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HomeMy Public PortalAbout1-CM Department Report - Apr 2019Monthly Department Report – City Manager Memo To: City Council From: Anette Spickard, City Manager Date: May 2, 2019 Re: Monthly Department Report – April 2019 1. Association of Idaho Cities District 3 Meeting – Legislative Update: I attended the District 3 meeting in Nampa on April 25th. The AIC Executive Director summarized the 2019 legislative session and highlighted bills that were passed and upcoming issues that are of interest to cities: HB134 – Allows for liquor by the drink in “plazas” where minors may lawfully be present. Plazas will be treated same as baseball parks, sports arenas, convention centers where alcohol sales can be done under one permit and not need a separate permit for each event from Idaho State Police. The city will need to define the area of the “plaza” but intent is to simplify paperwork and clarify how alcohol sales can occur in an outdoor event area with minors present. HB168 – Allows cities to designate overweight truck routes and either manage permits in-house or opt in to Idaho Transportation Department (ITD) program to issue permits on our behalf. Cities can deny overweight trucks from traveling through the city and law allows the city to condition permits in terms of hours, times of year, and types of facilities like schools that they cannot travel by. The city can charge up to $5,000 to industry requesting the permit. The permit fee is to be used for engineering analysis to see if the street can hold the weight. The city is not required to have an overweight route and can deny these trucks from coming through the city. If the city establishes an approved route and then denies a permit, there is an appeal process. SB1113 – Campaign Finance Reform goes into effect for city elections in January 2020. Our City Clerk will provide you with training and additional information regarding the changes at a future Council meeting. Transportation Funding - Legislature did not reauthorize “surplus eliminator” which eliminated funding to Local Highway Technical Assistance Council (LHTAC) for projects including the sidewalk/safe routes to school program. They also did not approve any fee or gas tax increases to pay for transportation projects. Online Sales Tax – The state will collect online sales taxes per the US Supreme court ruling (Wyoming v. Wayfair), but those funds will not be distributed through the normal sales tax revenue distribution formula. Monthly Department Report – City Manager Instead the legislature decided to divert those taxes to an unspecified “tax relief fund” for the next 5 years. The legislature did not define how those taxes can or will be spent from the “tax relief fund”. HB217- Urban Renewal reform goes into effect July 1, 2019. Vote requirement does not apply to underground infrastructure or unoccupied above-ground structures, like parking structures and sidewalks. Occupied above-ground buildings will trigger vote requirement depending on amount of tax increment in the project budget and a “three-part test” analysis. More information will come from Urban Renewal (UR) Agency association and Tax Commission regarding the “three-part test” analysis. The law is somewhat vague so it’s possible a city will proceed under their own interpretation and then be challenged in court. Rule-making will be done by the Tax Commission. The Association of Idaho Cities and UR Agency will work with the Tax Commission on the rule-making. Issues likely to come up in 2020 session that AIC will monitor– Repeal of grocery tax, business personal property tax exemption, revenue sharing formula, transportation funding, Medicaid funding, highway district consolidation (create highway districts in each county and turn over all equipment & road levy authority from local jurisdictions). 2. DEQ Source Water Protection Workshop: I attended the workshop on April 18 in Boise. Attendees were primarily from private water systems/HOA’s who manage ground water wells for rural subdivisions. McCall was the only surface water drinking source represented. I learned that the State does not require any public drinking water system to have a source water protection plan but as a practical matter it does make sense to have safeguards in place to prevent contamination from entering a water distribution system because the cost of clean up and loss of trust in the drinking water system is far more expensive than the preventive measures. Our treatment plant does test and monitor water quality coming into the plant daily and the City has protections in place at our plant to ensure the water is safe when it goes out through the distribution system. We are fortunate to have high quality incoming water and treatment is minimal. The workshop primarily focused on simple protection strategies such as fencing to keep trespassers/vandals and potential contaminants from entering the physical area around ground water wells. They briefly touched on surface water protection for a source such as Payette Lake, which is a much more complicated endeavor. The challenge for Payette Lake is the plan would have to encompass the entire watershed that feeds water into the lake which is a very large geographic area well outside of the City limits and City’s authority. To create such a plan will take many years and the involvement of multiple federal, state and local agencies, landowners, and other stakeholders. The City cannot unilaterally create such a plan nor enforce restrictions on public and private lands outside of our zoning jurisdiction. We also do not have authority to regulate activity on the lake itself. The Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) provided an example of a successful surface water plan, the Lake Maumelle Watershed Plan in Arkansas, which involved many stakeholders and resulted in restricted access to certain areas of the lake and the purchase of key properties to prevent development. A monthly charge was assessed to all water utility accounts to pay for the plan’s implementation activities. The implementation and enforcement of the plan was possible because it is a regional water utility with broad authority over all property within their watershed boundary. That is not our situation here in McCall. DEQ recognizes that regulating Payette Lake and the property within the watershed will be a major undertaking that no one agency can do alone. They do have some grant funds to provide technical assistance and can provide GIS mapping data of the watershed. The maximum grant award per year is $10,000. The City’s newly adopted Water Master Plan does recommend the City pursue a source water protection plan in the future; however the Council should understand the level of effort required to create such a plan will require a major staff and budgetary investment over several years and the willing engagement of other Monthly Department Report – City Manager agencies and stakeholders. At this time the priority for the Water Treatment Plant staff is to rehabilitate/replace outdated transmission lines, improve fire hydrant pressures, and make necessary repairs to our facilities to keep daily water transmission functional as outlined in the Council-adopted Water Master Plan capital improvements plan. If Council desires a future work session on the topic of source water protection and the timing of such an endeavor, please let me know. 3. Sewer District Board Appointment/Election Cancellation: I attended the April board meeting of the Payette Lakes Recreational Water & Sewer District (PLRWSD) and learned that no one filed for election to the newly created seat to represent the City of McCall on the Board. The Board will now move forward to appoint someone to that vacant seat. The Board decided they will not advertise the vacancy as they felt it had already been advertised by virtue of the election and felt they had done their required outreach. The City also advertised the position prior to the election through our social media channels. The Board voted to cancel the election and will appoint a current Board member from another zone to the vacant spot at their May Board meeting even though he does not reside in the area to be represented. 4. Human Resources Update: The City was invited to attend our first III-A Board of Trustees meeting, which was held in Boise on 4/24/2019. Traci Malvich, Human Resource Manager, will hold the Board seat for McCall, and Anette Spickard, City Manager, will be the alternate. Traci will officially be seated on the III-A Board of Trustees on July 1, 2019. Staff is very busy with recruiting efforts in several departments. There are currently several full-time regular positions to fill due to retirements/resignations. There are two full-time vacancies in the Water Department and one in the Street Department, and staff is currently working on a strategy to fill the upcoming Airport Manager vacancy. We also have a part-time regular position for a Library Associate. Staff is also still looking to fill several seasonal positions in both Parks and Golf for the summer crews. Applications have been slow thus far despite our multi-faceted advertising efforts. On a good note, our new City Engineer Nick Zaninovich started this week and we are so pleased to have him on board.