City Council - Regular Meeting

It's kind of a bait and switch though, like it should have been taped. All right, we'll call the meeting to order, beginning with the invocation and the pledge. Almighty God, send down upon those who hold office in this city the spirit of wisdom, compassion, and justice. Grant that with steadfast purpose, we may faithfully serve our community, seeking the common good, protecting the vulnerable, and promoting the well-being and harmony of all who dwell here. Amen. Amen. Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Okay. All members are present and accounted for. For announcements, we have one announcement. The city will hold a budget workshop next Tuesday, April 14th at 5:30 p.m. in the second floor conference room at city hall. The workshop is open to the public and all are invited to attend. Next, we have one proclamation for fair housing month. This is something we do every year for eligibility for the community development block grant uh funding. Whereas, April 2026 marks the 58th anniversary of the passage of title 8 of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, commonly known as the Federal Fair Housing Act. And whereas the Idaho Human Rights Commission Act has prohibited discrimination in housing since 1969. And whereas equal opportunity for all, regardless of race, color, religion, sex, disability, familial status, or national origin, is a fundamental goal of our nation, state, and city. An equal access to housing is an important component of this goal as fundamental as the right to equal education and employment. And housing is a critical component of family and community health and stability. And whereas housing choice impacts our children's access to education, our ability to seek and retain employment options, the cultural benefits we enjoy, the extent of our exposure to crime and drugs, and the quality of health care we receive in emergencies, and ongoing education, outreach, and monitoring are key to raising awareness of fair housing principles, practices, rights, and responsibilities. And only through continued cooperation, commitment, and support of all Idahoans can barriers to fair housing be removed. Now therefore, I, Randy Wesland, mayor of the city of Postf Falls, Idaho, do hereby proclaim April 2026 to be fair housing month in the city of Post Falls.

Any amendments to the agenda tonight? We have none tonight, sir. Declarations of conflict, exparte contacts, and site visits. Seeing none, please present the consent calendar. Item A is minutes from the March 17th, 2026 city council meeting. Item B is payables from March 18th through April 8th, 2026. Item C is computer equipment disposal. Item D is school resource officer agreement renewal with Postfall School District. Item E is city vehicles and equipment disposal. And item F is public hearing notification for the budget. Questions on the consent calendar?

I have a couple of them. Um I have a comment about item C. I just wanted to say thank you so much and I don't see our IT director. Oh, there you are. Thanks, Mike, um for working with K-Keek for this disposal. Um I really appreciate that. They have an amazing program and I'm glad that we're able to support them. Um and then item D, great program. Um it's the school resource officer and I hope we can keep doing that. I just am concerned, should we be signing a contract when would it be prudent to wait until we had a chief of police to review this since it is part of his department? Is this timesensitive? I that was just a consideration that I had. So, it is a contract that's executed by the city. Um, so it's signed by the mayor. Um, and it is the same contract form that we've had for however many years that we've had the SRO. So,

okay. I I think it's fine to move forward with the the contract as it's a a city contract. So, okay. Um, and then there are 16 items on the vehicle replacement disposal. So, is that all of the replacements for the next fiscal year or is that just the city council meeting?

Good evening. John Beum, public works director. Uh those are vehicles that were replaced for the most part last year. Okay. Uh many of them are police cars that we've been able to put the replacement into service. So, now we're able to retire the old one. Okay. But these are um I couldn't tell you definitively this is the full list for fiscal year 26. A lot of these are cleanup from fiscal year 25 replacements. Okay. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you. I think that's good. Thanks. All right. Entertain a motion. A move to approve the consent calendar as presented. Second. Motion in a second. Further discussion. Roll call, please. Malloy. I. Luca. I. Sig leader. I

Mosby I Ziegler I

motion passes. Thank you. Next up is public hearings. Tonight we have three. The first public hearing is the Mullen annexation. We'll open public hearing. Good evening, mayor and city council. I am Justin Solder, an associate planner here with the city, and the item you have tonight before you is the Mullen Avenue annexation file number A NX-25-7. So, the property owner is North Idaho Surgical Hospital Buildings Land Holdings and the applicant representing them is Angie McI and they are requesting the city council to approve a request to annex approximately 4.39 acres with community commercial services zoning into the city of Post Falls. Here is the project site in the red hatch marks. It's north of Mullen Avenue and it's east of Seringa Street. There are two parcels and there are a single family home on each of those parcels. And so more accurately, the uh project address or location is 1609 and 1641 East Mullen Avenue. And if you'll notice, there's a little square that's not part of this. That's another single family home that is not part of this annexation request. So, it's these two parcels here. Here you can see the site is not currently within the city and therefore does not have a zoning designation. The properties to the north and east are not within the city limits. They're also in the they're within the county and they also have single family homes. The properties directly to the south across Mullen Avenue are within the community commercial services district and contained businesses that provided different medical services. The property directly to the west is undeveloped also within the CCS zone. And the property

further to the west on the corner of Singinga and Mullen, also in the CCS, and contains a building providing medical services that is also owned by the North Idaho Surgical Buildings land, which is the same applicant for this project. So, they own this property and they own the one on the corner as well. Um, as I said, they're requesting a zone designation of CCS, which would be red. Um, and as you can see on the map, there are several properties within the immediate vicinity that are within the CCS zone. And then once again, you can see that one house is not a part of the project. I said both parcels contain a single family home. It's over the Rathon Prairie aquifer. Ross Point would provide the water and the city of Post Falls would provide the sewer. The city has capacity and is willing to serve at the requested zone. Um, Mullen Avenue is considered a minor arterial and additional rights of way and easements would need to be provided as part of the annexation. Now, we will get into the zoning criteria. The first is the proposed zoning district consistent with the future land use map and focus area contained in the currently adopted postfalls comprehensive plan. The future land use designation of the subject property is business commercial which provides a wide variety of general services including retail professional office light industrial um artisan manufacturing and mixed uses that serve local and regional residents. It also promotes a mixture of moderate to high density housing types within walking distances to the city center neighborhood center and other corridor commercial uses. The implementing zone district details the breadth and type of uses that would be permitted within the CCS zone. And the site is adjacent to properties with land use designations of business commercial to the east and west and low density residential to the north and then commercial to the south of Mullen Avenue. The CCS zone is an implementing zone district within the

business commercial land use designation and it is within the central island focus area which includes key policies to help guide development in this area such as promoting infill, prioritizing annexations, support development patterns that are interconnected and provide pedestrian connectivity and focus commercial along arterial or or collector streets with more than 4,000 vehicle trips per day. I'm sorry. Can you So it is like right on the border of the central island focus area, right? Like it's like on the southern little piece. Yes. What is the focus area that's just on the other side of Mullen? That is a great question. You got me. I don't know off hand.

Oh, okay. Sorry. I just wanted to be able to look at like both of them and kind of get a better idea of like which direction? South of Mullen. You know which one south? Southeast. Southeast. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you for that. Let's see where were we. If the annexation were to be were to be approved, the applicant intends to market the property for sale as a commercially zoned to create opportunities for future commercial or mixeduse development. The proposed CCS zone may be compatible with properties in the immediate vicinity to the west and south which are also within the CCS zone and also contain commercial uses such as medical office buildings as well as other commercial services along Mullen Avenue to the east and west. The CCS zone could also support mixeduse development which may also be consistent with residential uses to the north and east depending on whatever that development would be proposed in the future. The request may also be consistent with the focus area as it talks about promoting infield development and prioritizing annexations. The site is on Mullen Avenue which is an arterial that already supports a wide variety of commercial uses and has traffic volumes exceeding 11,000 trips a day. Now we will get into the second criteria. Is the proposed zoning district consistent with the general goals and policies contained in the comprehensive plan? The annexation request is consistent with goal one which seeks to grow and sustain a balanced resilient economy for postfalls providing community prosperity and fiscal health. Annexation of the property may contribute to resilient economy by expanding the inventory of commercially zoned properties within the city that are able to support businesses um business activity and job creation. We've already talked about how the proposed zone designation is consistent with the future land use map and may be compatible with surrounding land uses. So, as far as infrastructure, sanitary sewer is located at the intersection of Seringa and Mullen. It would need to be extended to this site at the time of

development. The existing infrastructure has the capacity for the requested zone and it is in conformance with the city's water reclamation master plan. Now looking at traffic patterns, Mullen is a classified as a minor arterial and can accommodate the future projected traffic volumes related to the annexation request. With the annexation, dedication of rights of way and easements are needed to conform with the transportation master plan. Um, the annexation is also consistent with goal seven, which looks to plan for and establish types and quantities of land uses and postfalls supporting community needs and the city's long-term sustainability. The annexation may support community needs and long-term sustainability by providing an area for additional businesses that may support community needs and that benefit the city as it continues to grow. The zone change is also compatible with policy 8 which encourages infill development um as a site is surrounded by development already and the annexation may encourage development of a property within city limits that is also considered infill development and the CCS zone may help ensure that development is consistent with the current uses on Mullen in the immediate vicinity. It's also consistent with policy 86, which seeks to work with local businesses to enhance, sustain, and diversify the local economy by supporting opportunities related to business campuses and attracting new businesses. The annexation would allow for the opportunity for the property to be developed with new businesses or in a in a mixeduse development. For the third and final review criteria, does the proposed zoning district create a demonstrable adverse impact upon the delivery of services? There have been no identified demonstrable adverse impacts at this time. Here's a list of all the agencies that were notified and were received comments

back from these. They all had um will either comment during the development, neutral, or had no facilities or impacts. Here's the review criteria one more time for you. And then here's the site. And then I did want to mention we did receive a comment from a Tyler Smithson Engineering. It's in your packet um representing some of the property owners to the north and they had some different requests in that letter and one of them was talking about a buffer zone. So there's currently a buffer zone required by code of 10 ft between multif family and single family residential. So if multif family were proposed here, that's already in effect. Uh but they are asking for a 20 foot wide buffer if multif family is proposed. So just wanted to put that out there.

Is that piece of property that that letter came from? County or city? County. That concludes my presentation. I'm available for questions and the applicant is also here. Questions for staff? Just to clarify, to make sure I heard you correctly, that the applicant is requesting annexation to then sell the property to a a different owner developer. Correct. Okay. And the applicant might be able to speak on that more, but yes, that was what was uh given to us in the narrative. Okay. Can I ask some questions about the land uses for CCS? So, you can just confirm what I'm thinking. So, we're at about four and a half acres, right?

Yeah. And in the CCS zone with a special permit, a special use permit, you can do up to 50% highdensity housing. Is that correct? I believe that is correct. Okay. No. Nope. Turkeys. Uh, you do have to get a special use permit for multif family. So, thank you for that. As far as the percentage, John was going to help out. Where do I here? Once again, John Manley, planning manager here at the city of Post Falls. So with a CCS you can do all the property

um with a special use permit as multifamily. So in this case being 4 acres and change you could see anywhere from 80 to 90 units on that site depending on how they strategize with their open space. The CCM is what you may that's the one where you can do up to 50% on that CCM. Okay. So then it could potentially then be 100% high density with a special use permit that does not come back to council. Hence, and that's why Justin brought up that request for that 20 foot that the residents to the north was for that case in case it was a special use permit that you would have that opportunity to review that. Okay. All right. Sorry. Thanks.

Yep. Further questions for staff. All right. The applicant wish to speak. Thank you.

Hello. My name is Angie McI. I'm the realer for Can you pull the microphone down a little bit? Sorry. I'm representing uh Nishi and also the agent representing them as well. Um Justin really covered everything that I have unless you have further questions. Sure. Would the applicant be interested in adding a development agreement that this piece of property stays commercial only and not residential? I can't speak for them, but I would believe yes. Okay, great. Thank you. All right. Further questions for the applicant. All right. Thank you. Thank you.

Public comment. We have none. All right. So, there's no need to Oh, you wanted to speak? Yes. There there are forums on the back and you can speak to the clerk here.

Go ahead.

State your name for the record. Tyler Smithson local civil engineer uh representing some of the property owners to the north as as mentioned earlier. Um I've filed a a letter and uh we have 32 signatures on it from some of the neighbors in the area I'd like to submit. Uh in addition to the 20- foot setback that we recommended, we recommend uh we made some recommendations regarding landscaping in that area as well as height restrictions within the the bounding area. The residential properties on the border are within about 10 ft of the property line. So it would have a we feel an adverse effect on the properties which are not part of the city. However, they do carry a Post Falls address and are essentially part of the reputation of the city and and so we would like to make sure that there are some levels of controls on what might be built. Um, in the letter that I submitted, we showed some uh some pretty responsible um boundary locations like this that have been developed right in the area. And we also noted some that that haven't been very consistent and that have probably had a bit of an adverse effect on some of the neighborhoods that the commercial areas have been built up against. Uh inconsistency once we get away from a street and so forth. And so we would we would like to recommend that what uh whatever zoning is applied have some conditions to protect the nature of the residential neighborhood above and the reputation of the of the city. as we continue to develop. The signatures are are all on this letter that was provided. So, they show that there's support towards annexation. However, they would like to voice that uh we want to make sure it's done in a responsible way and uh that some 30-ft wall doesn't

go up against the houses that are right there. You said you had 32 signatures. Yes. There's 15 properties. Is that right? How many properties are on that street? Um, I don't think it's 15. It's There are 14. 14. Yeah. And And so some are are friends and and of the neighbors. Oh, so not the people that live on that street. The people on the street are It's not every resident because we've had a week and a half to do this. Um, but all the signatures were collected on the street. So they were visiting friends, some of them that are also residents of Post Falls.

Gotcha. Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions? Well, thank you. We appreciate the time today. Thank you. Thank you. Does the applicant wish to rebut?

Nope. All right. And we'll close the public hearing. On to the first question. All right. Uh, first question before you is, is the annexation of the property in the best interest of the city? Let's say yes. It's a county pocket. It would provide for uh improved pedestrian connectivity. Um, it hooks everything up to sewer to, you know, assure the aquifer is taken care of as development happens. So, I would say yes.

I agree. Uh Mullen's kind of like a east west becoming an east west thrower especially right there seems reasonable to get the right of way and make that consistent with the rest of the roadway. I also agree. I think it's an underutilized county island and I'd like to see become part of the city. I guess I but we wouldn't really get that much right away, right? Because there's like a little keyhole. True. Like there's like a little piece missing. I guess we should have asked about that. Yeah, we'd still get some of it. We still get most of it, I guess. Yeah,

I agree that it is in the best interest of the city based on the fact that it's an infill area. I am concerned that that keyhole area might do something about the marketability of it as a commercial property. Not sure weird if it's not attached to the adjacent property as a you know medical facility or some other property that's accessed through there then it does seem a little odd. So um so that'll be on the zoning question but in terms of the annexation itself yes I think it's in the best interest of the city to see this developed. I agree.

All right I think we have what we need for that question. So that we go to the the annexation motion. Yep. See seeing unanimity. Uh next uh review question. Is the proposed zoning district consistent with the future land use map and focus area contained in the currently adopted postfalls comprehensive plan? I say yes from the focus area. It uh promotes infield development. Um again, aside from the key keyhole, it does provide pedestrian connectivity. Um and uh it's a higher impact use which is promoted in this uh focus area.

I mean really both of the focus areas that it kind of straddles is that little sliver of the central island is business commercial and then to the south of Mullen is all is more commercial in that area. And what would you say the future land use map says about the area? Isn't that what isn't that what we're looking at? It says commercial and business commercial. Yes. Yeah. Would you say that the CCS zone is in the implementing zone of the business commercial land use designation? Aren't they all?

Yes, I would. I think the only caveat that I would have to the zoning is the um possibility of a special use permit for higher density housing that I do not think is conducive to this surrounding area. Agreed. So, agreed. Um implementing this zone, I would I would suggest and advocate for a restriction on that development agreement for um more or less barring the special use permit for R3. Do you feel that way only about R3 or do you feel that way about the other residential products that could be put there?

I think my main my main concern would be R3 high higher density. Um, you know, I don't think I mean from a logical standpoint. I don't think anything other than R3 for a residential application would fit either for the purposes of this corridor. Um, but my specific concern would be a, you know, a tower of apartments that we've seen in other places that I don't think would fit the surrounding areas.

I, and I tend to agree with you. I just want to make sure that if we're going to do a development agreement, we like say it correctly because R3 does allow for like duplexes and town homes. And so if those aren't if that's not a concern of council, I wouldn't bar I wouldn't want to bar those. Covers those. But is R2 allowed in CCS? Good question.

I don't have in my chart that I stole from somebody's desk at some point. Um I have CCS and it it references the different land use types, but it doesn't reference R2 in talking about duplexes and town homes. It only says special use permit per R3. So, I wouldn't want to like write a development agreement that says no R3 if we didn't actually want to like limit the use of duplexes and town homes. I think it allows it and twin homes. You could probably phrase the development agreement as restricting multif family multi would that would be okay solve the issue. Yeah. Okay. I just want to make sure we're on the same page about it.

All right. Is the proposed zoning district consistent with the goals and policies currently adopted postfall's comprehensive plan that are relevant to the area of consideration? I like the idea of having um varied land use especially in terms of commercial like having more commercial land use in the city of Post Falls. I think that meets with our goals and policies and I'm a fan. Agreed. Anyone want to reference specific goals or policies to make the legal team's job easier?

Well, I think I've got Joe's uh transportation uh I can pull those as well. Connectivity, future future traffic patterns, etc. So, I'm hearing that. I believe it also supports by increasing commercial commercial space in that area. It supports the goals of job creation and therefore um supporting our economy and I think that's ever more important in our expanding population. I believe it promotes that goal as well. Thanks. As long as it is commercial space. Yes,

that's that's still my hangup. And I think and I see a lot of like you know on the fellow council members here all have the same I think idea that it it is consistent as long as it is going to be commercial. I think it's it's going to this area is rapidly becoming similar to Ironwood. Um and highdensity residential in that area would be out of place and perhaps dangerous. Um people don't drive to hospitals sometimes in the you know fully attentive mode or leave them in that way. So, um, so again, it's it's consistent if it's commercial. It's also consistent with existing and future traffic patterns along Mullen Avenue. All right. Does the proposed zoning district create a demonstrable adverse impact upon the delivery of services by any political subdivision providing public services within the city

and none were noted by any of the routed agencies. Um city won't have any issue providing water and sewer service. I'd say no. I will make my usual comments about uh fire and rescue and public school system or the postfalls public school district um saying publicly that they need funds to continue their services at the state that we're in. So of concerns

I think that's especially relevant with this particular consideration because we don't really know what's going to go there. So the consideration of the strain on public services is is much different if it's a purely commercial site rather than if it was 100% R3 with apartment buildings. So it is a little bit um frustrating to not get much indepth comment from those that were inquired or asked about the impact. Um, so I would just like to note that as well

in this category, um, I didn't notice on the agencies notified, uh, any internal agencies like the city police department. Do we put something out to department heads that asks for adverse impact as well? Yes, it is routed to the city police or the city departments including the police department, parks, um, and I believe engineering and public works. Okay. Thank you.

