City Council - Regular Meeting

All right. We'll call the meeting to order. We'll begin 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. And the pledge.

I 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.

All right, no other announcements tonight, but it looks like we are starting fire season. So if you're doing campfires outside, please be very careful with that. All members here are present and accounted for. Any amendments to the agenda tonight?

There are none tonight, sir.

Declarations of conflict, ex parte contacts and site visits. Seeing none, please present the consent calendar.

Item A is the June 2nd, 2026 City Council Meeting Minutes. Item B is Payables, June 3rd through June 17th, 2026. Item C is the Kinley Meadows Offsite Improvements Construction Improvement Agreement. Item D is Rosewater Place Subdivision Construction Improvement Agreement. Item E is Klondike Crossing Subdivision Construction Improvement Agreement. Item F is Legacy River Bend Condos Final Plat Approval. Item G is permit application for post falls parade.

Questions on the consent calendar?

I move to approve the consent calendar as presented.

Second. Motion and a second. Further discussion? Roll call please.

Stiglitter? Aye. Plew?

Aye.

Molloy? Aye. Ziegler?

Aye.

Mosby? Aye. Luca?

Aye. Motion passes. Thank you. On to public hearings. First up is user fee hearing. We'll open the public hearing.

All right, good evening, mayor and council. Jason Faulkner, finance director. We have a couple items that I wanted to bring to council tonight for your consideration. I know that the fiscal year end is almost over and usually we start the budget cycle off with the new fee resolution, but summer's upon us and we have a couple fees we would like to propose that we add for the upcoming summer. So let's just jump right into it. There's a couple fees that I want to point out that are new and there's a fee for parks that we have that has a slight change to it and I'll point that out when we get to it. Right. This year, the city is responsible for the parade, and so we do not have any fees established for the parade. So we're working off of what the rates were last year, so we want to propose the fees for the parade. Political, elected officials for $50. Commercial, personal entries for $40. Community events, $20. And if you have a marching unit, that's going to be $20. If you have a live animal entry, you get one to three animals for $20. Four to six is $25. If you have a vehicle, $20 for one, two, up to nine for $20. And each group that has 10 or more vehicles, that'd be a $30 charge. and military and vehicle and veterans groups, there will be no charge for the parade. We've had quite a few interest of those. My office has been taking the phone calls and so we have had a large interest in the parade this year. So it seems like it's gonna be a good one this year, so. All right, parks and recreation. This is a, we currently have the fee in our fee resolution for concessionaire and education. And what they have is a $25 per day and a $2 per day. I'm sorry, let's go back to the concession one. It's $25 plus a 15% for anything over $500 in sales. What they want to add is a $300 permit. And that reason for that is it's for the administrative costs of tracking people down and making sure that they comply with what the requirements are. And so that's just an administrative cost that they want to start collecting for the $300. And the same thing also for the education and fitness activity fee. We currently charge a $25 per day and a $2 per daily participant fee. but they'd like to collect a $300 permit fee as well. And so if that was approved, we would start doing that immediately with those. Okay, public records. This is one that we were wanting to bring to you sooner. Our legal department has been inundated with a lot of public records requests. And it's not just the in-state, but they've had a lot of out-of-state requests. And in-state, under Idaho code, you get two hours of free, no charge, and up to 100 pages, no charge. But with the out-of-state, it seems like that since it's been more laborious for them, they want to up the charge a little bit more than they can according to Idaho code. And so they want to do is they want to not have no two hours free and they want to charge for the pages that they do and they also want to be able to have a deposit paid before they start doing the work. So hopefully if they have that down that they might, it might detour anybody that wants to do a public records request versus just be inundated with them and spend a lot of staff time on them and not really be fruitful at the end. Fields supplied me with a lot of Idaho code if anybody's interested in reading it. And also, part of the copy pages we want to update was black and white copies for 25 cents, color copies $1 per page. If anybody wanted a DVD or CD copy, that'd be $5. Flash drive is 10. And if they had any oversized documents, if we had to outsource that, it would just be the actual cost of the duplication from the vendor. And again, I had more exclamation from field if anybody had any questions on the in-state or out-of-state. The out-of-state, evidently they've had quite a few from Washington wanted to know. That's really bogged down the legal staff and so he was kind of concerned about that because it's been a lot of time on things he didn't feel it was really necessary. Like any legal attorney, they can really write a lot. If anybody had any questions for me on any proposed updates to the fee resolutions.

I know for the public records requests, a lot of the issue is coming from people using AI chat bots to just drown our submission portal. Folks who don't live here, they're just sort of AI vomit that they're putting into the portal that we have to then go through and deal with. So I'm happy to see that one come through. Other questions?

I have one on the concession and education fees, uh, in the materials, uh, submitted for the hearing. Uh, it stated that the rationale is to, to know who's going to be using the parks that might owe a concession commission to the parks department.

Right. A lot of times they don't come forward and say they're using the parks. And so sometimes they have to seek them out of who's using them. Such as I went and had lunch today and I saw a little flyer that said there's going to be an activity in the park on these such days. And so they will use that information to make sure people comply with park usage. And so they would make sure that they're able to be in compliance with the permit and also that they comply with the $25 a day and then $2 attendee as well.

And that's what I was understanding. Thank you. You're welcome. So what I'm wondering is whether requiring a fee instead of just requiring a permit, it wouldn't require an apartment accomplish the same goal. It would still identify who it is. And it seems to me like it might deter applicants for a permit. If they have to pay for it, they would continue to do what they're doing.

It'd be instead of us having the class. That's a good question. Instead of us having the class in-house, they're having the third party conduct the class and the city get a cut of it since it's in a city facility, which is kind of what happens when we have a recreation class occur that city staff runs. This is just being ran by an outside party. So if it's ran by an outside party, the city should get a cut of that as well. So this is what's... they're trying to take place by having the $2 fee and $25 per day. Is that what you're asking? I'm sorry.

I'm focused on the $300 permit fee. Oh, I see. Okay. So certainly that makes sense to me, but what I'm talking about is if it were requiring a fee for the permit and the goal of the permit is to track who's going to potentially owe these concession fees or what have you. Right. Uh, it seems to me like requiring a, uh, an actual fee of 300 bucks to acquire a permit might deter potential applicants who might see very little sales or very little use.

And maybe that's the goal as well. If you don't want to pay it, then you shouldn't be using the park then. That's what I had inquired from the recreation manager and also the parks manager, that's what they had said that the $300 would be administrative time to seek out who's using the parks and make sure they comply with the 25 per day and then the 15% over sales or the $2 per person. Thank you. You're welcome.

Is there a, if someone's only going to use, be a concessionaire for three days for a special event or something like that, do they still pay the whole $300?

Well, I don't think, like if it's a special event, I believe there might be something different when we have post-falls days. This is just a one-off. If you're having a sale at Camelon Park on a Friday, Saturday afternoon, that's when this would kick in. I don't believe it would be... The Post Falls Festival might have different rules. I'm not sure what those would be, but this would just be the one-off.

Yeah, I'd want to know that because this, particularly the 15% tax on 500 in sales is pretty onerous to me.

That's pretty standard. If you were to go to pick out the park, that's the same thing that they charge there. They get a percentage of the register sales. And also you have to buy your supplies from them as well. So if that's not something that you're willing to do, then you don't participate in that event.

Just to confirm, these, like education and fitness, these would be for-profit groups that are utilizing our parks for their profit instead of providing some sort of private property or facility for themselves. We're not talking about like a running club that my son is like part of where the kids, well, the kids get together and the moms really heavily encourage them to run and sometimes they run and sometimes they don't.

In that case, you encourage the running. It helps burn off the energy. But this is more like a morning yoga in the park. Yes. Like a yoga instructor is having 10 or 20 people over at the Camelon Park. They're having morning yoga.

And the yoga instructor is charging those people, not just somebody that knows how to do yoga invited her Bible study class to do something. Okay. I just want to confirm. I don't want to disincentivize the normal use of parks by groups.

No, that's a very good point. Thank you for pointing that out. But yeah, it's a commercial use of the park where somebody is holding a class and it's going to be a, I'm just using Camelon Park because it has a nice river view and they're having a morning yoga and they're inviting 20 people and they're charging 15 bucks.

Exactly. Whereas if it were some sort of other activity like karate or something, they would be having to pay rent to their karate studio or fund that. So that's why we're just recovering that cost. Yes, that's right. Okay. I struggle with this because, like, I want – especially with the – I want to say concierge, and that's not how you say that word. Concessionaire, yeah. Concessionaire. Yeah. Like, I want to encourage, like, small businesses to be able to make money and have access to the public that use our amazing parks. And so I do struggle a little bit with, like, wanting to charge so much, but I understand that these facilities are also – paid for with public money and so if you're going to be using them for private usage, there has to be some sort of back and forth there. We have to find a good number and if the rest of council feels like these numbers are appropriate and not overly restrictive, I would be happy with them. I don't know.

I think maybe a perspective on it is also it's like a site reservation to prevent any kind of conflict with that profitable site being used. So if you have two different concessionaire groups that come in and say, well, I was here first or, you know, one of them has a permit and one of them doesn't, obviously we're kind of solving that conflict as well as how I would kind of view that.

I think we do have a legitimate need to control the usage. We have a legitimate need to police those permits, and so the annual permit fee makes sense to me. $25 a day, that's like your business lease, you know, if you lease any property and all that. I've signed business leases. I have never paid 15% of my sales to my landlord. So that, to me, seems...

It's common, too. If you go to the North Idaho Fair, they do charge register sales on that as well. So that is a common practice if you are a food vendor. They're used to that.

So, okay, I mean, the fair is a week. This is someone who's, let's say, is there for a summer or something like that. They have to make all of their profit in that. And I'm just thinking the economics of, All right, if you're selling hot dogs and you have a 40% markup or something like that, 15% is a lot.

You've had a pretty good day if you've sold $500 of hot dogs, though, too.

Sure, or ice cream or whatever. I mean, I don't really know what concessionaires that we have currently, and maybe that would help. But still, and my other question, too, is how much revenue would this actually generate? I mean, it would...

If you take 15% over $500, it's not much. Like you said, if they're selling hot dogs at $4 a pop, chances they get over $500 is not going to be very often.

Again, a different perspective on that. I would say exactly what you're saying. The volume that it would take to generate $500 in sales in selling hot dogs would then... lead me to the conclusion that it would cause damage to the public property we're using, like to generate that much volume, which would then make sense to have to recoup that in some way.

Right, that's what I was gonna say, the foot traffic that you'd have to attract to sell over $500, and let's say Hot Dogs is the example, if you're only charging let's say $5, you'd have to sell quite a bit of Hot Dogs to have a lot of foot traffic come down to the park to have that. Then they'd be using the restrooms, you'd be using the power.

Well, okay, so let's say you're renting boats. $500 is a half a day of one boat. So, I mean, I just threw hot dogs out there. Let's not get too bogged down with that.

But that's a typical what you'd sell at the park, though, if you wanted kids to buy it. So that's a good example, though.

Right, or ice cream vendors or something. But, you know, it could be somebody who's renting out boats, and that's $500 right there every time one person rents it for a half a day. So I'm just trying to... It just seems like I would rather we collect our revenue in the daily usage fee regardless of sales. And you could say maybe it is fairer because if you don't have any sales, then you're not paying a higher fee. Sure. I'm just trying to make sure we're not being overly restrictive to where we're keeping people from – from encouraging them to make our parks more enjoyable for people because we're trying to collect this, which probably isn't a lot of revenue in the end, right? We're talking one comma at best probably for the entire season. Chris has a comment for them.

Hi Chris Hammerman parks and rec director and Jason's doing a great job presenting this. I think you know I'm new so I don't know I don't have the whole background but the 15 percent and the twenty five dollars a day that's been in place. So the I believe. So I think the only new thing is the $300 one-time permit fee, and that is because there's been an increase in the demand on parks from concessionaires, commercial use, to do whatever, fill in the blank, and it's getting... It's getting way beyond just your hot dog and your snow cone. It's all these different kind of weird things. It's taking a lot of staff time to try to go through that and figure out and do a lot of back and forth with the concessionaire to figure out what it is they're trying to do and where that fits in our system. Because again, it's getting beyond just your average hot dog or snow cone vendor. And so trying to find a way to capture some of that staff time is why that $300 new fee, the other, the 15% you're talking about, has been in place. So I hope that helps.

That's very helpful information. Thank you, Chris. Can you give us an example? I'm not sure. What are some of these concessionaires that are requesting, that are taking up some of the time that might be helpful?

Yeah, so like someone that wants to do a sauna, an on-site sauna. Someone that wants to do, and this was a few years back, a lantern festival. I mean, so just some really kind of unique ideas offerings, which are cool, and we want to be able to work with them and provide that, but it does take some staff time to try to figure out, because it's not, you know, it's not a typical application form to do a lantern lighting festival, right? So just... trying to capture some of that time that we're spending on this.

Do you have standards or an ability to look at that and decide if that's appropriate or not appropriate use of the park? Or is it kind of like you kind of have to let them because of First Amendment reasons or something?

Well, yeah, we have standards and we just kind of look at each situation. And that's why, again, why it's taking so much time because it's not something that's just cookie cutter. And so it's taking more time to kind of go through our processes of, okay, would we allow that? Under what circumstance? You know, how many people and what does that trigger? And what are the impacts on the parks?

Thank you. I think this is probably overdue then.

And for me, I guess to put it more bluntly is, you know, the taxpaying public doesn't have an op, doesn't have an option, but to pay for the parks. And if you live in the city limits, you're paying for it. So if you're paying to provide a venue for somebody to do a for-profit business, then I think the public is then entitled to a portion of the share of that profit. It's only fair. So I don't have an issue with any of that. Thank you. Okay.

Okay, so if there's no more questions for Jason, we're in a public hearing, then we'll do public input if there is any on this.

There's none.

All right, so then no rebuttal.

I will close the public hearing, and I think we're ready for a motion. I just need approval to bring it back to council for the next, to update the resolution. So moved.

Second. Motion and a second. Further discussion? Roll call, please.

Plough?

Aye.

Malloy? Aye. Ziegler? Aye. Mosby? Aye. Luca? Aye. Stiglitter? Aye.

Motion passes. Thank you. On to our next public hearing, Heavenview Annexation and Vacation. I will open the public hearing.

