All right.

Hey, thank you everybody for joining us tonight here for our Treasure Valley Partnership Regional Town Hall.

This is the first time I think we've ever done this, so it's pretty awesome.

And it's nice to see so many people here in the crowd.

And I don't know how many are online.

I'm not sure if you're gonna be able to tell on that or not, but that's pretty it's it's a 10 10 people, that's good.

That's awesome.

Um my name is Trevor Chadwick.

I'm the mayor of Star, and I am the current chairman of the Treasury Valley Partnership, a partnership that's been together for roughly 30 years uh to work on the needs of our uh of our region.

Um we represent three counties, uh, Ada Canyon and Owaihee County, 17 cities.

We have about 800,000 residents within that area, which is a lot when you really think about that, and we have more than one million acres of land out here.

Uh so that's fantastic, right?

But there's a lot of a lot of stuff that we deal with.

We're a unified coalition working to ensure that growth pays for growth, quality of life is protected, and your taxpayer dollars are spent wisely.

We are local governments on the front lines of public safety, which is I think one of our biggest mandates is make sure that everybody our communities stay safe out here.

So joining me tonight, I'm just gonna go down the line here on this.

Uh we have uh Commissioner Zach Brooks from Canyon County down here on the on my on your right.

Uh Mayor Joe Steer um from CUNA, Mayor Eric Phillips from New Uh recently appoint our uh uh sworn in just recently, right?

Yeah, for Caldwell, uh Mayor Brad Pike from Eagle.

We got the wonderful Rick Hogaboon, the mayor of here, and thank you for hosting this in your wonderful city.

Uh Mayor Bill Jacobs from the city of Garden City, Mayor Robert Simmonson from uh Meridian, and Mayor Lauren McLean farm um Boise.

Um with that said, I guess we could move on to some of the uh uh housekeeping items there.

All right.

Good evening, good to have you here.

If you haven't been at Nampus City Hall, the restrooms are just down the hallway to the right.

And there's a lovely drinking fountain right there as well.

If you need to get a sip of the water, um just some housekeeping.

I know there's a lot of interest from respective communities in our gathering tonight.

The the focus of our gathering is on the shared uh impacts of some of the issues that will be uh addressed and brought forward tonight.

While we we may provide some brief examples of how those impacts respect our respective cities, the intent here isn't to um spend most of the time responding to questions, uh very important questions that you might have about how things are impacting just your city.

If if if we may permit some very brief moments of time to respond to questions, but we really want to stay focused sort of on the shared uh impacts on uh of the issues that uh Mayor Chadwick brought up at the opening.

So um there will time permitting at the end be some opportunities for some questions, so maybe just think ahead in framing the questions in ways where uh it's it's generalized where any of us could potentially you know answer the question if that makes sense.

So with that, I will move it on to the issue at hand, Commissioner Brooks.

We good, okay.

Good evening.

Yeah, mine was being kind of funky.

So the issue at hand is basically local government and how do we pay for it, right?

So we have the Idaho State Legislature that creates the rules to the game.

They set the framework and they set the rules for how we operate uh local government and how we fund it.

And it in the last uh four or five years, uh local government and that funding, primarily through property taxes, uh, has come under scrutiny from the Idaho legislature.

And one of those large one of those main bills was House Bill 389.

And that affected and changed the rules to the game of how it basically capped property taxes, and I think a lot of you probably understand understand that here.

The problem with that was not that we're gonna sit up here and go, hey, you know, that there's not enough money for everybody, right?

We just want to sit here and raise your property taxes as elected leaders.

That's that's absolutely not the case.

Um but we were elected to uh oversee the machine that is local government, and I believe, and I think probably most everybody else in this room believes that uh the decisions are made best, the closest to the people.

And right now we are living in a system where uh the state legislature has really decided to put a squeeze on how those services are provided and how that how they're funded.

So at a at a city level versus the county, um, I'll just say for the cities, what Mayor Hogaboum needs to address the issues and whatnot at his city uh are different than necessarily what CUNA and Mayor Starr need to address.

At the county level, there's only 44 counties.

I think there's a hundred and ninety-seven or ish cities.

Yeah, 1977.

Um they range greatly in population.

Same with the counties.

There's this five or seven counties that are roughly about the same size, and then the rest are very small.