All right, that's all three questions. It sounds like there's a consensus building. I think we're ready for someone to float a motion. I would move to approve the Mullen annexationnx-25-7 that it be assigned the CCS zoning designation and there be a development agreement prohibiting multifamily construction. Second motion in a second. Further discussion. Roll call, please. Luca, I. Sig leader, I. Mosby, I. Blue, I. Ziggler, I. Malloy. Hi.

Motion passes. Thank you. Next up, uh, next public hearing, the Powder Horn vacation. We'll open the public hearing. Good evening once again, Justin Souer, associate planner, and we have the Powder Horn Vacation file number VAC-25-5. The both the property owner and the applicant is Logan Dyikoff and he's requesting the vacation of a 10-foot utility easement that runs along the Southerntherly property line of his property at 25503 North Powder Horn Street in order to construct a garage. Here is the property in question and you can see the red dash lines there is the approximate location of the easement. Staff has reviewed the proposed vacation request and does not see issues with the proposal. There are no known or planned utilities present within the utility easement. The vacation would allow the property owner to construct a garage on the property and no other properties would be affected by the vacation as they all have established utilities and are also accessible to the street for utilities. Here's a list of agencies that were notified. We did get letters back from these five agencies. They were either neutral or had no comments. The notable one is PA5 a Vista. They are agreeable to the vacation of the easement as they will not be needing it. Um so there it is again. That concludes my presentation and the property owner Logan is here as well if you have any questions. Does that like um easement go anywhere else on anyone else's property or is it

just really those lines right there? It's just those lines. Um I believe on the plat each uh each of these parcels has that same um easement. So each parcel had that same easement. This one is uh being requested to be vacated. So it's why each of these parcels already have access to utilities through the street. So, none of them would be affected by the vacation of this easement. Okay. It seems unusual, doesn't it? I mean, normally, don't the easements run just in front of the property or is this normal?

Um, Rob Paulus could speak to that a little bit more. Um, being our city engineer, I think this might have been a bit of a unique case, an older subdivision. Good evening, honorable mayor, members of the council. Robert Paul, city engineer. Based upon the time frame that this subdivision was put in, that was not an atypical process to include easements along the rear lot lines and side lot lines of each um parcel over the past 25 years. That has not been a common practice. Does that answer sufficiently your question? So, you're saying it was at the time common to have an a utility easement between two properties?

Yes. If if you go back in time, there was a point in history where a lot of the utilities would put their underground electric uh telecommunications and when the cable TV first went in, it would typically be in the back lot lines. One of the problems that was found over time was people put up fences in the back lot lines. It makes it a lot more expensive for the utility companies to get in there to access a transformer or other utilities. So that's why in today's practice, we put that stuff out in front along the back of sidewalk. Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome.

And we have that with my house. It's early '7s construction and the electrical and and cable is in the lot lines where multiple properties meet away from the street and so they just they have the easement to be able to get back there. Questions for staff?

All right. The applicant wish to speak. Hi. Um, Logan Dyoff, a property owner. Um, trying to build a functional garage. My driveway slopes down right into the garage door. I've hit it twice. So, I'm trying to get uh I looked up the city setbacks of 10 feet off the back and five feet off the side and I laid out a garage that I can access through the garage door without being too close to the house or too close to the neighbors and uh set that up and got the building process started and we found this easement. So, um, still want to build the garage at the the postfall city setbacks as they are. So, just they overlap by five feet. So,

and that's where I'm at. All right. Any other questions? Just as a fellow man, I want to see you have your garage. They save marriages. They do all kinds of great things. So, um, yeah, best of luck. Thank you. Thank you. Any public comment? We have none. All right. So, no need for rebuttal. We'll close the public hearing. I move to approve powder home vacation VAC-25-5. Second and have I'm sorry, jump in. And have staff uh final ordinance for adoption. So moved.

So moved. Motion in a second. Further discussion. Roll call, please. Stig leader. I. Mosby. Hi. Pl. I. Ziggler. I. Malloy. I. Luca. I.

Motion passes. Thank you. The next public hearing is the Millworks vacation. We'll open public hearing. Once again, good evening, uh, city council. John Manley, planning manager here, uh, presenting the mill works vacation. This one's a little funner, um, to go over, so looking forward to this. So, the owner is AWLC. The applicant is Brad Marshall with JB Engineers. He's also with here with Cole Henderson. So, I think they're both going to present portions of this possibly, but uh there's three different areas. Um, one would be the portion of North Lincoln being south of East Railroad Avenue. Um, that one's probably going to have most discussion this evening. There's also a remaining portion of uh an alley east of uh Lincoln and then there's also another little portion south of East Forth being east of Lincoln Street. Here they are visually. it's a lot easier. So, here's that alley that was referenced and then there is that other little portion that's south of Railroad east of Lincoln. The portion that we'll probably be talking most about is right here, East Fourth. So, the applicant intends to build on the southwest corner of Fourth in Idaho and then east southeast of Lincoln and forth this project here. And this is step one for them is to request these vacations and then they are going to do probably a series of dedications at some time with their master planning of this block. will point out at this time there is if you see here these little swells that are along the proposed well to the west

this is what's there the way that they did the west end apartments and then when they went and what they're planning on doing is doing something similar between Idaho and Lincoln one of the comments you seen in the staff report is there are existing utilities so staff wasn't necessarily against the vacation such that we retained some ease easements for those utilities and then at such time such time in the future when they go to redevelop it then that would be dedicated and realigned at that time but we would want to retain the easements until such time. So this is the current city center parking plan as you see here. And so by default the plan what they looked at is the typical process or methodology that we would do is that's having a continuous swell separated by curb swell sidewalk and that was the methodology used in the city center plan to with the one concept only maximize parking not necessarily improving frontage for the facilitation of site development. And this is just a zoomed in image of kind of what they're planning and where those swells are in relation to the counter. You can see here they do propose a narrower rideway at 90 ft versus what's currently out here at 100. Um and another is if you go here this section that's 80 feet. And so they are planning a difference on that. I'll let the applicant propose that why it makes sense to them and why they're proposing it. And I would like to call up Rob Paulus, the city engineer, to talk about the pros and cons of the two different applications in that and for this.

Good evening, honorable mayor, members of the council. Robert Paul, city engineer. The cross-section that is in the city center master plan does have two one lane in each direction angled parking on both sides. What is being proposed does show that as well. The big difference is that in the city under master plan they include a 9- foot wide uh continuous swale on both sides of the road. This proposal here would get rid of that and substitute in swelles about midb block or on their site about where they're proposing to have a driveway approach. From a functionality standpoint, having the swailes more at the center point does provide the same function and that the storm water would be taken care of from treatment and disposal. The difference would be that you would lose approximately 10 to 12 parking stalls on that side of the road versus having the continuous linear swale. One of the areas that there's a potential benefit is that we have 4th Avenue as a 25 mile per hour road. We intend to keep it as a 25 mile per hour road between Idaho Street and Spokane Street. Having those ballout areas help reduce the width of the road from a perception standpoint for the drivers and help keep the overall speed limit a little bit lower. The road lane widths are the same. The depth of the parking stalls is the same. And um the one other benefit is where they are proposing the driveway approach. By having the swailes on either side of that driveway approach, it does allow for a vehicle that's leaving that development and coming out onto the roadway to be a little bit more visible before they actually pull out in the road and pop out from behind a parked vehicle. Just a slight bit of improvement there. Um, one other thing to note, I took a

look at the numbers and they are proposing a 83 foot uh crosssection which would be from back of the sidewalk to the back of the sidewalk. That leaves on the north side of the roadway a little bit more than 5 feet of distance from the back of the sidewalk to the right ofway as it exists today. And part of the oddity which threw a few people off looking at this is the rights of way seem to be change as you go across Lincoln Street as well. A lot of that is caused because west of Lincoln Street on 4th Avenue. The city went with a process of having three lanes on 4th Avenue. A left turn pocket to get on to Lincoln Street. And you'll see the same thing down at Henry Street as well that we have that two-way center turn lane in that area. But the master plan did not show that that was needed east of Lincoln Street. Took a look at the current master plan's numbers. We're not anticipating 4th Avenue to be more than 50% of capacity by the year 2035. Um, I can't use it as a definitive, but I did look at the transportation master plan update that we're working on, which takes a look at traffic volumes through 2045, and the traffic volumes are not projected to be much different. Still around 50% volume to capacity by the year 2045. Any questions that you might have of me?

Mr. Pace, if we kept the swale model like we see everywhere else, who's responsible? Who who would be responsible for the upkeep of those?

The adjoining property owner would be responsible for the swale. And that makes one other comment and I the applicant may make a a comment on this as well. Having a continuous linear swale in an area where you anticipate more pedestrian activity or having more people with angled parking getting in and out going to apartments or businesses. During the winter time, you don't have that nine foot wide, one foot deep swale to step in to get across with your feet. Or during the really wet times of the year, you don't have six inches of uh water down in that swale. You're crossing directly from a parking area to a sidewalk, which is from a planning downtown type area is usually more conducive to how people want to move around. Will those um property owners still be responsible for these bumpouts or because they're kind of part of the parking area? Will the city be responsible for

because it's part of the frontage they would be responsible for the irrigation, landscaping, and maintenance of that? Okay. I This is what downtown in the city that I grew up in looks like. And I actually like it. I think it looks quite lovely and is quite functional and and very nice. This this parking with the bumpouts and everything. Um, I don't mind it at all. Okay. I know you weren't expecting that comment out of me, were you? Saw the look on your face. Does this create any issue with the alignment of the sidewalks on the south side of 4th Avenue across Lincoln?

No, it does not. We took a look at what their preliminary layout is. Um, we have seen something a little bit more in depth than what is on the current image and the ADA facilities can be put into alignment to work correctly.

My uh uh Facebook degree in engineering doesn't quite let me keep up with as quickly as we went over that. So, let me ask you. Um, so originally was there going to be a swale across the entire uh south side of Fourth and now the driveway is going to not have a swale. Is that the change we're talking about?

So, yeah, there was a 9- foot wide swale along the entire length of the block. So now what they've done is taken essentially the equivalent area and then concentrate it to either side of that driveway approach. So what we do is we take a look at and say based upon the amount of square footage that's involved of both the roadway and the parking and taking into consideration the sidewalk, how much storm event or how much water is going to be created from a 25-year storm event of two-hour duration. And then with this methodology that they're looking at, they would have to provide enough treatment area so that water could percolate in the first half inch of the rainfall. Anything above and beyond that could be disposed of by going into a dry well.

Okay. And and there is a dry well planned or they would have to do the calculations to verify if it was it is possible to create a swale without a a dry well in it. Looking at the amount of area on this conceptual plan, I'd say that you would not be able to handle a 25-year storm event without providing a at least one dry well. But we look at that during the development process and make sure that the storm facilities are able to handle at least a 25-hour storm event of two-hour duration. Okay. And that would be the responsibility of the adjoining landowner to provide that.

That is correct. They would be responsible for providing that along with the construction of the curb, gutter, angled parking, any roadway illumination. Uh they would also put in the landscaping and irrigation that goes with it. Can I ask one more question? Sorry. And just like back up a second. The reason that this is being requested from the developer for us to vacate though is because with this setup, they gain slightly more square footage on their land to develop.

Yeah. If you look in this area in blue, and they will need to go into this more detail for you. As I look at it, uh there's an outline here of a building and that building is in that 10- foot area of the rightway that's being vacated. I don't necessarily have a problem with the plan, but I just want to make sure that we're clear about why it's being requested at all. And they do show you know as John mentioned over here in green uh dedicating I think that's 10 feet as 10 feet as well which would happen with uh the development portion dedicating it for sidewalk. Why? Why?

Well that yes that would take in the sidewalk area that they would have to dedicate anyway. Yes. Okay. It's maybe it's more from the standpoint it's shown on here. It's not going to get missed. Okay. Gotcha. So basically the only potential con to the city to the public is the loss of some parking spaces. Everything else, storm water, sidewalk, all that remains consistent. That is correct. But maybe the benefit to the residents is that you don't have to walk through true

a horrible swale or walk like down the road to where you actually get seen and can get in there. I like that. It seemed to me as a exchange of dedicated easements here almost. Is that is there a benefit to the city? I don't know to whom I should be directing this this question specifically, but is there a benefit to the city from a financial perspective by agreeing to the vacation, are we getting a dedicated easement in return that we wouldn't have otherwise gotten?

Right. So on the vacations to the south where there are utilities, we would be maintaining an easement until such time as those utilities are taken offline and rerouted in the area to serve how development would occur. And at that point, those easements would be vacated. Um, for where we're vacating the rightway adjacent to 4th Avenue, uh, there is not a utility in there. So, there's not a real need to maintain an easement at this time.

Okay. And maybe to answer your question, one potential benefit to the city, although I think it's pretty nominal, is that obviously they're going to construct and develop closer to the road than they otherwise would be able to, which might make it a higher value property, which means more revenue. But I I think the in the scheme of the entire development, that's probably a nominal benefit at best. If the city were to need this piece of property from this property owner, would we have to purchase it? Like if it was the exact same highlighted line and this was just the inverse question and we're like we need this for utilities, we need this land to create an easement, would we have to pay for it? Can you run that by me again, please?

Um, yes. So if maybe the roles of applicant versus approvey were reversed and the city was like actually we need this piece of property. You came and you said we got to have the road the easement dedicate or we need this piece of property as an easement. Would we then have to pay for it from the developer or would we say would you mind dedicating this piece of property as an easement to us if the property is in its current state and we needed to put the road in in that area in green

and they weren't doing anything no subdivision action or other land development action then yes we would need to re request and and and negotiate to purchase those rights of way. That is the only thing that gives me pause about this is that were the roles reversed, we would have to purchase that property, this small little strip of land would not then be dedicated to the city as an as an easement if we needed it for some public thing. But we're being asked by the developer to vacate or give up rights to the land. Am I making sense? You're making sense. Let me let me throw um some

context. Okay, great. So there's um there's a couple different things at play. So on the dedication question or purchase that is rooted really in how much if they're developing it, how much impact are they having that's causing the need for the additional rightway. If there's a nexus there and there's some proportionality for the amount that we're asking is offsetting the the impact they're creating, we can ask for that and have them dedicate it. Beyond that, it becomes a taking and then we have to pay for

the the public needs to pay for the right to use that property that's beyond the impact that's created by the development. The inverse isn't necessarily true when it comes to vacation. This is sort of going into a legal fiction a little bit. When properties are developed and there's a dedication, the dedication typically is because it's given to the public for the public's use for so long as there is a public need for that property. Once that public need goes away, the property is supposed to revert to the party who dedicated the property. And that's typically generations down the road. And so it it's a little bit of a legal fiction, but the idea is they gave it to us kind of in trust. We held it. we used it for a while and we give it back. That's why you typically, at least as a city level, you can't really sell right away. You can't require that they give you something in exchange for giving that back to them because it was only ours for so long as we had a public use for it. Once that use has gone away, they're entitled to have that property back. Um, highway districts aren't have exactly the same rules. You can squint at it and try to make us a a highway district and say we could sell it. There's case law that essentially says you can't do that. It's an ultravirus act. So, we're not really in a position to require them to pay us or give us something for it. And depending on what the use is and the impacts of the use, we either can ask them to dedicate it or we have to pay for it.

Gotcha. Okay. Well, I mean, it does seem like it will be overall a benefit to the residents and it will be fine. I just feel like it is a question that should at least be asked and considered by council since we pay for land all of the time and freely give up land all of the time. Um I don't know. I just think it's a reasonable question but doesn't mean it has to stop what we're doing. So any other questions for me question? I'm not sure that was completely answered to where I'm understanding like is this are we vacating a an easement or are we actually giving land to the developer? So this is right ofway. So it's a dedicated to the public. It's kind of a tweener. Um

like who who owns this land today? The public owns it. Okay. The city holds it as a public trust. So it's different than something that we own in fe simple absolute. It's what's Jack will understand this. It's kind of fe simple determinable. You hold it as a trust for a period of time until you don't need it anymore and then it goes back to the person who dedicated it. And in this example, we would give up that right of way with the understanding that it will come back to us later as a dedication. Is that right? No, because they're going to build on it.

No, in in this instance, we're giving it up. They'll build on it. Um, and we're we're essentially that's what you're doing tonight is making the determination whether there's an existing ongoing public use for this property. If there's not, then you vacate it. If there is, you'd reject that and say we still need this property for the public. And if we were to look back, this would have been dedicated to the city upon annexation a long time ago. Presumably, I wouldn't be surprised. This is original town site, pretty close. So, this is a long time ago that this would have been dedicated.

To help with the context, uh, councelor Luca, I think it's helpful to think about like the alleyway to the in the middle of the property where we'd have no use for an alley that goes nowhere. And so, there is no public purpose behind it. And so, they're going to develop on top of it. We're going to retain easements for the uh, infrastructure that's in there. But it sometimes it's helpful to to think about it like that. Sure. In the same way. So

that's helpful. Thank you. But I I think councelor Stigler's point is still valid that if we were to decide later that, you know, we really did need that alleyway, we would have to either have a taking and go through eminent domain process or negotiate or whatever. And there would be no question of can we just have it? And yet we're giving up land to a developer um who's definitely, you know, making improvements to the city. And I think that's that's worth considering. But as we move forward in these in the in the future, if something similar comes up, I think that is a very valid point to make is the citizens of Post Falls would probably appreciate being paid for the land that they're giving to developers. I think that's probably a mischaracteration of how I understand it because it's not that we we have ownership of the land as long as it is in the public use of rights of way. So, it's originally part of the plat of the private land owner until the city determines this is part of the rideway that is required. Once that rideway requirement is either met and we build on it in a public service or we say we don't need this anymore, then it reverts back to the original ownership. And so I think what the way I understand it this that we're kind of meeting in the middle with this land owner of saying we are vacating this property because it does not is not required as a rightaway requirement for what we have proposed along Fourth Avenue. Our needs of the city public service is is adequately met without this rightway. Uh in which case we would vacate it. And if I understand correctly, the city didn't pay for the property in the first place,

right? But the city owns it whether we paid for it or not. I mean, the citizens have paid for it in some way or another. You own the right to use it as long as we can demonstrate that it's under the service of the city. Yeah. So, if you inherit a house you did pay for, you still own it, right? So, it's not the same kind of ownership. Yeah.

