

No, no, it's just research I did on my own.

Can we submit that to the record so I can review as well, please?

The numbers that I gave you are the numbers that I was given, so you're welcome to ask St. Luke's or St. Al's for those numbers. And Elaine can confirm those as well.

We are open records. We can share with you if you'd like. I'll have those numbers.

Thank you.

Appreciate it. Elaine, if you have the numbers or semblance of, that would be helpful to supplement.

Say that again?

I'm sorry. If you have the numbers... uh it'd be helpful to have them yeah we can provide you the numbers that rather than individuals on rides to wellness and and we do spend a lot in your community we do provide a lot more rides than just the ones that you see on the on demand in the fixed route but if i understand correctly in your presentation you've separated out uh caldwell nampa going to boise yeah and back from in county yes uh between nampa caldwell and so if we said we we want to service uh nampa to caldwell and in inside our county we could drop that other portion going to Boise.

Well, I would tell you would happen. CWI depends in part on that. So we'd probably see more folks from CWI writing the on-demand. We'd like to talk to you about a mix of if you think you need to do that to make budget. I think we probably have to shut down the three stops in Nampa. I don't like doing that kind of stuff, but sometimes, you know, what other choice do you have? So I'd like to work with you. I think we could figure out something. It would hurt Caldwell.

Other agencies or other entities are going to need to participate. NAPA's been carrying the load, and we've been subsidizing the other entities, and unfortunately, it's got to come to an end. um and so in the legislature's uh so-called wisdom uh they've put onus upon the cities to uh do more with extremely less and uh so we're trying to figure that out and this is one of those issues and you know that i'm just stating it for the record and and uh so yes councilwoman um elaine thank you for being here today um does

the school, CWI, finance any part of the system?

Yeah, they give us about $270,000 a year. Okay, thank you.

Yes. Elaine, thank you for this presentation. I've been sitting here for five years, and having this come such a long way, the information that you provide, I think that you're doing a great job. And it's hard, and I've said Every year, I've told you, if there's an opportunity for us to help you lobby, the legislator, let us know, because we will, because we are one of, I think, two now. Alabama, I think, is the only other one that doesn't, the state doesn't provide public transportation. It is a very tricky situation where we're being forced, individual municipalities, to try to connect and and do this together, and it is incredibly challenging. So thank you for being here and providing this. And I'd be curious to know if Councilman Daryl Bruner is happy with these numbers finally, the numbers he's been asking for for a long time. He might be happy with it now. But I personally, I can appreciate your desire for the connectivity throughout the whole Treasure Valley, and I think that's the end goal. With the finances that we have to deal with, I still would like to see as much connectivity just happening within NAMPA. I know it's not ideal, but for our tax dollars to be spent locally to keep our ridership here and let people move around within our community, I think that that's still a focus for me, but I appreciate all this information. It's been really helpful, so thank you.

And remember that Micron is hiring about 3,000 people next year and they're going to have to get there somehow. And not all of them will live over there. But I appreciate what you're saying. We need both. Definitely.

Council President.

Ultimately.

Councilman. I'm switching between in our packet slides 10 and slides 22. If we were to just fund the micro transit portion, the 353,600, obviously that's for the service. What would the out the door cost be to provide that service if we removed fixed route and just went with micro transit?

You know, I don't, I will, I've got some numbers here and I will try to answer that. Um, Here's what I do know. If we match the current hours on on demand with the new model, it would be about $218,000 rather than the 353. If we do any TNC overflow, it would be somewhere between $20,000 and $50,000, depending on how much TNC overflow we did, and if we did not expand the weekday or Saturday service. So there would be a way to provide exactly the same amount of service that you're seeing today on the on-demand. and actually probably produce more riders because it's gonna be a better service for about 100,000 less than that 353 as one option. Or if you went all in on the microtransit, Challenges on not serving any of the fixed drought obviously means that the folks who do write it, we know, are the ones who depend on it to get to work. Our guess is some of those at least wouldn't be able to get to work and they'd either figure out a different way or lose their job. So there's that human cost. The other cost is that somehow we'd have to figure out what to do with Caldwell because then they become isolated on the fixed route. At this point they seem more than willing to continue on the fixed route. So I don't, I, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm saying all this to say, I hesitate to give you a number today because I would want to sit down around the table and really work through it to figure out what we could do. But I think we could, you know, if that's what it takes, we'll, we'll do it.