Good evening, Mayor Westland, Council President Malloy, and other members of Council. John Manley, Planning Manager, presenting the staff report for the Heaven View Annexation and Vacation. File numbers are ANNX 25.9 and VAC 25.4. So the applicant is JUB Engineers for representing the owner of the Strizak's Haven Ranch, LLC. You can see here what they're requesting is about a 41 acre annexation and it's a split zone. They got about 22 acres being requested for R1 and about 19 and a half requesting the medium density R2. In addition, they are requesting a vacation of just a little bit more than a third of an acre along Fenwick right away. So how I'm gonna go through this, I'm gonna go through the annexation and zoning request first and then at the end of the, after that, then we'll go over the vacation request. So the Planning and Zoning Commission on February 10th did forward the recommendation for those zones to you. In addition, they also looked at a subdivision request which I'll show you in just a second here and it's contingent upon the annexation and the vacation request. You can see here there's 92 single family lots of R1 and about 117 medium density lots that they propose in the R2. This right here is the general disposition that was approved here. You can see here in red, this is an extension of prosper Avenue. So kill deer west of highway 41 runs up to it. And then it changes to the east and I'll kind of show a collector map here in a bit, but it's planned to go east to west. I mean, west to east, east of highway 41. There also potentially could be some, depending, I don't know exactly who's improving one. The applicant might be able to detail Phinicus Road here. So with the subdivision, there might be portions improved with this, or it might be done with the development to the west. Here's the project location for the annexation. You see it here on the northeast corner of Phinicus and Hope. It's about midway south of Prairie between Highway 41 and Meyer. There's the zoning, you can see here, the surrounding zoning and the proposed zoning that they have there. The light yellow, the bright yellow there, that's R1, but note that that's in the Foxtel PUD, and there is varying density on lots there. So west of Phenicus, you primarily have your typical R1 lots. You do have some smaller, I think, 5,000 square foot lots over there west of Finnecas. East of Finnecas, you do have a school. The school property is right here. And you do have, once you go further to the east from that, you do have some smaller alley-loaded houses and lots. And then it kind of goes up and it transitions to some larger lots as you get to these big Sky Estates County lots. So what they're proposing with the mixed density does by looking at it blend in with kind of what you see out there with the surrounding Foxtel development. Further to the west, you do have some developing commercial, corridor commercial on Highway 41. There is a planned medical campus at this location, which I'll touch on that in just a bit. And into the north of Prairie Avenue, we do have some community commercial mixed zones there, which is developing now currently with some mixed development with types of commercial, school, and whatnot. To the northeast corner of Highway 41 and Prairie, that is a commercial destination development site. so you'll see some more big box type and pad type development there.

Mr. Manley, I'm sorry, can you talk about the PUD in the yellow? Yep. What is planned for that PUD in the area that doesn't already have platting?

This, currently what's being planned there is for additional, I think it's currently being developed up to Prosper now, but up to north of that, They do plan on doing some additional single family type development there currently. They will be required to come before the Planning Commission, I believe, and do a PUD amendment to fulfill that.

Okay, so more like single family detached product of some density is what you're...

Yeah, up towards Prairie. Up towards Prairie. Currently, what I've heard, once again, until they get their entitlements, they do have, I think, some form of senior care or senior housing type development they want to do on Prairie. But until we get that amendment and we get that, we're kind of pontificating a little bit.

How would these zones being R1 and R2 affect Can I ask that, their ability to put any other type of product in there, I guess? They would just have to adhere to the prescribed setbacks and borders if they wanted to do R3 next to an R1 or an R2, is that right?

So here you can kind of see how they're attempting, they're working together and the applicant can kind of talk to how they're in coordination with the Foxtel people. And you can see here, they have the road connection points here. They've planned those, um, to the west on Phinicus. You can see these, these locations that they do have onto Phinicus. And so from what I see from a residential standpoint with what they plan to do and what Foxtel is doing, it does seem like they're, they should transition well.

Okay, but to put R3 next to something R1 or R2, which is being proposed, there are like specific barrier requirements that we have, right? Like you have to have so many feet or like plants or something like that? Yeah, they're not, in the R1 and R2,

there's no multifamily that's gonna be allowed by the zoning district. So they're not, in this proposal, proposing any multifamily.

Yeah, no, I get that.

But at Foxtel, if they did, then yeah, there would be some buffer requirements. Potentially, but you have Finnecas Road here.

It's probably wide enough.

So we don't buffer between, once you put in a right-of-way between, we currently don't apply that buffer between an apartment complex.

Okay, thank you.

So a couple of the first two criteria you have when you look at zoning is deals with the future land use map and some goals and policies and are you consistent with that. So the next few slides here is going to hit the kind of touch on the first two review criteria. So the future land use designation you see here, that's this blue, that's transitional and the way our current comp plan does is it points you to the focus area, the applicable focus area to look for other guiding policies that could help assist the decision. So looking at the 41 North and what it states and how it could affect this proposal is development should provide pedestrian connectivity to all multi-use paths and trails, including the Highway 41 trail. Additionally, it does say focus provisions for multifamily commercial and tech uses near higher classified roadways. So going back into this right here, you do have it transitioning from lower density to higher density as you go to prairie. kind of touching base on Samantha's question that if for some reason, whenever this comes forward, let's just say they did propose multifamily, right? That would be adjacent. And so that's where we would apply our design standards and buffer there. And it does provide some space between Prairie. We did look at this when this came in and we actually asked the applicant to kind of show that we could get a road running east west and still be able to develop those as either sort of form of commercial and future development. What staff's concern was looking at this is that we didn't get pigeonholed on a remainder piece that then compromises all of our decisions down the road. But by looking at it, it seemed like their proposal did allow future development. Looking at the compatibility with multi-use trails, I'll go back one more. Sorry, I'm flipping. Right here is the prairie trail. I think they're going to be doing work here late this summer or here in the near future on getting the Prairie Trail across Prairie Avenue. So as this develops, we'll be encouraging connections through either multi-use paths and or other connections to it, as well as there'll be multi-use paths on Prosper to get to the north-south corridor of that trail on the east side of Highway 41. Now going into some goals and policies, grow and sustain a balanced, resilient economy for Post Falls, providing community prosperity and fiscal health. The other goal, plan for and establish types of quantity of land uses, Post Falls supporting community needs and long-term sustainability. So earlier I referenced the commercial development going at 41 and the medical campus. all that is going to create a need for some sort of employment base that's going to need some housing. So having diversified housing at different price points near employment centers may be considered being complementary in enhancing the sustainability of that corridor. And that kind of moves us into the policies. Support land use patterns that maintain and enhance communities' level of service. And then I bolded promote well-designed development. So getting the right uses near some services could assist. And even foster long-term fiscal health, I think you could argue that might even tie into that. Looking at policy 15, ensure that adequate land is available for future housing needs, helping serve residents of all ages, incomes, abilities through provisions of diverse housing types and price levels. I think we all know there's no guarantee what the price levels are gonna be. I think we all wish they were lower than what they are. But having different sized lots, the R2 and the R1, may provide that opportunity for diverse housing at more attainable prices than other sizes of lots. There we go. And then goal six, maintain and improve Post Falls Transportation Network on pace and concert with the needs and the plan's objectives. Right here is an excerpt from the overall plan here to extend the Miner-Collector-Prosper generally east west to meyer road and so by getting this if it's in the city and we get this extension of prosper it'll be just that much closer to providing that connection to meyer which will be another alternative east west route that could provide options for individuals in that area annexation should also help implement the post falls transportation plans enabling completion of preserving continuity and circulation patterns for roads and pedestrians I think I've kind of driven that home. So there we go. I've kind of gone over the first two there that you see there, review criteria for zoning for annexations. The third one is, does the proposed zoning district create any demonstrable adverse impact upon delivery of services by any political subdivision? So this is who we notify for seeing if any of these individuals had concerns of what we received. We didn't receive anything other than neutral. They want to coordinate with development. No impact on infrastructure. So you see that. Any questions now regarding the zoning as part of the annexation?

All right.

Okay, I do have to go to the vacation now.

Oh, yes. Oh.

Sorry. This was admittedly the first time I ran actually the annexation vacation, so it admittedly is a little bit awkward. So here we go, here is the vacation. You see here, that's the area, it's just on the northeast corner there, Fenicus, Hope, highlighted in the hatched. In relation to their proposal, you see it there, it's right around the southwest corner of their proposal. Why it's important to them, more or less, as you see, once it's vacated, it gets absorbed into this and it can get planned as part of the subdivision. Staff's concern is, well, do we have any Need for this, use for it. Well, you see the plan is always to go east, west, north, south. So the plan was to be right on the property line. But the plan changed. We moved the road to the west, right? So I don't know. Maybe Rob, if you're curious enough, he can tell you why I had to move to the west. But I don't know. But so it moved to the west, and so we have this little piece. And you can see here that we don't have any concerns because there's no sanitary sewer mains, no water mains. There's no need for it for the city's perspective. And so we're open with vacating this area.

Do we own this piece of property, or we just have an easement on it? Does that question make sense, or is that not applicable?

No, I understand the question. I just wish.

Oh, no, I just want to make sure that it was a reasonable question, not that you didn't understand.

The easy answer is yes.

To which?

To both. It's right of way. So we hold it in trust for the public until such time as there's no longer a public need for it.

The developer does not own this piece of property. No. No other private person owns it and we just have a needs man over the top of it.

We own it. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. are they gonna buy it from us? Like we would have to buy a quarter acre of land from any other person?

So cities don't have that ability. When it comes to dedicated rights of way, when the public no longer has a use for it, then we return that back to the private property who has a reversionary interest in that property.

Because someone gave it to us, we didn't buy it from someone.

Yeah, it would have been dedicated right of way.

Okay, all right, that's great. Thank you. I'm sure you've explained that to me lots of times.

Stop it.

So once again, same individuals noticed. It was all one noticed. We heard no concerns. So any questions for me before we get to the applicant? I don't know if this is the right time to ask it.

Didn't I see something in here about them having to wait for sewer to be developed? There was like a...

Temporary line that was being used or being repaired and yeah, we do actually I could get I do have a slide that I can pull up here that if you have questions regarding that that Rob Hollis the city engineering was there just are they are they gonna wait until that? I'm not the right person to answer that so I'd rather have Rob come up here They can give you the more succinct, you know accurate response on sewer. I I will. It's a separate slide.

Oh, it's just a single slide? He knew this was coming just for Rob.

I never ask anything. That's fair. That's fair. Moment in the spotlight here.

Tell me about the sewer. Good evening, honorable mayor, members of the council, Robert Paulus, city engineer. The very short answer is yes, they cannot move forward into the subdivision process or into the formal subdivision development until the sanitary sewer is verified that there's capacity in the temporary line that's at pole line and State Highway 41. We are doing a study which was approved within the last two months and we are currently collecting the data for that study. And that study should be completed around December of this year. Actual completion date's a little bit sooner than that, but I'm looking at it as it'll be a nice Christmas gift if it's done. That study will verify that there's capacity in that temporary line. If not, there are other options as to how to get sewer to this location. properties in this area are part of the Meyer alternative facility and that they are paying a surcharge towards that. There is a potential that the developer could put in the missing sewer pieces and then we would work with them on negotiating how we do a reimbursement on portions which are the city's responsibility. Does that answer your question?

I think so. So regarding the vacation of this property, originally was it envisioned that there would be sewer lines and such going north-south through that area, and is that why it was originally a right-of-way for the city?

The original rights-of-way for that area were part of the Post Falls irrigated tracks from the early 20th century, so the early 1900s. And when this area was developing, there was a power line in that right-of-way. As Foxtail developed, there were some difficulties in how to place the roundabout that's out there and not impair the private property, which was not in Foxtail, and that's what caused the roadway to shift slightly to the west. Once that was done, and when the road improvements were built in Fenekes, the sewer and the water got put in the roadway, so that right of way was no longer needed.

OK, so the sewer and water does run along. You said it's with the roadway, in other words. So that land is now not needed. Correct.

Right now you can see the part in the middle that says existing sewer that's south of Hope Avenue. The developer of Foxtail is putting in all of the remaining sanitary sewer as well as constructing the remaining portions of Venicus Road from Hope Avenue all the way up to Prairie Avenue. that will be completed this year, but the actual connection to Prairie will not be put into operation until the Post Falls Highway District and City of Post Falls project to widen Prairie Avenue is constructed, estimated in next summer of 27.

So in short, if we vacate this, there's no adverse impact on our ability to connect to the north or east for future annexation?

That is correct.

OK, thank you.

Engineer and historian.

There's a little bit of surveyor in me, so I like to know the history on the right subway. Any, if without any other questions, thank you.

Any other questions for staff?

Okay.

Good evening, Council. I'm Brad Marshall with JEB Engineers representing the applicant. With me tonight also is Cole Henderson with JEB Engineers. He's the project engineer on this. And normally our client would be here with us, Trey Tutt. He did have kind of an emergency that came up tonight so he's not able to make it. So it's the JEB show tonight. john and i have a lot of similar slides so i'm going to kind of work through ours and kind of quickly move through some others as well again we want to thank the council for your you know committing to the city and being here tonight we want to thank the staff as always who had opportunity to work with shelly and john and warren and rob for a long time and we're all lucky to have such great staff we reviewed the staff report the agenda report Absolutely agree with the entire context of those reports. We've worked on an annexation agreement between legal counsel and the applicant. And we signed that annexation agreement. Promate has, the applicant. So that's in the file. So there's no real negotiation there. It's very fair. So pretty straightforward. Who is Promade Homes? They are a developer builder out of the Tri-Cities. They've been in the Tri-Cities areas for 20, 25 years. They've kind of branched off their regional home builder developer in Spokane and now in North Idaho. They've wanted to be here for years. I think it's important to point out, I'm kind of a big economic development guy is, While their corporate office is the Tri-Cities, they're gonna use local professionals in our community, title companies, real estate professionals, you know, to make it for house sales. They'll use local tradesmen, electricians, plumbers, roofers, concrete, they'll source materials from our local facilities. So that money's going back into our economy and ultimately providing homes for our community. That's kind of a little bit about Pro-Made Homes. A little back story. Again, John did a great job of kind of addressing the request, the annexation request, the zoning of the R1 and the R2. Your Planning Commission heard this. They unanimously recommend approval of that R1 and R2. As you kind of put on your land use planning hat, you kind of think about the more intensive uses you tend to put on those arterials and those collectors, in this case, Prairie or 41. As you kind of back away from those, you tend to start to do those R2s and R1s. And we think this is a pretty good fit in the context. And I'll kind of get into that a little bit. Again, this is kind of a long-term phase project. You know, five to six years of development. I think there's six phases. You know, the goal is ultimately to break ground possibly this fall. That's just on the infrastructure of phase one. And I'll kind of get into that. And ultimately, you won't have the last house for six, seven years. So it's just a phase project. It doesn't mean there might be a year that one phase goes, maybe two phases go together. It might be a year if the economy is a little slow. There might not be a phase. You know, it's just incremental. It's a reminder, John probably mentioned this, the site's in the area of impact. It's adjacent to your city limits. It's kind of surrounded by the foxtail. It's adjacent to your city streets, your city sewer, and the Ross Point Water District. I'll kind of touch on that. The Ross Point provided a will serve letter on the project. It's adjacent, just across the street from the Treaty Rock Elementary School, and a neighborhood park, and a planned city park to the west. And I'll kind of touch on that a little bit. There's that kind of area map you've seen before in the staff report and John. I want to touch a little bit. John did a great job, as always, logistics shows, next to Fitticus, next to Hope, next to Treaty Rock. Today, in terms of park space, there's an existing city park that's going to go in. This is more of a regional park. And then there's kind of a homeowner's park that's within the Foxdale project adjacent to this. And Promete Homes has partnered up with Arcaterra Homes, developer of Foxdale, and those in the Promete project, Heaven's View, will participate in the funding of that neighborhood park through HOA dues. So they're going to be able to use it without paying for the maintenance of that park. And they also probably is partnering with Foxtail, Arcaterra, on the development of the infrastructure in the area that's common. Again, future land use designations are always important. You're looking at that proposed zoning, the R1, R2, does it fit with the underlying comp plan designation, future land use map, and that transformational Again, John did a great job in the staff report of kind of walking you through that. I'm just going to kind of touch on that in a minute.