Agreed. you I I understand your concern and I actually share some of it, but that's just not how it works under Idaho law. There's a fundamental difference between things that you've paid for and things that are dedicated in this instance. So, if we buy right away, I'm absolutely willing and I think the law allows us to turn around and sell that where it's been dedicated. It's really dedicated in pub in trust to the public for as long as there is a public use. Once that public use goes because we never paid for it, we're just giving it back to the to the property owner who gave it to us in the first instance. And and there's case law that specifically says you can't require compensation for that for cities.

So if we had purchased it, right? That's a different ballgame. Sure. And I think Rob what he stated was that we can fit the public use in an area or rideway based on their proposal. Yeah, obviously if we were trying to vacate a property that would then prevent us from adequately serving the city with the rideway, then it would be it would just be a no. Like if if vacating this property limited us to a 70 foot rideway along Fourth Avenue when we wanted 90 or 100, then obviously that would be a no. Like we're not doing that because we would try not to stand before you and ask that.

Exactly. That's the point. Yeah. We wouldn't do that. And then they'll be dedicating what is the new railroad avenue. That's why that's in green. So that would become city property. Is that correct? Correct. That would become dedicated right away.

Is that road on our transportation master plan? This Idaho between or railroad between the Lincoln and Idaho in the way that it's created or is it better than what we asked for? Railroad Avenue being a local roadway does not fall into an area where we have shown it as being an extension. On the other side of it, we do have the city center parking plan which does indicate um Railroad Avenue eventually going through to Idaho Street. With local roadways, we tend to be a little bit more flexible on the alignment since we're not showing it in the transportation master plan.

Okay. I mean, it looks like a beautiful road. It's kind of curved weird, but it looks really nice. Yeah, it's trying to smile. Is that what it is? Okay. Happy little road.

All right, moving on. So, on the two to the south, staff really doesn't have much concerns on those. And you see here fourth as discussed because I didn't know where the discussion was 100% going to go when I created this slide. But yeah, if I already identified the sanitary sewer mains, the water manes, you know, in that alley, we would want to get those easements. Um, and then upon site development, we would then facilitate the relocation of those lines, you know, appropriately and get the dedications appropriately.

And I had a question on that. So earlier it was mentioned that the easements wouldn't be vacated for the the utility lines that currently exist in the portions that are to be vacated until the redevelopment. Who's bearing the cost of supplying those lines and the costs of moving them out? They would do all that as part of their development. That'd be a cost they would bear um to move those lines and facilitate their project. So no cost to the city, no interruption of services to the city. It's all I am not an expert on the operations of that aspect. I would have to probably call Rob up and to find out if those moving those would that affect anybody temporarily.

Good evening again, council. So the green sanitary sewer line, there is nothing currently connected to it. So the process of removing that is no issue to the rest of the public. Uh the blue line between 4th Avenue that heads due south, uh that's an existing water line that will have to be relocated. So as the new line goes in, that would have to be shut off until the and then the new line gets put in, disinfected, put back online. There's a balance between when you're putting it in and what the new alignment is that that line line may be out of service for a while. Um, we tend to loop our system to make sure that there's adequate capacity, especially from a fireflow standpoint in the rest of the system. If there was a concern with this piece being put out of service while it's relocated, um, we would take a closer look at that during the development process, engineering would be in coordination with our water department to make sure that adequate fire flows are going to be in the area.

Thank you. You're welcome. Yeah, these are funny presentations because most questions never relate to planning. I feel like we need a new saying, all roads lead to rob.

So, this is the agencies that were notified. Um, here's the responses we got. Neutral comment during permitting, no utilities in the area, no comment. We did get urban renewal with a letter of support. Once again, here is those areas. We did receive one comment you may have seen in your packet by Immaculate Conception wanting to split the difference for half of this going to them and then the half going to the site. Um, in applications like this where they're not full rightways, that's generally where you see that is when you have 100% the rightway where you go down center line where half would go to the one to the north, half would go to the one to the south. In situations like this where this is clearly um south of uh Fourth Avenue on the southern side, it would be awkward to sliver this off to have different ownerships where you really couldn't have much use to the north with a sliver of 10 ft. So, um the comment is in there. I just didn't want to ignore the fact that we did receive that comment.

Would there be any benefit to them? Like is there a reason that they would request that? You're not asking that like it all just be shifted five feet up towards them or shifted I I couldn't gather 100% the nexus between that 10 ft and how it applied to the north side of the street. Okay. I do know that with the proposed cross-section that it's a little narrower which may prove long-term beneficial for the properties to the north. Okay. And then ultimately, I think once this develops, I think some of the land values in the area will probably increase. And so there's some benefits that way, too. But the road would like stay exactly where it is. We're not like moving property that would take anything away from them.

No, we're trying to maintain this rideway line that you see here along the north being very consistent from this site to the west. And so that that's currently in place. I see. Okay. My understanding was they they were envisioning five feet being added to their property on the north side. I was guessing, but that's that would misalign all the the boundaries up there. Yes. Okay. Sorry, that's what you're saying is what I assumed that they were how they were thinking that it would work. So, I just wanted to Okay. Yeah. Any more questions for me or Rob?

All right. All right. Does the applicant wish to speak? Um, good evening. Brad Marshall with JB Engineers, 351 West Hanley and Celane. Again, a pleasure to represent ANA and their request for a vacation. Again, this is a continuation of the mill works redevelopment of the Idaho veneer site. With me is Cole Henderson. Cole Henderson's a civil engineer with our firm, a project manager, and he's going to kind of get into the details of the the actual vacation. And also in the audience with me is this handsome man back here is Ryan Ruffcorn. Ryan is a partner in ANA Construction, so there's a chance that we may drag him to the podium, but there's a specific question. Um, but I thought we'd just kind of give you a little overview of the mill works. It's a good chance to give you an update of kind of where we've been, where we're going, and then kind of get into the details of that vacation request. And it's a good point. There's also a dedication that's involved in this project. It's pretty significant. Rare Railroad Avenue. See here. Again, this is the uh the Millworks master plan. Um, part of the city, 50 acres, smack in the middle of the city. former Idaho veneer site. um that uh at one point in time was a great employer for the city and as time went by like many of the mills along the river faced challenges and admittedly uh having being a longtime resident of Post Falls I I remember the prosper the mill and and the challenges they faced and I I know it was um on the market for years um as one of the council members can probably remember uh both on and off the

market and so forth. And then ANA, a longtime Spokane developer with strong ties to Post Falls. Actually, I can remember uh ANA is owned by Bill Lawson and Bill had partnered with Bob Templan gee 30 40 years ago uh in a big interest in Post Falls. Um so they acquired uh the bulk of the site and started developing the master plan and that you see today. Um which includes you obviously hotels and apartments, a variety of product types, single family homes, uh town homes that are fe simple, uh rest, restaurants and uh office space. And again, this is a continuation of that project. This is kind of a fun picture to take a look at. Little a step back in time, but it's not too far. 2017 again, former logard and the mill itself. Um and some additional miscellaneous law. That's pretty daunting redevelopment project, you know, to take take down the mill, remove the old materials, whether or not it's chips and sawdust and organics that thing. But nonetheless, with the help of the city, um, and so forth, the project moved forward. Uh, this is what it looks like today. This is the most recent Google Earth picture kind of moving, uh, from east to east to west. you know, just wrapped up the uh the Hyatt Hotel, which is a great addition to the city. Again, apartments to the east, uh town homes to the center of the site. There's different product types of town homes, uh from, you know, kind of a lower level to a real upscale home with a detached ADU unit. Uh and then, you know, the apartments uh have first floor retail, which is in line first commercial, in line with the smart code. uh you know we're all I think we're all enjoy the kindred company and so forth and there's

more to come and we'll kind of speak to that a little bit and the roundabout and then the project to the west that we're talking about today again just a little reminder of the the Hyatt Hotel. Uh fun fact there's the Hyatt Hotel has a one of I believe one of the first underground parking areas in the city which kind of dictates the market that we're starting to see. Um, actually it was a prior uh borrow pit for the overpass uh that over time got filled with some debris and so forth that had to be removed and so we're excited to have the Hyatt there. Um, this is kind of a before and after p pictures of the mill site and some of the debris in the mill we took down and some of the right looking straight down Fourth Street. Uh, we worked extensively with the city engineering department on the crosssection of four street what that look like. Um, I kind of came with that and I should have probably mentioned this before, you know, mixeduse mill works to some degree is modeled after Riverstone, uh, Kendall Yard in Spokane. Again, that that overall mixed use development. Um, again, a roundabout that we worked extensively with the city, the city engineers on. We wrapped up about a year ago. Some cool drone pictures that always fun to take and take a look at. Significant investment. Uh we continue to work with the engineers and particularly uh Bob Seal on the extension of Idaho Street uh from fourth to third with that rail crossing which we think is instrumental and a huge benefit to the city as part of your transportation master plan providing that connectivity and reducing some impacts to Spokane Street and Bay Street. So kudos to Bob and his efforts with Burlington Northern on on that effort. Uh again our um our clock tower that we installed last year and had a ribbon cutting on that and u one of the u another public art piece that I think we

developed concepts brought some concepts in front of the agency the council and ultimately built it. I think it's a good addition. Kudos to my partner here Ryan Rufforn. Ryan's an architect as well and played a big part in that as well. Um this is kind of where we're at tonight is the next phase of the building, the mill works. Uh it's continuation of what we've seen already. Um this is this is kind of an upscale um apartments. Um again, the east side of this block will include first floor uh commercial space as well. But as you can see, these are very attractive buildings. fourstory uh elevator on the higher end of the marketplace probably for uh retirees um uh empty nesters u that type of it is a nice product and will add substantial value ultimately to the city again very very attractive units and so there's kind of something for everybody within the mill works with that I'm going to turn it over to Cole Cole has a really good grasp of the rightway uh vacations and dedications and then we'll kind of wrap up with some questions. There you go. Howdy, council. Cole Henderson, JB JB engineers, um project engineer, uh for the site. And we kind of touched on these. These are kind of the three different portions of vacations that we're looking at tonight. And so picture's worth a thousand words. And we've kind of already seen this one a little bit before. John's stole it or took it a little bit, so we don't need to rehash it too much. Um, we even show a road section of 4th Avenue and it kind of really lays out what we're proposing for this road. It's a little bit different as you guys already discussed. Um, having the swale in between the par

the angled parking and the sidewalk, which we do think that this captures the look and feel of the downtown of Post Falls where you can kind of park right there and not have to walk through that swale. we are accommodating for the storm drainage improvements that are needed for the soil. We do think it fits really nicely with the drive aisle on the east side of this development. Um we do have a zoom in here on a couple slides that kind of shows that portion of 4th Avenue and we can dive into those details to make sure we're kind of accommodating everything we need to on the engineering front. Um to touch on some of the things, you know, why we're vacating this and the stuff that you were talking about before, we're planning how we can meet all the city's needs for these roadway utilities and everything. So, with this development, you guys will not need this. And that's what we're trying to kind of show here. We can kind of get this on the the taxpayer dollars and whatnot. It's not going to be rightway. It's just another benefit for the city. Um, we think this slide to kind of show it is it's 80 feet of rideway just to the east and then it transitions to 100 ft. So, when we look at this road section of what we're proposing here, we want to kind of make it an even 90 ft here. And that accommodates this road section that we have. It's really 83 feet. um of improvements that we have from back of sidewalk to back of sidewalk and that fits snugly very well within 90 feet. So, we're kind of saying we do not need a 100 feet. Rob Paulus touched on you have an additional turn lane as you get west of Lincoln. Um and that matches what the city center or um the transportation master plan. We're not needing a turn lane here. So, that matches the city center parking plan just having two through lanes. Um, so our plan is to make it 90 ft on the west and we do have plans already for the roadway that will be built through to Idaho. Um, and you know, we are showing that that's going to need, you know, an extra 10 ft there. And so this will be developed by the same developer. They're going, you know, as you can see with all the phases that have been done before, this is a well-versed developer and they

already have plans and concept for that next phase. And with the engineering department, that will be a requirement for those improvements as needed when they develop this out. Perhaps a silly question that I probably should ask Rob. Are you doing both sides of the street or just the south side? We're just doing the south side. That's what's required when you kind of do development. It's just your frontage. Also have the north side of the street like illuminated for us. Yeah. Okay. And we're trying to show what would be the full roadway section. So, we're doing our due diligence of planning like here's what would be You only have five minutes left and my question was answered. So, keep going.

Go faster. Um, this is that zoom in that kind of shows where we're at. If we have the 90 ft, this center of this roadway again, 83 feet of improvements. So, half of that road would be 41.5 ft. So, we are shifted to the south side a smidge giving on the north side of the road, it's still seven extra feet between the 83 feet of improvements needed. We have 90 ft of rideway. That seven extra feet is all given on the north side of the road from back of sidewalk to the rightway to the north. So the rideway on the south lines up with the back of the sidewalk. So this zoom up kind of shows how that would be developed fully in the future. And again, we're just building out that south side and that's what's responsible for that developer. And then that uh section in green to the east, you know, as that would be built out in the next phase of development would be dedicated to kind of match that even line that we have here. Um we're really far into this plan honestly. We've already submitted plans. There's two different um plan sets that we have into your uh your city planning and engineering departments right now. So the area in blue shows the terrace west and then for the area in green it's the railroad avenue. Um so we already have these fully done 100% engineered plans into the city. So, they're under the review process right now and it'll likely go back and forth with your engineering department and other departments with the city um to get that fully flushed out. But showing you guys, you know, this is a well-versed developer um dedicating this roadway for city infrastructure and whatnot. So, these couple slivers of property trying to show you guys that we don't believe they are needed for the infrastructure um that we're proposing and all this development and that's why we think can be vacated. Um, this is uh one that we haven't really touched on too much. This is just another jog in Lincoln where it does jog 10 feet over and we're kind of showing um for the section to the south u to jog at just 10 feet back because really that

section of rideway isn't going to be needed for the um improvements of Lincoln Street. Um here's kind of a summary. Um we don't need to kind of read this verbatim. Um, basically the gist is we're we're kind of seeking um the vacation of these three portions of property and just kindly request acceptance from the council and appreciate your guys' time and we'll stand for questions. Has no bearing on my decision tonight, but parcel 4 was it? What's going to go there? Um, or no, part there's a boundary line adjustment that's still in the works right now. So, parcel six. Oh, parcel six below the smiley face. There is a storm water swale. Okay,

that is planned for um a big portion of this development. So you don't see a big swale on parcel one because it's utilizing a lot of the area in parcel six and that is even planned kind of doing a master planning as well for parcels 2, three, four and five and buying in bulk with one large swell. So trying to kind of look into the future too to have a really wellversed plan for that whole area.

Okay, cool. Thanks. Further questions? All right. Thank you. Anyone wishing to speak? Thank you. Um Ted Petty Bone um wishing to speak in neutral. Come forward. I'm Ted Petty Bone. I'm with uh the Immaculate Conception Church. So, we own the block basically north of the property we're discussing on Fourth Avenue, goes all the way through to Fifth and it goes between Idaho and Lincoln. And so, we submitted the question of, you know, are you going to proportion whatever we give up on the south side and give some of that benefit, I guess, to the north, uh, which which would be, uh, IC's property. And the real question there is, and I see the diagrams with the swailes and the parking and all that, we just want to make sure this isn't going to end up overburdening or putting any more burden on what the eventual property owner on the north side would have to incur to develop that property in terms of the size of the swailes, the parking, and what would fall on that land owner um that would eventually own the own the property. So I, you know, what I've seen now, I'm kind of neutral. You know, it seems reasonable to to us. Uh we just want to make sure there's not a kicker that's going to be down the line where it's like, okay, now whoever invests and

builds out our property. Uh now there's going to be a surprise. So I don't know if we can if there's any way to answer that. Uh but that was really the thrust of our comment. All right. Thank you. Does the applicant wish to to rebut or add any color to that?

Yeah, I can just add to that. It's a great comment and I think um what we're showing matches pretty similar to the city center parking plan. So, it's not like what we're doing here is something way above and beyond and typically would be mirrored on the north. And those improvements again would probably incur a very similar cost to what you'd see in our city center parking plan. So I I don't think there's any kicker that would kind of come later. We're kind of showing this conceptually just to show spatially how it would fit. Um but I I don't believe that that borders them anymore. So thank you.

I don't see before you close want to get staff comment. I don't see anything that's being proposed that would uh in any way add any extra burden to the north side of the road. Could staff confirm that for us? It's the Rob show. You're getting some exercise today. Thank you for asking that, counselor.

All roads lead to Rob. Maybe it's a roundabout way to get to Rob. Um, from my perspective, and granted it's biased as being the city engineer looking out first for the city's interest and then and the public's interest, I don't see any additional burden to the properties to the north. The change is going from the linear swale to the midblock swale with the ball out. And that could be a matter of just perspective of one person versus another as to whether or not that is a significant change or whether or not that'd be a burden or not. my my opinion from a land use standpoint with engineering and with the way this area is developing I don't see that as a additional burden

because the property owners to the north aren't going to have to add additional swailes because they're going to a different type of swale on the south or they're not going to have to add additional parking because a couple spots they're going to be stuck with the same amount of swale area as the plan exists prior to today. Um they are going to be responsible for the widening of the roadway to put in the multi or the angled parking, the curb gutter and sidewalk and everything else that goes with it upon the redevelopment of that side. So that all stays the same. Yeah. This proposal changes none of that.

Yeah. Correct. What ends up changing is instead of the sidewalk on the north being up against the right of way where it exists, there's now about a 7 foot gap between the back of the sidewalk and the right ofway line. So that could open up the potential in the future that if that is not needed that that could be a future consideration of the city for possible vacation. We we would take that up as a need arose. Correct. We take that up in the future. I would recommend that that not be considered until we get to a point where there's significant redevelopment on the north to make sure that everything is going to work just fine. Agreed.

Upon the development of that property to the north, we would hold them to matching what the roadway is on the south side. Yes, that's what I would assume. That's my first question. Yes. Yes. Okay. And then Oh, turkeys. Oh, I was thinking that really could only benefit that property owner because they wouldn't have to spend engineering time sorting out what it is they're going to do. It's already set for them. Yeah. Conceptually, that helps them a little bit, but most of it, most of the engineering cost is getting the survey work of what's out there and drawing up the plans and putting it together. Unfortunately, just because you're mirroring the other side doesn't save you a lot in engineering costs.