I'd follow up if I could council president, just regarding the app and the system, just within the last day or two, I, heard comment about the actual app currently itself for the on-demand, the service provided there. Will that be modified or improved if we do go in the $353,000 or will that remain the same system? Because I think I've been hearing feedback that's not very user-friendly,

That's exactly why I wanted to change it. I didn't explain this very well. The on-demand system we have today, I've continued to call on-demand. In this presentation, I called the new system that we're proposing microtransit, And I made that distinction in part because I think it's easy to visualize it's a different kind of vehicle. Because it's a different kind of vehicle, it can go curb to curb instead of stop to stop. Our big vehicles can't always get at a curb, and we weren't confident of that, and so we created the stop to stop system. So it would be curb to curb. I think that's a huge advantage. because of the TNC support for the overflow and the edges, the rides on the on-demand itself would be more efficient. I've talked to the, provider of the data who helps us optimize those rides and they're they've been doing this in salt lake city I talked to we talked to salt lake city and the database itself optimizes which would be the quickest most convenient most attractive way for that writer to get to that. destination if it's on a TNC they ask permission to put them on the TNC because as Councilmember Reynolds talked about not everyone's comfortable on TNCs if they give permission then that ride would be sent to the TNC if if it's optimized to say that that's the best way so we think it will be much more user friendly and convenient service than it is today even though it nominally is the same service. We're saying the on-demand zone is the same. We're saying if you give us less money, it would be the same number of vehicles other than the TNC. We, in talking to our peers around the country, believe it's a superior way to provide it.

And just for comment, Council President, if I could follow up. I'm frankly impressed with the microtransit option that you have in the discussion. And it's been many, many months with Uber. Your numbers are comparable to what they were going to present to us. $11 is realistic when you look at the area in which we would be servicing Nampa. Is that north to south? If anybody in anywhere in the city of Nampa wanted to get to another portion within this, this says the on-demand. I know we're moving away from the on-demand, but maybe the map is still the same.

Across both cities, yes.

would the cost would be the same yeah one of the the only hesitancy i have and it was alluded to earlier uh i know we're kicking into the kitty to be able to afford the whole system i know it has benefit of caldwell i'm not trying to completely isolate caldwell My mind, I was this budget setting going somewhere in between $300,000 and $400,000. So for $353,000, if we're able to service the individuals for that amount, it's not unrealistic for me that that would make sense based off of numbers within the market as well. So

We would still ask of you the $53,000 administrative fee. That's what we use to run the back office. We would still want to negotiate with you on the capital. I think as I look at the capital, probably part of it is vehicles that we no longer need. So I don't know exactly how much of that 75,000 is in play. I'd have to look at it. We have, You have deferred maintenance on your water system, on your road system. We have deferred maintenance on our base in Canyon County to the point where we almost lost occupancy last year because our HVAC system was so underwhelming. We've since done some patchwork here and there And we can hopefully keep it running, but we've got to make some investment there. So I don't want to tell you that I'm not going to ask you for any capital. I will need some of that to keep us at least somewhat whole. So you say you have a goal of $400,000. I don't know that I can tell you that I can provide everything you want for that. and but we'll certainly talk i would say that cutting us in half when you're also presumably considering the increases that i've seen in in others of the ask for use feels like a lot and i'd hope that maybe we can talk about is that the right number and i and i'm not trying to set your budget for you for sure no no i understand i

It's just the reality is the tools that the legislature, NAPO's in position the last three to five years that we set on target back in the late teens, early 20s for a great deal of industrial and commercial properties to come online. Commercial industrial properties don't have homeowners exemption and they budget and they operate to be able to sustain the community that they're built in and what's happening. And I know you know this. I'm just saying it for the record. So in what the legislature has done to the communities of Idaho, and it extremely hits Nampa to take a great deal of that commercial and industrial somewhat offline by the caps of tax. So it really impacts. And the unfortunate part is there's not a willingness to see a different route. And so it forces us into the situation that we're in.

Yeah, I totally recognize that. One thing we haven't mentioned today, for no cost to you, out of that $53,000 administrative fee, we were able to set up a totally private band pool service in Canyon County that you've not had before. We are bringing federal funds to it, which allows it to work in a way that's affordable And I believe the primary beneficiaries of that system will be that industrial area that you guys have built. These are pooled rides to Canyon County that don't touch Ada County. So think Hawaii County, Payette County, Gem County. Folks that are working in that new North Nampa area need to get to work. And being able to get there for $60 a month in a pooled ride rather than whatever they pay to drive We're very excited about that. And I just wanted you to know we've done that. I think it's going to really benefit your community.