Uh counties are mandated to provide certain services.

Uh I'm not exactly familiar what cities are mandated to provide, but state legislature sets the rules for both of us.

And in doing that, is everyone familiar with property tax relief?

You've seen the last couple of years, the the state has uh had a has it had a line there that they gave you it's called PTR property tax relief uh on your um property tax bill, where the state gave you property tax relief.

Well, in my opinion, that's a farce.

It's at least a messaging farce because the state doesn't do anything with property taxes but set the rules for how they will be collected or not collected, right?

Your assessor is at the county level, your treasurer is at the county level, you pay to the county, and then from the county, the the the clerk helps decide how those funds are going to be dispersed, right?

So, what that really is is the state is collecting your income tax, they're collecting your sales taxes, and then they're doing an awesome, awesome job at messaging during election season that they gave you a property tax, property tax relief with those funds.

And so what we're trying to do here, in my opinion, is raise awareness that the system uh is is reaching a breaking point to where local jurisdictions are not going to be able to continue to provide the services at the level that uh we feel like we have been told the citizens expect them to be provided for uh unless something changes.

And so hopefully through our discussion tonight, uh we will illuminate that a little more.

All right.

That one come on.

Yeah, your green life's not on.

Well, mine green light won't work, these hold it for a couple seconds.

I think you're good.

Hold it.

He gave you the thumbs up.

Okay.

It's okay, it's okay.

That's different.

You're on.

All right.

Um, so our overarching goal, uh, besides trying to make the microphones work, uh, as the Treasure Valley partnership is to preserve and enhance the quality of life that makes the Treasure Valley so special.

But we can't shy away from the realities of our growing region, and growth needs to pay for itself.

We know that's not necessarily the case, but our goal is to make that happen as much as possible.

Uh without modernized funding tools and updated laws or rules, counties and cities can't meet the demands for essential services like public safety, infrastructure, and community development.

Uh, we're on the front lines and need the tools to do what our residents elected us to do and to do it well.

Yeah.

All right.

Mayor uh Mayor Hogaboom's gonna talk about tax policy and what we're looking at as one of our Treasure Valley partner pill uh pillars out here, and then I'll move on uh after that and talk about uh public safety and um infrastructure items.

All right, tax policy.

Uh I was fighting for this one, so it's glad uh this one.

Um tax policy is is interesting.

There's a lot of ways uh to kind of discuss it, but in summary, there's a history in Idaho of tax policy, and I don't have time tonight to go through the history, but I I want to maybe speed up to more recent history.

Um Idaho legislature, there wasn't always a homeowner's exemption, for example, so I I can't help myself just briefly.

So I I can't help myself just briefly.

There was basically a taxpayer revolt in the late 70s.

And so those in public policy are familiar in the late 70s, early 80s, there was there was a taxpayer revolt.

I I think Time magazine and others even had some of the activists nationally who are saying uh property taxes were escalating.

A lot of that was due to tax structures, uh, which tax homes based on their relative value.

You had uh home values going up at a higher rate relative to other uh uses, commercial retail, and therefore home homeowners were taking there's a shift to homeowners to to pay more taxes.

That explains why whether it was California with Prop 13 or Massachusetts with Prop 2 and a half.

You you saw measures that came in play that that tried to create a predictable climate for property taxpayers on the homeowner side to limit the the way in which your property tax bill went up.

Sales tax is predictable, you're paying a percent based on what you consume.

Um income tax is a rate of income, you know, over a certain level of deduction.

Uh property tax homeowners, the the biggest frustration from homeowners is the volatility of a system in which you don't know what your tax bill is gonna be from year to year.

It's hard to predict that because there's factors outside of your control that don't really reflect your your earning income potential or your consumer habits.

Um but we we do have in Idaho, I'm not gonna talk at length about whether a three-legged stool is a good thing or a bad thing.

There's there's people who have opinions about how taxes should be structured, but we do have a three-legged stool where there's income tax, there's uh sales tax.

Uh property taxes, what's funding mostly at the local level, the localized services.

So you elect local people who have levying authority to collect property taxes to provide services.

Um Idaho imposed a 3% limit on how much the budget can go up year over year.

That's kind of the baseline budget, plus, and this is really important, uh, new construction.