Okay, then. Wish it was that easy. Yeah. Thank you. But I guess on that note, just as a side note, there isn't a requirement of them to mirror that exact same plan. Correct. Could they could still have the option of putting a linear swell along the north property line?

At this point, if they wanted to put a linear swale on the north side, that additional that remaining 7 feet is a little bit on the narrow side to fit in a linear swale. We have used seven and a half foot wide swailes on Mullen Avenue between Greens Ferry and State Highway 41 because we were restricted in the right ofway width there. So it is something that is possible. I would look at it a little bit um I'd be reluctant to go that direction because it makes it makes the swailes tend to be a little bit steep and more difficult to maintain and it will get more difficult to put street trees in seven and 1/2 ft. We really would like to see I mean we allow for six feet but when you have a swale in there uh six feet of flat area is better if you have a swale you really need to have about 8 to 10 feet for the trees.

Think perhaps maybe they wouldn't have 9 foot sidewalk requirement or something that could be talked about at that point.

There is the potential depending upon what the development is we can go back in and look and say do we still need a 10-ft sidewalk in that area. There'd also be the potential that depending upon what would redevelop on the north side and how we look at parking however many years down the future, maybe we look and say, "Yeah, let's put in parallel parking on the north side instead of angled." There's that potential, but right now our plan is for angled parking on both sides. to the to the comment that was in the concern of immaculate conception then it really sounds like from what I'm hearing so just to state it another way because there's a lot of conversation here it sounds like any impact would more than likely be positive and in their favor in the future

I would agree with that okay Mr. Petty bone. Does that answer your concern? Thank you. All right. Any other questions before I close the public hearing? All right. Public hearing is closed. Ready for a motion or further discussion? I would move to approve the Millworks Vacation VAC-26-1 and direct staff to bring back an ordinance at a future meeting. Second. Motion in a second. Further discussion. Roll call, please. Mosby. I. PL. I. Ziggler. I Malloy. Hi, Luca. I Stiglader. I motion passes. Thank you. Thank you.

All right, we are done with public hearings. On to um unfinished business. First action item, Westwood Water Distribution Replacement Phase One, recommendation of award.

Okay. 15 years maybe. Well, no one wants to see my presentation, I guess. That is just okay.

How many slides is it though? Cuz like really

12 and it covers two of your uh two of your items. So, both the Westwood uh both the Westwood items are covered in this presentation. Uh introduce myself, Jackson Fleshman, project manager, city of PL Falls. Um tonight, I will be be presenting a recommendation to award as well as a construction services management agreement with uh or for our Westwood water distribution project phase one. Some background. Our water division maintains a pipeline replacement fund that came as a recommendation from our 2018 water system master plan. Uh this program recommends approximately 1% of system replaced yearly. That's a 100red-year plan. So percent a year. Uh the area we are talking about tonight specifically was selected due to a mixture of things mainly infrastructure age and condition but also some considerations from operations staff who have been in the area. Um it's one of the more heavily um operations needing area for fixes and things of the like project map. So where are we talking about? So the area is the Pine Villa subdivision east of Ponderosa Elementary. So that map to the right will kind of indicate exactly where we're at within the city. Um Ponderosa Elementary being there on the bottom left is a landmark you can you can look to. Uh I would like to note so phase one is the highlighted area. Um the whole project phase one and two is the red lines. The highlighted area is what we're talking about tonight. I have another map on the next slide that is helpful for you guys to see exactly what phase one is, but this is a larger picture so you guys can see where we're at. Um for this project, we'll be replacing about 56 5700 feet of of water mane. Uh, and that will also include the services and meters for each individual resident that lives out here. Um, there's about 74 of them, I believe.

Um, same slide, just a different picture for um, council to see, bit better orientation. So, north is facing to your right now. Um, but Westwood Drive, San Piper Loop, Pinewood Drive, and Ponderosa Boulevard down to Ross Point Road is where we will be. handful of project considerations here. Uh especially with the location Ponderosa Elementary, uh we identified that fairly early and because of the traffic from the elementary school on Ponderosa Boulevard, we defined it within our contract that the contractor needs to schedule that work to occur during summer months so that it doesn't affect the school. Um neighborhood access is something that we also look to mitigate any construction impacts. So during construction, the contractor is not allowed to put some of their piping on this road, some of their piping over here. They need to keep it contained so that way that the neighborhood is impacted in the the least amount possible. Um not to mention safety. So pedestrians, motorists, dogs, um we want to make sure there's no open trenches at the end of the day. So lots of provisions in there for safety. Um, another consideration we wanted to make with this project, uh, is to have our water staff directly involved. This streamline the streamlines the process a little bit because typically they're involved anyway with our customers that get taken offline. Customers will inevitably be taken offline for a short time while their new service and meter is hooked up. Um but specifically why it helps to have our water staff involved. They can communicate directly with our customers um people that they see daily that they know are going to take care of them, not just a contractor who's in the area. It also ensures some quality and customer satisfaction as well. Um customers know that they're they're getting a quality product from their their water department, not just a contractor.

So the two separate items tonight are the construction award to Livier as well as the construction management services agreement with Century West. This first one is for Larvier. They came in as the lowest responsive bidder at $1,230,895. Uh we are requesting a 10% contingency for the total ask to be 1,353,984.50. The engineer's estimate was 2.2 million and some change. So, a bit higher than what bids came in at, but worth noting there were nine total biders and five of which were within 9% of our low bid. And I'll give you guys just a moment to to take a peek at these, but Lurier is at the very bottom. They are the low responsive bidder. The next bidder was actually very close at 30 30,000 more. Um and then the next four biders above that were within about 100,000. So we still feel that we got good competitive pricing. And then on the construction management side of things, so the highlighted portion is what the request tonight is for. The two lines above were the design portion which is now complete. The design contract was $100,000 and we requested a 10% contingency there of $10,000. That is being retired is what we're calling it. We're just giving it back, not using it as the or for the construction management services contract. Um we're requesting a new completely separate 10% contingency there. Um that contract is $226,200 with the contingency we're requesting. The total request is for $248,820. Um, we do intend to bring back a future

presentation for phase 2 design at a future date. Um, here's a few example photos of what residents, customers could could likely expect. Um, this is some waterline, a previous project that the city did a few years ago. And some next steps. So, we do have a community open house April 16th from 5 to 7:00 in the rotunda uh for residents, customers of the area to come and ask all the questions they would like. Um there will be a Facebook post on this tomorrow. Phase one construction, we will we plan to start, this is all presuming award, uh plan to start summer of 2026 and we anticipate a May 15th start date. Um phase 2 design would occur throughout this fall looking to bid into the winter um early 27 and then phase two construction we would anticipate summer of 27. Any questions?

What the bid amount was for a million and some change? Correct. 1.2 million. But then you have highlighted tonight's request is only $200,000. Yes. So uh two requests uh the two items on your packet. The first one is the uh notice to award for Lurvier that is the 1.353984 their bid. Yes, that's what you're asking for. Okay. Yes. And then there's another contract for construction management services with our consultant. That is the the 248 number. But in item one, we are committing to the 2.1 million. We're just not paying it right now.

No. No. No, no, no, no. The the the low bid is is one is 1.23. I'm sorry. 1.2. I've Yep. Yes. 1.2. That we're committing to it, but we're only paying presently 200,000. Item A is the 1.3539450 up there. Item B is the 232. Yeah, but we're not for CMS. Um, yeah, I I I can elaborate a little more. So, the this one specifically, this is for the contractor, right? We're not paying this right now. We're agreeing to the contract or we're paying this right now. As construction would be completed, we would issue issue payment.

And then so how is what is the 200? This is for our consultant services during construction. Yes, it is. Okay. Yes. Consultants and is not part of the million dollar. No, unfortunately it is not. Sorry. Just Nope. That's Can you just highlight all the money that we're going to spend next presentation so that Yeah. Okay. Great. Thank you. Of course. Yeah. I I was trying to differentiate between the design. You did a great job, which is why I was confused. No, what uh any other questions? Oh, sorry. Oh, I do have one more. Can you go back to the picture just before this? Uh yeah. Is most of our water mane under the roadway or under private property?

In that picture, it's a little bit hard to tell which one. I would certainly uh default that question to Rob Paulace. However, I I'm fairly confident that most of our water line is within the roadway. Okay, great. Thanks. All water lines lead to Rob Paul. Yeah, I'm good. That's all I have. Thanks. Yeah, perfect. Right away. Any other questions? Yes. In regard to the bidding and the engineers estimate that, you know, I did notice that there were quite a few bids all around the same pricing, but the engineers estimate seems very high

way way higher. So I'm curious or maybe you can explain how do we did we bid this right? Do we did we give a good scope because that seems like a quite a a difference between those numbers.

I agree. Yes. Um I do believe we we bid it within scope to to use that term. Um things are very competitive right now. So, you guys will actually be seeing another another request to award um our Selty Sway project here at the next council meeting. That was about a $10 million estimate and that one came in at about five. Um we're seeing a very very competitive bid market right now, which is which is good. Um and I guess to answer in the best way that I can, something that we look for is the low bid was that 1.23 and we see that there's a handful of people that are close to that. So that gives us confidence that we're not just totally off the rails as it pertains to the engineers estimate. And I'm going to steal something that John says all the time. Maybe it's at a planning level. Um but an engineer's estimate can be anywhere from half to double

which is always everyone's favorite thing to hear. I could have that job being a weatherman just pretty good at predicting things like this to me. Yeah. So, um I I will say we're we're confident moving forward and we're I think pleasantly surprised with with bid pricing comparative to our estimates from our engineers, but we budgeted for the 2.2 million. So, if that was the price, we would have been able to pay it, I believe. So, so where does the where does the remaining money go? John's going to take this one for me. Slush fund.

Slush fund. Good evening, John Bechum, public works director. It does not go to a slush fund. It goes to our pipeline replacement fund. Okay. So, it just stays there as Yeah. And so, if this happened year over year over year where estimates were way higher than what we had anticipated in the financial plan when we redid the financial plan, we would be able to do lower rate increases or even um rate decreases at some point. Okay. If that happened year-over-year. And there, as Jackson said, there's a lot of uncertainty in the financial planning that goes into a 5 to 20year plan. So, this is a win in the book of uncertainty. They're not all wins, unfortunately.

Okay. Thanks, John. Um, who does the engineers estimate? Is that a contracted engineer or internal engineer? A contracted engineer. So, um, it's on his slide here. Century West is the consultant for this one. So they are contracted to do an engineers estimate at a couple phases of the project. This is the one that was done most recently before construction. And that helps us to make sure that we're as we go through budgeting, we have the right amount of money allocated for the project. We're not we haven't thought we were biting off a million dollar project and it's actually three. So that's really where that information is most helpful.

I guess we can't throw too much mud at them because a politician's estimate is usually about a tenth of the cost. So I I will say in defense of these estimates, if you follow construction pricing, things over the last I'll say eight years have been all over the board and they're doing their best. I'll say I I don't know that we could do better. I'm not sure other engineering firms could do better. There's just a lot of uncertainty in the construction market right now. I'm not sure anyone anticipated the competitive nature of the bids we've seen last couple weeks. I don't know how long they'll last either. then let's bid for more like Yeah.

And not long ago, you know, an engineers estimate that was made in January of 2020 was about 40% of what it ended up being in 2021. So, it it works both ways depending on what's going on in I like this way better. Yeah, me too. I like it a lot better.

I don't know, John. Any projects we need to escalate now that it's we're in this environment. Uh it the engineers estimate is a good gut check for the number, but I would caution against using it to using it too closely because you you can make bad decisions by the engineers's estimate. Um and in this case, if we had trimmed the project back to be within a million dollar budget, we would have not made a good decision if you look at it. So they're an estimate. They're something they're a planning level cost. They're they should be a little better than the the master plan level costs, but still 30% 40% is pretty typical for an engineer estimate.

Thank you. Thank you. I will say uh not to steal Andrew's thunder, but we do have a couple projects out of it, so we are we're working on it. Okay. Okay. Further questions? All right, looks like we've got two motions to to float here. I would move to approve the Westward Westwood water distribution replacement phase one recommendation of award. Second. Motion in a second. Further discussion. Roll call, please. Blue. I. Ziggler, I. Malloy, I. Luca, I. Stigleer, I.

Mosby, I. Motion passes. Thank you. Thank you, councel. I move to approve the Westwood water distribution replacement phase one construction management services agreement. Second. Motion in a second. Further discussion. Roll call, please. Ziggler, I. Malloy. Hi. Luca, I. Stigleer. I. Mosby. Hi. Poo. I. Motion passes. Thank you. Uh, does anybody need a recess before we move on to new business? We'll call a fivem minute recess.

All right, we'll return to order. And next up, new business, contract with Matrix for an Americans with Disabilities Act Transition Plan.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. I'm John Beichon, public works director. Uh, I will note I'm giving this presentation, but this is really a team effort. This project has been uh helped along by folks from parks and engineering and community development. Uh our project team as we go forward will be led by Rob Pollace uh with help from Shannon our clerk who's also our ADA coordinator. Is that the coordinator? And as well as from myself so a cross departmental group that will be implementing this project. Uh I'll talk a little bit about what we're doing in broadstrokes and then about this specific project and how we got to where we are. Talk a little bit about the financial implications of the project, what our recommendation is and any next steps. So uh 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act commonly called ADA governs a lot of things that need to be um built and um put in place to ensure access for everyone in the country. Uh so this isn't just what you think of as ADA ramps. This is also our policies. This is our activities, things like that. Um it is noted that immediate continued perfect compliance is probably not going to occur as with the passage of this bill in 1990. So one thing that is allowed is you can do a transition plan where you look and see where you're deficient and then have a a programmed approach to remedy those deficiencies. uh that is in contrast to doing nothing until you are uh found to be not in compliance with the law which is not allowed. So u a transition plan is one way to um demonstrate that you are doing the things you need to do under this act.

Is that what you consider this? Yes, this this project is the transition plan the uh inventory and transition to uh plan to transition to compliance across the city. So, we don't currently have a transition plan in place for all this.

We do currently have a transition plan in place, but it is from 2008. So, a lot of the activities have been completed, which is great, but the plan, it's obviously dated. It needs updated. So, which is why we're here today. So, a little bit of the history of this. We requested $40,000 optimistically for the FY25 budget. And uh as you recall from our budget amendment for this year, we carried that money over to double it to $80,000 for this year. Um that was intended to more closely match the funding we needed. However, when we requested proposals in early fiscal year 26, uh you you'll see later in my slides, it's still well short of the money for an ADA transition plan. That being said, we requested proposals in late 2025 and interviewed uh I think we got six proposals. We interviewed three different firms. There were several really good firms. Matrix was the one who provided the um best proposal in terms of cost and the best proposal in terms of services for the city. U a mix of those two things. They weren't the lowest price. They weren't the highest price, but the services they provided with the price they offered was a really good match. Sorry if I'm jumping the gun, but the prior plan that was completed in 2008, is the scope of this new proposal include those same reviewing those same facilities that have not yet been done or was that plan in '08 adequate for those and we're only looking for things that have been built since then or weren't covered in the 2008 scope?

Yeah, this plan will completely replace the 2008 plan. So, we're not going to try to look at the the small subset of things in that plan that still need to be carried forward. It's more just a complete inventory of all of our programs, doing the whole thing over again. Yes. And I I don't think that's necessarily wasteful. I think it would almost be more effort to try to include

what's close to 20 year old findings in this current plan. Uh so um in terms of the project, we are recommending breaking this project into phases for budgetary reasons. As I mentioned, we have $8,000 in this year's budget. Um so phase one is what we're talking about today. That project will involve doing all the uh planning for how we're going to receive the data, which may seem like a a small endeavor, but we want this to be a GIS-based deliverable so that we end up with a map on our GIS system that we can use going forward so we can draw a box around seven projects and do all these at once.

Uh that also involves field investigations and community outreach. The field investigations are the primary uh cost driver where that's where you are physically inspecting a lot of the facilities. Uh they have uh machines that can go on the sidewalks to check the pitch of the sidewalks and and so they there are a lot of cool things they can do to make that efficient, but there's just a lot to look at in terms of all of our buildings and facilities and public rights of way, which is the scope of the project. I will say there is an off-ramp in phase one in the event we do not fund phase two in next year's budget which would stop data collection and develop a plan based on what we've learned with a recommendation that we come back and do another plan to fill in the the gaps at some future time when funding is available. So does that part make sense? I feel like that that's an important piece and I'm happy to answer questions on it. the completion of the work which would be um at this point in fiscal year 27 would involve a policy review. So that's some of the the paperwork exercises that would be in this project done in the less great weather months. So it's good timing, good efficient use of staff for them. Uh more community outreach and then the actual consolidation of the plan into uh both the inventory of things that need done and the prioritized list. And there's a lot of uh public outreach that goes with that too. Making sure that our priorities match those of the public.

What is data integration planning in that's what I was talking about where it's developing a system where the data they give us is going to be something that goes into our GIS system our our geospatial information system if we get a work product even if phase two doesn't go through. Is that

Yes. That's where I'm talking about the offramp. So we would um currently in phase one most of the time is spent just collecting data with little analysis. We will know well before that's complete if phase two is not funded in which case we'll stop the data collection at a time when there's budget remaining to do the to give us a deliverable that we can use going forward. It won't be a complete deliverable but it'll be a workable one while we look for funding. Thanks. Uh, so I do want to talk about community outreach. That was another strength of Matrix. They um have a pretty good history of doing this and can provide us some guidance on how they will do that. So they've got some public meetings planned. They intend to make those accessible to folks with all sorts of disabilities that I'm I will probably learn about through the process but don't know about. So, it's not just the physical access that are easy to think about, but also some of the other disabilities folks might have that would prevent coming to a public meeting or um public speaking, for example. So, uh deliverables currently anticipated in this project but currently scheduled in phase two are several reports looking at the different elements of the project and then as I mentioned the GI GIS database. I do want to highlight that that was a key feature for this particular consultant. Most of the other consultants will sell you a proprietary tool to manage your inventory which you then license year after year after year. Uh they'll give you a couple years free which is nice but these are 20-year plans. So um and then the the final document is the formal thing called the ADA transition plan. It incorporates all the findings, the database of things that need addressed and a prioritized list of when we will in what order we will work on them. uh the financial summary. So cost of phase one is um almost $94,000. As I mentioned, our budget is $80,000. Those

two numbers don't line up perfectly. Uh we do believe there are um in other projects we were looking at taking on this year. Uh there is a $14,000 that we can reallocate to this project through um through budget transfers from one line to another. Um the full project cost is about $190,000. That's the uh that will be the full contract value with matrix if we award phase 2 at a future time. So our recommendation is to move forward with this. It is a lot more expensive than what we thought it was going to be in the first place. That being said, it is important work and it is important to get it started even if we're not able to bite the the full project off at this time with the budget we available. Can you just clarify that GIS it was part of phase one but then it gets pushed into phase two? Um would we still get that if we took the offramp for phase two?

