Treasure Valley Partnership
Meeting Minutes
April 24th, 2006

Mayor Frank McKeever welcomed everyone to Middleton.

Mayor Nancolas indicated that during a meeting several months ago with Mayor Bieter, it was felt that we should attempt to show the legislative body a united voice for public transportation funding. He explained that we had invited numerous State legislators to this meeting and welcomed Representative Kathy Skippen as the attendee from the legislature.

Kelli Fairless mentioned the Coalition for Public Transportation and its mission to find a funding source for public transportation. She indicated that Chuck Winder and Dan Stevens from the business community have stepped up to champion this effort. She stated that this coalition’s effort was designed in stages. First there have been meetings held with the business community to explain the need and provide education. Then they targeted the local officials and provided similar education.

Out of this effort, Kelli indicated that an RS has been drafted consisting of language for State Legislation in next year’s session. This legislative effort will be centered on providing a dedicated funding source of a local option taxing authority specifically for Public Transportation. The enabling legislation would be under the Regional Transportation Authority Act. If a region undertook a local option tax for public transportation, all counties in the regional authority would be under the local option tax.

Mayor Merrill asked what the changes in leadership will do to the legislatures willingness to adopt such legislation? Representative Skippen indicated what she believed the makeup of house leadership would be. She felt we needed to spend our time and effort working with members of JFAC.

Mayor Merrill stated that the Executive Committee of the TVP has put in motion holding a meeting with all of our area legislators in November. The purpose of this Legislative meeting would be to give an opportunity for the local elected officials to discuss issues with the local legislative body.

Representative Skippen stated that Local Option Taxing has been pretty well thwarted in the past. She mentioned that at the end of this last legislative session, there were some alliances being built with Legislators from North Idaho and those of the Treasure Valley. This alliance would create a majority. Legislators from North Idaho appear to be more in favor of Local Option Taxes.

Mayor Nancolas stated that he felt the State Legislature is anti-local government. He asked what has caused that feeling and what can we do as the Treasure Valley Partnership to address this issue? Representative Skippen indicated that one of the causes is that there are very few legislators who have been an elected local official. She suggested building a personal relationship with the local legislators is probably the biggest thing we could do.

Mayor Merrill stated again that we were working on innovative ways to bring the two bodies together in a forum that would be conducive to building a rapport. She mentioned the projected November meeting and we could also invite local legislators to our Retreat in September. Mayor De Weerd suggested that we also invite the local mayors/commissioners from the McCall/Cascade area to our retreat as well.

Mayor Bieter mentioned a discussion on the Local Option Tax and that there should be a sunset clause associated with this legislation. He would hate to build infrastructure and just when the fruits of the labor are starting to pay off, have the legislation sunset. Representative Skippen felt that the sunset clause was not a make or break piece of the legislation. Kelli Fairless indicated that the sunset clause got into the RS because of an opportunity to make a simple majority election with the sunset clause. If it weren’t in the legislation, then the majority might be bumped up to 55-60%.

Representative Skippen suggested that we assign members of the TVP to certain members of some of the more key legislative committees and just start building a personal bond with these legislators.

Mayor Watson expressed her appreciation to Representative Skippen for her support on the SAUSA piece of legislation.

Business Meeting

Mayor Merrill made the motion to approve the minutes. Mayor Nancolas seconded. Motion carried.

Mayor Merrill indicated that her and Tom Dale met with Bill and went through the budget. She moved to approve the budget/finance report. Seconded by Mayor Watson.

Discussion: The budget presented was a revised budget for the year based on the SAUSA Project. Bill discussed a couple of plans for upcoming projects that were included in the budget.

Mayor De Weerd mentioned the upcoming request that TVP would be receiving from the Treasure Valley Air Quality Council and asked that this item be included in the budget.

Mayor Nancolas moved to approve the dues structure contingent on a budget for next year that details expenses. Commissioner Yzaguirre seconded with discussion. Commissioner Yzaguirre indicated that based on next year’s budget, their needs to be some clearly delineated expenditure’s on how the funds are to be expended. Motion carried.

Mayor Watson asked if we had received any interest from prospective cities for membership in the Partnership. Bill indicated we had sent the letter out and that he was on the agenda for the next City Council meeting for the City of Wilder.

Bill indicated that the MOU between the Partnership and the Canyon County Prosecutor’s office is in the process of being worked on should be ready by next meeting.

Bill mentioned that the Retreat is scheduled for September 7th and 8th in the Ashley Inn in Cascade. He mentioned that the current plan is for a facilitated discussion around City/County Relations, a presentation on Right of Way/Corridor preservation and a strategy session on the November meeting with the Legislature. He also asked the group if they had any topics they wanted to have covered at the Retreat.

Mayor De Weerd stated that we should invite the Mayors and Commissioners from Valley County to the Retreat.

There was no further discussion and the meeting was adjourned.