May I ask you about the park? I'm so sorry before you get too far from that.

Oh, sure.

Is this park between Cirrus and Lira? Is that the park that you'll be participating in, or is there an additional park? somewhere that is not yet in existence?

It's that neighborhood park there that you see on the southeast corner of the proposed annexation. Okay, so Hope and... Yeah, and they'll participate in the funding of that park. Gotcha.

Okay.

Thanks. Feel free to bounce me around.

Sorry. I didn't want you to get too far.

Again, your code and state law requires you to address these criteria for annexation and zoning. Again, I'm not going to go through all of them, but as the indicated slide number nine of the staff report, the presentation were compliant with the future land use map. Again, slide number 10 kind of talks about the goals and policies that are applicable to this annexation and the zoning. Again, we believe we're compliant with that in accordance. And we'd adopt that report as a matter of fact in the minutes today. And does it create an adverse effect on the delivery of services? And again, I think there's, well, 20 or 30 different taxing districts and agencies and utilities that are providing public notice on this. To my knowledge, not one of them responded with there's a negative impact if anything there was a couple favorable again i'll talk a little bit about the zoning some good questions i've been around a while and i remember when foxtail was done it was annexed with the r1 with the pud which was a great design and they some areas where they create some large lots some areas where they created some smaller lots to make that mixed housing product And so there is some more intensive areas, there's no doubt, some back-loaded units, some cottage-style homes and so forth. And again, kind of looking at that makes, we think it's very, this R1, R2 is very compatible with Foxtail. And to speak to that, again, ProMade has partnered with Arcaterra Homes on the park and the infrastructure development. So there's a mutual benefit there, and the right-of-way vacation. I wish this map was turned another 45 degrees, but nonetheless. Again, this kind of shows that R1 and R2 lots. Again, nice R1 lots adjacent to the elementary school and then kind of moving to those smaller R2 lots. You know, there's a market for everybody there. We often think about the R1 as the perfect opportunity, but there's a demand for the R2, whether or not it's You know, the first time home buyer, the starter home buyer, or the empty nester, or the single professional, you just kind of never know.

May I ask, and I know this doesn't have to do with the criteria. I know this doesn't have to do with the criteria, um, but you, you noted that, um, the adjacent lots have done like a PUD or mixed. And so that gives them more ability to mix these two zones, um, from kind of the mind of a developer. Why did you choose to differentiate them so specifically instead of, um, requesting something where you could have like a street of R1 and then a street of R2? doing something like that is it just the progression towards prairie or what is it that's beneficial to doing it this way as opposed to doing it more mixed up than you could do that's a great question many of the jurisdictions have adopted these big residential zoning and i've got a couple projects like that going and

And that actually was, in all fairness, this was explored like five, seven years ago on this property. There was a prior annexation request with a makes residential and it was denied at that time. And it was significantly larger. It was a kind of, it went all the way to Prairie Avenue, that request. There was a little different era. Highway 41 was still being finished up. The interchange was still kind of unknown. So there were some issues that affected that annexation that makes residential at the time. So it was denied. So this property has now come back with a more straightforward R1, R2, we think it's compatible. And it's based on those just standard land use patterns. Gotcha.

Okay, cool. Thank you so much. Great question. I can actually give you the history on that some other time if you want.

Is this the Meyer farm land?

There were several that led up to the denial of that one. Yeah, different times. Different times, different eras. The good old days.

I pondered putting this, this is housing availability and affordability. You know, we, you know, we, The last study that was done, it was kind of commissioned by the EDC and Avista, and the city participated in that. Nationally, statewide, locally, we know we continue to be short on housing units. There's a lot going on that pushes prices up. So this is adding additional potential units into the mix of things. And it's creating choices for the marketplace. Choices always create a competitive market. And it's good to have options throughout the city of Post Falls. This is an example of real products that would be built within the project. These are kind of from their other projects, but this is what they've committed to building, good examples. The R1 is an example ranch home, three-car garage that fits on that R1 lot, or a two-story house. I think it's up in the 2,300 square foot two-story in that R1. And then those R2 products, they're down to the 1150 starter size, and then they kind of ratchet up a little bit to the 18s on the two-story units. So that's kind of what you get. And you're welcome to look at ProMade's websites. The material's out there.

Those are all detached. Was that in the annexation agreement? Pardon me, I don't remember.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Compliance with R1, R2.

But R2 you can have not detached. Correct. Okay.

So it's tidied up.

I'm sorry?

Yeah, it's in the annexation agreement. Oh, that they're all detached. That's all detached.

Gotcha. Okay, great.

Just kind of timeline, just kind of walk you through that. Again, we submitted the application in November. The Planning Commission heard it in February, unanimously approved the subdivision recommendation on the zoning. It took a little while to get to the council. We had to work on the annexation agreement. We got delayed. We had a little public notice challenge. Here we are tonight. That's all good. I think our goal is to begin some form of development with phase one or two this fall. Again, Rob touched on the sewer. We've got to work through that. There is some sewer line out there that's a damaged line that's being repaired this summer, and then some modeling that will be done to look through different options. We understand that. Home construction wouldn't begin until 2027, and that last phase is 2032. These are best guess. Again, phasing, illustration, kind of watching through from kind of south to north. It kind of a mix of our ones and our twos. Transportation, again, this sits really well with the arterials and collectors in the road and the extension of Prosper that ultimately will serve the hospital and Hope and Finnecas downstream, the pole line. So there's a lot of good transportation there. Kudos to the city for a great transportation plan. I'm kind of looking forward to that. Again, we're partnering on the development of Finneas, excuse me. So Homes, Lakeside, they're constructing Finneas this summer, as Rob mentioned, all the way up to Prairie Avenue, but just short of that roundabout. They're not going to make that connection. because the Prairie Avenue will finish widening next year, 27. There's a little right-of-way that had to be secured out there to push that project back just a little bit. So again, Finnegas. And Promates participate in the cost of Finnegas because it's Jason Street. And I'll kind of get into the right-of-way vacation and explain that a little bit more. developing into the city's cross sections. This is kind of a key point. This site is adjacent to the Ross Point Water District well site, adjacent to the water tower out there. But if you're looking east on Hope, just north of the Treaty Rock, You're looking down the street, and two thirds of the street are constructed today. You've got three lanes there. But if you look at the north side, there's no curb gutters, drainage, sidewalk. And we're right next to an elementary school. There's a lot of pedestrian traffic. And the first phase of this project will finish off that street, providing some good connectivity and a little safer access.

You have 30 seconds left on the clock, by the way.

Sanitary sewers there, water's there. Talked about that. Open space. Again, immediate cease requirements there. Talk a little bit about the vacation. Again, John did a great job. I stole his exhibits. I wrote the legals, though. And again, we're vacating this area as a result of the realignment of Finnecas due to that roundabout shift. And ultimately, we'll get this. There's no utilities in the vacated area. We'll get this property actually on the tax rolls and actually develop in lots and provide housing units. And again, closing comments. I got 11 seconds. Again, we appreciate the city staff, the commission's recommendation of approval. Again, we signed the annexation agreement. We submit a very strong application that meets your criteria for both the annexation and zoning. And with that, we respectfully request approval of the annexation, the zoning, and the vacation. And stand for questions.

CHRIS RODGERS. Questions for the applicant? All right, thank you. Public testimony. Wishing to speak in favor, Mark Hughes.

Mark Hughes, 7074 West Prairie Avenue. We're the ones that sold the property to ProMade because of the delays. Some family members wanted cashed out, so we put two parcels up for sale. We had six very interested buyers, but we chose ProMade. And the reason we did is because I liked their product. I just felt like they would be What they would be doing would be good and work well with our plans and with Arcaterra, et cetera. I hope there's not a fire going on. They're after you. You know, my brother, who farmed the property, opposed the Arcaterra annexation.

Oh, they're putting houses on good farmland.

I said, Fran, get up in a plane. Look down at the Palouse. Look out at the basin. There's plenty of farmland. There's going to be food at Safeway. I, on the other hand, am all about highest and best use. And I feel that I've had to, that it's sort of been incumbent on me to be supportive of the Jacklins who we've known for 50 years to Arcaterra and of course now Promade. When I originally saw their proposal for 209 units, we were proposing when we were denied by city council in 2022,

which was 140 homes. But we had a park, open spaces, community garden, and whatnot.

And I thought, 209 homes? Yeah. But of course, and I didn't see, I did notice a little bit of open space in there now. And they're partnering with Arcaterra for, you know, to support their parks, which is, got to hand it to them. That's pretty innovative. We're not allowed to say affordable housing anymore, right? We have to say attainable. And I'm all about that. I have kids. And again, I know what they paid for the land. So I know what they have into it and I know what development costs are and carrying costs and assuming they choose to, they're going to be able to offer homes at a very competitive price point. So I support that. I also support them because well, again, highest and best use. I'm happy to see our little area around 41 and Prairie developed. with the hospital going in, the shopping center, and everything else that's going on. And someday, the residents in those 209 homes will be doing business in the commercial and retail that we're going to be putting in. So that's my personal reason for supporting it. But I think what they're proposing is a good project. JUB's done a good job, I've met with them to talk about this project and of course city staff always does a good job. I think it's gonna be a good project. Thank you. Thank you.

Next up, wishing to speak in opposition, Peter, I'm sorry you'll have to help me with your last name. Judo. Judo, okay.

Thank you, Mayor and City Council members. My name is Peter Judo, and I am a resident in the Foxtail development. First, I want to say that I am not opposed to the approval and development of this parcel of land. I believe if done right, it can be a nice addition to the post falls in the local area, but I am opposed to the current proposal. My biggest issue is the lack of any parks, courts, playgrounds, or really any kind of amenities from a development of this size. Post Falls is supposed to be a family-friendly town, and Heaven View, in my opinion, misses the mark. We should have neighborhoods that showcase how Post Falls is a great place to raise a family. Do we really want typical suburbia neighborhoods with no charm? A neighborhood this size right in the middle of Foxtail and across from Perry Elementary can negatively affect the local aesthetic. if all it has to add is rows and rows of houses and condos. Lastly, I would like to talk about the proposed HOA formation. I know the City Council doesn't typically get involved in HOA matters, but the proposal by Heaven View is concerning. While attending the planning and zoning meeting, I learned from the first time that Heavenview proposed to join the Foxtel HOA. This caught me by surprise as neither I nor any other resident I spoke to were made aware of this. I contacted our HOA president to ask why the current residents of the HOA were not made aware and given an opportunity to ask questions, voice concerns, or even support. It was essentially told that the Foxtel HOA is still held by the developer. and that residents have no say in how the HOAs are run. While I understand this to be true, it leaves residents no recourse with the unelected developers and HOA board. So they will be looking to elected officials, the people they have chosen to represent them, should this merge of two separate developers cause any unforeseen issues in the future. Thank you. Thank you. Does the applicant wish to rebut?

Again, Brad Marshall, JB Engineers, representing the applicant. Again, we want to thank the Hughes family for the support of the project. In regards to the gentleman's comments on the parks, it's a reminder that each applicant for a building permit within any of the projects will pay the parks impact fee. They'll develop city parks within the project. They have partnered with the Foxtail through through Arcaterra Homes, which does control the ownership of that neighborhood park at this point in time. It's very common, not entirely uncommon, that the developer controls that until there's kind of a tipping point where they've sold more lots, they've sold the lots out, then they hand over that park and ultimately management at HOA. So we think it's a fair opportunity to provide a park, two parks, and we think it's appropriate and very transparent. Again, we've submitted a very strong application. Your commission's recommended approval on the subdivision, the zoning, and with that, I respectfully request approval. Thank you. Thank you.

All right I will close the public hearing we're on to deliberation so we're going to take the motions in three parts this time we're going to do the annexation in the zone separately to avoid any confusion like we've had in the past and then the vacation will be a third motion at the end as we go through this.

As soon as John gets up the approval criteria we'll start through with starting with annexation. All righty, here we go. So annexation, is the annexation of the property in the best interest of the city? Discuss.

I would say yes. It's not quite a county pocket, but it's surrounded on three sides by a city. So it makes the city more contiguous. It's particularly appropriate for it's providing more housing where housing is growing naturally that direction anyway. So I would say yeah, it is in the best interest of the city.

I would agree. It's actually kind of surrounded on four sides if you go a little farther north. The original Jacqueline property there kind of overhangs along the rail spur there. So I think it's just a matter of time before that's closed in. And it's basically an island now. And our policy and goals have been to fill in those islands. So it does meet that criteria.

I can see how it could be helpful. I guess I am a little bit concerned about the expenditure of city resources that sometimes we talk about, and then other times we choose not to talk about in these situations, just purely taking care of roads. um side with things that are cities responsibilities as we look into years of maybe not having the funding that we want and we know that growth does not in fact pay for itself i guess my other hesitation as it usually is with large annexations of land is it is a lot of land that we're committing to being in the city um where maybe we could take it piece by piece um and just do like one section of the annexation and then watch that guilt get built out and then do like the second part that they're asking for i just happen to be a more risk averse individual so um when i think about is it in the best interest of the city those are the things that concern me But I do see what the rest of council is saying in that it is a county pocket. I do like that it's delineated out between R1 and R2 so we can confidently vote on what they're asking for. And we know what they're asking to put in so that we can evaluate whether it's in the best interests of the city. So like all things considered, I'd say that I could be convinced that it is. I just also sometimes have concerns.

CHRIS JERRAMSEN. What you bring up about The impact and the roads and things like that. I mean, it's already being used by Foxtail residents.

So you're just going to bring more funding into the city to not the new roads that they would build that aren't going to pay for themselves. Like the pieces of property won't pay for them.

I mean, I'd have to see the map again, but my understanding is there's, there's residents right here and right here that are using these roads. So if you add more residents to that, wouldn't you add more revenue?

Not to the roads that the houses will be on. Yeah, in the neighborhood itself. Yeah, the arterial stuff is what I'm talking about. I appreciate what you're saying.

And there's a lot of trips down that road, too, with the school that's there and soon-to-be hospital complex. I think it is in the best interest to have city level sidewalks and services there to improve the the pedestrian access and safety of those intersections keep in mind when i look at is it in the best interest of the city i'm also thinking it's adjacent to this hospital property if it doesn't become city property with a subdivision on it. Do they put a commercial hog farm on it next to the hospital? I mean, what do they do with this if it's agricultural land? Doesn't make much sense to leave it as county and not have a buffer, particularly with the hospital and with Prairie Crossing and an elementary school to the south of it. It really seems like this should be part of the city, and it should be a residential subdivision. to provide that buffer area.