Yeah. So yes, I'd be happy to elaborate on that. Good question. The data integration planning is what I mentioned in phase one. That is planning how we're going to get that data. So it it's actually more complicated than you just get a a file and you upload it to your GIS system. So currently we're not anticipating getting a GIS deliverable in phase one. Okay. However, if we take that offramp, we would we would get a GIS deliverable of the information they had gathered so far. So it won't be the complete rideway, it'll be the portion they studied. It won't be all of our facilities. It'll be the portion they studied. Does that make sense? Yep.

Great. Other questions on that? I the the phasing of this feels complicated, so I'm happy to answer as many questions as you have.

My question is not about the phasing of it. That makes sense to me. I guess my question is maybe underlying of we're going to spend $190,000 to develop a plan to mitigate any deficiencies in compliance with an policy that is 36 years old. So, I'm assuming that any of those deficiencies would be constructed prior to 1990. No, I think there are a number of ways that a deficiency can develop. So, yes, if they were constructed prior to 1990, that's one way. Um, sidewalks don't stay flat. So, a lot of deficiencies can accumulate in that way. Uh, policies we've developed, uh, maybe with the best of intentions, but are not found to be in current in compliance with the current interpretation of the law. I think um I might punt a Warren a little bit on this, but the interpretation of the Americans with Disabilities Act has also changed over the course of its existence. So something that wasn't previously considered to be a deficiency might be under the current interpretation. I know that is the case with pedestrian facilities at U intersections. That has changed immensely in the the 10 years I've known about it even. So I mean obviously would have been built to ADA standards at the time but since that has been updated

we have to come up to compliance. Correct. And so is the requirement of the federal government that mandates the ADA that every municipality look at every one of their existing constructions every time technology increases or this policy is re-evaluated and update every piece of their infrastructure to meet that. As I understand it, the the law says you must be in compliance with this at all times. However, if you're not, a transition plan is a way to get there. And quick answer is yes. Okay.

So, it's this is part of an ongoing obligation every city, every governmental entity has to be in compliance with the ADA, which as John alluded to, that's a number of ways you can be out of compliance. Um, ultimately the hammer is you might have the Department of Justice come knock on your door. That happened to the city of Moscow probably 10 years ago. They do a full-blown inspection for you and the and you find yourself getting this nice little compliance audit with an order to comply that directs your budget to be spent in various ways to comply with the ADA. So, that's a place you don't want to get to. This is frankly just another form of master planning that we need to do every so often so that we know that we're in compliance and we're keeping up with our obligations.

And so why is it that these evaluations are not part of our other master plans as we have many of them including a facility's master plan? So I would say that they this is a separate um separate idea. So, our transportation master plan is looking at moving cars and people around people on sidewalks. People on sidewalks, but it's not necessarily looking at the condition of those sidewalks or the condition of the streets. It's looking at the capacity of them. So, we we have projects then in the city based on our master plans that we build and we don't look at ADA requirements when we do that. Definitely not. So, when we build a project, we are building it to all the current codes. Okay.

And that is something that we task our engineers and architects with. So, um, the recent facility upgrades here at city hall were specifically designed to be in compliance with ADA, except that you said that part of the evaluation of this would be things that prohibit um, disabled residents from coming in public speaking at that podium. So then that would be a consideration that wasn't done when we upgraded this. So I think what I was saying when I was talking about folks who uh might have a disability that makes public speaking difficult is the outreach plan that matrix the consultant would do is looking at ways for folks who

maybe um mentally or emotionally aren't able to come speak publicly would still be able to give their input to the plan and those are considered disabilities that are protected by this policy.

That is my understanding. I have real concern. I have real concerns with this request. I think that it's really great that we do it, but this seems like something that we the scope of it seems very large for the amount of money. Well, not for the amount of money. I think that's why the amount of money is so huge, but we look at so many of these things in all of our other master plans. We're constantly I mean, we're constantly building new things, talking about our facilities master plans and what we're doing. And I just I can't imagine that a lot of this isn't already evaluated there and that maybe we could bring the scope in and thus bring the money into the specific areas that you're talking about that we need to look at that we aren't evaluating all of the time. Like when we build a park and our parks master plan, surely we look at all of this and think, "Oh, uh Robbie's not here tonight." But even our new baseball field is like specifically being developed to be used for people with many disabilities, right? So I feel like there's a lot of redundancy here and it shows in how big that number is.

I think the main point of of my understanding why we're doing this is you're exactly right. When we do build something, that was partly my question too. It is up to ADA standards and then two years from now they change the standard. So then we have to determine if if all that we already did is up to the current standard. That is a crazy expectation of us, right? Absolutely. And I think it's just another example of how federal programs you think they're a great not that the ADA is a bad idea, but it just continues to grow and that's how programs never die. So we need to do this every 20 years. Is that what the cycle is then? You said 2008 was the last one, right?

Correct. I I think a best practice is probably more frequent than 20 years. Um but they need to be done on an ongoing basis. Is there a requirement for the transitional plan to be in place in a certain time frame like an updated one? I so we are not under any current order from Department of Justice as Warren mentioned to do this plan. It is something that we are proactively selecting to do. um that that is when you would receive a deadline. It's my understanding is if there was an a complaint investigation. Um

there's nothing in the code or the act that specifies if if you're not 100% compliant with current ADA requirements and you then default to a transitional plan. There is no requirement for that update. I I am not familiar enough with the code to answer that. I don't know if anyone in the wings does. I am not familiar enough with the code to answer that. So essentially the deadline was decades ago because this was adopted in 1990 and so you essentially you had to have one in place

with after the bill passed but then you keep one in place moving forward and so that becomes this is like like an ongoing master planning effort. So until you're fully compliant, always you need to essentially make sure that you're staying in compliance and making sure that you're evaluating each of your programs, each new program that you're adding, each new uh change. So your website needs to be ADA compliant. So you're every new service program facility needs to be evaluated on an ongoing basis

which seems which sounds like why it would be a better idea that it lives within each project and we like keep track of that like that our policy states that with every project we do this and we do a master plan like this only to look at things that are

well I think again I think it's just a great example of of federal circular reasoning of we're going to require you to be 100% compliant all the time until we change it tomorrow and then you're also required 100% and then the next day. So, it's just an ongoing process. It is surprising to me that there isn't a kind of a stipulation of how frequently the transition plans need to be in place, but it sounds like it could be whenever they make the decision to change any specifics of the act. So,

I I do think it's one area where we have some discretion where we can say our current plan is in place. We've been working on it. that we've been doing improvements. It's no longer serving as well to guide us on our projects and we would be better suited to have a new plan that maybe we're not doing the lowest priority projects from 2008 just to complete that plan. We look at what the new priorities might be.

So, we have to have a plan, which is what it sounds like. There's no getting out of that. Is there a way that we can I I hate looking at you and asking this, sorry, but do we have to like do all of the fun expensive things like have a robot drive our sidewalks and or give you your GIS because it's just quite expensive. Yeah. So again, my understanding the robot is the less expensive option rather than having a person with a level and a ruler checking the side slopes on all the sidewalk. Okay. Okay. So, the the robot can sense the pitch of it, whereas an engineer with a a level and a ruler, which is literally the other way you check it, is going to be far more expensive. Okay. Um,

is there a plan where we could knock some items off to make it cheaper is really what I'm asking. So I in some ways I think that's what we're doing by breaking it into phases. But we could um so so as an example if we knew today that phase 2 is not going to be funded in fiscal year 27. The plan we would move forward with is collect good amount of useful data on we probably looked at matrix to recommend what they would which portion of the data they would collect and then we would write the report based on that study. So it could be on the right

what is portion of data does that mean portion of town or specific buildings? Probably we would break it into a program. So we would either look at public rights of way, so the sidewalks, roads, that sort of thing, or look at parks facilities and city facilities, um public public facilities. Um so it's probably all of the city for a subset of the things that we would look at otherwise. So if we did that, we would still be in compliance if we only looked at a small piece of the city. I can't answer that. I So probably not. Yeah,

because you're only then looking at a subset of your programs and facilities. So, you could potentially say we're in compliance for those subset we've looked at, but you would not be in compliance for the rest. Could we look at the things that don't already evaluate these ADA standards every time we do something like the sidewalks? So, I don't know. for what you're suggesting to incorporate it into a master plan. Yeah.

We would basically be taking the same cost of this and adding it to the individual master plans. So, if we did a parks master plan, they would take the parks portion of this ADA study, add it to their existing master plan or what the master plan contract would be anyway, and we would get a deliverable on that subset of the facilities we own. That's not what I'm asking for. My assumption is that it's already in the parks master plan because how could it not be?

So, it it's not something that's analyzed in any of our master planning documents. The the full compliance with the ADA is, as an example, there's a the handrail behind you right there. Our facilities plan didn't look at that handrail to see if it had the returns on the end of it and the height compared to the stairs. It only looked at whether this room was sufficiently large for the number of folks who would be in it. But when we built it, we would have to have followed ADA standards, right? Because that would have been like the requirement to build it.

So I think the the nuance there is every time we build something, we do build it to ADA standards. That by itself is not sufficient to show that you are in compliance with the act. So you have to do more than just meet the code every time you build something new. And and you could see that making sense, especially in a city that wasn't growing, wasn't building things. They would say, "Well, we'll build it to ADA standards when we when we build a new thing. We're just not going to build a new thing for 20 years, so nothing will get better." That's that's not really a plan to come into compliance with the act,

I guess. Which is why I'm asking that instead of evaluating every single thing in the city, we only evaluate those things that have that have not been part of the master plans that already exist that have had the ADA Well, I don't think you can really put ADA in the master plan because the master plan's looking out 20 years. So, who knows what the ADA is going to require 20 years from now. So, in a master plan, it says in 10 years, we're going to build this. Yeah. Two ADA standards at the time that we build it, right?

You have no idea what the ADA standards are going to be. So, you can't put that into the master plan because you have no idea what the future's going to hold. So, it can't happen at the master planning phase because that's looking way out. The the ADA is looking what's like right now. So this is only this plan has no future forward looking. It is only what exists right now and how you're going to change it tomorrow. That's correct. That's all it could be. And it's a look back. So even if it was in compliance 10 years ago

10 years ago, the question is is it still in compliance? My question I have the same heartburn over spending money on this. It's not that I don't want us to be in compliance. Um, but I'm wondering with this amount of money what is what is the risk of not doing it would be the legal question? I mean you you mentioned uh Warren that you could get draw the eye of federal agencies. How often does that happen? How egregious does it have to be for you to get there? I mean, obviously, we're attempting to be compliant. We build buildings to ADA standards. It's part of everything that we do. And we do have a plan. It's just old, but we're still executing on that plan, right? That 2008 plan. We're still trying to get those things done that we identified in 2008. So, what is the risk of not doing anything?

It didn't come on. Sorry about that. So, the risk is significant. you could end up in a compliance order with the with the feds. There's also, frankly, private rights of action. You could have people come in and sue you and and there are folks out there that that's how they make their living.

Um, it is so there is significant risk. the it's been a number of years since I've dug into this with any depth, but I I'm aware of a couple of scenarios where millions and millions of dollars annually were having to be set aside towards ADA compliance, which is not an insignificant thing. Um, as well as then paying attorney's fees and other things on top of it. I don't know that we're we're not that big of a city. So, we're not going to have as much liability as say a Sacramento or a Seattle. We're not we're not in that level just because we don't have the same amount of infrastructure, but it could dwarf your budget. This number is a small number compared to your potential liability down,000 good faith effort.

It only takes one person in the city to file something of course that could be very expensive to comply with this year. um right now,

but but do we also run the risk of all right now we're producing a report that tells them all the ways we're not in compliance? So then they could just go down the list and say that sidewalk, oops, you know, I'm suing over that one and this bathroom. I'm Does this report mitigate that by saying that we've identified it? We're trying to comply as best we can within the budget concerns that we have enough that it offsets that risk. That is one of the major reasons to do the report is it you are under the act you are allowed to prioritize your projects. So if you have a plan and you have a known deficiency but you weren't able to prioritize it yet having that plan is somewhat of a shield for someone saying that you haven't yet u upgraded that. It's It's a little counterintuitive that inventorying it would be a shield, but that's that's how it's intended to work. No,

I mean, I could see that it could be. The question is, is it? And you know, if it is, it makes a lot more sense. Then $200,000 becomes a lot more palatable for a consultant. Um, and I think all of us also the the other side of this is I don't want to seem like we're callous. We're only talking about this in terms of numbers. like we do want to identify areas where people with disabilities can't access our services and fix those to the best we can. So there's value in that. I don't I don't want that to get lost in the translation of this. But in terms of the spending of the money, if we just looked at it from a financial and legal perspective, helping demonstrate compliance in staff's view is worth the expenditure of money because of the risk of not demonstrating recent attempts at compliance. Is that correct?

Yes, I would agree agree with that statement. Mr. Re, please don't misunderstand me. I'm not advocating that we don't support ADA. I just feel very strongly that we have already done it quite significantly in every single project that we do and that's why I find it frustrating that we have to pay someone to go and look at the things that we've recently made that clearly are in even the recent interpretation of the law. I mean this building is this. How do you know that? Because like when was this redone? A year ago, two years ago. The room that we're sitting in and the one right there. But do you know if they changed anything with AMA in the ADA? in the ADA. Well, I mean, I guess they could have, but but we only redo it every 20 years, so two years.

I think that's exactly to me. It's like a it's a $10,000 a year insurance policy to keep the feds off of our back, which is I think more than worth it considering I mean, I think it's ridiculous the way that they move the goalpost, frankly. But, no, I think we're in agreement there. I also I mean, it's just when we're looking at tight funding, but you have the money you need to do this. So, you have the $13,000 somewhere else. You We could approve this and you've already got that. We have the money for phase one. And it it does seem like Rob would like to speak. All sidewalks lead to Yeah.

Members of the council, honorable mayor Rob Paul, city engineer. One of the things I think, you know, we're talking about, have we been building things to ADA compliance? We have to the best that we can.

Yes. One of the biggest changes that we've seen very recently was in November of 2023, the access board and the department of justice adopted the public rights of way accessibility guidelines that changed the standards on a number of things that we do. So you take stuff that was prior to late 2023, we were mostly in compliance, but we were not completely in compliance. And so now we don't know on a lot of the sidewalks that were done what is and isn't fully in compliance. We had adopted the draft proag and had been utilizing it. But over the course of almost 20 years before they adopted it, things did change. And so it is important. One of the weaknesses in our 2008 study was we did not do an in-depth analysis of our public rights of way and we do need to have an a feel for where the compliance is, where the compliance is not and especially having a plan as to how do we address the deficiencies that do come up and are found or how a resident or a visitor to the town who's utilizing a accessible route, if they have an issue, how do we get that onto to that transition plan to make sure that yes, it will be taken care of and here's how we prioritize that.

Sure, that makes sense. But I I really wanted you to know that we did have that major change at the federal level in 2023 that you seem aware of without a $190,000 report.

Well, I know what the rules and regulations are. The problem is if you ask me and to go out to certain parts of town, I can't tell you what's in compliance or not. And if someone comes to us with a complaint today, we would talk with the street department and say, "Hey, we have a problem here, but we don't have a compliance plan that says yes, this type of complaint is going to be handled in this manner and for the justice department to come back and I'm going to, you know, I can't give you legal advice, but from the engineering perspective, and I have taken a couple continuing education classes on this. So from the engineering perspective that transition plan is the insulation so that you so when the justice department comes in and says what have you been doing it's not well our policy is that we will go out and get the street department and when we have time we'll grind down that crack. It's like no here's our policy and we've got the complaint. We followed steps A, B, and C. It's being taken care of. Maybe not as fast as the complaintant wants, but it there is a policy and we have been following it.

Sure. I understand the $10,000 a year insurance policy um statement. I also think that it's worth having meaningful conversations about consultant plans that we do that seem ambiguous and odd that we don't do often because it is a concern of residents and it has been brought up even at the national level the use of consultants and how much money is being made off of doing different studies of different things. So while I know that I tend to look antagonistic in all of our conversations Yep. Okay, great. Um, it's it's not that I don't think that the city is doing meaningful work and I it's not that I don't think that we're doing a good job. It's actually that I think very strongly that we are and that I want to be very prudent about the money that we spend and how we spend it and who's telling us that whatever they're doing is worth that amount of money when we're trying to balance those two things. So, just just to be clear about that.

Yeah. Thanks. Thank you. There are more questions than I try to answer. I would like to ask you a question.

We know and have known for a long time that the ADA has been in place. This is an ongoing obligation. What steps have we taken to ascertain whether we can bring this in house and have departments have their own their own processes within their department for determining uh compliance like whether it's the streets uh checking to see if the streets are in compliance or whatever it is like why don't we have that as an in-house ongoing process where there's training there's education courses to make it a consistent I mean we know that this is going to be a constant obligation. Why are we not it seems a we're putting ourselves at risk to be constantly beholden to the the cost of whatever the consultants are. So I'm wondering what analysis have we done in that regard?

I I don't know that we've done a formal analysis of what it would look like to do this in-house. I think um the the scope of the the size of the fee that this consultant is proposing is in line with the size of fees we saw for others looking to do the same amount of work. So there's there's obviously markup anytime you hire a consultant. That being said, we would not have the bandwidth to do this holistically across the city in short of a couple years if we're adding it onto existing workloads. Um the I'm very serious the ruler and uh level method of checking sidewalks does work and that is what we would do if we received a complaint right now and and what we do if there is a complaint that's received. Our engineering staff goes out and investigates things. We are not experts and it would take time and money to make us into experts. That it's an intriguing idea especially when we have a plan that is um current and a little more updatable. Um the current plan we have is an Excel spreadsheet plan. It's it's what you'd expect from 2008. Um I I think the biggest answer to why we're not looking at doing that is just workload that would and and consistency. So if you do the same thing over 15 years, you're adding to it a little bit all the time, but are you still doing the same thing you started doing 15 years ago? And how do you keep that plan? What what starts as a small plan and and builds, how do you keep it prioritized and uh consistent across the so it could be done. It would be a a pretty significant lift. I think I I don't know that we would have this staff on staff right now to take that on um without not doing some other things.