Uh, new construction would be the relative proportionate share of what um I use it kind of a potluck analogy.

If you're if you have a party of 100 people and they pay 10 bucks each, you you provide enough food.

If 50 more people join the potluck, you're charging them $10 more each.

The total bill goes up, but you got to provide more food for those people.

Um the the total bill, if you were sending the bill to the whole party would go up with those 50 more people, but they're paying their share if that makes sense.

It doesn't uh create an increased uh liability on on the others, it's their proportionate share.

So that was the system we had in place until 389, and and one of the things that it did was say the new construction comes in at 90%, you only collect 90% of the increment value.

Um that changed that really changed things for most of the cities sitting around here because if you're of the 197 cities, a lot of them aren't really surprisingly to you, a lot of them aren't experiencing a lot of growth.

So they still operate under the rules of 3% is your increase year over year.

If you're a fully built-out city or city not experiencing growth, House Bill 39 doesn't really affect those cities a whole lot.

It really affects cities that are growing because as growth occurs, we have to provide more services, but we only get 90 cents on the dollar.

And it's actually worse than that, but that's another uh conversation another time for tax policy because uh the the land value change in a subsequent bill also isn't captured.

So when agline is is uh converted to residential, that that increased value, the levy rate is your budget divided by the total taxable value.

And what we have is a lot of things are getting loaded in the total taxable value, but not on the budget collection capacity.

So it's creating an artificial depression on the levy rate, uh, which is also contributing.

So you have several contributing factors where growth is not paying for itself.

So in a nutshell, growth is not paying for itself.

So for us as growing communities to try to do more with less, literally uh the challenges of just operating within the 3% is challenging by itself, especially when cost of goods, cost of infrastructure, the CPI on that is much higher than 3% year over year.

So the climate that we were already existing under is a challenging atmosphere where you're trying to fund double-digit inflationary increases and be constrained within the 3%.

And then you add to that new construction and trying to maintain proportionate services, but not getting the full increment.

So I I've likened it to allowing more people to come to the potluck, but not collecting as much money from those new admissions.

So what happens over time is you're gonna feel um less food is gonna be received by all the parties because the chef can only provide so much food for the entire party.

So maybe a few people, it won't be felt, everyone's eating to their full, but over time you'll you'll see this compounding effect.

So 389, that that that is one of the big challenges just from a tax policy is new construction comes in at 90%.

They also, and I'll call it arbitrary because there really is no rhyme reason or logic to it.

Um they created new construction has a hard 5% cap.

Um this really affects, you know, Mayor Chadwick and Starr.

If you're experiencing growth over 5%, they they really cut you at the kneecaps, where let's say you have 15% growth.

Um you're allowed to add the 3% plus the 5%, so a hard 8%.

So you're having to, you know, feed people 50 cents on the dollar essentially.

And so that creates a big, big challenge.

So they have this hard 8% cap um that doesn't respect how many people are being admitted to the party, as it were, and so it's gonna create strain on the ability to provide services.

Uh I'll just briefly say expiring urban renewal, that's a whole mystifying world for a lot of people, including our legislators.

I say that respectfully.

Um is challenging, but we we do have significant urban urban renewal districts here in Nampa that have been successful marketplace or downtowns in the urban renewal district.

They are um when when an urban renewal district is successful and builds up increment value, uh, those that increment value doesn't come to us.

And I know that's a surprise to a lot of people.

The city's not collecting those property taxes.

It goes back to the urban renewal agency to pay back its original um investment.

Once it expires, and this is an important piece, what's paid in in urban renewal districts is the same levy rate that as determined by the budget divided by the total tax value.

So they're not paying any more or less than would otherwise be paid if if there wasn't an urban renewal district.

When that expires, one thing they set in 389 is it only comes into the city at 80 cents on the dollar.

Um it just makes no sense to me that marketplace, which is paying again, no more, no less taxes.

When it expires, we get less as a city than it's paying to the urban renewal agency.

And and so I I I as you could tell, I can burn it out on this and and and go on.

But those are some of the several of the key factors that I think are punitive.

Um, 389 did raise the homeowners exemption from 100,000 to 125,000.

Um, it used to be on an index and then they fixed it at 100,000.

So to be fair, they did raise that.