I would say two things. I think the greatest benefit we have from the city of Annex and this property is the rights-of-way development along Fennecus and that north-south corridor. But I do think your point is relevant, because we do talk about future revenue projection and the shortfall that we know is coming, and that in everything that we know about low-density residential, it does create more shortfall. But to Councilor Luca's point, Luca or Luca? I always get that wrong. You're gonna make me guess.

What's that?

Is it LECA or LUCA?

LUCA.

LUCA, I'm sorry. I think it's also, you know, we talk about highest best use or best use, and I don't see the opportunity here or appropriateness to have a high density commercial development that would kind of answer that question of generating more revenue. So I think site specific, this is the best use of it.

Right along the lines that councilor Luca has already mentioned. And now also councilor Ziegler. I think that there's a really great benefit to the city and praying connectivity, especially toward that Prairie trail. Uh, it's really hard to get to it from any part of the city. Uh, I used to live in that area and I would like to get out to it, but there's no connectivity. And I think that's going to be a great benefit to that side of the city to be able to access it. And I think this is a necessary development in order to get there. Uh, especially with connecting with prosper and, uh, with the contributions that the, the applicant has, uh, has represented to us that they're going to participate in the cost to improve Phenicus. I think those are essential for the, all of the parts of the city that connect to that area in particular, I'm referring to my experience at Foxtail. Uh, I would try and get out from there over the trail. And I think that that's important, uh, for that entire community, which is growing. to be able to access that trail.

we would be remiss to not remember that there is a very large Corterra development going in just to the southeast of that as well that's going to feed a lot of traffic as people come up to Prairie Crossing to shop or to the hospital complex or just to access Highway 41. There's a lot of, I think, was it several thousand houses over the years that are going to go in that area. So whatever we can do to accelerate the development of the infrastructure on the roadways, et cetera, I think would be in the best interest of the city.

All right. With that, I think we need a motion on the annexation.

I would move to approve the Heaven View annexation ANNX-25-9. Second.

Motion and a second. Further discussion? Roll call, please.

Malloy. Aye. Ziegler. Aye. Mosby. Aye. Luca. Aye. Stiglitter. Aye. Plough.

Aye. Motion passes. Thank you. On to the next question.

Turning to the zoning criteria. Criteria one is the proposed zoning district consistent with the future land use map and focus area contained in the currently adopted post falls comprehensive plan.

The free for all that is transitional.

I'd say that it is, especially with, as we heard the description of this particular, the R1 to the west and south of how it's, it's not just R1, it's got a little bit of that mixed use. I think that the, the requested R1 and R2, um, I know I liked uh, Samantha's comments about the, you know, why wasn't it more mixed, but I think the applicant had an excellent answer. Uh, I think that it's consistent with the surrounding development, uh, with how it's not just, even if it were just our one, it would be consistent, but how there's diverse housing types and sizes, uh, in that surrounding community. I think it's consistent.

Yeah, and R1 and R2 are both implementing zones, so it fits the comprehensive plan and the focus area.

I think it's thoughtful. It works well with what's already there, and it can't be a hog farm, so it seems reasonable.

I think providing a variety of housing types is also essential, especially kind of in context of our workshop previously of, you know, I think this is a great example of an implementing zone when you have responsible local government that responds to market forces, that this can be accomplished without larger legislative bodies becoming involved, so I think this is a great implementing zone for that reason.

The focus area, too, also contemplates higher density as it gets closer to Prairie Avenue, and this proposal does exactly that.

Moving on to number two. I forgot to push the button. Is the proposed zoning district consistent with the goals and policies contained in the currently adopted comprehensive plan?

I would say yes. It promotes compatible development. It's very compatible with what's already there. It improves vehicular and pedestrian infrastructure connectivity, as was mentioned earlier, and provides for a variety of housing types. So I think it fits well.

I am sympathetic to... to the comments about the park. I can see that 40 acres is quite large. I do like that the park that they're partnering with is essentially between the two developments. That's why I was kind of asking which park it was, because if you went from the tippy top of that 40 acres down to the first park, That's kind of a jaunt. Yeah. So it is nice that it is in the middle, but I mean, I am sympathetic to the idea that it is a whole 40 acres that is going to have to share a smaller park with another large development. and our comprehensive plan, our goals and policies are often point back to the lifestyle of Post Falls and the quality of life that we have here with open areas and park access and activity access. So I don't think it's enough to make this a no for me, but I just, I'm sympathetic to that point and I wish that maybe there was more that we could do to help meet that goal.

There's also a school right there too, which when the kids aren't in session, that's a lot of, that's a lot of grass.

Yeah. You can use that. Okay. Yeah. That's nice too. That's a good point.

Quick comment about the kind of the joining of forces of this development agreement with the existing, uh, HOA. I, you know, I'm not extremely familiar with the ins and out of how HOA operates, but it seems like effectually you're spreading out the cost over more residents, uh, which would, which would lower your HOA dues. I know there's some additional open space, but I think proportionately for everyone, the costs will be lower in maintaining that park and the open space. So to me, I think it's kind of an advantage.

Sorry to, uh, also empathize with Mr. Judah's comments and HOA. So I've, I've made this comment several times throughout the, however many years I've been on here, HOAs have some problems and, um, there are some things that definitely need to be fixed. Unfortunately, it's kind of a separate issue from annexation and zoning. But I hear you. HOAs, there are some issues there. So that doesn't get by me. So I do appreciate that. Yeah, we don't really have a lever for that. Right.

We are desperately looking for one. Yes, we are. Or a button or anything. Yeah.

Yeah, and it's not our place to tell the applicant how to run their business, but it might be good to the gentleman's comments to maybe go around and get the resident support for this. There is an economy of scale with HOAs that it would reduce the cost potentially of HOA dues. I know that we have a very small one, has zero amenities. And we have to pay $500 a year as a result because we have a very small number of homes. And so one of the things we've explored is merging with a nearby HOA to try to, you know, we pay 500, they pay something like 75 and have clubhouses and a golf course and all kinds of fun stuff. So maybe that's something that the applicant might consider. But again, it's not our place to say, but I think that the gentleman's comments were well received.

All right. I believe that the proposed zoning district is consistent with the goals and policies. In particular, we heard some comments about comprehensive goal number six regarding the, I think that connecting, for example, I already mentioned this, but connecting Prosper, that's going to help improve the Post Falls Transportation Network. I also think that in alignment with comprehensive policy number one, that the requested zones would be would promote a compatible well-designed development and as well as promote the pedestrian connectivity that I mentioned already. I think that also comports with the Comprehensive Policy 27 because it improves the street connectivity and walkability, and I think that applies as it relates to this particular design for both pedestrian and motorists.

Also as well as the development of more street trees which is one of our goals and policies as well. Currently that area is a little bit devoid of that because it was farmland so it would help in that as well.

All right, criteria three.

Does the proposed zoning district create a demonstrable adverse impact upon the delivery of services by any political subdivision providing services within the city?

Understated. None were noted.

I'm not comfortable with the neutral from the public school, especially when this so directly impacts one of the elementary schools. That's right there. It would be nice to have like an actual yay or nay on that. Um, and then my previous comments as usual stand, but I don't think demonstrable enough, I guess, to make this a no.

All right. Then we're ready for a motion.

I would move to approve, wait, I would move to assign the R1 and R2 zoning designations as outlined in the application. Second.

Motion and a second. Further discussion? Roll call, please.

Malloy. Aye. Ziegler. Aye. Mosby. Aye. Luca. Aye. Stiglitter. Aye. Plouffe.

Aye.

Motion passes. Now we need one last for the vacation.

Yep. Finally, I move to approve the Heaven View Vacation VAC-25-4. Second.

Motion and a second for the discussion. Roll call, please.

Maloy. Aye. Ziegler. Aye. Mosby. Aye. Luca. Aye. Stiglitter. Aye. Flew.

Aye. Motion passes. We are done with public hearings. On to unfinished business. First item up is the ordinance amending door-to-door permit issuance requirements.

Nothing that needs to be said about this one, right? All right. I move to approve. Hang on. I move to place the ordinance amending door-to-door permit issuance requirements as on its first and only reading by title only while under suspension of the rules.

Second. Motion and a second. Further discussion? Roll call, please.

Ziegler? Aye. Mosby? Aye. Luca? Aye. Stiglitter? Aye. Liu? Aye. Malloy? Aye. Kent, I wanted to say something.

it didn't affect the vote i just wanted to say thank you to staff for getting it back on our agenda so quickly after we had requested those changes and then i also wanted to say thank you to staff for the um heaven view annexation and like thinking about as you moved closer to prairie what we were going to do with that piece of land and i mean i know that you guys are always really diligent about everything but still i think it's nice to express thank you for thinking about what's going to happen to that little piece and making sure that it all fits so that's all i'm good you can move on

All right, with that, I think we're ready for the title. An ordinance of the city of Post Falls, Kootenai County, a municipal corporation of the state of Idaho, providing for the amendment of Post Falls Municipal Code by amending section 520.080 regarding issuance of commercial door-to-door permits, providing that the remaining sections of Post Falls City Code will remain in effect, providing for severability, providing for this ordinance to be in full force and effect from and after its passage, both apparently, approval and publication according to law. That's a lot.

I move to approve the ordinance amending door-to-door permit issuance requirements and to direct the clerk to assign the appropriate number and that it be published by summary only.

Second. Motion and a second. Further discussion? Roll call, please.

Ziegler? Aye. Mosby? Aye. Luca? Aye. Stiglitter? Aye. Flew? Aye. Molloy?

Aye. Motion passes. Next up is new business, the fiscal year 2025 annual comprehensive financial report.

Thanks.

All right. Good evening, mayor and council. What I am seeking tonight is approval of the fiscal year 2025 financial report. And the audit has been done. And what the auditors usually look at is when they come to the office is they hit every aspect of finances. They look at fixed assets, accounts payable, all of our general ledger entries, utility billing, payroll, Accounts receivable, accounts payable. And they look at also our internal policies to make sure we're following them correctly. So what they also look at is any policies that council has passed that affects the city, such as leave. They look at make sure that my office is doing leave accruals correctly. Make sure that we're applying catastrophic leave accruals correctly. make sure that anything that basically affects the financial situation of the city, make sure that my office is doing it correctly. Grants is another one that they look at. There's two categories of grants. If we've spent over $750,000. they will call that a single audit which means our auditors that we have hired are eligible to do a they're able to review all of that activity and report on to all the grant agencies instead of us getting bills from economic development hud whoever else gives transportation, Idaho, the feds, instead of having them come and audit, they're allowed just to have one auditing agency, and they'll report back. This year, we did not have that, so we didn't have that expense. But I'm happy to report that we didn't have any issues. There was no findings. There was no adjustments to the financial statements. The financial statements were presented fairly incorrect. We did have a little delay. There was some family issues at the accounting firm. Unfortunately, having a small firm means there's only one person that's able to do the audit. And so while she was out, she was out for a while. But we're finished. So 2025 can be put to bed. So I wanted to present these to council. The easiest way to look at these is to, in order to look forward, you have to start at the back of the process. So the city has 10. financial statements, basic financial statements. I didn't print out the other 142 pages. That's gonna be available on the city's website if anybody wants to look at the notes. I hope you guys look through all of that because it's a lot of work and it's a joint effort between my office and a lot of the other city staff that goes into that. So it'll be on the website after tonight. So I only printed out the financial statements. If you look at exhibit 10, we look at it as a fiduciary. And if you remember correctly, what we do is we collect the monies for the EMS and Kootenai Fire, and we have to report them in our financial statements. but we're not able to spend these monies, but I do have to track them. And so exhibit nine and 10 will be our fiduciary statements since we're a custodian of these monies. And so you'll see exhibit 10 is basically the income statement. Exhibit nine is the balance sheet of that. We just have to report them. We're not allowed to spend them. It's not our money, but I do have to track them. The next exhibit, exhibit eight, if anybody, if I wanted to put this on the overhead, that's why I printed these out, is because too small to see. Exhibit eight is the cash flow statement for water, wastewater, and sanitation. I won't go through all of those lines, but I'll spare everybody that. Let's look at exhibit seven. Exhibit seven is for the proprietary funds, which are basically the enterprise funds. And we have three of them here at the City of Post Falls, the water, reclaimed water, and also the sanitation department. And so the first block, operating revenue, The second block is the operating expense. And then the next line is operating income. So between all three, there was $15 million in operating income between the three funds. If you go through the investment income, interest expense, interest income, capital contributions, cap fees, developers, when they Pay their cap fees. That's also recorded on here. Transfers between funds. We transfer in, transfers out. We net those two together. They show those on the statement also. The net change in position between the three funds is $25 million. That seems quite a lot, but this year in the reclaimed department, they took a draw on a loan. So that loan is considered revenue on the cash side. Sorry, it's not revenue, but it will show up as in the reclaimed water area. If we go down a little further, I noticed that we had, in accounts payable, we had some utility bills in the wrong fiscal year, and so I had to change them. And so since I had changed them, it wasn't an audit finding, so fortunately that was good for us.

Jason, before you move on, can I ask?

Yes.

So just as a regular math person, operating revenues for the total were at $31 million. Total operating expenses, $15 million. And the difference there would be what we put away for repairs, New built like that's our future planning that we are doing to make sure that our infrastructure like stay supporting the city is that it's just the net difference between the income and the operating expenses, but yeah, that'd be what's what's the difference between the two correct that I'm asking like the what happens to the difference between those two because you look at it and it looks like oh we're collecting double of what we actually expend and then that goes for capital yes and then that goes for future capital to make sure that we can still provide service and not have to charge like a one-time levy or tax to build that's why we have our rates the way set that we do so we can pay down that the loan with deq that we have great perfect thank you you're welcome that is that noted there and transfers out is that where that is

No transfers out or any transfers between funds such as the general fund is getting reimbursed for payroll. Let's see any administrative costs the general fund has to pay for. The utility funds. I'm trying to think of what else off the top of it would be. We did some transfers between funds and the reclaimed water, which is why there's also transfers in. So between the net of the two, there's like a million dollars. So that sounds about right to the general fund. If one fund has more money than the other we're spending out of, I'll do a transfer between the two. And the only way to do a transfer between funds is at revenue and expense. So for financial statement purposes, they net out.

Okay. My other question was in sanitation, most of the expenses are administrative and supplies. Is that just payment to the franchisor or what is it?

Right. We, since we contract that out, we just pay the amounts for public services.

Yeah. And is that the reason why there are a number of differences between the, whether it's water and reclaimed water and sanitation where sanitation has line items that are not filled in where they are on the

line items for water and reclaimed water for example the salaries and benefits of recruitment out that's why it's blank on sanitation correct since we have since it's out the third party provider yeah thank you good questions thank you i'm glad i did this there's a lot of work in this um the next part on if we look at exhibit six is the balance sheet They call it the statement of net position, but that's the interchangeable of balance sheet. The first section is current assets, which includes your cash. The second section is your non-current assets, which are your fixed assets, your restricted investments, Deferred outflows is a little unique for government that pertains to our Gatsby 68 which is our Percy portion our unfunded portion of the Percy pension that has to be reported on our financial statements. Next we have current liabilities which those are basically our accounts payable our compensated absences which is our PTO. Any bonds we have is that the next section down for the non-current liability anything that's due over a year The deferred inflows that's another section that it's a little unique to government the first one is also has to do with the Percy liability and In the unearned lease contract, that is basically any of those water towers that we have that we will eventually earn income on. That's New El Gasby pronouncement. I had to calculate what the future earnings of those would be and show those on the face of the financial statements. So in the water fund, they have 1.4 coming due pretty soon in future years. And wastewater has roughly 260,000 coming due. And so exhibit six and exhibit seven, the net positions at the end of the year should tie out because your balance sheet should balance to your income statement, and they do.