Sure. Perhaps not a prepared a transition plan of this scale but I'm looking at it as a okay we need to prepare the whole you know the whole project now in this uh this multi-phase uh endeavor or is there some kind of thought process where we can take smaller bites and do it just have a more consistent sustainable approach over time especially as our city is growing and ADA is not going to go away. Maybe this is something to spread the load out among staff and to train staff over time so that we could reduce these kinds of costs instead of coming back in another 10-15 years when we've grown a lot to do a whole new transition plan which is probably going to cost twice as much.

Yeah. So, and then if we did, would that be cheaper than $10,000 a year? Exactly. It's the second cost. The additional wages for the staff and the training costs would be filtered into that. And hey,

may I mean it may give us better compliance because we wouldn't be waiting 20 years to find out. Yeah, I I would say we are investing in staff to understand these issues currently and that is across departments. So our our park staff, our engineering staff, our building official, our building department staff are familiar with ADA requirements. it is more a matter of taking that time to analyze each each piece of infrastructure and policy in a programmatic way to where you get a the the transition plan that would serve as the insurance policy if you will. Um

so like would that be an FTE in other words would be a question and now you're now you're looking at more than $10,000 a year

significantly. I I can't answer that without diving into it more, but putting it in the $10,000 a year category, it seems like it's a pretty good deal if we're able to hire a consultant for that. Um I So the way we use our expertise right now is really in implementing projects. So, um, when we're looking at designs for roads or, um, every time we do a overlay project, we need to bring all the ramps in that area up to current ADA standards. So, we're we're hiring contractors to do that work and then inspecting it to make sure that it it meets those standards. So, we do have some expertise. It's it's more of a workload question than it is a um staff know nothing about ADA and we have to hire experts to tell us what we did wrong.

And I have a follow-up question on that and this is maybe more for you Warren. Uh in regard to the nature of the transition plan, what is required? It sounded to me like what is required is more precise. Like there's a a sidewalk out of compliance. That better be a line item on the transition plan. Otherwise, you don't have a shield to protect you from an action based upon the sidewalk being out of compliance. Is that kind of

So, generically, you want to look at all of the services and facilities you provide and determine whether they're in compliance or out of compliance. You're invariably going to miss something. I mean, there's no one that's perfect, no one that gets it 100% accurate. But that's the goal is to essentially identify areas that you're out of compliance and identify a transition period and how you're going to correct those deficiencies over the life of the plan.

And so my followup to that would be, could a transition plan be a plan for we inspect this sidewalk for compliance on a quarterly basis with this person in this department and that would become our regularly scheduled almost like routine maintenance. to be routine ADA compliance. We check this sidewalk, we check that bathroom, and that confirms that this facility is ADA compliant on a quarterly basis or on a yearly basis. And that's the transition plan for all of our facilities. So then we don't have to have a consultant come do a top tobottom investigation. It's already on our transition plan for all of our facilities and policies. We're going to review it at this time. We're going to inspect it at this time. And that's according to our policy. will identify if it's in compliance and bring it up to compliance if needed on a okay we identify something out of compliance then the the schedule is 6 months later or within six months we'll have budgeted to to put it on our project schedule I don't I don't know is that sufficient

I want to think about that and do some reading of it it's um I suppose that could work I think the problem is a practical problem that John alluded to is just staffing I don't think we could staff to that level. Um, and it's not just one person because these are multiple disciplines that don't really bleed over the stuff that Rob is doing under the proag for sidewalks doesn't really help you understand whether your website is in compliance. It's a different and or whether your buildings the the countertop heights or the sink heights are or the the the pounds of pressure to pull a door open. Those are different standards that the engineering inspectors are not going to be able to understand.

I think you're talking significantly more expense in trying to approach it in that direction. Could it be done? It it might be able to be doable. Um the other piece of this that you're getting out of this is you kind of alluded to this is you're going to get this punch list of things that need to be fixed. Then you need to start budgeting to that. It's kind of getting back to some of the things we've been talking about in other areas where you've got this backlog of deferred maintenance. You need to know what that liability is so you can start budgeting for it over time to be able to punch those things off because the transition plan isn't just identify the deficiencies. It's to fix the deficiencies.

That's all I had. Thank you. To my mind, this is just another audit. We have to audit our financials. We have to audit ADA compliance u make sure we're staying within the lines of federal law. And the feds carry a pretty big stick. So, I'd like to stay on their good side. I would also argue that one of the deficiencies of the 2008 plan is that twothirds of the city didn't exist in 2008. So if if the feds were to come here and say, "Hey, where's your plan?" That'd be absolute proof we're not in compliance. So I think it's probably overdue. I move to approve the contract with Matrix for an Americans with Disabilities Act transition plan. Second. Motion in a second. Further discussion? Roll call, please. Malloy. Hi

Luca. I Stigleer. Hi Mosby. I PL I Ziggler I.

Motion passes. Thank you. Next up, park naming policy. Good evening, mayor and council. Chris Ammerman, parks and recreation director. Tonight I'm going to um talk about a update to our park naming policy. So this has not been updated, speaking of updates for a while. Um in fact the impetus for this and bringing it forward tonight is that we have a new park coming online soon, Crown Reserve. We also have a cr already already have a Crown Point park. And in looking at the the park naming policy that was in place, it was old. It was maybe a um part of a a overarching policy with some other things. So, uh went to the legal team and decided to clean it up and they did a great job of turning it around fairly quickly and and coming up with this new updated uh policy for you. I think uh the the purpose and I just highlighted the kind of the uh key words here obviously is to name parks um but I think um being consistent in and having a consistent mechanism for evaluating and selecting those names is important. So that's why this policy uh is coming forward tonight. And this is for naming new parks and also renaming parks if if that were um proposed. So the process would look like this. Um the city staff would could solicit uh names from uh the community members and then those names u you know proposed names for parks would go to the parks, recreation and urban

forestry commission to evaluate and select those names and then recommend those to council and council would make that ult ultimate decision for naming the park. Uh a lot of different selection criteria for naming a park. the neighborhood it's in, the planned usage, um, uh, proposed naming rights. That that gets into a sponsorship situation, and I'll I'll touch more on that in a later slide. Um, you have your natural features, uh, historical significance, you know, think Falls Park, think Treaty Rock Park, things of those nature. um common names of the park in the surrounding area in honor of people that have had a significant um either made a significant land or monetary contribution or in honor of a person who who died more than two years prior who contributed exceptional community service. And then this didn't make it into I think the sl the presentation in your packet but I in the last one I left off um in honor of a living person who has provided exceptional comm community service for 10 or more years. So that was a something I left off there and and added that on in this one because that was part of the policy. And then so you might be asking yourself what is exceptional community service? So that is defined in these ways. uh sustained civic leadership and then basically just anybody that has contributed to the community a and specifically you know in a to communities or uh segments of our population that have been underprivileged so and and in in any way basically and then uh seniors seniors and youth are also included in that. Can I ask?

Sure. Why even I mean why even have all of those criteria in there? If if the naming process has to go through somebody finding a name and then has to go through the parks department and then has to come through city council, why are we I just I don't really like this idea of like naming out what exceptional community services. Whatever that name is is going to have to go through three bodies of people. What if they did something worth naming a park after that's not on this list? It seems weird to me that we would list this out. Like, can we just not pick whatever name all three of those bodies want? I had the same concern, by the way, before you answer. Oh,

based on the same things I thought with the proclamations policy, it was overly rigid. Like if you served the city admirably for four years, should we not be able to name something after you because you didn't quite hit the fiveyear mark or you know would we be able to name something after George Washington under this policy because he didn't do anything for postfalls specifically for five years. So I think that it's it's overly rigid and what is the problem we're trying to solve? I think there's benefit to standardizing it, but just the same consistent problem I had with the with the proclamations policy was let's just allow for some human flexibility so that you know your commission says you know this person you know they they were let's say they were a law enforcement officer for three years here and they took a bullet for the city and we want to name something after them god forbid but shouldn't we be able to do that now we have a policy that says no we can't um you know could we at least loosen it up a little bit will be but you know please continue but that'll I just wanted to to piggyback on what councelor Stigler said is this is consistent with at least where I've stood on these policies.

Yeah and I'll I'll defer to legal um as far as where this came from. I'm I'm not exactly sure. I think the language though, you know, I'm not from this area. Obviously, I'm new to to my position here, but I've served in other places and the language just seems fairly consistent, but I do understand the comments that have made been made, and I'm sure we could certainly um be less rigid. Um, did Wilsonville have a similar policy?

Um, yeah. I I don't know. I couldn't tell you the the verbiage exactly, but just as you look at policies, you look at what different agencies are using, and I've seen similar language as as I've read and done done research on it. Um, you know, given the fact that you are ultimately the decision makers, I think maybe if if it came to that, you know, the I don't know legal will help me out. But these are just kind of guidelines for what what we want to see if someone was out of the I mean certainly we could loosen up the language if that's what you you want to do, but um I'm just trying to think about the process. Could it could it look like hey because usually when you're you're naming or renaming something there's there's pressure from someone to do it, right? like like you're saying like someone was died and and you really want to honor that person. So that'd be probably a special circumstance and it would maybe wouldn't fit this language exactly, but you being the ultimate decision-making body could probably override that. So to kind of chime in on that, I I do think it, you know, the the purpose of the policy is to sort of establish the the mechanism for evaluating it, especially for um a lower commission to be making a recommendation, right? You're you're setting the sort of here's what we're looking for, provide us a recommendation based on this. I don't think these are um hard and fast rules. They're going to make their a recommendation based on well, you know, whether or not it's been three years or five years, I I think

that's in the the discretion and the recommending body, but it's it's establishing the sort of framework that we're working under. Um and then yeah, it does come to to council to eventually make that um determination even if it's contrary to the recommendation or in accordance with the recommendation or we hear your recommendation, but we think that this is enough. So

wise, I think it could have a chilling effect though on someone making a a recommendation to the parks commission. They might see our policy though and say, "Well, well, they're not going to qualify." So, so maybe the the solution is we have a policy, but the exceptions are built in. So, including but not limited to these types of things or someone who's made a significant cultural achievement, period. Not just to the city of Post Falls within the last seven minutes.

Well, that's what it says, though. I I I find that the text is actually pretty broad to play the devil's advocate on this. Okay. Uh so George Washington, I think, would qualify as a historical or culturally significant person under the selection criteria. Uh I think a police officer, God forbid, if he ever took a a bullet or he or she was a living person who has provided exceptional community service, I think they would definitely qualify under this policy. Um so I don't see it all that restrictive. I I I am of the same mind that I think it would should have a pretty broad scope but I do think it's important to provide a framework as field mentioned to kind of the window down what is significant um and would have a lasting effect in naming of our parks.

Well like it says historical or cultural significance of the area. If it just said historical or cultural significance it's less specific and now George Washington is included. You know, so what I'm reading says just historical or cultural significance. Look at the I mean the draft policy. So each each one of those evaluations is it's actually in the policy that says Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't have to meet all of those. Yeah. Those are just ways that the name of a park comes about. Those were just kind of examples. So

I made mistakes. It says in one or more of the following areas. I mean so you do have to meet one or more the way that the policy is written. If I may, I'd love to have exceptional community service still in the policy, just not in the definition section. Can we just have it lower down as an option, but we don't have to define it? The one or more following areas is for that exceptional community service, right? Definition. That's what we're arguing about, I think. Sure. But you but you don't have to meet uh historical significance and exceptional community service.

Yeah. I I think can we just not capitalize exceptional comm that's that was my point like exceptional community service is a fine thing to consider when naming a park but does it have to be defined A through F and I wish I could tell you what letter F was six things um but just have it like not in the definition section but down below where it says evaluation and recommended by parks commission and you know has like a bunch of ways to name it which is fantastic. IC exceptional community service. Totally agree. Does it have to be defined out with six points in capital letters? Like I don't feel like that's necessary. Joe, you go. Like you have something to say.

I actually agree with that. Okay, great. So, if I might, most of this is carried over directly from our existing policy. We did water it down some to make it a little looser. We certainly can go into the exceptional community service and make these examples of ways that you can render exceptional community service. So, it's not an exclusive list. That's No, I want you to take it all the way out. I don't want you to define don't like that. Well, I know, but I get to vote and you don't.

Sorry, it's getting late. Um, it's Anyways, this is we can make it clear that that's not an exclusive list. These are examples of ways that you rem you could render community service that's worth um recognizing. Part of this I think and I'm going to speak probably out of turn because I don't write these kind of policies all the time. It's I'm not an expert on park naming policies. I have shocking. I know you have a park though. Yeah, maybe that's a CE course you could take.

Yeah, I'll sign up for that. I'll look and see what I can find. But I I have watched over a number of years the controversies that can surround requests to name and rename parks. Um they can get kind of bloody and they can get kind of painful. And so I think these types of policies have evolved over time to try to provide some sideboards and some parameters to try to solve some of that bloodletting. It can get there was one in a community near us where they went to a community survey. They didn't like the outcome, so the council decided to ignore what the the community survey was, which then led to another whole round of fighting. It's it can get exhausting, I guess, is the idea. And so, I think these types of policies are really there to say, have you thought through this? Is this really the step you want to take? to have a little bit of a deliberative process where at the end of the day it's a recommendation and you all get to do what you're going to do and make a decision based on whatever you think is appropriate. We can provide more flexibility. That's the easy part. It's really trying to make sure that you're going through some sort of deliberative process to kind of put the brakes on and make sure that you're what you're doing is the right thing for the community.

I agree with that. the the part with the potential issue with it being so specific and I know there is still some leeway here but is that there might be a really good name put forward that the council never sees because yes one of one of the previous reviewers didn't uh didn't think it met this qualification whereas if it got to the council might be you know actually that's a really good name even though it wasn't even though it doesn't quite meet the fiveyear they were here for four and a half whatever right so I guess that would be the the one concern I don't know how often we rename in parks. So, we're probably beating this horse to death a little bit, but that would be one of my one of my concerns.

I would rather see a policy about renaming than such a restrictive naming. Well, renaming is part of this policy. So, we'd follow the exact same steps for renaming. Yeah. Okay. I also have a question about sponsorships whenever we're done talking about exceptional community service. Yes. So, that's right here. Um um sponsorships cannot be permanent and may not la uh last longer than 10 years without renewal. Naming right agreements may apply to the full park or a portion of the park. So what was your question?

I didn't I somehow I missed the without renewal. I if you pay for a park or whatever like I don't know why you can't just have the name and then how much does it cost for the city to rename a park? Yeah, that that would be part of the agreement. So, usually it looks looks like uh I'll give an example, Century Leak Fields in in Medford, Oregon. So, they get to put their name on it. They provide a substantial contribution at the beginning. usually put a limit on that because um with maybe give them first right of refusal at the end of a five or 10 year period whatever you decide in the agreement then they can reup or so the name can go to someone else and it can go out to like a RFP or

do we have people beating down our door to sponsor parks to get their name on them? Not not as far as I know, but there's a potential, but there is there is definitely potential. Absolutely. I mean, we just talked about a couple weeks ago about American Legion and Little League Baseball. I think that would be a great opportunity to solicit for park sponsorship. Okay. To defer the cost of city maintenance on the field that they use all the time. Okay. I mean, the American Legion does that kind of stuff all the time. So, I think it is very relevant for a baseball field that's doesn't have the name American Legion in it. One example. Yeah. Well, there we have Thorco field because they were a sponsor and they played a major role in establishing that American Legion in part. So,

don't misunderstand me. I'm actually trying to support the people that paid for it initially, which is not generally my position on an issue. Um, I just it was like the renewing part that I thought was odd. If they like sponsored it and paid for it, like why would we want to change the name? No, but like an existing park that somebody comes and says, "Sherman wants to make this the Charmin bathroom at whatever park, they can do that for 10 years, but it's already there and then they're just naming it." And then 10 years later, somebody else gets a chance to make it the Angel Soft bathroom. Okay, everyone, you heard it here. Like, we're looking to get sponsors for our parks because actually a great way to generate revenue. I No,

it really is. In fact, in my experience, it's been um the governing body that hasn't wanted to commercialize their parks. So, if if you made it known that you were open to that, then you potentially could have people beating down your door to not really, but you know, at least coming to you and and

working through an agreement to get put their name on something. I've seen it um um more so in like the park and wreck district, the special districts. Um I don't know if they have those in Idaho, but they do in Oregon uh Ben Parks and Wreck Lewab amphitheater uh which then turned into a homebuilder amphitheater after a 10-year period. So, that's definitely a way to leverage uh private money to okay to bring your park system forward for sure with significant rename city hall donations. But

I like the the renewal period because when you put a company's name on your park, you're effectively advertising for them on an ongoing basis. So, it makes sense that there would be an ongoing financial connection there, too. Yeah. And so again, in my experience, it's been the governing body not wanting to commercialize their parks. So it's it's completely up to you folks how you how you want to see that move forward. the amount of money that that constitutes a sponsorship somewhere else in our policies or determined by park somehow based on the park or just I think it just says in the policy that that would be part of the agreement which we haven't

started that conversation with anyone so okay all right

okay so moving on name changes so park names are intended ended to be permanent. So, we're we're not really wanting to do a bunch of renames here. Um, mostly it's just for our new, you know, we're adding to our system with all the growth. So, mostly we're going to be talking about um a new park and giving it a name. Um, but if we did decide to go down that road or if there was some pressure to rename a park, it would follow the same process. Uh fun fact, uh I'm sure all of you know this, but as a newcomer to the area, I didn't know until somebody told me and then I found this u this um picture in the in the archives of Camelan Park used to be South Park or South City Park. So it has happened. Um again, it's not something we want to do often as far as renaming, but naming new parks of Sure. So, any more questions or discussion? Um, sounds like maybe we just want to drop the uh the definition of of uh

exceptional service. Yes, thank you. Exceptional community service. But are you going to need to pull us on that because it doesn't sound like we're all on the same page? I would I would move to table the park naming policy for to a future meeting to allow staff an opportunity to uh allow more flexibility in the language. Second. Second. Motion in a second. Further discussion. Roll call, please. Luca I. Stig leader. I will say I but my request is not for more uh flexibility. My request is for it to be moved out of definitions. I Mosby I Blue I Ziggler I

Mallaloy I motion passes. Thank you. And change Camille and back to South City Park. South City. That sounds pronounced. I can never remember how to spell it. Nobody here knows how to say it. Camil. Did you notice that they even changed the name of the power company too that was on the sign? Was Washington Water Power Company. Now it's a Vista. Did you notice the log deck in the Did on the back LP Mill was pretty cool actually. Nice. And next up is update to city social media policy.