They did raise the circuit breaker, but they also added uh a means test on on the asset value of the home.

I'm not gonna go into that.

They do allow use of foregone.

This is kind of closing remark.

Foregone is remember the 3% thing I said.

Let's say a city decides to take 2% one year.

That means they didn't choose to take the full 3%.

That extra 1%, depending on your city size, let's say it's a few hundred thousand dollars.

It stays in a foregone capacity, which means in the future, if a future city council takes its full three percent and wants to claw back that additional increment, they could add it to their budget capacity, and that's called foregone.

Uh the rules prior was all foregone capacity could be added to the budget, it gets added to your ongoing base moving forward.

Um, they put some constraints on how you use foregone and said you can only add one percent to your ongoing operating baseline, but you can allow um you can collect up to three percent as one-time capital.

So and and that and that's gonna vary based on the cities here, our foregone capacities a little bit different based on our behavior's behaviors.

So um with that, I'll kind of pass it along to public safety.

But if you're interested in more tax policy, I'm happy to discuss after.

If you want if you want to get in the weeds, he's got the weeds on that, right?

So a couple things with public safety is what uh uh Mayor Hogman was talking about.

Uh huh.

389 really constrains um uh cities to grow properly.

Who would have thought that in 2020 we would have had a worldwide event that created such a massive influx of people to move into our communities.

I think honestly, 389 would have been okay if it would have been just normal growth.

But the growth rate of people flying into this state uh for their own reasons has created challenges for all of us.

And 389, I'll just give you an example of STAR.

Star only I was 11,000 people in 2020, according to the census.

Because of the growth, we're at 23,000 today.

Five years, that's incredible growth with very little with very few tools to allow us to address that growth.

Regardless of what you think about stopping development stuff, there's things in place that you can't do that with, right?

So we're trying to play within the rules that have been established by the state of Idaho for all the cities.

I levy two million dollars is all I levy in property taxes on a four and a half billion dollar value.

I could only grow that by 8% max, regardless of the amount of growth.

That's $160,000.

That's incredible.

You can't, you can't fund a police officer for that, right?

And so that comes into our public safety issue that we have.

165 cities in the state of Idaho are 5,000 people or less out of the 1970.

Their budgets are smaller than what mine is.

They get upside down very fast because of how 389 has treated that when they get a house built.

Stats have come out, we just got these done at about roughly 86 homes in those smaller communities.

I'm sorry, 86 smaller communities, 10 houses would turn them upside down in their budget.

Just 10 houses.

So those of us that have been in this community for a long, long time, my family's been here since the late 1800s.

Kids can't even buy a house in this valley anymore.

Star used to be considered the armpit of Ada County, if you ever heard about that.

The armpit.

And now we're one of the higher valued uh areas out there, but kids in our communities cannot even come back home because they can't afford those houses.

So that has created some challenges with our public safety.

When I can't fund public safety, the challenge is, you know, we your crime goes up and stuff like that, and you have to find uh alternate ways of trying to fund stuff.

Um public safety in star, I'll give you an example.

Um our fire station, for instance, you know, impact fees are there, the state provides an opportunity to do impact fees.

Uh, you could collect them on the new growth.

We get all sorts of impact fees for the fire.

However, it's only allowed to be used on um uh uh capital improvements, buildings, you know, uh the initial setting of the of the station.

But you have a limit, you have to spend that within eight years, or you have to give the money back.

So we had to build a fire station in Star, and that fire station sits unstaffed today because we cannot get a levy passed to pay for that.

Whereas if 39 was not there, to be honest with you, that station would be staffed today, right?

So the area that that station is put in, the level of service response times are anywhere from eight to nine minutes because they're coming from different stations, either on the other side of Star or out of Eagle.

And that creates problems for everybody, right?

Um the um public safety is our largest expense.

100% of the property tax that's paid in STAR goes into my police.

Now, out of these 197 cities, everybody's unique and different.

Some cities have their own police and their own fire departments, some contractor of police and have fire districts, some have sewer districts, some have their own sewer.

They're all unique and different.

So a one-size-fits-all approach, like 389 was done, creates problems on all sorts of magnitudes for every single city that's out there.

Okay.

My police, 100% of my $2 million, my two million dollars that I collect in property taxes goes to my police budget of 4 million bucks.