One question on that one. The bonds payable, there's just one really big number in reclaimed water, but there's nothing for sanitation or water. Why is that?

There's no debt. All right. Yeah, water's debt was paid off last year. So the only fund that has debt is wastewater. And then they did take a huge draw on their second loan for DEQ and so that's what's reported on the wastewater side. Good question.

And then our starting position is that the total current assets line?

Starting position, say that again?

like our starting position, how much we started with. I know at the bottom here is our net position of what we ended up with, but what we started with is at that, like at the top though, 120 million under total current assets.

Oh, I'm sorry. The net investment of capital assets, what that number is, is the... your total assets, and any debt related to the fund?

He's talking all the way up here. Yeah, at the top there.

Oh, the current cash, the $120,000? $120 million, sorry.

What number, 120 million? We're calculating the net position. The net is what minus what, or what plus what.

Oh, gotcha. Okay, so if you take the total assets plus the deferred outflows of resources, you take those numbers, and then that will equal your current liability Sorry, your total liability, your total deferred inflows, and your total net position. Those three numbers plus the two numbers at the top will total.

So then our starting position is we have this much in assets, we drained out this much in liabilities, and we get our net position of $312 million, right?

Yeah, since the net position is the difference, yes.

Thank you.

All right, so exhibit five is a reconciliation between the governmental funds and the entity-wide, so I'll skip that because I just wanted to include it so you knew that I wasn't skipping a page intentionally. Exhibit four is when we talk about funds, what the auditors also look at is that I'm not crossing funds and supplementing. Since you saw that the wastewater fund has a lot of money, that I'm not supplementing the general fund with wastewater funds to make sure that we're using the funds appropriately and not just where we need the cash. So governmental funds are our general fund, debt service, Our capital funds, which are basically our impact fee funds, and then our other governmental funds are like 911, K9, any debt funds, all of the other smaller ones combined. Those make up the total governmental funds. And it's the same type of theory. And these have different categories as well. So if you look at the taxes, those are property taxes. Sorry, those are just taxes in general. Intergovernmental, that's revenue between other government agencies. Charges for services, those are like permit fees, parks and recreation fees, anything that we would charge to do. I'm pretty proud of the interest that we've earned. We're pretty aggressive on what we can invest in at the city. We don't go out for anything too crazy, but we do. I'm actively investing with a dealer broker on other government bonds that we can do, like Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, federal home loans. So the money just doesn't sit in the bank, so we're pretty actively investing that also. So this last year we earned almost $3 million, so that's pretty part of that. Expenditures, we have them broken down into the categories general government, which basically is anything that's not the three, highways, streets, public safety, or parks and recreation. We have them also expenditures broken out by capital. And there's nothing for debt service because we don't have any debt. And again, we have the transfers in and out, those net together, and so those, the total of that is a little over two million. So if we switch to exhibit three, this is the income statement for the governmental funds. Same type of idea, it has the assets and the liability, the deferred inflows and the fund balances. The fund balances you have in this one, we had a prepaid item, so we have a non-spendable in fund balance. That's kind of an anomaly, but we have to show what is that. Trying to look at anything else you wanted to point out.

Is property tax delinquent what we got late or what we still haven't received?

Still haven't received.

Oh, okay. So it's not really... It's not too terrible. Revenue.

No, not revenue. Okay. We have it on the receivable, so that's why it's money coming in.

Gotcha. Hopefully.

And here's why I wanted to start on the back and work my way forward, because the next two pages, exhibit one or exhibit two, these are called entity government-wide financial statements. And what they're doing is they're comparing your government entity compared to your enterprise funds. So historically, government funds didn't show debt or fixed assets on your balance sheet, but that's not true because governments have debt and they have assets. So we have this fun little worksheet that we keep track of every year when Rob adds streets to the infrastructure or there's a donation of developers, we track that and we add that and so that goes through and we have that developer contribution every year and so we track our assets and we track our debt and so that way at the end of the year, everybody can have a side-by-side comparison of, what our government looks like with general government and also with our enterprise funds. So exhibit two does that. So if you look at exhibit two, which is kind of on the sideways, the expenses are broken out for the first part's government activity, and then they also break out the charges for services, operating grants, capital grants. And then it shows what the government activity, basically what the operating income is. So it looks like there's a deficit. There's more expense than revenue coming in. The next block is your proprietary funds, which we just looked at on exhibit six and seven. So you have your expenses broken out by water, reclaiming water and sanitation, your charges for services, and you have your capital grants. And then on the flip side of this, you have a $22,000 positive variance. $22 million, I'm sorry, $22 million variance to the good. And if you notice, we have a component unit on here, even though Post Falls Urban Renewal isn't really part of us, they are part of us. So I have to list them on our financial statements. So when Joe Johns was here showing you the financial statements, I have to list that on mine as well because they are a part of us. they levy taxes as part of their income, so they're part of post falls. So we broke this down into even further where we list the property taxes, the sales tax, motor fuel tax, and then we can walk down to net position for governmental activity is $183,723,415. Business type activity is $312,383,726. And if you go to exhibit one, for the balance sheet side of it, This is where we have listed, we have a comparison between the two as well. So one column shows government activities, which was also your exhibits three and four, but we've added a few things to them, such as capital assets, such as debt, the deferred inflows, outflows. things that occur, but we just never listed them on the financial statements, but here they are so you can have a side-by-side comparison. The assets and governmental total, $549,340,720. We show these subscription agreements Those are the IT agreements that we have that somebody hosts the server, but we can still use. We have multi-year contracts that we can, they host offsite, but we can use the subscription-based IT agreements I have to recognize those on our financial statements. So we have a $2.2 million asset. But if you notice down below, over the year of the contract and liability, over the course of that agreement, $2.3 million. So we had to recognize those as well. That's another Gadsby pronouncement we had to follow. And then by the time we get down to net position, Net position for governmental, governmental for business type on exhibit one and exhibit two, they tie out, which means they match. So exhibit one, business type activities is the exact same as exhibit six. That's the easy part is the boat business type is already done from prior. It's the governmental funds that we have to do a little work on to get them into the format so they're comparable. But... I know this is a lot. I know that this year when the auditors came in, we had everything ready to go for them. My staff had made sure that any adjustments they had in utility billing or fixed assets, they were all in a binder. There was no scraping together papers at the last minute. The payroll had all of their adjustments done by the time they walked in the door. We had just a hiccup of a family emergency that took a couple months, so... The notes, if anybody is interested, these are just the 10 small pages of a 142-page document, and there's notes that explain in the back behind the financial statements that explain a lot of this stuff. It's helpful to the reader if you have these and read through it as well. I didn't want to print that out because it's pretty substantial. So if anybody's interested, and I hope you all are, that maybe you can go through and check it out because your photo's in there as well, so that's another surprise, so.

Jason, did I hear you at the beginning that when all of these materials were submitted to the audit that no corrections had to be made?

There was no corrections, no. My staff is pretty good about having, we've worked to push the debt out far enough now that by the time the auditors hit the office, we have everything pretty much done. I ask for a list of what they're looking for. We get that list together, and by the time, they don't waste any time. When they come in, we give it to them, and they can just review, and a lot of times we provide them ahead of time so they can do, there used to be Anderson Brothers, but now they're Alpine Summit. They're right over here on Snidemiller. We send it to them electronically. A lot of times they look at the information offsite, but there's just some things they want to be onsite to do. It goes pretty slick now, so we have the system down at this point.

Got to say that's very impressive and thank you to you and your staff for your diligence. And it's very much appreciated. And I think it's a testament to how skilled your staff is and how tightly you're on your ship. And I appreciate that.

Thank you. It's definitely a team effort. They work hard at it. Yeah.

Thank you.

Further questions.

I have one question. We talked kind of at length when we were doing the budget workshops about fund carryover from previous year. Where would that be reflected on these tables?

It's a very good question. When I look at the general fund fund balance, I'm looking at what the total fund balance is. And then according to our own internal policy, we matched GFOA that says we keep, I believe it's three months of expenditures as a reserve. So I look at what three months was, so I calculate that number, see what our fund balance is and I back that out and then that's what the difference is.

So for this is 2025, is there a line item there or is it kind of hard to find?

It would be, It'd be hard to find because in this, if you look at exhibit three, even though it says unassigned for this purpose, I do have, we have assigned fund balance internally such as I have park trust money, I have, I have different monies that we've set aside on our own, even though for government purposes it's listed as unassigned. That might be a good topic of discussion. We go over how that's calculated, but that's a good question as well.

Would that be explained in the notes behind that Exhibit 3?

That wouldn't because that's an internal policy. The only thing they care about is what GASB says, the Government Accounting Standards Board, yeah. our own internal, they leave that up to us.

May I ask then, and I appreciate that your staff is super skilled and I appreciate all that you do. And even when we hear from other departments, I feel like I've kind of heard it alluded to that you like keep everybody on track. There's no like late emails or late accounting for anything. So I appreciate that. I am curious if you could help me equate the idea of an, of this net position, um, $183 million in like the terms of my, um, like my family budget. So like at the end, well, sometimes at the end of the month, sometimes at the beginning of the pay period, depending on how we're doing, um, I take what we got And take everything that we owe. Right. And then do a lot of addition and subtraction and then come out with hopefully a positive number, which is what this looks like. And then I would say that that is like our family net position for like the next pay period or the next month. Right. Like we're up. I don't know. $1,500, is that how I can understand this number? Or is this number reflecting also like the value of the land that we own or the value of something else? Because it is such a large number, it's kind of confusing when we talk about having a tax deficit in the next few years. And then it's like, but we have $183 million. Sorry, that was a really long question.

That's a great question. And what you can look at it is accounting is a double entry side of accounting system. And so what you want to look at is you could always judge your financial stability on your organization by your fund balance. Sometimes I've seen fund balances as a negative and that's not a good sign. What this is, is fund balance is the difference between your liability, the accounting equation is your assets, and your assets minus your liabilities equals your equity, which is your net position. So if I add these up, like we talked about, the assets plus the outflows, That will get you a number. And then if I have the liabilities plus the inflows plus net position, that will give me a number, and those two will tie. So what that net position is, it's what we owe. It's the cash. It's the land. It's everything.

But also non-liquid assets, right?

It's the assets, the cash, all of it, yes. Okay.

buildings roads yes roads in which column yeah you can see that at the toward the top half of exhibit one where you see infrastructure 69 million in infrastructure that's listed as an asset but that just costs us money every year yeah okay yeah so it's a if that number was that unrestricted was negative that's a problem that's a problem okay thank you i was just hoping for some detail as if anyone looks at this and they you know understand that position in like maybe just household terms, like a net position of that much excess would be lovely.

I don't have a balance sheet like this, so I don't really have, I wouldn't have a net position as large.

But we don't, when you do your like household net position, you're not factoring in the assets of your 401k or the, or how much equity you have on your home every month to get that number.

Typically just cash. This is more like net worth.

Right. This is more like net worth. Okay. And I'm just trying to get that out more and talk about that more. Okay, thank you so much.

Maybe we can find somebody to buy our infrastructure from us.

Like HOAs? No.

Is one of these... Similar to... Oh, sorry, go ahead. Go ahead. Is one of these a simplified profit and loss kind of statement, like what... Councilor Stiglitter's talking about.

Exhibit two, the statement of activities, that's an income statement. That's a fancy word for income statement. You can look at the very end is the statement of net position. It lists all my expenses, my revenues, and then down below it has my general revenues.

And which exhibit is this?

Two.

Two.

And is that why we see, because I was looking at kind of in parentheses is negative, right?

That's just for the transfers. Like there was a transfer out of the business type and into general government. Is that the 2.1 million you mean? Oh, I see, I see. Okay. Yeah.

So if we wanted to know, did we spend more money this year than we took in and pull out of, say, a fund balance or an investment account or whatever to backfill something or whatever, like where would we see that simply to Councilor Stiglitter's point? Like if I pull $10,000 out of a savings account to backfill my, reckless spending habits or something like that. And it shows us income. It's not right. So is that what this is showing is we can say that we started with this much, we ended with this much in terms of like our, just our cashflow.

Well, the cashflow for the, um, government side doesn't have a cash flow statement itself, but the enterprise fund does. Exhibit 8 shows where the cash flow statement is. It's very small, even to print out. But the details for the account details I have in my office, that's what's audited when they come through in my financial statements. And when I put those together, they want to see what makes up the transactions. And if they're authorized, if... Even the budget transfers that I have between line to line, we have a policy that says Shelly has to approve each one. They want to make sure that she's approved each one before I have done them. So even on the bills that come in or anything that is paid has to be authorized. They want to make sure that it was authorized to pay before we've paid it and that it hit the agenda for council to pay. So even to follow their own internal processes, they want to make sure that that's followed through as well. So when you guys see the claims on the agenda, that's also for my benefit, because they make sure that you guys approved them before I paid them.

It would be nice to see, appreciate how comprehensive this is. It would be nice to see something that is simple for us and for the public to say, that would just say, we started with this much money. We spent this much money. We took in this much money. and this is what we ended up with and so we're better off or worse off today than we were at the start of the year in just a simple one pager that's general categories and then of course they could break that down more with the background of them but and taking out things like depreciation expense and things that are esoteric assets and all of that. And they could see like, oh, the city invested $14 million this year and it gave us an 8% return. Good job, city. You know, that sort of thing.

There is a second report we'll see, and that's the popular annual financial report. There is a second report we'll see, and that's the popular annual financial report, which has graphs and stuff that I can understand.

That one's almost done. Yeah. But anyway, I think something like that would kind of celebrate the good work that is being done in a very fiscally well-run city. And then if we end up because of revenue pinching over the next few years end up going through the rapids, we could point back to that and say, this is what we do when things are going well, and when they're not, this is why we have to do this. It might help us tell the story of the future. Sure.

Okay. Yeah, when the Paffer's done, I'll send that out as well. Stephanie's almost done with that one, yeah.

Thank you. Our face is in that too as well, right? What was that? I said our face is in that too, right?

Absolutely.

photo op there there's no other questions I think we're ready for a motion to approve the fiscal year 2025 ACFR second motion in a second further discussion roll call please next up is consent to annexation agreement for 200 South Sequoia Court

Good evening, honorable mayor, members of the council, Robert Paulus, city engineer. Staff is requesting your approval to enter into a consent to annexation agreement with the property at 200 South Sequoia Court, which is in the Pine Estate subdivision, which is actually a county island. None of the properties in that subdivision are in the city. The owners of that property, They have a failing septic system that needs to be replaced or connected to the city sanitary sewer. Because they are less than five acres in size, the city has a sanitary sewer line running in Maplewood Avenue right along the rear of their property, which they could connect into once this agreement is executed. The city would then look at sometime that's convenient in the future to move forward with a annexation process on the property. I stand for any questions you might have.

