Meeting Minutes
May 23, 2016

Attendees

Staff and Guests

Open Discussion

Nathan welcomed everyone to the Parma Ridge Winery.

Nathan said when you turned off of 20/26, right before you jump on the over pass, is a goat farm that has been selling goat cheese in the valley for years. She had a fire last fall that burned the milking parlor. Between last fall and now, there has been a business concern that is interested in purchasing about 35 of her acres. What they want to do is process sorghum. Within three years they project hiring around 100 employees.

The problem is, 100 employees would be nice but there is no housing. He would like to see something in Parma like a housing authority. He asked how he opens the discussions within the city to get a housing authority to help fulfill this need.

Garret said the Housing Authority is formed under the authority of the city and is just like an Urban Renewal Agency once it is formed. It is a City Council Action that creates the Housing Authority. Their attorneys and Mike Mike Dittenber the Caldwell Housing Authority Director are very informed about this process and he would be happy to get Nathan with them.

As a reference the Housing Authority is created under Idaho Statutes, Title 50-1905, creation of housing authorities.

Nathan said in the last six months, they have had a feed store for pets and large animals come to Parma. They have had a restaurant in the middle of town that will be opening any day. So he feels good things are happening in Parma.

Nathan said if he had planned this a little better he would have planned a tour of the Boise Dixie Drain Project. He and his public works person have visited the project about six times already. He thinks they have some space they might be able to use to duplicate this project on a smaller scale to help the City of Parma comply with Phosphorous removal.

Garret said he recently went to a Labor Relations Information Systems Seminar. It was good in that it focused on both union and management perspectives. One of the things that was brought up is, nationally there is a shortage of people wanting to enter the law enforcement field. Also, nationally, the contracts that are being negotiated, the police contracts are starting to out distance the fire contracts because there is thousands of people waiting in line to be fire fighters and there are not many waiting in line to be police officers. The police contracts are out pacing the fire contracts by about ½-1 percent. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but it really is.

There is also a trend of loosening requirements on tattoos, body piercing and other things to encourage people to be police officers.

Bob said, in addition there is a trend nationwide about consolidating fire departments. As you know, they are having discussions here. Garret added they are looking at combining with the City of Middleton.

Darin said this all makes sense. Is there a discussion with regard to ambulances being part of that? 90% of the calls reported by Middleton fire are actually ambulance calls.

Dave said there are several Counties in the State where they have consolidated the fire and ambulance. Darin said he believes one of them is Kootenai County. Dave continued that this only makes sense as currently EMS stations are located without regard to where the fire station is. Bob said this was the same in Canyon County.

Bob said, the next step is one he would like to talk about, and that is 911 services. If there ever was a service that needed to cross county and city lines, that is dispatch. It is phones and computers, period. For Canyon County to have one, Nampa to have one, Ada County to have one it doesn’t make sense. The City of Nampa is looking at a $685,000 cost for upgrading the hardware for this system.

He feels it makes sense to have this service valley-wide. We are all growing together. They and the City of Meridian are having discussions as their lines come together.

Bob said it is his understanding that the Ada County 911 service has the capacity to take on the whole valley. Garret added that Ada County has upgraded to the next generation equipment which everybody is going to have to do. If you have three-four dispatch centers all having to upgrade, you end up spending more money you would have if you were consolidated.

Dave said it is not a bad time to talk about this. Bob said he has talked to Dave Case who has said let’s talk about this.

Bob said he was thinking about having Brad Richy with the Idaho Bureau of Homeland Security to come to our Partnership meeting in Nampa this next month to come talk about this. Combining 911 systems is right down their alley.

Garret said they just combined the SIDC and the ECC which is the State Interoperability Commission and the Emergency Communications Commission and he actually Chair’s all of this. The state-wide plan calls for consolidation and making sure we are all using the same equipment.

There was a lengthy discussion on consolidation of 911 services in the Valley. Dave Bieter, Bob Henry and Garret Nancolas agreed to form a sub-committee of the Partnership to begin working on this activity. It was discussed that Bill would invite Chief Brad Richy of the Idaho Bureau of Homeland Security and Representative Rick Youngblood to the June 27th meeting of the Partnership to discuss combining 911 services in the Treasure Valley.

Bob asked if anyone has dealt with Idaho Fair Housing with regard to mobile home parks. They have two mobile home courts. One is being closed down due to sewer problems. On the other one, consisting of 100 units, the owner has indicated he wants to close it down, has given notice and wants to sell the property. Idaho Fair Housing thinks that Nampa as a City needs to do more for a reasonable accommodation for these tenants, to the point of threatening lawsuits.