I only pay half of my police for that, and I have to come up with alternate sources of revenue for that, which makes it very difficult to do other things in a smaller community.

If we ever want to see growth for attainable housing for those of us uh for our kids and family members and stuff that need that, you will never get that in these smaller communities if they're gonna be upside down every single time they build a house.

And that creates a problem.

Infrastructure is another challenge for us with all that.

When we're talking sewer and water, like I said, some some cities have sewer and water uh departments, some have sewer and water districts.

That's a huge one.

With all the regulations that are out there, uh the federal regulations, the state regulations, um, with with the and honestly, I'm just gonna bring this up because it was a big controversial thing here recently in our areas, Eagle and Star, with discharging of water, where does it go?

Does it go in a canal or does it go in a river?

You know, canals can be cheaper, rivers are gonna be more expensive.

There's all sorts of factors that go involved with that, but with people's misunderstanding and their concerns, prices keep getting driven up, but you have no way to fund this stuff, right?

Growth should truly pay for growth, but we're being hamstrung with that ability to have growth pay for growth right now, and that's why this Treasury Valley Partnership has been has been together.

I mean, for the last couple years, we've been really hammering this home and trying to figure out ways to make some changes out there to make certain that growth is truly paying for it.

So it doesn't come back on the existing taxpayer that's sitting there in the form of an additional levy or additional bond or things like that.

That's the challenges that we're facing here in our community.

Rhodes is another one, and you're hearing things right now about the state.

The state provides funding to the cities as well and the counties, right?

There's other sources of funding out there, but they're not very much funding, and they keep toying with that because of what's happening at the state level.

And that's going to create more constraints and challenges for us as local communities to be able to fund that necessary infrastructure, the necessary public safety.

You know, the last time I looked, police fire and sewer and water are probably the most critical things that we need to pay for in our society right now.

We do not want to turn into some of these holes that we see in these other areas with uh uh public safety going down the toilet, right?

Literally down the toilet with a system that we can't even hardly flush in because we're full, right?

So we we we just we're out here trying to find ways and trying to find solutions and we need your help.

I'm just gonna tell you this right now.

We need your help when we come into this p uh position when we're working with the state legislatures and stuff to try to find these solutions because your lives depend on these very things that we're trying to fund and trying to find ways to take care of, and we're being hamstrung and doing that.

Okay.

Um I know we'll have some questions, and I can I could just like Mayor Hogan Boom could go on tax policy, I could too, but I could go on this other stuff for for days on it because I've lived it.

I've been mayor since 2020.

I've lived in Idaho my whole life, and we've had some crazy, crazy, crazy growth uh in our community of star, right?

And and it's scary.

It's scary that we're seeing what we're seeing and not being able to fund this stuff, and but we but everybody that's up here, everybody in our coalition.

In fact, all 197 cities and all 44 counties are trying to fight the same battles to try to make certain that your community stays safe out here, right?

And so we're gonna need your help on that.

All right.

Who's talking about the Treasure Valley Partnership voice?

Who is that?

You got infrastructure, somebody's I just kind of I went over briefly on infrastructure, roads, roads, and we're well, we'll get more into that as we go.

Um I can take that.

Okay.

Uh so the Treasure Valley Partnership voice.

Uh Idaho succeeds when it's cities and counties succeed.

Uh this is why the TVP is united and we know what we need to thrive.

We're advocating for local control and responsible growth.

So that everyone in this room benefits positively now and for generations to come.

Now that you know who we are and what we represent, we can go ahead and open it up to you for questions.

And I do want to uh before we do that, my soapbox is still there.

I'm sorry.

I do want to say that soapbox.

Over 70% of the state's economic power comes out of cities, just so everybody understands that.

70%.

A lot of money comes into the state and funnels through the state through the through through the power of the cities.

And if we cannot fund the critical infrastructure, the critical public safety and stuff like that, you're gonna see that power go down, and it's gonna be a big problem for all of us.

Okay.

All right.

Are you are you asking questions, Mrs.?

Anyone want to ask a question up here?

Oh, love it.

Sometimes people get shy, and that's awesome.

I'm not shy.

So I I see one county commissioner here.

I'm wondering where where is Ada County, where are the county communities?

That's a that's a great question.

I'm gonna why are they not here in this conversation?