Yeah, and we appreciate it. And it's, you know, I mean, good or bad on the 389 and the other bill, you know, but it's forcing us. We have to pick and choose.

And we're battling to get a 389. We're battling to get a piece of something that gives us some dedicated funding. Yeah.

Council President.

Yes, sir.

Elaine, you've been a city councilman, and you know what we're up against.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, and there's a brick wall that we're having to deal with. And when we say this, when the council says we have this limited amount of money and budget, a set of priorities come into effect. And quite frankly, VRT is not a priority right now because we have so many other stuff we need to do. When Councilman Griffin, I say Broom because he was really effective when it comes to VRT. When he said there was a 300 people, in Nampa out of 130, that caused some alarms to me. But then again, you say, well, we're going to have 31,000 or 21,000 in the next year. Well, I have never seen those numbers. So I'm going to say two things. One, option number one, that I, myself only, give you a number, and you have to work within that number. If you can't, I'm sorry for that. because we have a number as well and we can't work any higher than that. The second thing is it's a private industry that you have funded by this, funded by the local governments or, or, and, and the federal government that I would think it's up to you to go private and still supply our community with your service. Only keep the city of Napa out of it. What do you think about that? I know the answer is it's a, It's a tough one, Elaine, but the bottom line is here we are.

So Council Member Rodriguez, since I've been in this job, I've been trying to grow our funding, grow our contributions, not just from all of you, but as Council Member Reynolds talked about from our hospital system, we have a... PASS program that does increase participation by the private sector. I've long thought that actually going to the private sector, including those industries in North Nampa, And asking them for contributions is certainly not a bad idea, certainly something that we should pursue. We have pursued it. We haven't yet had a breakthrough, except with a residential development, believe it or not, who's going to give us part of their HOA fees, as well as capital contribution up front as they build out. Micron is taking it under consideration. They have yet to contribute, but they're considering it. Given all the time I spend on everything else, I haven't gone door to door in North Napa, but I probably should with those industries out there. What you're describing is in a situation like ours, all of the above is what we have to do. I think ultimately all of us are better off if we pool our resources and provide things that together we can all benefit from. We're not in that position today, I get that. That's what I'd like to think that we could and should do. It's frankly what most of the rest of the world does. Their transportation costs are tremendously lower than ours because of it. So how do we get from here to there? Will I go door to door in North Napa? I might. Doesn't mean I don't still need contributions from the government right now.

We understand. Thank you. Council President.

Yes.

Another set if I could. In consideration of the federal funds, the grant monies that we received three budget settings, two budget settings ago, we're in our third now. if we were to only fund the micro transit portion of the budget, we have a project that's in the middle of design. We're 70,000 deep into it. It was anticipated that we would get a 534 some odd thousand dollar payout from that. Would we lose that funds, number one? And if yes, would we also have to pay those funds back? Because in my mind, if we're gonna lose the funds and need to pay it back, I might be proposing a different contribution number to offset that loss in $70,000.

You know, we don't control that decision. We are the recipient of that grant, and you're the subrecipient. We would have to report to FTA what the current conditions are, and they would make a determination about whether it's still eligible. Certainly have been working with Crystal to do some work to figure out what exactly the conditions would be. Again, I don't want to say something here today because I might be wrong, but we'll get you an answer.

And I think that's really all we need. And working with Crystal would be good and well to have that understanding. Because frankly, I would hope they'd stop the project effective immediately until we get that answer. continuing to kick money to that project. And ultimately it's not a priority for myself to get that sidewalk done right now. I'd rather put 70,000 to pipe that burst on Davis. So that's where I just am trying to weigh everything. Very grateful for it. Appreciate the grant. If we can still receive it, let's finish the project. If we're not going to receive it, let's definitely not. And let's put those funds elsewhere. So that's kind of the perspective I'm coming from.

Yes. Crystal, do you have a timeline on that project? Is that due to be done next year?

Tomorrow.

Council President, Councilwoman Jangula, for the record, Crystal Craig, Director of Transportation. Councilwoman, we have been working through the environmental process with the FTA. This is the first FTA grant that I've ever done and I believe Nampa has ever done. The first submittal, I think, was back in October and there's been some back and forth from there. So right now we are at, it has to be called preliminary design because you have to have the environmental clearance before that. As soon as that is complete, I think we'll get to final design within a couple of months and then be able to start construction. And construction should take less than six months to complete with procurement of the signal poles.

Thank you.