I think generally the less septic we can have over the aquifer, the better. So I'm in support of these requests when they come up. We don't want failing septic in the middle of the city.

And this is just like an agreement to annex at some point though, right? That is correct.

This way they don't have to have a failed septic system for months while they go through the process before it's official.

So once this agreement is executed, they would be able to start moving forward with paying their fees to pay the cap fee to connect to the sewer and get their contractor working on putting in that connection.

And they would do that through the rear of their property because there's not anything running down like

sequoia court because nothing else is annexed right that is correct and also most homes in that neighborhood have their septic existing septic systems are in the backyard so in this case it's really convenient for them to have maplewood avenue to connect in we do have in our sewer master plans that entire subdivision laid out how we would anticipate it being sewered in the future this does not negate that ability

And just out of curiosity, if it was one of the lots that didn't back up to Maple Avenue, what does that request look like? Or that would never come to us because there's not sewer?

Engineering staff would write a letter to Panhandle Health and discuss how sanitary sewer is not readily available and what reasons why it's not practical to put it in. Normally we look at a distance of around three to 600 feet. If you're further than that away, cost-wise for a single family residence to try to connect to sewer is beyond most people's budgets.

But for them, they would be not only paying the cap fee, but paying the construction fee of ripping up whatever to connect.

They're responsible for all their costs for connecting to sewer, yes. Okay, cool, thank you.

I think this is the first one of these requests that I've seen, maybe.

Yeah, the last one we did was a few years ago on Rod Key Avenue.

Is this coming because it's a cost savings for the resident or convenience? I mean, it seems unusual.

It's unusual, but we live in an area where the soils septic tanks tend to last a long time. A lot of the homes in this area are nearing that 50-year age mark. They're either early 80s or earlier home construction. But to dig up and replace a septic system typically is on par or it could be less expensive than connecting into a city sanitary sewer system. The good thing is, one, environmentally, it's better to not have the additional phosphorus and other stuff going into the aquifer over time. And the other benefit is a city sewer system is a little bit more reliable from a homeowner's perspective than every few years having the septic system pumped and wondering what happens when your drain field starts to plug up.

I had an uncle that used to only let us use two squares of toilet paper when we were at his house.

So in effect is, are we being asked now to lock ourselves in to approve this annexation and that at some point in the future we're going to

What we're locking it into is that they will be able to hook into the sanitary sewer system and that at some time in the future, staff would be coming back with a annexation and go through the annexation process. What this does is it sets them up as, them as property owners or if they were to sell or transfer ownership, that they can't object. They've already said yes, we consent to being annexed by the city when the city feels it's the right time.

So it gives us the discretion, it's not binding our hands that now we can't say no if we decide it's not the right time.

That is correct, but they would be able to solve their sewer issue.

And we can't annex them anyway because they're not contiguous to any piece of city property, right?

They would be contiguous with the city of Post Falls. Maplewood Avenue, on the other side of it, is contiguous with the city. When that annexation came in, there was some discussion why we did not bring in that section of Maplewood Avenue. I can't answer that, but we should have, in my opinion. Oh, sure, sure.

But they will be connected to the city sewer prior to being in the city?

That is correct. This is the methodology on how to do it and we do it rarely.

And so there's some sort of contractual arrangement as far as the billing for that, right? About like their monthly sewer bill is through the city of Post Falls even though you're a county resident? Yes. Okay, thanks.

Going back to Commissioner Mosby's comments, we would want you to annex this as soon as you can to sort of get to Councillor Luca's concerns. We do this really as a convenience for the homeowner. We don't want them to wait the six months it takes to get through the annexation process while they've got a failing septic system. we don't extend sewer by right outside of city limits. And so when somebody wants in, we do this as a convenience to try to help them out, but we really do want them in just because we wanna have them subject to city codes when it comes to billing.

But I would imagine it's exceedingly rare because like their neighbor two doors down south on Sequoia couldn't do this, right? Because they're not contiguous to the city land or sewer.

That is correct.

I move to approve the consent to annexation agreement for 200 South Sequoia Court. Second.

Motion and a second. Further discussion? Roll call please.

Luca?

Aye.

Stiglitter? Aye. Plew?

Aye.

Molloy? Aye. Ziegler? Aye. Mosby? Aye.

Motion passes. Up next, agreement with Urban SDK for traffic data acquisition.

Good evening once again honorable mayor, members of the council, Robert Paulus, city engineer. So the city of post falls about every two to three years collects updated traffic counts at key intersections in the city of post falls. The last time we did this was in 2023 with the transportation master plan. So we're at that three year mark. Historically, the way we collect spot checks on traffic volumes on our roadways is we utilize numerous ways of technology. Pneumatic tube counters, which you can see in the upper left corner A portable radar unit, the police department owns one of these, it's called a jammer unit, which is on the lower left, mounted on a pole. Then there are portable video systems, which is kind of the center one, and then also signal mounted video and radar detectors. Prior to 2017, city staff did collect tube counts at key intersections. We did it on an annual basis but we were only able to get about 60 key intersections on a four year cycle. It takes quite a while and it was taking over 10% of our staff time which was also fairly expensive for what we were getting back. So we then thought the best way to move forward is to use other technologies such as portable video systems. With the 2025 Transportation Master Plan, we collected data on 80 intersections, and we also got 24 speed classifications. The problem with that data is it's accurate, but within the realm of reasonability. We collect data on one single day over a six hour period, two hours in the morning, two hours at lunchtime, and two hours in the afternoon. The cost for doing that over those 80 intersections was, in 2023, about $32,900. How we utilize that data is It's utilized to calibrate the transportation master plan and when key land use decisions are brought before planning and zoning or city council, staff will take a look at the data that we have. How close is that location to a key spot that we got the data and then we can say reasonably what is the potential impact to that road and what is that roadways capacity. The further you get away from those key points, the more reliant we get upon the model itself for identifying what is the volume or estimated volume and what the impacts are going to be we do also have the ability to go out and The last few years we've been sharing and the police department has been utilizing their resources with their jammer to provide us data when requested engineering is in the process of acquiring a jammer which was approved as part of this year's budget and When it gets down to residential streets our model doesn't show what traffic volumes are we're more relying upon a We know how many houses are on that road, and we know whether or not there's complaints. If there's a bad complaint, we'll request the jammer to go out there and verify what the volumes and speeds are on those roadways. This year, we'd like to do something a little bit different, and that's why we're looking.

Before we move on too far, I just wanted to ask, what was the source of the $32,000 that was needed to collect the data before? Was that just staff time?

So prior to 2017, when staff was doing it, it was just staff time. In 2023, when we collected it, that was impact fee dollars, which was part of the transportation master plan.

Okay, but so that was, we spent the 32,000 on what?

On a company that went out and put video cameras at 80 intersections and collected data.

So that was to pay for the cameras. Okay. Thank you.

So Urban SDK is a national company and they provide contract services for over 300 jurisdictions, police departments, engineering divisions, and they utilize data from vehicles that have, whether it be OnStar, infotainment systems or if you have something similar to Apple play and you connect your phone into that that some of that data is broadcast back to the vehicle manufacturer or other entities which then sell that data and then other property other companies sell that data again this company buys that data what we would get would be washed data. We just get results, we have no idea who is where or any key details about them. We would get data as far as what the traffic volumes are on every single roadway in the city of Post Falls from a one year analysis so we could take a look at data on what is the average daily traffic on a roadway and also take a look at what is the typical average hourly volume on a roadway during different hours of the day. Gives us a lot better view of what we have and how well our system is working. The product also has the capability of showing us traffic delay around the system. That is a additional module that we are not looking at getting as part of this. With the package we would also be getting a one year ability to look at traffic speeds within the city of Post Falls. This data is updated daily so we would be able to know where the roads with the most speeders on a daily basis or look at it a weekly or monthly basis. And that could be a benefit for the police department in identifying areas of concern. One of the benefits to the engineering division with that type of information is several times a year we will get a request where a person says, everyone's flying up and down my road. It's 50 miles per hour in a 25 zone. And can you do something about that? The current process is we have to contact the police department, request for them to put out a jammer when it's convenient. They'll put it out. get the data then send it back to engineering and it could be several weeks before we get back to that property owner as to is there really a problem out there and whether or not that's something that the police department wants to take further action on. This could be a kind of a triage for us to be able to take a look and say, yeah, it looks like there's something going on out there. Do we need to do a more thorough analysis with the jammer or is there enough information that the police department wants to do something or is there something that the engineering division can do from an engineering standpoint to address the concerns so this contract would be for one year of service it would give us the traffic volume data for the past year it would give us historic and daily updated traffic speed data and it would cover all city roadways including collector and arterial sections in the county pockets and along the exterior of the city of post falls It would include three user seats with training and onboarding support. The way engineering is looking at it is we think that two seats would be utilized by engineering, and we would have the third seat utilized by the police department to see how they could best utilize this type of technology. If it makes more sense, we might switch and go with two for the police department, one for engineering, but I think between police and engineering, we can figure out the best way to utilize this data for the best interest of the city. The cost is $32,750 for the one year contract. If we were to hire a company to go out and collect the data at the 80 single locations, we estimate that the cost today would be over $40,000. We did have in our budget for this year and it was approved to expend up to $45,000 for collecting traffic data. We feel that this is a better utilization of the funds that we have and it gives us more robust information. So barring any questions, my request is to enter into the contract with Urban SDK.

I have a few questions. First is, is this something we need or something that is nice to have?

The traffic count volume is something that's valuable to us to verify that we are actually growing in the direction that the model anticipated back in 2023. It also helps us identify some potential problem locations. The data is also valuable from a job creation standpoint in that a lot of companies do contact, not so much anymore because we do publish the data on our GIS, but they do want to know what are the current traffic volumes on a roadway before they locate their business there. I have found in my discussions over the years that when you tell people that, oh, my most recent data is two or three years old, they go, that's historic. That's not of as much value to us. We'll take it, but we would prefer to see something that's a year, one or two years old.

Okay. And second question is, so the data that we would get is the previous 12 months or starting and then 12 months following the contract?

The traffic volume is for the previous 12 months. So they update the traffic volumes every one year. traffic velocities are updated on a daily basis.

Okay, so some of it's previous, some of it will be active. Yeah. Is there any way to I assume because all vehicles are not captured in this, only the ones that are connected to data systems of some sort, then do they have a formula where they extrapolate that to give you a traffic counter? Is it, we could say, only this many that had Apple CarPlay or whatever drove through?

The wonderful world of artificial intelligence and algorithms that we'll take into account, this represents this percentage of all the known vehicles out there of these ages, and here is our best estimate as to the reliability on the information. We do the same thing when we do that spot test, when I have one day out of 365 days in a year, what was the weather on that day we were collecting traffic? Was there a collision at an intersection that follows up that data. We always have to take that into account. It's our best representation as to what's going on out there. I think that with a statistical sample of the traffic on all the roadways over an entire year, I think we're as accurate, if not more accurate than the two hour window on the peak hour from one day.

And I think my final question is 32,750 for this 16,000 plus is just the user seats fee of $5,500 per user. Could we just have one central user and somebody makes queries to it or is this something that's gonna be used like all day every day or someone's gonna make a query once a week and maybe one central person could be part of it and we could save $11,000?

From an engineering standpoint, I don't see this as being something that engineering would be utilizing every single day. There's some backlog information that I would like to glean out of this to help look at some of the areas of verification for speeds versus speed limits on some roadways, and also classifications of some of our roadways where we utilized our model to say, hey, here's what the road classification is. But outside of that, I do, this is the first time we've ever used this technology. I would like to have two individuals in engineering trained on it so that if I lose the one employee or if that employee happens to be gone for a one week vacation, that I at least have someone else able to be able to go in there and get that data and still provide the resources that we need. And the other part with the third one, with the police department, the three seats was the basic setup for the program. And I do see that having someone in the police department trained on this allows the software to be looked at from the perspective of law enforcement. They look at things differently than engineering. Our goals are similar, but it would be nice to know how valuable is this over the course of a year for the police department, and is this something that in future years, if we were to come back, is it worth doing again?

Sure, yeah. I'm concerned about the... and maybe that's a strong word, about the fact that half of this is user seats for something that's probably not going to be utilized on a regular basis. So back to my question is, could we have a single user that pulls data for people? I don't know the system well enough to answer the question, so I'm relying on you to say. yes or no, could we have a single person that pulls that data? Because it's not an emergency need. Yes, the person's on vacation. We could probably wait a week for this data, right? When we're talking about $5,500 for that additional seat. And maybe we could roll that into, that's half the cost. Maybe we get it for another year or something like that. I'm just throwing that out there. I mean, you tell me.

My preference would be to go with the three Cs initially to see how we're utilizing it and to have the overlap of the training.

Could we do a single user and then later add more if we find that it's cumbersome?

That I don't know the answer to. I'd have to check with them what it would cost to add a additional user later on in the year. The other option would be to look at and bring it back to you with a, see if I could get two user seats and then have one in the police department, one in engineering. One of the things, and this is my leaning, is I see that the potential use for the police department, that they may have a higher usage of this than engineering would. Engineering would utilize it several times a month. From the police department, it depends, and I may want the police chief to weigh in on this, but I see that there's the potential that they would be utilizing, if not weekly, that they could possibly be utilizing it, on a somewhat daily basis.

Okay.

Any questions?

I just have one clarification question. When you were explaining that the data we would receive would be washed, that, just so I understand, that's not going to supply or publish any data regarding who's driving, no pictures or videos of drivers, nothing of that nature would come to either. us or be published or to the police department or what have you. It's just numbers.

That is correct. The only data we get is traffic volumes on specific roadways and the speeds on the roadways within the city of Post Falls. No other data.

Except for your car.

He does show the fanciest car of all of us, doesn't he? I think so. I looked through the slideshow before and it looked great and I thought it was fine until I learned about the data. And now I don't know that I like it so much. And I appreciate that this is the reality that we live in and I like that Google Maps knows where I am so that I can also know where I am and where I'm going. And maybe I'm just trying to figure that out. I think the other... problem that i have with the proposal is i'm ha i can stomach it for the request of this is year-old data we want to validate our traffic plan and for what you're doing in engineering but i was sort of surprised to hear that we would also be using it to do daily spot checks for the police department on adherence to laws within the city. And that seems, like I wonder if you would have a different response from council if the police had come and requested this so that they could see daily what roads we were speeding on so that they could be monitored more. I don't know. Maybe I'm way off and I'm happy to have everyone else weigh in, but there's something about that that I'm not comfortable with.