Because Ada County has a uh public hearing tonight, and all the commissioners on our big public hearing that's got a room full of stuff going on.

And other cities have other meetings and stuff, so we had to set some it's impossible to get the same schedule at night for every one of us.

So there's gonna be other Treasure Valley partnership meetings like this, like in Ada County, where they'll be involved with as well to be able to answer some of those questions.

And then and then ARPA funds.

ARPA funds, yeah.

Yes, you guys got all fat and happy on ARPA funds and and you know, I I know a lot of I see a lot of parks being built and different things like that, which are great.

But if we're having issues funding our safety, maybe we need to refocus ourselves a little bit, and you know, and I'm wondering, you know, if ARPA funds have have created a lot of this extra expenditure, and you you you you guys are still relying on those funds because you know, before 2020, we didn't seem to have these problems.

Can I answer that question for you?

Yeah.

I will tell you that that's not a correct statement, and I'm not gonna be controversial or contradictional with you.

I will tell you what we did with our ARPA funds.

Right.

We used our ARPA funds that we received to buy a ladder truck for our fire department for a fire district.

So taxpayers didn't have to pay that.

We used our ARPA funds to build a police station for our expanding police department so the taxpayers didn't have to pay for it directly through property taxes.

Uh obviously ARPA funds were indirect all around the thing.

I don't think anybody up here has been using that to fund stuff outside of what they're allowed to be using for.

With there's very limited on what we can use it for.

Some use it for wastewater uh expansion, so it didn't come back onto the uh property taxpayer, right?

So there's different things that happen with those ARPA funds that are out there, and then honestly, the people that say, well, you shouldn't ever use it.

Why?

If I don't use it, it's gonna get funneled back into some other cu uh state that's gonna utilize it for other things when I can create a uh a tax savings for my people because we're already being paying paying for that, right?

And so we used it for critical infrastructure stuff, so it didn't have to come back on to the existing taxpayer.

Well, it's good to hear that because not everybody did.

You know, but thank you.

We used ours for uh sewer infrastructure.

Yeah.

Canyon County used theirs to build a sheriff's administration building.

So an election building, new election.

Hey, for real.

And rehab the animal shelter, and you know.

So it's a great question because that's a that's a that's a misunderstanding that's out there, thinking that we all got fat and have we didn't.

Not at the local level, it was very very constraining control, right?

Within our communities, and we use it for the critical stuff that we could use it for.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

You're welcome.

Just I I I promise briefly.

I think most ARPA money was spent on one-time uses because there's limitations on ongoing.

So I think um one way to think about this is ARPA certainly allowed for the build-out of facilities that do need to be staffed.

I think the concerns we have is ongoing staffing, uh, needs an ongoing revenue source.

And so part of the challenges of 389 is it's affecting growth pain for growth.

So thus the challenges of uh providing ongoing commitments.

So I guess one further question on that.

Was that money figured into your budgets and what your where your budgets are set at now?

I mean, was that completely separate of your last five years worth of budget since that money's been available?

Has that been kept out of your budgetary numbers altogether?

No, it's it's included in your overall budget when you spend it, but it comes out the following.

So if you've been getting ARPA funds for years and years and years, as you go beyond that and they're no longer available, that money still is a requirement within your budget, and you're still having to make up for that then.

No, because like as as uh Mayor Hogman was talking about this one-time expense.

And so when you build, like when we provided the uh uh million dollars for the uh ladder truck, right?

It was an expense at that one time and it came out the following budget year.

And it was never it was out of the way.

And it's not anything you're expecting and carrying forward as a need.

No, and budgets are a completely great topic, interesting topic because they're when we're talking like property taxes, right?

That's just one line item on our uh on our overall budget, right?

Because you have you have the property taxes, you have sales tax revenue sharing, you have liquor tax, you have franchise fees, uh others have sewer and water connection fees, all that kind of stuff that's in there, right?

Right.

And those are always changing.

But those ARPA funds like that were a sort of would have been a separate line item that was used a one-time expense, and then they went away.

Right.

Well, and then another question real quick.

If if growth is causing all this problem, why not just not grow?

That's that's another thing.

It's uh we need the tools to allow us to say no.

Oh, all right.

There you go.

And and and and honestly, the the the cities.