Council President, if I may. Yes, Marker. Just just as a point of clarification, the budgetary request is for on demand and for fixed route. So there are a number of other services that are provided by VRT that don't include those costs. So that's beyond access and access and other paratransit services. So my question for Elaine to help with this discussion is that if we do reduce the budget, will we still enjoy the benefits of beyond access and access, for example, and rights to wellness?

The access benefits would go away if the fixed route went away. they're dependent on that. Most of those riders would then try to move toward Beyond Access because that would be their other choice. Beyond Access is funded by another different kind of federal grant, but the local funding for it comes from both local partners in some cases, but primarily from the area agents. That contribution has also been reduced significantly, and we're trying to figure out how much service we can provide, given the local funding that we have. We think we're whole. We wouldn't, because we don't use your contribution toward that system, we wouldn't cut it because of you cutting service. But I do want to tell you that there's headwinds there as well.

And we understand. Yeah. No. We fully understand the challenge that we have is we have an aging infrastructure. And we've seen the results of that three times in the last two and a half, three weeks. And we know we're going to continue to have those challenges. decision-making on the council part and leadership of the city leads us to have to say our priorities and do we have water and sewer to our residents or do we have transportation? And it's just a reality from my perspective and we're having to work within the confines that are given to us. And so once again, We appreciate that your team has put the information and broke it out as you have and given us that information. And don't want ill will because of my being thrown a curveball this morning and my ducks were not in a row anymore. I apologize again and we want to stay in good communication and good working relationship and know that any changes are not personal. They're not anything that may have seen here. It's just strictly we're having to make choices as a council and we head in. We've been doing the updates from our departments. They've been giving us great information. And now we're headed into the number crunch time.

I would ask one thing. If you determine that you think that you need to consider not funding the fixed route, we will have to hold a public hearing on that. And I would ask that we hold that together so that you all can hear from your public as well before you make that decision.

Yeah, and I've made a note here that we need a public hearing. So we're probably going to agenda that. We're probably going to set that on an agenda here in the near future.

Thank you. thank you for allowing me to to talk today i know it's a like i say i was as as thrown by this as all of you and um i you know dale says he he doesn't know why i took this job i took this job because i love this job as hard as it is i love working with all of you and um i'll be here till I'm not here and I won't quit knocking on the door.

So thank you. Well, you're tenacious and you're to be complimented. So thank you very much. Okay. Council, we're still before our time, but I think we've hit the issues unless somebody has more time or any more items to cover or talk.

Council President, I just would recommend that we have that public hearing sooner than later. so we can get a set finite number to be able to allocate to this as a big portion of the budget? Correct. Thank you.

Any other comments?

I just have a quick comment. It's kind of just a thing that keeps going through my mind. Elaine had mentioned comparing the cost of maintaining roads and then the cost of having transportation. And I just was reminded that in spite of everything that, you know, is good about the bus system and that it truly is our duty to maintain roads and infrastructure. It is not the taxpayer's duty to make sure somebody gets to work. And so we have to prioritize what really truly is our job and what is important. And I feel like, and it has nothing to do with BRT, but I feel like we've done a deal with the devil in a sense, you know, when you hook up with the federal government, you end up with all of these strings attached. And in my thinking is that if we limit this as we have to, that it will give Elaine a chance more of a sway, so to speak, with the private people that she services, the businesses. I mean, my crunch should not be holding out. They should be doing more than anything that we can do in the city, as well as, you know, Amazon and all these big companies coming here, they should be participating. And it's absolutely right that the hospitals should be paying their share. And so I feel like us, um, as a city backing up with how much money we give her gives her more of, uh, uh, opportunity to say, look, I just had this happen and so I really need your funding because that's where the money should come from private, not from our taxpayers. Just my input.

Your input is noted.

I did have this written down. It's on the heels of this comment, but it's not designed to you. But when I think about public services as a city, we have to make very challenging decisions and there's a lot of different things that we have to weigh in. But one of the public services that cities do provide is public transportation. And even though we don't all use it and we don't all see the functionality of it or the reasons why we need it, part of having a community is what amenities does a community provide that would make my life better and that brings a quality of life. And even though we don't all see it exactly the same, there is an element that providing a service brings people to want to be here and thrive in many ways. And so I still think it's a need. I still want to tailor it a little bit. I still think it needs to be more centralized to Nampa, but it is a public service and it is something that is part of our, our negotiations, things that we got to work through.