Darin asked based on what. Bob continued that it has been asserted that these people have a community and the City has a responsibility to allow them to continue as a community.

Chad said they have some good things happening in Star as well as some fun things. St Al’s is building right next to City Hall with an urgent and primary care facility. They have a couple of grocery stores that are looking at coming in. One has already bought land and the other is looking to buy land. They have also had some people looking at putting in an event center into Star.

Chad said they have a couple low-income apartments that are coming in. These developers are looking at Star pretty hard. They used to be considered farther out but everything has moved closer to them.

John said we continually see the phenomenon of the brewery, winery industry in Garden City. With the renaissance of the Riverside Hotel, they are seeing that this venue is booked a lot more.

In Garden City they have a functioning planning and zoning commission with a design/review function as well. The planning and zoning commission just approved an indoor gun shooting place that also sells guns at the site of the old Hi-Ho Club.

Garden City is a co-permittee with the Ada County Highway District, the City of Boise, Boise State and a drain district on an NPDES Stormwater Permit. Making a long story short, they removed the MS-4 discharges from the river and filed an application with the EPA for termination of the permit status. It is looking pretty good that they are going to get out of this permit. It can have all kinds of implications. Apparently it has gotten the attention of a group out of Washington DC that deals with EPA on stormwater issues. If they don’t get out of the permit, there is a good chance this group will, on a pro bono basis, fight the EPA for them.

Darin said the City of Middleton annexed some industrial property south of the river in their area of impact. 12 years ago the city extended water and sewer south across the Middleton road bridge and annexed an Idaho Power substation site. However, the State Tax Commission said no and that they are annexing by a shoestring or a strip of land consisting of a road and a railroad. The City, after quite a hassle, finally found an administrative appeal process. They have filed an administrative appeal with the State Tax Commission asking them to reconsider their decision on the annexation. Garret said they just received a letter from the State Tax Commission saying they were overturning an annexation decision they had made in Caldwell.

Darin said they are proceeding with building permits and inspections as if this is annexed. Because the alternative cannot be true, only the City Council has the authority to authorize annexations, not the State Tax Commission.

Darin said the Middleton Fire District, not a City department, was able to get its permanent levy passed for the area.

Middleton recently had a ribbon-cutting for its skate park. There were about 400 people that turned out. It is probably the most used portion of all their city parks for the longest duration.

Brad indicated that the EPA has said that Greenleaf will be the first one stuck with the temperature rating on their re-up. He added the groundwater under their plany violates the temperature rating by 4 degrees.

Joe said the City of Kuna is passing out about one building permit today. He indicated he had met with Dianna with the City of Boise on homeless issues. He said it would behoove all of us to form a partnership on affordable housing, to see if we can get ahead of the curve on this. Brad said as they were coming into the town from Coeur d’Alene and there was a homeless man pushing his cart in Parma. If economic times get worse, it would be a good thing if the valley had a plan and it just wasn’t the City of Boise that was trying to figure this out.

Joe said he believes we should look into this. John said there are some resources in Boise because of its size, like the rescue mission that would not work for all of us.

Stan said they are redoing their comp plan. For the most part, he had turn people away that wanted to be on this group. They have an issue coming up as they just redid their impact fee for parks.

The biggest concern right now is their Urban Renewal Agency. They are not having a problem in Eagle with people coming in to build either commercial or construction. With all the changes that are happening with the URA, he is beginning to think they should disband the URA. If they fund everything this one developer wants, it will be millions of dollars out of the tax payer’s pocket.

Dave said he would be real slow to disband the URA because of what they did to existing redevelopment agencies compared to forming a new one. You have to have a vote of the citizens to set up one. This has made forming a new URA real tough.

John said, if the URA has no debt, it might be best to just sunset the district.

Dave said he would be an advocate for combining our efforts on homelessness because there is safety in numbers. They pay a lot of attention to Seattle and Portland because they are in a tough spot. He is a real believer in this anti-camping ordinance and thinks it would be good if we all had one.

Dave said that permanent supportive housing is a good thing because you can wrap services around the chronic homeless issue. He said they have a doctoral student that has done a good job of studying this. It costs about $53,000 per person to serve the homeless when you add up EMS, jail, police and other services.

Bob asked if the word gets out that you have this supportive housing service, does this increase the number of people you are seeing. Dave said, this is a good question, but it is opposite of that. They found they gravitate to the camp and are not gravitating to the service. He believes if we can discourage the camps and provide an alternative that is positive, we can avoid the problems other urban areas have experienced.

John moved to approve the minutes and financial statement. Darin seconded. Motion approved.