I think a lot of people would support you on that.

Well, we would support you on going to do it too.

Well, let me know.

I will.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I know there's other questions, but I I think another conversation, another time for growth is there's local land use planning act and there's laws, and we're uh you you're delving into another topic there of property rights and um there's not an obligation to have to annex everyone, certainly.

So when cities are talking about growth, it's a little bit different than the counties that because they're absorbing the the they have to live with this the decision cities are making to bring people, you know, generally densifying within a county to provide services, but the services at the county and city are different, but um I I think it's it's challenging.

I would just say for myself, I think we have to be more prudent with how we grow because um the service level demands based on the type of growth relative to the revenue is forcing more challenges, and I think as uh Mayor Chadwick said, we have an incredible need, I think for middle housing uh uh middle housing different housing types.

Um the challenges there's gonna be collateral damage where in exercising prudence um we might have to be pickier with with how we grow and it revises the way in which we intended to build out as a community, and I think there's collateral damage on a lot of different ways and unintended consequences.

Um but that that's another conversation of merging, I think the property rights land use act with um how we're growing.

So and I just I'm gonna follow up.

Sorry.

I sorry.

On the land use planning act, when Commissioner Brooks was talking about the mandated um stuff from the state for the county side, the land use planning act really provides some mandates for us as a city as well.

When you have 17 chapters that you have to establish in there and you're establishing levels of service and things like that, right?

And then when you establish those, then you have to try to meet those with your budget.

That's kind of a challenge in itself.

And at the county, you basically have criteria depending on what type of application it is.

If the application meets that criteria, you don't have to say, I guess you're not probably not legally obligated to approve it, but you really open yourself to a lawsuit when you say no if it meets the criteria.

Because you're gonna have to go defend yourself in court to say why you said no when it actually meets the criteria.

So, in one sense, you your hands are kind of tied, and I'll briefly answer your ARPRA question for the budget.

The Arbor rules were such we basically had to say by the end of 2024 how those ARPA funds were gonna be spent, and then by the end of 2026, the money has to be spent or they're gonna want it back.

So after this budget cycle, you probably shouldn't you I'm aware you probably shouldn't see any more of it.

They should be expended.

Real quick, if I I can finally get chime in here.

I think what was your name by the way?

I didn't hear it.

Leanne Mozell.

Leanne, thank you.

Um, sure who gets what?

But also one of the things that's interesting, I don't know if people understand this that when you annex in property, you have the annexe, the the landowner comes to the request of the city or the county and asks to be annexed into your service area or into your city for that reason.

So we're not out there taking on farmland.

I mean, these are things we get feedback from.

Taking on farmland and and buying up and gap gabbling up land, um, the developer, and it's usually the children of the farmers that have no longer want to row crops or cattle raising or whatever anymore.

They're saying, does anybody out there want my property, and all of a sudden developers start coming to you and saying, Yes, I'll offer you X, Y, and Z for it.

It's way more than you would ever make in your lifetime, usually as a farmer.

And uh, we have property in Colorado, we go through the same problem with that.

But um the thing is the annexation is important for the public to understand that you would request annexation in usually for services, water and sewer and things like that.

But it's not always it's not government going out there and doing that.

So I just think that's an important topic as well that um you have to request the annexation to come in.

So when you're asking for growth, um, yeah, we're not out there gobbling up land.

It's it's the land people coming to us and saying, hey, start only to developer and hey, I'm interested in selling my property.

It's important factor.

All right, sir.

Go ahead.

My name is Buzz Bookamp.

I'm a uh fire commissioner for Caldwell Rural District, and uh to say to you gentlemen and ladies, uh, I'm preaching to the choir.

Uh 389 is a terrible, terrible debacle.

Uh it was passed through the last two weeks of the session in 2021, and nobody knew what it was about.

It was supposed to be property tax relief.

So everybody got excited.

But all it's done is take an aim at taxing districts, especially fire districts.

Uh you know, we our our mail rate keeps going down because of 389.

You know, to try to survive is just phenomenal.

There's a rumor that uh the new legislature is gonna take aim at 389 instead of having three percent, they're gonna make it two percent, but they're going to give us back growth.

Well, that's not gonna really help all of the road the rural districts where they don't have growth.

The other thing that hurts fire districts is uh urban renewal districts.