So uh didn't have a presentation plan for this is it's a fairly minor update. It just is putting our social media policy into our new policy format. um updating our old website because our exist existing policy was passed in 2021 and still had the postfallsidaho.org uh site. So, it's updating that. Um and the existing policy didn't cover commenting very well. It it talked about comments. Um, and the new policy is a little bit clearer on because social media is a tool to sort of get information out. Um, having commenting on each individual post is not the best way for the city to take information in because we want to point people back to our official website and our official channels. Um, and so updating that to um to basically make it the the default is off unless there's a reason for it to be on. So, I don't I'm sorry. We're going to be here forever. Um I kind of feel like that's not the point of social media and that it seems more open to the residents that we have commenting on but maybe we put somewhere that there's an understanding that this is not like how official communication through postfalls will happen. So like we are not as a city going to give official responses there but a lot of discussion and information can be exchanged via residence by commenting on the things that we post. But I can be overruled. So

isn't that what it's saying? No, it's saying that we're going to have the comments turned off unless there's a reason to have them on. Yeah, that's that's how I read it, too. Tell me if I'm wrong, but it was we used to the old policy encouraged people to have a limited public forum. This policy is saying no, we don't want that. We just want to use it as a broadcast. Is that true? The the existing policy as a limited public forum was a the idea behind a limited public forum is it is not the public discussion forum. It is a limited public forum that we are putting out the information in. So,

but it allows people to give us instant feedback currently and we would lose that. But it it doesn't really allow us to get to give them in or to give us instant feedback because we're not monitoring. We're not monitoring that. It's not a a tool for them to to get information to the city. if if they want instant feedback, they need to go through the appropriate channels on on the website, get in touch with the mayor, get in touch with the city clerk, those those type of channels because we're not we don't have the ability to monitor every comment on every post.

Point and we should we should say that as councelor Stigler said, we should say this is not the official, you know, this is monitored for your comments. You should direct them to wherever. But I look at it, you know, so that I can see what people are commenting on with the understanding that most people are going to say negative. Most the commenters on any review are going to be negative. And we don't even know if these people live in the city. And you know, nine out of 10 comments are we don't need any more apartments or fast food places. We need this whatever this is. You know that. But a lot of times there is valuable information I think in getting a certain segment of people that are saying this is what I think about this like not I would miss not having that

not information for the city to receive but information for residents to communicate to each other is where I see the value and I think that it does show an openness of the city to block comments entirely seems it does to that point though it does I think create a perception that it is a a city discussion and that we are actively monitoring it. Even if you say it upfront, I think it um I don't think people will understand that and they may say, well, I I commented on that road closure po post X, but the city didn't do anything about it. So, I I think it's it's more about managing those expectations and those perceptions.

There were two big things that jumped out at me. One is if we're listing notice of a public hearing, we don't want people trying to give public hearing testimony as a comment on the post because that's not the appropriate place for it. Uh and the other is is that perception of if people are trying to interact with us in a comment section and we're not there, that makes us look unresponsive. And I think the the really the way that people are going to do that and probably the way they do it now mostly is if you look at the number of followers we have on our social accounts and compare that to the Celane Press and North Idaho News, it's on those third party sites where people are really discussing this. We're broadcasting information and then it gets shared on news sites and those are the comment sections where people can go back and forth and it's not a city property. It's true.

I think that's where they can have their discussions where there's no perception that this is a city thing and you're interacting with the city. Yep. 100%. The social media is noisy and and we couldn't even give it a fair shake if we tried and pretended to be monitoring it. So, just I would Yeah, I would support just turning it off. I agree. It's the kind of the official communication on social media of the city and I think the the communications ought to remain official and be up to state statute and everything else. That perception, again, like you said, there's there's North Idaho Life, there's a bunch of others.

Yeah. Um, and part of it too is we don't know who's whoever's commenting is is a resident. We don't know if they're who they actually say they are. And being an official conduit, I think it needs to be outbound. I would move to approve the update to the city's social media policy. Second motion in a second. Further discussion. Oh, there are other things that I want if we're going to turn off the comments, but I don't think it matters. So, let's

We can talk more. I mean, I think it would be nice if we're going to turn the comments off then at least on the post to have like a small thing that says like comments are disabled as the city does not monitor these posts or please direct your commentary to the city directly. Something like that because just just turning off the comments makes and perpetuates this vision that the city just does stuff and doesn't engage. And I would like to avoid that. And I think we can add that to our maybe not every individual post but certainly and media is not here but I'm sure that pinned post we can have that somewhere um on those. Great. Further discussion. No roll call please. Stigler leader I. Mosby I. Clue I.

Ziggler I. Malloy. I. Luca nay. Motion passes. Thank you. Next up is citizen issues. This section of the agenda is reserved for citizens wishing to address the council regarding city related issues that are not on the agenda. Anyone here wishing to speak? Anyone here? We clearly scared them all off. U seeing none, we'll move on to administrative staff reports. First up is Postf Falls little league report.

Good evening, mayor and council. Brian Meyers, parks manager for the city of Post Falls. And uh coming in here in long relief. I'll try to keep it as brief as possible, but uh going to do my best. Uh for many of you, I'm a new face up here, so wanted to give a little brief introduction. Uh been the parks manager here since 2014 and worked for the city since 2010. So, uh theou that was discussed by Little League was uh something that I brought before council back in 2020 and that we generally worked under uh following like the 2016 and 2017 season. Um so generally under that framework for a couple of years before it was actually adopted by council. So uh just want to uh start with that overarching uh track record that that's why I'm here giving this presentation versus Chris and uh hopefully be able to provide some context that way. So uh to start just review the the primary concerns that were voiced at the previous council meeting. Uh primary off the top was the the statement of annual cost to support their programs at the city facilities of $12,000 a year and that impacting the ability for their programs to exist in Post Falls on city facilities. Um they pointed out that neighboring communities uh don't charge their little league organizations for the utilization of their facilities. touch base on that and uh where that plays out and what we found in researching that um the identification that they do provide significant volunteer efforts to support their programs and to the city facilities as well. So we'll talk through what that has looked like over the past 10 years. Um and then there was this piece of the desire to prioritize youth access uh local access I would say

local youth access over out of city or out of out of state access to facilities and then also prioritize youth versus adult and then uh the large ask is for additional fields to support the activities. So with that we'll kind of go into inventory. That's where we'll start. Uh so inventory that the city manages. There was a little bit of confusion that I think was represented in that discussion of I think the number was 13 fields that they utilize. Uh we have five in our parks inventory that are city- managed parks facilities. It further gets noisy uh because ourou was drafted back in the time where we were operating under an interlocal agreement with our school district and at that point in time when it was drafted the city parks division uh retained a portion of the revenue for fees associated with the use of school district sites basically handling that reservation service and um we handled the booking of all non- high school sites. So that was the previous interaction that interlocal has now changed to anou. Uh and prior to that we unwound some of those uh responsibilities or roles following COVID. We we stepped out of that role about the time theou was signed. Um so within our city inventory we have one full-size baseball field at Brett James at Sportsman's Park and we have four youth fields. uh two being at Chase, one being at Sportsman's Park, and one at Corbin. School district provides uh three additional full-size fields and eight youth fields throughout their system. Youth or uh fast pitch softball. Generally, in our minimum level of service, so kind of when we decide to

trigger the addition of a new facility, uh we'd aim for one field per 3750 in population. Um so that generally puts us dead even right now in our current population when you count the school district facilities towards that inventory. Uh that has historically been the way we've done that. We've taken the full community service of both city offerings, school district offerings and other service providers. So Real Life Ministries when their soccer fields would be an example of another service provider that provides inventory to the community. some level of threat that that could go away at some point in time. So just to kind of paint the picture of where we stand in terms of inventory.

Ryan, does that include the two parks that will be coming online at Tullemore? Does not current. Okay. Yep. Those are it the acreage does for our acreage level of service, but the facility based on that number will provide additional capacity to allow for a little bit of growth that that will happen until the next period of time. we add some fields. So, and how do we arrive at that ratio as the target ratio?

That's something in our park commission uh reviews on a periodic basis and provides updates to um it also folds out of our park master plan and the community input that happens through that that data gathering and community input early phases of our master planning process. Thank you.

Yep. And I will also note that a previous version of our impact or our level of service did differentiate the full-size field versus the the youth field and at some point in time that was gone away with and we just went with the baseball softball field generally. Um so that's where we stand today. Uh back in 2015 we had a field fee of $10 per hour with a $35 prep fee. Um that held pretty steady for a period of time. We dove into some cost recovery and fees associated with field use with our Corey sports master plan. Corey Sports Complex. At that point in time, it was called the Totmore Sports Complex. We dove into that really granular uh came up with operational costs for the facility at buildout and uh some revenue projections of what that facility could be. it identified a at that point in 2020 a $20 an hour field fee. Uh so 2023 came along. We're starting to move our way towards that $20 per hour based on that early direction that was uh kind of captured with various stakeholders, staff, council, park and rec commission around that specific project. But knowing that we have this other inventory that looks very much the same as what's up at at now the Corey uh that we can't just shockload that as soon as the Corey comes online. We got to work with the community over a long period of time. And so here we are in 2026. We've now hit that 2020 recommendation for a fee fee amount. Um, and then kind of that midpoint 2021, we had theou that established Little League paying 50% of the hourly rate. Uh, and also them excluding their field fee. The other item I'd like to highlight here, and I I

mentioned this to our park and net commission, uh, that at that point in time, it may have been the first time that Little League learned that our field fee was $20 an hour. That was my mistake. And I We've uh asked and you know worked with Chris to say it doesn't seem right to make this change especially now that we didn't notify them well in advance of their season that their fee was going to be $20 an hour times times.5. Uh so we're sticking with that $15 an hour with theou structure around it for this season unless I hear differently from you tonight uh to move forward with the adopted fee at $20 an hour that was done at the last fee update. um at the budgeting process of late 2025 for the 2026 season. So that that was my misstep. Um just coincided with further push back on the fees. Soou summary uh little league organization is given a two-eek early reservation window. So generally the way that plays out currently, we open our fields March 15th for activities. Uh we open for the general public March 1st. Little League gets an early offering uh notification that all of that's going to occur around February 15th and um that generally has worked pretty well in from the staff's perspective that we're able to receive the bulk of the reservations. We layer those in right behind our own planned activities for parks and rec programs. Um we send them a quote of what that will be. oftentimes that results in some additional back and forth between the organization and us to ultimately revise their starting schedule. Um there's as we get into the field fees, some of those early quotes have been represented as part of their total costs of

operating uh versus what their actual invoices have been. So some of the ambiguity around it is the nuance of operating a program. They do get the 50% reduction um within that little league is responsible for the dirt maintenance portion of the field. So generally the way that plays out for staff is we take kind of the safety level maintenance of the field itself. So, we're going out on a weekly basis maintaining things at flattened level to the best of our ability. Uh, but we're not the primary individuals out there for little league programs. Putting chalk lines on the field, painting the painting the turf, uh, packing holes for the mound, and all of the things that go into making a field playable on a daily basis. So, that that's, uh, one of the items. They also get exclusive use of the concessions facilities at Sportsman's Park. Uh so they have some revenue potential out of operating those facilities that no other user gets. Um and then they also have layered in there that isn't fully unique to them. We have offered it to other uh user groups a donation based credit opportunity but it's very specific in thisou that we will consider that pretty broadly within theou and have done so as you'll see as we get further into this talking about uh field use dove into the past five years um just to kind of give you a picture the big point of pain right now is that Brett James field the full field

it is the one that is most used by various groups. Um, Little League being one of them and the adult baseball program that was me mentioned being another and various other groups. So, the high school having two facilities and one other facility that's substandard at Ponderros Elementary that's just due for a little bit of love. Uh most of the other community activities happen in a Brett James and it it definitely shows itself in this use. Is the Legion baseball program captured when you say postfalls little league in all of those or is that in the other hours?

So to date the American Legion program and have go back in time here a little bit. So, uh, basically around the late 90s, early 2000s, uh, Brett James Field, the outfield fence was 200 or 330 ft. It's really short distance outfield fence for high school level play. That Legion program relocated to North Idaho College and played there for about a decade and then that field now sits the health and sciences building where the nursing program is held. um at that point they moved to the high school and that's where they've been. So Legion program hasn't been a primary user for 30 years of any city facilities. They've lately had kind of a feeder program that's offered kind of their younger youthbased programs that have been using 19th and Chase and some of those others. Um so that's a rather new conversation for us with them as a user group.

Okay. So they don't operate through little league when dealing with the city. They are their own entity that makes their own reservations and they Yes. They they're they're to make their own reservations. Um but they don't get the benefit of the twoe early thing. Only Little League gets that. They would not. Yeah, they would not. Yeah. Just as it's structured. And I don't know that the way it's structured we could offer it to a different group. We'd have to unwind some of that or put a different touch point with another user group that would be after little league. Can I ask one more question about the usage then? Then why Brett James is our full-sized field? Yes. Why is Little League using it then?

Little League goes up to 16 years old and kind of the cut off is 13. Okay. So they have a senior program that utilizes that field that uses the for 40 years. Okay.

Yep. So, all told on this um I did some quick quick math on where we're sitting for Oh, I the other point at Brett James, it is constrained due to some title restrictions on the site due to the way we acquired the land. It was a donation um for both White Pine Park at that point in time, North Park that has also gone through a neat renaming policy. Uh White Pine and Sportsman's those both came to us from the same land owner that established St. George's. So there's all an agreement for shared parking. So Saturday evening through Sunday mo Sunday afternoon we don't allow competitive uh play or programmed use of that facility to accommodate the parking facility for St. George's Church

and that's in perpetuity that is and beyond that it would create a substantial amount of conflict. Uh, yeah, they need it.

They need the parking to operate their their facility. And I think we'd be putting private vehicles at risk if we had active use at that point. Um, that would have other unintended consequences that we'd have to work through. Um on the inind donation piece um early on prior to theou being established again we kind of generally worked under that framework in 2019 they did a score scoreboard donation it did include some sponsorship naming rights on the scoreboard. It did have a five-year uh horizon on the panel that is offered for that that sponsorship. Uh with that they got a estimated the estimated value of the scoreboard improvements for additional scoreboard on 19th and replacing the the existing scoreboard at Brett James. Uh they got an $8,500 credit. Then the whole world kind of turned upside down for a year and baseball didn't happen at the same levels as we anticipated. So that credit rolled forward for a couple of years just to do the right thing. Um we so they they didn't end up uh fully utilizing that until 2023 I believe it was. Since then mostly what they've donated uh to that from then on has been portable pitching mounds that have a useful life of three to five years. Uh so not long long range equipment but generally support the program uh and also reduce ongoing maintenance costs for staff for the other programs that may may occur on the field.

Can I ask about how those work donations and credit? So, if something is done during the 2025 season, they'll see that credit on whatever the cost of their um reservations in the 2026 season or we cut them a check if they if it's established and received prior to theou says that they are to make payment by March 1st for their activities or I'd have to go maybe March 30th for the payment. Yeah. as long as the the donation is received by that point. It would be good for the current season. Um but they but we would just take it off of their charges. We don't reimburse them.

We have not in the past done a reimbursement at the end of the season. We we haven't had that need as you as you see here. Um with the exception of that scoreboard, we haven't had a credit that has exceeded the cost in any given year. Right. So, I guess that answers my question is that we only credit them what we charge them. We never just like charge them the amount and then they said we paid for a portable mound and then just write them the a check for the amount that that mound cost. We haven't had to yet. Yeah. Um

I don't know why you keep saying haven't had to. So, that's just not the way that the process works then. We don't do reimbursement. We only do credit. And if they were to do so many donations that it exceeded the cost of their reservations, that's what you're saying. We haven't had to. But I'm I'm just saying that we don't ever do reimbursement. We only do credit. I think there is a world where we could provide a reimbursement for the fees that they paid in advance at that early donation date. I I don't know that we would we could pay them to use our facilities. I suppose if they donated more than we'd provide, but that would certainly come to you. So, you're saying there's not a policy that guides that situation. Correct.

There's nothing nothing outlined that said if they donated $20,000 in dirt and $80,000 in fencing that we would write them a check for $60,000 for those improvements to the field. Is that No. No. No. Okay. I just mean your your understanding is correct. So you can see the net paid is is zero for the couple years after 2019. Okay. So we just credit it. It looks like we just keep crediting it. We don't ever cut a check in the middle of the season for whatever it is that they purchased.

No, we have not. No. And the 2019 specifically called that out because it was that extraordinary circumstance. We said we're going to do this over two years because it is a large amount and they didn't anticipate having field fees that were in excess of what the donation amount was going to be. Um, talking operational context and operational cost to kind of give some framework. Again, we dove into this with the Corey master plan at a at a granular level. Uh, that plan includes five youth baseball fields. So generally similar to the inventory that we're talking about, the difference there is that it's synthetic infields versus dirt infields probably doesn't mean a lot, but generally the daily operational cost of a synthetic field is going to be lower. The long-term operational cost is going to be higher because of a replacement. Um, but the operational annual cost of five fields studied in that complex was around $94,000 in 2020 estimates. um playing that out to see where we're at today. We're about 300 250 to 300 hours for just mowing operations. So with that, you're $15,000 per two fields. Uh we only really have two sites that we can tease out information from our our work management system. Um, and then 2,000 different events when you go back to those field hours and 2,000 different activities where weiring to do field preps and such. Um, that ends up being about $50,000 that way to do that field prep activities at those sites. Um, so all that combined, all of it kind of passed the sniff test that the core master plan is generally pretty close to what our real operational costs are for

two complexes um at that $100,000. So what's the timeline to open that again? So there are no baseball fields in the first phase. They are in our midterm priority list for CIP right now. We're going forward with the construction of two soccer fields at the Corey. Um, and then the next phase would be at two additional soccer fields. So, we're in the 2030 2035 range before any additional youth baseball would be added at the Corey. So, what what was the year again? 2030 to 2035. and the soccer fields would would be when

you'll if you haven't already seen uh project related to that first phase. You will here shortly. We're we're out to bid on that um at the moment or or preparing to be out to bid for that now. Oh, Robbie showed us those and I saw them. They look great and I'm like tomorrow, right? Like we get those tomorrow. Yeah. No. Yeah. And to know that it started in 2020 with the master plan, right? Yeah. So that 94,000 that's our estimated annual cost for maintaining five fields. Just the five baseball fields. That's not including the four soccer field. That's not advertised land. That's just on and m correct. And that's $20. $20.