So. The challenge that I'm going to respond a little bit, but the challenge that our area has is, uh, We're wide open space. And growing up here, I enjoyed the wide open space. And the few trips, one to Europe, some to Hawaii, those are finite land masses. And they build vertical out of the gate. And getting on the bus in Hawaii touching shoulder to shoulder with people and moving from an area to an area is a way of life because vehicles there are very difficult as far as parking, excess land, et cetera. So there's constraints and society works within that. We've had the great luxury of a lot of elbow room, but you're not efficient in the transportation side with that elbow room. And so consequently, it's difficult for the adjustment in a way. So I've appreciated being able to jump in, ride a subway, ride a bus when you know you're going two to three miles along with 40 other people, 60 other people packed in. And it's five minutes, and you're there. Doing the 30-minute hour ride for people who are used to the elbow room, there's just not that much usage. And so a lot of us are geographic. And yet, trying to provide for those is understandable. So we're kind of in a unique situation in multiple ways. RICK MACLENNAN IWASAKI- Council President?

BILLY RADER IWASAKI- Yes. a question maybe for legal or for Crystal, because now we're getting kind of into the discussion and we're hearing opinions on where to set the numbers. I don't know if we're going to do that through the budget. Well, that's what I'm trying to confirm. Do we need an additional public hearing? In addition to this one, this was noticed, it was publicly discussed that we're considering a significantly less amount of money. VRTs here, have we satisfied that requirement?

Yeah, Council President, I may chime in on that. I've sent a communication to VRTs team asking for more details. As you know, when there's federal grants and regulations involved, there is many, many, many layers that are deep, deep, deep. And a state law, there's no requirement for an additional public meeting. So I'm just getting details from them, what the criteria is, what triggers it, just so that we can be apprised and make sure it's all properly noticed and follows the regulations requirements.

President, thank you. Cause that's from my side, we want to, I don't, I don't look at it as a sole and separate public hearing. I just see us putting it on the agenda coming in June. Okay. And yeah, ahead of as we go into further discussions on the budget.

And then just for a comment, the door's been opened by good Debbie Scogg, Councilwoman Scogg. And I discussed this with you yesterday. In my mind, when push comes to shove, and it is pushing and shoving right now, trying to figure out this budget process, I go back to what's the proper role of government. And then I refined that down a little bit to what's the required role of government. And I, I believe that the required role of government is public safety and infrastructure period, period. Uh, parks and rec is an additional amenity that I think is nice, but not required. Transit is nice, but not required. So from this councilman's perspective, uh, every dollar that I can find, I'd like to put in our infrastructure. Two nights ago on election night, I got to have the great privilege of being with two of our directors and our chief of staff on a pipe that burst in the middle of a very busy road. And it opened my eyes to the realities that that pipe is twice my age. And it literally is. It's 50 years old. It's twice my age. And it's not expected to be efficient beyond that point. We have $600 million in deferred maintenance. According to our directors, if we started today, they could only do $25 million of improvements per year. If we utilized every contractor and every city resource that we have available, that's 26 years that it would take to satisfy the needs of our community. And, and the reality is the can has been kicked down the road for a long time and it's no one's fault. Nampa used to have the highest levy or one of the highest levies in the whole doggone state.

Correct.

The council had to do something for their constituents here and now. I don't throw blame anywhere. When I say it's been kicked down the road, it's not because somebody didn't do what they were required to do. Everyone sits here with a unique perspective and serves their community how they can see fit in the time that they're here. For the remainder of my time here, it's going to be infrastructure. It just, it has to be, and that's tough. And I'll fight to help discuss a levy override to be able to support that infrastructure because the required role of government is that we have cops that show up when you get stabbed and they have a road to get to you when that happens. Beyond that, it's fluff. And it's necessary fluff for the quality of life that we have here, but it's still fluff, so.

President. Okay. We're moving. We're moving into other areas. So I know it's a bunch as we want to share.

It's a tough situation. I know, but, uh, I'll just go make it quick.

Make it quick.

Okay. Make it quick. Uh, VRT. I want you to, uh, not, we, I don't want to fund VRT and I want to fund police officers and infrastructure and you find a way to make up your, your, your differences. However, I'm going to keep an open mind of what you come back with. And if it sounds good, then, uh, then we're making a decision there.

There you go, sir. Thank you, councilman. Well, a little different meeting got off track again, uh, early on throwing the curve ball. I've never been able to hit a curve ball. Very good. And, uh, so, uh, I, I, I had visions of, uh, remembering those, uh, junior high days and there's a reason I gave up baseball. Well, occasionally I've gotten hit with dirt on the job site and so forth. Yes. Any event, thank you everybody for your patience and the participation today and we'll continue forward. Motion to adjourn. All in favor? Meeting is completed.