My opinion and impression was that there's a difference between being reactive and that you wait for people to call in and say, hey, I have a problem on my roadway. People are speeding. What are you going to do to solve it versus let's be proactive and say, hey, we have this data. Here are locations where we have a lot of people speeding. Let's find out what's going on. Is it a law enforcement issue or is it an engineering issue? My responsibility is look at it from the engineering responsibilities. And I thought this was a good opportunity that

let's offer it and allow the police department to see if this is a tool that could be a benefit to the city long term yeah i get what you're saying i have a personal experience with this as mr paulus knows i've had two different people in my neighborhood on different streets complaining about speeding i throw my mom in there too she she complains too and it's uh it would be real nice to uh not wait for the jammer to come out and do the study and then get back to the person and say what the situation actually is versus what they perceive the situation to be to be able to have data that's more quickly accessible to say yeah this that that seems like a problem or we're not really seeing a problem there you know whatever so i get where you're coming from but it's i don't i don't think it's like meant to take anybody's um freedom away you know as much as it's worth it to be able to review if something is actually unsafe or being abused so

And I'm sensitive to the data part too, but it doesn't bother me in this case because it's just collecting the same data that you could collect by standing on the street corner and counting them yourself. In fact, it's collecting less data because you could collect license plate type of vehicle, who the driver was and all that if you have one of these cameras out. In this case, it's only telling us how many vehicles and when and speeds. So I'm comfortable with that. For me, it's the financial part is if you came to me and asked me to like, how much would you be willing to contribute to my fund to buy this? how much would any of us write a check for if we felt that money going out versus it's coming from some nebulous tax fund. I'd like to see a smaller proposal just to see does that change the numbers if we went with single user, two user, three user broken out if the vendor could provide that. I'd like to see that just to see if we could get this start small and add later like hey, this is cumbersome because we only have one person, the police department's calling the engineering department all the time asking for speeds on this road. If we get this as is, then we've bought $16,000 worth of licenses on a $32,000 proposal and we don't even know what the usage is going to be yet, so.

There's something hinky to me that you only get year-old capacity data, but you can have 24-hour-old speed data. I mean, surely you have both of them at the same time if you have one of them, so why? Anyway, oh, I don't know, for your purposes it seems like, maybe I'm being illogical about this and I'm sorry. That part of it, I don't like about this proposal and I don't think I can be convinced tonight only because of that piece, the traffic piece I get. And I appreciate what you've said in the past about speeding, not speeding, but the speeds at which cars go. You've said plus or minus three is usually the actual safe speed, regardless of the posted speed, right? Well, something like that. People usually go with safe speed regardless of what's posted. Average people, most people.

Most people will drive reasonable and prudent based upon the conditions that are on the roadway. Typically, you set somewhere around a five mile per hour buffer. as before you see the increased need for enforcement. Most residential streets, and I say most residential streets because it will depend upon the character and nature of each residential street, but I generally am not shocked when I see 28, 30 miles per hour on a residential street. I wish people would drive slower. for the children yes as well as other items on there you know residential streets are narrower you have parked cars etc but

I guess what I mean to say is that I understand why you look at speeds and I understand what you do with those variances from the posted speed, whether it be higher or lower, but I don't think that that's what we would be talking about in a different department. And I know I don't sound great right now and I appreciate that and I am really sorry, but I don't think that I can be supportive of this specific proposal for that. for that reason, just engineering, just traffic, I like it. To monitor citizen speeds on a daily basis on every street in Post Falls via data collection from our cell phones, from our cars, I'm not okay with that right now.

Chief Brannel, do you have any input on how this might be used in your department?

Thank you, Mayor and Council. I share your concern about, you know, just big brother on this type of proposal. For us, I gotta be honest, Rob was working with one of my captains and he's in Tennessee at this point and so I don't have a whole lot of data on this or a whole lot of information on this. i'm not opposed to just cutting us out of it um i mean we generally know where the speeding is and if there's a big issue and a complaint to rob's department of hey this issue in this area then that's what we'll go um but i mean if we do have an option to this it would be nice for resource management of my very small traffic team yeah that's to look at it and go okay well let's go work this area today because this is the hot spots and so I can see both sides of it but cell phones are as they are and they're listening to us anyways and they're tracking everything and so it doesn't shock me that there's a service out here like this

I just feel like if it's going to be a five-minute data poll, it's not worth $5,500 a year to me. I call the engineering department, hey, are there any hot spots this week?

Yeah, it's really bad over on Prairie.

Okay, we'll go there. And it just seems like that would be easier.

I'm totally fine with bugging Rob all the time and calling him. I'm fine with it, too. And so, you know, I hear you with the, obviously, trying to tighten our belt with budgetary restraints, and so reducing the number of licenses to just... cover engineering. I'm totally okay with that.

How long would it take you to burn up $5,500 putting the jammer out there when people complain about speeders?

The jammer doesn't take very long to put up. And obviously it's nothing that we're sitting there manning. So you don't have much staff time. So you're taking like 15 minutes to put it up, 15 minutes to take it down, and about 10 minutes to crunch the data. So it's not a lot of time that we're doing with that jammer. That's the benefit of it is it's collecting data, collecting speeds, collecting counts, and kind of giving us an option of, hey, this is someplace we do need to work on when we have a complaint. This would be another version of that, just one that is captured from cell phones and data on the cars, which I drive old cars, so you ain't getting that off my car. You do.

25 years old is the newest car I've got. Right.

And so, again, I think it's a good option definitely for engineering. And I... hear the budgetary concerns and so if that means our traffic sergeant calls Rob on a weekly basis and say hey where should we work this week? Okay. Or if he calls us when he has a complaint on an area then we'll go work that area.

And then I want to know, like, if it turns out to be super effective in it, I think there's efficiencies for your department. One, it's cheaper and less intrusive than cameras doing this work. So that's great. And we're all about finding ways that technology can reduce our need for staff. So it does that, too. I like that part. Let's see if we can start cheaper, and then if it needs to expand later, we go, like, are you amenable to just bring this back to council next meeting with the answers to those questions to see if we can ask the vendor, you know, if we start with one license, yes, and six weeks from now, if we find it's taking up too much staff time, can we add a second one? Or a third one, or a fifth one?

Not to barter too much, but what about with an approval if I can get it down to two seats and have about $5,000 savings below that? That's basically what you're asking. But that way, it's approved if I'm under $28,000. under 28,000. Yeah.

And it's not exact, it's not, this whole conversation isn't entirely your fault, but a couple of meetings ago we spent $21 million that night and now I'm just, you know, so I'm trying to find whatever efficiencies we can, and this doesn't make up for the 21 million. Um, but it is, it is money. I mean, 5,000 here, 5,000 there, and it adds up to real dollars.

And the other side of it is if I only have two seats and both of them are in engineering, we can still coordinate with the police department on what elements they most want to look at so that we can get them the information they need. And then I will have one person in engineering who will utilize this a little bit more than originally anticipated, but they will be much better with the use of the software. So can I make it work?

Yeah. If I'm the only one holding this up, please speak freely.

I would say I'm comfortable with the original proposal just because I think we're getting a lot more data that is much more reliable for actually less than what we spent three years ago, so I think it's a great deal for what we're doing. I'm going to borrow Joe's tinfoil hat and drive around with that. No, I was going to ask for it. But I have old cars, too, so they're not going to catch me anyways. But I would leave it up to your discretion if that's what you're asking. If you can squeeze a turn up a little bit from them to reduce the user count to save a little bit of money, I think it's a valid point. But if not, then I'm comfortable just with the full proposal.

The funding's out of traffic impact fees, so $5,000 doesn't go much towards a traffic signal, but it does help.

Well, and I think the big benefit of having remote monitoring is some efficiencies that are already going to be built in. So I think there's that aspect of it, too. It's hard to quantify it in a dollar value, but even the deployment of a JMR or whatever we need to do, I think it's going to be a much more effective system that we currently have.

Okay.

Other thoughts? I move to approve the agreement with Urban SDK for traffic data acquisition as presented. Keeping in mind, if you can save money, please do. Second.

Motion and a second. Further discussion?

I want the tinfoil hat.

I'll make you one.

Thank you. You're welcome. Roll call, please.

Stig leader.

Given my comments, just not that I don't want to give you what you want, Mr. Paulus, but I'm just not comfortable with the parts as I explained, so no.

Aye. Maloy? Aye. Ziegler? Aye. Mosby? Aye. Luca?

No. Motion passes. Thank you.

Thank you.

Does anybody need a recess before citizen comment, or should we just go through?

Let's just plow through and power through.

Next up is citizens issues. The section of the agenda is reserved for citizens wishing to address the council regarding city related issues that are not on the agenda with a five minute timer per person. I think we have some folks here to talk about the Chapin building. So I want to give you a quick kind of where we are today to set the context for that. So the city owns the building and it's been leased to the historical society. And in lieu of rent, the agreement was they would take care of the building. They approached us earlier and asked us to take over that maintenance obligation. They were not able to do so. And the short version is we don't have the money. We've been working on how we're going to pay for health insurance and pay our police officers and dispatch and fill potholes in the streets. We have some tight budget years coming. The state cut our funding. So being hopefully good stewards of the taxpayer dollars that we have, we put out a request for proposals to say, let's take a look at what are the options for using the space no decisions have been made we're not looking at any particular thing right now we just put out the request for proposals and what i would like to see and i think what a lot of folks here would like to see is the building to be preserved and saved because one of my concerns is If the building is not able to sustain itself, we could lose a historic building. I want to make sure that we preserve that, the building and the history, the collection inside. It has to be done in a way that's sustainable. And so right now, we're waiting on a proposal from the historical society in terms of how they're going to operate over the next 10 years. Where is the money going to come from? How can the building be maintained? what can the value be to the community given that we're not likely to have money to subsidize it with with property taxes which is kind of where we stand there's a lot of really good organizations doing great work in the community and many of them rely on private donations and that's what i would like to see for this as well in whatever form that that's able to take. And so that's kind of where we are. We're waiting on proposals to come in. And when we have those proposals, we'll evaluate them to kind of see what our options are. And then we'll have to make a decision up here about what's the best use of kind of taxpayer dollars where we stand. So that's the current status right now. We're waiting on that proposal. So that kind of sets the stage. So who would like to speak first? Come on up. Five minutes on the timer.

Hello City Council and Mayor. My name is Kara Dixon and I'm married to Keelan Dixon. He couldn't join us tonight but I'm going to read his comments. This is in regards to the value of the present and the future for the Chapin Building and its current resident which is the Post Falls Historical Society and Museum. My name is Keelan Dixon and I am writing with a heavy heart regarding the news that the city does not view the Post Falls Historical Society as a benefit to the community. I'm continuing to pour into the Historical Society with what can and believe that we have a hidden gem that will provide generations of value to the community. My family has lived in Post Falls since 1900. For more than a century, we have supported, invested in, and helped build the community that we all know and love today. Because of those deep roots, I have seen firsthand the importance of preserving our local history and ensuring that future generations understand the sacrifices and contributions that Post Falls, that made Post Falls what it is. While the Chapin building may or may not generate additional revenue for the city, no amount of revenue can replace the value of preserving our history. The work, dedication, and community spirit of our ancestors helped create the place we call home. Once that history is lost, it cannot be recreated. Maintaining local history shows the next generation that their actions matter and that their contributions can be remembered and preserved for future generations. It gives young people a glimpse of what it means to be good stewards of their community, positive influences on those around them, and contributors to something larger than themselves. I understand that I am in the minority as a fifth generation Post Falls resident. However, because of that perspective, I also understand the pride that families both old and new can experience when they feel connected to the history of the community they call home. The Historical Society helps create that connection. After many years, Post Falls is finally beginning to develop what many would consider a true downtown district. New commercial buildings are being constructed, businesses are moving in, and the city continues to grow. For that very reason, I do not believe this is the time to lose one of the few remaining institutions dedicated to preserving our community's identity in exchange for the possibility of additional revenue. The Chapin building was meant to house the historical society. With the growth of downtown, it will finally begin to reap what it has sowed. Many storefronts will come and go over the coming decades, but some businesses will thrive while others will not survive. That is the reality of commerce. However, the Post Falls Historical Society has consistently served this community in the Chapin Building for 17 years. From a business perspective, I do not believe it is wise to replace a proven community asset with the hope that a future tenant may generate greater economic value. As the owner of Rosemary Manor, I understand what it means to invest in and contribute to the community. My family and I have planted three vineyards and produced the first wine grown entirely in Post Falls. In many ways, I am simply continuing the tradition established by those who came before me. My great-great-grandfather contributed to the area's agriculture heritage through his orchards. My grandmother helped establish parks and recreation and continue Post Falls days. Her brother developed the Highlands Golf Course, and my grandfather was one of the first police officers. My family has contributed to businesses, community organizations, and civic improvements that have helped shape Post Falls over multiple generations. Those contributions were not made because they generated the highest financial revenue. or return. They were made because people cared about the future of this community and wanted to leave something meaningful behind for the generations that followed. Today I am raising my children here in Post Falls. They represent the sixth generation of our family to call this community home. Like every parent, I want them to grow up understanding where they came from, who helped build this city, and why serving one's community matters. Preserving our local history ensures that future generations, including my children and their children someday can learn those lessons and develop the same sense of pride, responsibility and stewardship. When young people see that their city values history, community involvement and civic pride, they learn that their own contributions matter. When decisions appear to prioritize revenue above all else, the message becomes that community institutions are expendable if a more profitable opportunity arises. Parks could generate more revenue as housing developments. Community spaces could generate more revenue as commercial properties. Yet we preserve these places because we understand that not everything of value can be measured in dollars. As for the business that may occupy the building, Post Falls residents will remember they had pushed out history for opportunity of profit. I respectfully ask the city to consider the long-term impact of this decision. The Chapin Building represents more than a structure. It represents our shared history and our commitment to preserving it. Future generations deserve the opportunity to learn where they came from, who built it, and why those stories still matter today. The decisions we make today will determine what kind of community we leave behind tomorrow. My family has been fortunate enough to witness more than a century of Post Falls history. I hope that my children and the generations that follow them will inherit a city that values not only growth and prosperity, but the people, stories, and institutions that made that growth possible. And I'll end with this. My grandmother instilled something in me that your actions reveal your priorities.

Thank you. Thank you. Next up, who else would like to speak? State your name for the record and five minutes on the timer.

All righty. My name is Bill Starkweather, 2842 West Celtice Way here in Post Falls. And I do appreciate all of you, how well you work together. I really do appreciate that. That's how I used to have my school boards operate back in the day.

So it makes things run a lot smoother.