That's a lot of money for maintaining a field. It's a big number.

It is not a small number. Um generally per acre we're 38 to $3700 per acre for developed parkland right now. Uh national standard national averages which are as good as you can throw a stick at, right? Uh are in the neighborhood of 7 to8,000 an acre. So largely we have some big open spaces of the community forest that that offset that and and change that that metric a little bit but we're we're driving some pretty competitive operational costs compared to our peers. Um but it is is not a small number to maintain five fields. that regional context that was referenced. The Cordelane Little League organization does work with the city of Cordelane. They do have anou uh to operate four fields at the Canfield Sports Complex. They have a $4,000 agreement. They also have the inind donation language included. They've received a couple of storage sheds at that location uh to offset some of their fees. They also have a 5% escalator into that into that agreement on an annual basis. Hayden Little League is pretty unique. Um they had a large donation that I think the naming policy in Hayden probably reflects the name of that park and uh they basically dedicate that entire facility, the operations, maintenance, mowing, all things associated with that complex for the entirety of the Little League season is on the backs of the Little League organization. So, while yes, they they don't pay anything to utilize that facility and it's a great facility, um they do a lot of work at a 35 acre

complex that the city then doesn't bear and there aren't the other competing demands for that location. Uh where, you know, Little League is taking up 50% of our use, Little League and Hayden is kind of the only game in town. So, it's it's somewhat different in that in that respect. And then Lakeland to our north, uh, they largely utilize the Lions Club facility. So, it's a privatelyowned through a nonprofit organization complex that has three fields there. And largely they don't use city property. They do use the Majestic Fields some uh, and my understanding is pay a fee there. Um, but I don't know how long that arrangement exists in in Lakeland as well or bathroom. So, with that and stand for any questions and then any direction you'd have for me to take this back and continue to work with little league organization to gain some context and and or other organizations. Um, we did at the time of our last park and commission knowing that this conversation was ongoing, we did generally open up that this falls into an item in our park master plan of identifying a cost recovery framework uh and methodology in allowing us to recommend fees that are aligned with that overarching policy or guidance. Um, so if you have any feedback for us to take back to that working group so we can come forward with something that's grounded in in what your vision for the city and working with youth programs versus adult versus competitive or tournament. There's a lot of different nuance that can come into this this program type. So

I have a question for you. Yes, sir. Speaking to those fees, if we have Postf Falls little league taking up more than half or I guess they're taking up more than all of the other use combined for the fields, how are they able to be charged only half the hourly rate? That was a directive at that point in time. So, um, much like the conversation we've had right now, it resulted in that that agreement for that long-term user to operate with that level of subsidy. I see. Yeah, that was just the directive. So, we're

they said they said that they they paid 12,000 a year, but your graph indicated it was closer to five. Is that accurate? That's accurate. So, they were incorrect about they may have been looking at other costs or something, but our fees are only about 5,000 for

I mentioned that process of us providing a quote. And um in 2023, we did have a quote that was in that $12,000 range to start the season. And then there were subsequent reviews that happened shortly thereafter. And then those basically for their primary season ended up still in that $4,500 to $5,000 range for their primary season. And then they extended a fall season beyond that that ended up resulting in the larger spike in that one program year. Uh it's about 5,000 it looks like.

Yeah, I think we got close to 8,500 in 2023 total. But in 20 So we'll just take 2025 for example. It says the fees are that like 5,000 and then credits, good heavens. Yes. Are two and a half. So the green line is what they actually paid out of pocket cash. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So even less than five. Yes. Okay. And there those details more granularly are in the packet in a couple of tables there as well if you want to dive into that. My question is how do we make Corey Park be full-size fields? So yes, uh we did look at that when we were in that park and rec that site plan.

Uhhuh. And that was the goal. The goal was to get multiple youth baseball fields and a full-size field out there. The constraints we have with our adjoining property being Ross Point Water District didn't accommodate a full field at that location. But what if the other ones could be made into full-size fields with like the moving of the bases? Gosh, that word.

No, you're good. Uh, we again, we were working with the leadership of Little League at the time as a stakeholder in that master planning process. So, they were a seat at the table along with Park and Recreck and a couple of council members at that time. Um, and the decision at that point in time was to move forward with a complex that could be tournament quality for that purpose and allow us to maximize the revenue to try to offset some of these these dollars and basically only have 30% of that operational cost being on the taxpayers's backs for that type of facility. Uh with that the goal was to place a full-size field somewhere else and right now Montrose is actually the location where that has shifted to

in 20150. Maybe maybe not as long as that. I think phase two Montros was prior to phase four Corey. Is there a reason that we can't re-evaluate that in light of there being such heavy usage at Brett Jamesfield? We could and I think the other piece of it is are there other locations that are already dedicated to this type that could be upgraded and can we partner with the school district to get Ponderosa at a level that is sufficient for the use because right now it it does sitow if you will. Uh there there may be some opportunity to open discussion that way. Okay.

And we could take direction that to to get some near-term wins, right? Like that's that's a big part of this. Uh, I also remember the day when right outside the American Legion post there was a vision to have a full baseball field on their campus and now their house is there. So, but uh it's it's part of the game and then trying to make this work. There are other sites that likely will happen in the next five years that we may be able to to look at as well. Um the Westridge Elementary Park site also had two youth fields identified as a part of that original plan. Generally those ended up shifting as a part of the Montro Sports Complex that that's been going. So what do we do with that land? Uh maybe maybe that is a solution.

Full size baseball field very very possible. Um, but even at 2045 numbers, if we're looking at likely by then if we're if we follow KMPO's growth model, the city's probably still only adding just the one full baseball field unless we change that service level.

And I would ask for more baseball sportsman expertise because this is not my area. They seem very expensive to build and very expensive to maintain. So it seems curious to me that we keep talking about having dedicated youth fields and dedicated adult fields when there is a process in which we could build a field that could serve multiple purposes. not well

because the the the physical demands uh associated or the physical capacity of an adult or a high schooler versus a youth requires portable fencing to be installed. So it actually ends up driving your operational cost up to to have that multi-use type activity on a single it up more than building a whole new field and the multiple competing demands is the other piece of it because they all want it at the same sure but that's for them to sort out right anyway. Okay. Yeah. Somebody else can

I think I think the missing part of this as far as this the fields that we control as the city is we have seemingly adequate youth fields that feed into one highly restricted field um at Red James. So, um I think for a more sustainable model as far as revenue generation, it's really about economy of scale because you're not going to attract tournament quality events with one baseball field that you can play at 9:00 a.m. on Saturday. U whereas if we could build a complex of three or four um you know I don't know if it would hit a break even point but because of the amount of of traffic that you would generate on on that size of a park um we would see I think probably equivalent numbers that we are now with with cost per acre and you know in addition to additional revenue generated by events like that. Um, so I I would echo what Samantha said about, you know, I I would advocate for as many full-size baseball parks as we can as we can manage to get installed in the city because I think um with the growing momentum of especially the American Legion program right now, we're seeing a spike in interest that I think we could capture. Um, and I think it's a great benefit to the city. Baseball parks are romantic to me and they do kind of add a bit of open space um that that everyone seems to be clamoring for.

I'm curious about the sort of the financial breakdown for maintaining a field. How much of that is is covered by say user fees versus backs stop by property taxes? Is it like a 50-50 split or are is there any world in which the fields are self-sufficient in terms of the fees collected? I think well yes there there are models out there where fields become self-sufficient but they've kind of moved in the direction of private equity and some of the discussions that are happening in Congress right now around what are we doing with youth baseball because we're pricing our kids out of the sport and we're injuring kids because they're ramping into this competitive level level of activity at a very young age and their bodies just are not h handling that well and we're seeing increases in injuries and because they're moving towards that competitive competitive travel, highintensity, select sport uh type activity. So yes, you can go that route, but there are some costs to that and you know that that's again I'll keep doing my best to maintain maintain what we've got out there and provide you with the best information I can of the way we're currently acting and if that's the direction we're looking we can come back with what those models may be. Um I do attend some CU type activities that that are aligned with that. There's a lot of convention and visitor bureaus that kind of take that approach.

I'm not suggesting it. I'm just curious where it falls and and whether they are self-sufficient or or whether they're mostly subsidized because I've heard a lot about if we could have more fields, we could draw tournaments into the city and that would be a benefit and then that would bring us more revenue. But then if the fields cost way more than that to maintain, h how does that revenue actually translate into the city? I haven't had a clear answer about that. Yeah, the the Corey Tolmore Sports Master Plan does the best job of articulating that. I would I would frame that as a very aggressive revenue projection. Like we're not going to be there year one. We may or may not hit that year five with very intentional programming. Okay.

Um with all of that fully operational and everything clicking on all cylinders, we're looking at 65% cost recovery. So we're still 35 30 35% taxpayer burden to operate that facility operating at a really high level including sponsorships of individual fields and scoreboards and trying to layer on every little lever we can pull to try to make that not a burden on the taxpayer. And I add on my slide there the portion of that that comes from tournaments. So to be able to make that cost recovery piece, we have to shift to a tournament model. It allows weekday league type play local activity. It also gives our local residents the ability to play tournaments here in Post Falls versus having to travel outside. So we capture um or we save our taxpayers travel dollars to be able to play in their hometown versus going to the Tri Cities or Boisee or Missoula. I I don't think though that unless the fields are booked out 100% of the time frame that they're open for use. Like I don't know what would that be like. I don't know how early you can go to a park anymore because I don't have to do it. So I'm sorry I have forgotten.

Um we wouldn't expect a 100% cost recovery, right? because at the end of the day, these still are parks. And so if there if there isn't an entity that's paying to reserve the park time, then it should be open to, you know, whatever whatever family wants to just go out there and run the bases and have fun. So I I do think that there is that perspective because that was brought up by little league like multiple times like why are we having to pay? You're having to pay because you're reserving the land, the the what the park so that the residents that also pay into this program can't use it. same way you pay for a park structure or whatever. So,

I know there was a a comment at least one about feeling double charged for paying property taxes and then also paying fees to reserve, but it sounds like you need both revenue sources to cover the maintenance of the field. Yeah. Right. Right now with the fees that are collected all in all user groups, we're between 8500 and $10,000 for our athletic field rental program. If we're $100,000 for five fields, we're at, you know, five to seven% cost recovery right now. So, it is largely a taxpayer served facility.

I would be interested to see the percentage of the budget versus the percentage of hours used. And I think those should match up more if that makes sense. Like if you're if it's being rented for 30% of the time that you can be on it, then that should be 30% of the cost that it takes to maintain it. I don't know how you hit that guess because that's that's is that what it is. That's where our current occupancy because I did dive in. Okay. Your presentation was just so good. It just I dove into numbers. Yeah. Occupancy load right now.

Previous work. I was in kind of secondary to the hotel industry and that's that was like our weekly meetings was occupancy rates. Um, yeah, we're we're in that 30 to 35% occupancy of our current inventory, excluding the hours that we can't use Brett James and 19th.

U, so it was just looking from I think I went 400 pm on weekdays to sunset and 9:00 a.m. to sunset on the weekends. And all that considered, we're about that 30% during the use season of April to October. Again, we have this one user group that's using a large percentage of the fields in this one period period, one period of time. We've heard from some users that there's additional demand in that peak season, which you'd expect. We can't build for peak

and that limits that later season activity. Um, and I think if we're aiming for revenue, we're going to have to act differently. Yeah. Thanks. Sorry, I was just going to say thanks for keeping such good numbers and track of all of this that you could get us such a in-depth presentation in two weeks, right? Is that like So anyway, I just in yeah conclusion for me I just want to say I appreciated that.

I have a guess, but do you know if um as far as re revenue generation for covering of fees if there's a greater potential in youth fields compared to full-size fields? Generally we we barely touched that in that TLMR sports master plan but generally yes the the youth fields have got a higher revenue potential. Soccer has got an even greater higher revenue potential.

Um soccer lighted synthetic fields are the greatest yet. Um, so yes, generally the youth is going to be a higher revenue piece just because as you age into the older ports of the league, you're going to have fewer fewer individuals. So you've got a smaller market to be able to capture um more more competition that way. Yeah. So, further questions, any any direction on where to go or continue to do what we're doing and just update thatou associated with

the changes associated with the uh school district change I think is probably a worthy update, but

I I I feel like our hands are a little bit tied with Brett James as far as expansion of service there. Um, I feel much more confident in what the city is doing in relationship to the Little League program after seeing the numbers here. Um, which is kind of was my response initially. Like I just need to see a better breakdown of this. Um, according to what I'm seeing here, I think we're treating them more than fairly, you know, for the usage of their of our city fields. Um, you know, I would I would love to see a more cooper uh in-depth cooperation with the school district on the full-size fields that that they have available. I know um American Legion is kind of looking at that too with utilizing the high school field. Um, you know, kind of in the short term to get that better. I do think as far as condition, you know, Corbin Field down there is is pretty rough, you know, so I think it would help if we could maybe help Little League with uh the improvement of that condition, but um you know, growing the sport is is definitely a priority to me. So any opportunity that we have for acreage to kind of expand our offering in this area would be great. Okay. I would like to see like options of either expanding the Corey field or the Corey Park plans to include that adult size versus Montrose versus working with PostPaul School District. And I guess if we have anou, I just I don't know what the right answer is. I get that little league gets first pass at all of the fields, but I do want to be like supportive of the Legion and their program as well, but it also sounds like there are other club teams that are local to Postf Falls. And so where do we draw the line to differentiate who gets preferential treatment if they're all local? I don't know, but I don't know. I'd like to I do know the Legion had a lot of things to say about them not having access to fields and if there are

ways that we can treat them more like we treat little league in that if they're doing all of the work too. Um I I'd love to see to be supportive of them. So I think I would say on just a differentiator between club and American Legion. Yeah. And I think it's important for us to

promote this distinction. American Legion baseball um heavily promotes civic involvement and involvement in their communities um and not that club teams, you know, maybe don't, but certainly not as proactively. And so from a city standpoint, um to me that would make them kind of a preferred partner to really pursue a relationship with because of the kind of that add back to the community that that those programs provide.

Yeah. I think the other distinction with the American Legion program is they're unique and that the folks that are playing on those teams are local. You can't draw from Spokane as individual players playing for a postfalls team. You've got to be associated with the high school. Um oh, that the post is I just want to make sure if we give them preferential treatment, we don't get in trouble for not doing it for like other clubs. And so what pieces of information do we need to draw out to make that? Yeah, I think American Legion would give us that because you have that nexus of their local taxpayers or 80% of the players are local taxpayers. Maybe there's a way to evaluate that. We we could probably come back with something that way. Okay, great. Okay. Thank you.

Thanks, Brian. Next up is 2026 Postf Falls parade update. Good evening. Secretary Lewis telephone. I just want to thank Bob and Mark for hanging out to watch the post walls parade. Been here all night and they don't have any agenda items. Would you like to table this until the next meeting? Honestly, I don't have that much to say. So, I think we can do this in 5 to 10 minutes. Do we have much to say? No. We Okay.

Well, our two biggest talkers are on. You're keeping everybody here, so I just want to be sure. If this is quick, good. Let's do it. Otherwise, I was going to move to table it. Go ahead.

So, for years, the chamber hosted the Post Falls parade. It went over to the Post Falls community ambassadors and as of about last year, they decided they wanted to step away from it. They have been working with us to provide us all of the information and details, put me in contact with everybody who helps on the day of the parade and also the sponsors for the parade. So, I have all of that information put together. I have a meeting set up with John Beichum, Bob, um, Chris to look at what it looks like for staff to basically put together the hosting of the parade. And we wanted to make sure you're all aware of it. It is a big year. It's the 250 year. So, Stephanie put together just kind of a slide for what we want to do with the parade this year. Long term, there is conversation about moving it down here and having it be more of a downtown parade. Doesn't work right now with the connectivity we have. We really need Bob to finish getting Idaho Street punched through for us.

Let's go, Bob. So, that's all on you, Bob. Um, but I'm just here tonight to make sure I have your support in moving forward with uh the staff doing the work on hosting the parade. Um, POS's community ambassadors are being very helpful and handing everything over to us. So, we do hope to have a host for the parade for future parades 2027 and beyond. We have interest in everybody supporting, not necessarily someone taking the lead. And so it may be creating another entity like Postf Falls Community Ambassadors to do that. There's still a police car on offer. Yes. In sport. Yep. Mark will do that. Bob's punching through Idaho Street. Yay. I'll be handing out candy.

You can sit next to me and throw it out the window. Okay, cool. I think we definitely don't want to see it die, especially on the 250th anniversary. So, as a transition plan, I think it's great to have the city staff be involved. Plus the the staff then I you know we'll have not that they don't have a good idea of what it takes to do it anyway because especially the PD's always been heavily involved and others. Yeah. But I'd be full in full support of the of the staff taking it for a year until we can until such time as we can find a different uh sponsor. Yeah. I will admit I had no idea of all the number of details until I got Warren's list. So Warren Merritt, not Warren Wilson, but um all the folks who help on the day of the parade have agreed that they will step up and help us. So awesome.

Yeah. I wanted to make sure we had the opportunity to discuss it because when we started this, it was more than a year ago, we started talking about this and one of the the themes was trying to make sure that we're not spending a lot of taxpayer dollars to fund a parade that's hosted by another organization. But then the position now is we can step in and save it or it can die during America 250. So, it's not much of a choice right now. You're right. Thank you for offering to take it on. I know it's a lot of work from staff that already does a lot of work. So, thanks for doing that. Oh, you're welcome. this time of night, you probably could have gotten more out of us than just support, but thanks for Could have. You're welcome. Yeah, thanks for resisting. Thank you. Thanks. All right, mayor and council comments. Nothing for me tonight. No.

Hello. The next up is executive session.

Dang you. I move to enter an executive session pursuant to Idaho code 74-206A to consider hiring a public officer, employee, staff member, individual agent. Uh and further that no action will be taken during the session and the session will last approximately an hour. Second motion and a second further discussion. Roll call, please. Mosby, I. Blue, I. Ziggler I Malloy Hi Luca I Stiglader I motion passes under executive

call the meeting back to order. And seeing no further business, we will adjourn.