And each time with my business, I want to give kudos to the police department of Post Falls because each time I've had to call them, hopefully not too much, they come in with two or three cruisers and we get those yahoos out of our business. So I do appreciate that. So I do have a concern, but it's more of me to give you information so I can get information of what I can do because I'm kind of in a loggerhead, kind of a butting heads a little bit. So my wife and I, we purchased Post Falls Mini Storage on West Seltice five years ago. And this business was one of the first storage businesses in the area. And we are a mom and pop run business. You call our phone number, one of us is going to answer 24-7. All right? So we can give the best quality business to people. As the council probably knows, the area between McGuire and Pleasant View on the south side of West Saltice is not very pleasing to the eye. And when we purchased the business, unfortunately, the business was in disrepair. There were drug addicts and dealers living in the facility and treating the property as people would treat any property like that if they were living there. Weeds as tall as myself and trash were strewn everywhere. When we took possession of the business, we kicked out all those living, dealing, and addicts in the facility and let all the occupants know the business was under new ownership and new rules. My wife and I work additional jobs. I work a third job because we have spent every dime we have made from the business and have reinvested that money into Post Falls Mini Storage so this part of West Saltice can start looking better and attract better people into the area. The reason why I'm here tonight is to ask you what next steps I would need to take or we would need to take to follow Because we have run into, like I said, some roadblocks, some loggerheads with permitting. And they're very good people. They're following the rules, all right? So I understand that because I expect my people in my business to follow my rules that we have with Idaho state statutes. We are running into problems with the permitting of our reader board and sign that we want to put in our landscaping in front of our property. In our meeting with permitting, my wife and Sign Corps, who is the contractor for our reader board and sign, were told the reader board and sign would be inside the 20-foot easement, so a permit would not be issued. We offered an MOU. that has been accepted in other Idaho cities that we would be responsible for the moving and cost of the reader board and sign if the city needed to get into the easement area to do any repairs we were told by the department that there would be no agreement signed and what I'm giving you now and you can keep these or give them back these are just some pictures the first picture It's not too good, but it's a stake on the right-hand side that shows where we want to put the sign in front of the business. And it is in the 20-foot easement area. Oh, let me find here. And so what I'm giving you are the pictures of the signs in a one- to two-block area on the south side of West Seltice that have permanent signs including a business within the 20-foot easement that has stated that it's a mobile business. Permitting said the signs were grandfathered and the business was a mobile business. However, we did mention one business had recently put in a new permanent sign-up And permitting did say they did approve the permit. Permitting mentioned that they would have to take the sign out. That was months ago. If the City of Post Falls had to do the work inside the easement within the grandfathered signs, I believe the City would foot the bill to move those and to be able to get under those. With our MOU for our sign, we would be footing the cost at no cost to the city. We also wanted to do landscaping in front of the business, but we're told only grass. And we could have dead grass, but we'd have to paint it green. Okay. We also brought up the subject of sidewalks. The north side of West Celtice has sidewalks installed, I believe, at no cost to the business. But if we wanted a sidewalk on the south side of West Celtice, we would have to put the sidewalk in at our own expense and maintain it at our own expense. We're willing to do that, too. We have no problem with that. We feel, and this is coming from me and my wife, that in some aspects we're being treated unfairly. Others get their signs, sidewalks, and landscaping. Post Falls Mini Storage does not. By improving the look of our facility, we can help increase the property's value, the look of West Celtice, and have a better clientele, which in turn increases the revenue to the city.

we're running out of time but can we take this after the meeting we can connect with the planning staff and i want to look into this with you and kind of get it yeah that'd be great and so would that be after executive session yeah we don't need that tonight so just after after a comment we'll be able to do that we can connect with our planning director that'd be great and our community development director and everyone here so okay and we can look into that with you yeah i'm going to work on you with this thanks thank you anyone else wishing to speak Name for the record and five minutes on the timer.

Good evening. Thank you for allowing me to speak. My name is Sharon Alexander. I live at 2436 North Reddington Way here in Post Falls. I am a Post Falls native. I've lived here 81 years. I lost my mother last year who was 100. She was born and raised here. I am also a Post Falls historical member. We have worked very, very hard for many years to save buildings here in Post Falls. People have asked, where is Post Falls Center? It's up on Saltice. No, it's not. It's on 4th Street. The sad thing is that so many developers have come in here and have ruined our downtown area. We have three main buildings. the Chapin Building, the Presbyterian Church, and the Republic, which is a restaurant. We just lost a historical site across the street. It's very sad. My husband and I used to travel, and we would stop in at old, what I call old towns, to see what has happened to Post Falls. It just kills me. New people move in here, and I don't think they like history. They want new. Everything's got to be new. We worked very, very hard to save that building, and we're trying to work with you as the city to be able to save it. To put another coffee shop in there, when you have one two blocks ahead, you're going to have a coffee shop across the street. No, we don't need another coffee shop. We need you as the council and as our mayor to stand up and support us as a historical society. We have moved that historical parts of our history around in Post Falls to save them. We were in a double wide for a while. We were in a mobile home for a while. It was put into people's barns. We lost a lot of historical society items. So please, do not do this to us. You're ruining our towns. You say, well, we need to pave roads. We need to pay our police department. Well, then stop the building for a while. Put a moratorium on. Now you've just annexed in another part of Post Falls. Where are you gonna bring the plows in? Where are you going to bring the employees in? You gotta put your budget in. We as homeowners have to budget our budget. So slow it down. Think about the city. I've called the police many times to come up on pole line. Pole line is terrible. But do you do anything about it? No. So what I'm asking you as a citizen of Post Falls, as a resident of 81 years, please do not do this to us and lose another building. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else wishing to speak? Name for the record and five minutes on the timer.

Hi, my name's Vicki Sweeney-Eagle, and my great-grandfather was the first mayor of Post Falls. My mother was born in a house right where this building stands 100 years ago. She and her friends in the Historical Society were instrumental in saving the Chapin Building. When they were doing the new campus, They had planned on taking the building down and perhaps having a parking lot. So we were able to put together and the city council, the Mayor Larkin and Eric Keck all on board and we were able to get the Chapin building. Our society, small as it was, spent over $60,000 for the remodel, and it was done with as much memory as some of us younger people. Not so young anymore, but of what we could remember in our childhood. My mother used to share the story that they were over at the Chapin Building having a soda, and Mr. Chapin came in and said, you kids need to go home. They've just bombed Pearl Harbor. There is so much history here and there are, I don't believe that people care as much about history, the young people. When we bring the fourth graders down to the museum to see them put their finger in a rotary phone, just to hear that noise and explain to them what it was like to use a phone like that or when everybody could pick up the phone and listen to what you were talking about, to talk to them what is a thunder pot. Do you know what a thunder pot is? That's where it went underneath your bed at night so that you didn't have to go out to the outhouse. The kids go, oh, that was to make soup in. The things that these little ones learn from coming in there. I'm going to start crying. You say that we said that we can't handle the maintenance anymore. I know that we had a problem with the furnace. I don't know that we believe that we would have to take care of a furnace. But with the mold problem, we stepped up and took care of that. I just want to be able to have more communication and try to work together so that we can come up with a solution. I don't know some of the people who have money in this town, I know a few of them, that they would give us a big donation because We don't own the building, but maybe there's a way we can all come together and save that. I just think it's so, the thing we always said was, here's our hundred year history here. and then look at this beautiful building of the good old days without these good old days, you guys wouldn't be here, this building wouldn't be here, this community wouldn't be here. It's always been family friendly and I just hope we can work together and come up with a solution.

Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else would like to speak? Why not?

My name is Gavin Villarreal. I'm a resident here in Post Falls. I am a volunteer with the Historical Society. I am also a local historian. I do my own research. It's actually my specialty is Spanish colonial history in the Pacific Northwest. But I came to Post Falls here in 2023 as I was the former museum manager of the Tacoma Historical Society. And moving here from west of the Cascades and being, you know, involved in a historical society of a major west coast city, I have to say, I don't have to tell you, we have a very, very special city here. And this is something that is not, you know, common and usual, especially when you think about historical preservation. But everything I think that we are, like you said, the budgetary concerns or anything that is an economic issue for downtown, what's the old saying and the adage, you know, the money is out there, we just got to go get it. And for anyone who understands Post Falls, and especially right now, I'm actually working on a genealogy and history for one of our other founding families, the Havermails, who, of course, Frederick Post, his daughter, married into. The extensive history here, I mean, going back from the Northern Pacific Railroad to everything that we had coming into, excuse me, voice picking up, didn't have any water. I hope that we definitely can come to an agreement and some type of understanding as to keep the Chapin Building absolutely occupied by the Historical Society simply because I have been very privileged to work here with the board members and participate in the research here and just after working on my own work and discovering the history of this place, it absolutely needs to be preserved and especially if we can do anything else that is getting other people on social media, getting out, like for instance, if we're comparing the Spokane Valley, their historical society, anytime you go into a hotel room or any other place around town, they have a brochure, they have a flyer, they've got a bigger social media presence, they just spent over $100,000 remodeling their entire facade, So around the area, if you're comparing to other historical societies, they're kind of keeping up with not only maintenance and updating their buildings, but they're having a very large presence in the community. And I think especially if that was to go away from downtown, especially with all of the new development, all the new buildings that are going on, it is gonna take away a lot of piece of downtown. And seeing the history of that building going back to 1923 and seeing the place and presence that it's had and all of the memories that everyone here has made aware to you, I think it absolutely would be worthwhile and make sure that we stay within that building in perpetuity. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Anyone else wishing to speak? All right, then we will move on to Mayor and Council comments. And for me, I'll just say thank you to everyone who came out to talk about this. There's a lot of difficult issues that we deal with and trade-offs that we have to make decisions on. And a lot of the times, there's nobody here to talk to us about it. And it's really good to hear that kind of community engagement, to hear that testimony. And I know it's important to us to preserve history that my kids are descendant from some of the first Norwegian settlers who were out here farming potatoes in those days. And we have that history with the town, and it's important for us to preserve it. And so my hope would be that the proposal that you're working on from the Historical Society would be a very good one and would show where the money's going to come from and how... how it's all going to be managed how the building can be taken care of how the you know how many days a week could it be open what's the vision for this for the next 10 years and and i hope it's a really good one because i i think it's a very valuable part of the downtown so that's it for me any comments from the council i would echo the same and i think um maybe there's a misperception out there and i'll just speak for myself as a member of the council here

I think there is a misperception that perhaps we don't value that the building and the historical society as much as, um, maybe social media and other accusations have portrayed. Um, you know, I do agree with the statement that the decisions that we make do show our priorities. And one of the priorities that I feel responsible for is sitting on this council responsible for not only the money that I spend in this city, but for many of your monies also that we collect. is to get information, as much information I can to make the best possible decision in the best interest of everyone. And so that's how I've approached our requests for RFPs and maybe a financial plan from the Historical Society to save that building. It's not that the city is against saving it. In fact, the efforts are exactly opposite of that. Our efforts are to be able to preserve it know in my preference would be to have the historical society stay there but there has to be a practical plan in order to make that happen and i think that's in the middle of the process that we're having right now and i think it is a good reflection of not only our priorities to to save it but also to be good stewards of the many other responsibilities that are on our plate so i do echo the mayor's sentiment i appreciate all of you being here it's one of the best turnouts that we've had in public comment outside of public hearing. And it is very crucial to us in that decision-making process to see who values what and how that plays into this type of decision. So while it is difficult to feel perhaps put on the hot seat on trying to defend the position, please understand that it is part of the process in order for us to make the best decision that we can. At least it is for me. So thank all of you.

further comments yes mr mayor um i too would echo what council councillor ziegler said i've been very dismayed at the mischaracterization misinformation and accusatory attacks on the city and this council and our mayor about motivations It's history that made me want to move here. People have pointed to certain developments and I said I liked it the way it was and I share those sentiments. I'm very much interested in history. The city that I moved here from has a very vibrant historical society and a history going back to 1848. And my family's been there for most of that time, owned a business in that town for the last 100 plus years. And I hope that, and the reason I say that is because the other comments that I see a lot on social media is a lot of whatever's bad is the fault of the people that have moved here recently. And it's really disgusting and it needs to stop. Not everything is the fault of people who have moved here recently, which to some of you might be the last 50 years. I really appreciate the longevity of people who have been here a long time and have worked a long time. By the way, I went to school with someone whose last name was Post. I guess that post and so I think that I have friends that have been here longer than anybody and I really value what the historical society brings in making sure that people know where they come from and it's especially important for those who have come recently to know that so that we might work to preserve the place that we've moved to and keep it as close to what it was, at least preserve the values of that place and not change it. And I want you to know that I value that immensely and was raised that way by my father, who I think I've seen every World War II documentary and et cetera, you know, because he made sure that we knew that history was very important. The people that are on this dais are trying to find a way to preserve what we have here in the Chapin building and with the museum. And part of that process could be the public hearing that they're at risk of losing it and that people might step up to fund something that really is a gem in this city, in this area. And I really hope that the publicity that's generated will cause people to do that and open their checkbooks. because it is worth saving and I'd be happy to be part of that effort in whatever way that I can but I really hope that the comments that we hear about just wanting revenue the amount of revenue that a coffee shop in that location would generate for the city is so minuscule that has nothing to do with it the question is is can we Can we have this pay for itself? And the city has been generous, I think, in not charging rent. So for many years, and that does show the value that the city places on it, it could have just been rented out to a private business that would have been paying if that revenue was the motivation. It's not. And so I hope that the city, Like for the Dixons, I hope you know that that history that you gave, like that means something to me. It strikes me that there are people who have been working for this place for a very long time and it's my job to help keep it as much of what made it special as I can. I do not value the new over the old, not at all. And I appreciate those who are working to make it a better place as it moves forward and we look for a future that preserves what we had and moves us into the next phase without changing it to something that we don't want it to be. So just know that and know that people like me who have moved here, I've equated it to like Cubans who swim to Florida. Like we very much want to see that it doesn't become the place that we left. We're your best friends, not your enemies. So thank you for those that came and spoke and for all of the work that you've done to preserve all of that history over the years. It's really special. Thank you. Further comments?

I just would like to highlight a couple of things. Thank you for your comment about having open conversations. I think to Councillor Ziegler's point, we are sort of in the middle of a difficult conversation that we have to do in public and also in slow-mo, which are like the two worst ways to have a hard conversation. I, knowing everyone up here personally, know that it is a priority to keep Post Falls the best place that it can possibly be, but we've also been elected to balance a lot of priorities and make a lot of really hard decisions on behalf of the residents that aren't each individually having to make these really difficult decisions. So I think affording a slight amount of grace would be really helpful. It is not my understanding that the heart of anyone up here or that anyone in staff is to make a revenue specifically off of this building. We are in no way, shape, or form looking to make money from this. We are solely looking to make sure that things that are important can persist and that we are also good stewards of the tax money that you all have put us in charge of, which you see us often kind of bickering about like a little bit like low key on things because we think that $5,000 is important and we think that $180 million is important. We also think that it's important to not only pay our police department and our dispatchers, but also the people that sit in the room behind you every meeting, making sure that this is online for anyone to view. making sure that they have health insurance and 401 s just like the rest of us need. And not to get too in the weeds, but I just am really I don't know, hit struck by the idea that we are just, we are not asking or advocating to get rid of the historical society or even get rid of anything there. It's just that we are asking a hard question, which is what does this look like in 10 years and how can we make it work? And we're just in the middle of a hard answer. And I think that it will be okay once we get to the end. And thank you so much for all of your public comment. I think I'm, I mean, we all like public comment, but I think maybe I'm the one that's always asking for it all of the time. So I do really appreciate everyone coming out and telling us what they think because it really is important and it helps guide our decisions and our priorities.

Anyone else? All right. Moving on, we do not need an executive session. And seeing no further business, this meeting is adjourned. Thank you.