When an urban renewal district gets in, goes in, we don't get any tax advantage out of that.

We lose money on an urban renewal renewal district.

You know, it's long been said that the fire department has to do less with more, and you know, or it has to do more with less.

And that's just that's typical of what's happened.

Right now we're in an imbalance, you know, everybody likes commercial and and manufacturing coming in, but right now the residential is paying about 70 to 75 percent of the property taxes where commercial and manufacturing gets pretty much a free ride.

Uh a few years ago it was pointed out that the uh the uh Amazon Center had a wonderful tax break.

Their taxes drop to a point where they only pay 200,000, and it yeah, that the NAMPA uh council member that pointed that out.

I think he lost his his seat in the next election.

But that's what happens.

You know, I look at my property tax bill every every year.

Right now, my property tax to support the school district is at 28 percent.

My uh property tax bill for the fire district is 20 percent.

You know, I don't have any kids in the school district, but where can we get school districts paid for?

Uh why is the legislature not putting in impact fees for school districts?

Every time that there's a plat, there should be either a five thousand dollar or a ten thousand dollar assessment on the plat, or do it on on doorways.

Because more than likely, over the life of that uh that residence, there's gonna be some child going to the school.

But that type of uh uh revenue is not there because of our legislature.

So it it truly makes strain on people that need to go through.

Like uh like STAR, uh two fire fire uh buildings, uh Middleton is sorry, have have new fire stations.

You cannot use impact fees for maintenance and operations.

So what do they do?

The the uh uh man who brought up 389 says, well, if they need a new uh fire engine, just get a bond.

Go to a bond.

Well, there's one problem.

Our state legislature has made bond and levy a dirty word.

So every property owner, when they hear bond, they go, no, I'm not gonna do that.

And so a lot of people don't even vote because they figure, well, if it's a school district, all the people in the school district are gonna pass it, we're gonna end up paying it anyway.

But when it comes down to uh uh fire service or public safety, that doesn't benefit just K through 12.

It benefits everybody.

And that's a short-sightedness of our legislature.

So they really need to go through and put impact fees for school districts because you know, with the with the influx of people, there are just too many kids to go to school.

And and you know, there it's much easier for them to float a bond for a school than it is to float a bond for a million-dollar ladder truck or million dollar apparatus or even a brush truck that's like 300,000.

Right.

So that's what we need.

Well, I'll agree with that.

I I personally spent several years uh trying to push for legislation to allow school districts to collect impact fees because that that is one of the major issues in the city of CUNA has its own school district, and that that's one of the biggest problems we have in the city of CUNA.

And uh even working with the Idaho State School Board and some other associations uh couldn't even get anybody to carry a bill.

So uh I don't know what the answer to that is, but you're exactly right.

So um go ahead, Mayor.

Yeah, just briefly I uh thanks for your comments.

Uh you mentioned Nampa um and Amazon.

I just want to clarify for the record that um any any reduction that Amazon's paying in taxes is not a policy set by the city of NAMPA.

Okay.

The city of Nampa did not give Amazon any breaks on taxes.

Okay.

Their levy the levy rate has gone down, driven by the increase in home values and in, and I don't want to pick on our uh whether it's Walmart, industry, commercial.

If their properties did not go up at the same rate that home values went up, they benefited from the lower levy rate.

So you could even kind of shout out to if you go to Canyon County's website, there's a data hub.

You can it's a public record, you can put in any address, your own address, any commercial address, and see what the taxes have been over the last five years, and that's maybe a helpful instructive tool.

Um Amazon actually, the city negotiated with Amazon to pay uh more fees than what impact fees would have required of them.

So uh regardless of people's respective thoughts about Amazon, good, bad, or whatnot, I just want the record to reflect that um as far as the discretion that the city exercised towards Amazon that they paid more than what impact fees would have required, and any tax reductions that they pay are not some tax break that the city has issued to them.

But all your other points are well technically, I just don't want there to be any misunderstanding about the city of Napa's relationship to Amazon and stuff like that.

And I just I'm gonna follow up on uh your levy thing about the fire districts.

I think there's like 15 fire districts this last election in November, not fire districts, but 15 public safety levies uh that were out there uh statewide, and only two of them passed, right?

Um they they've created such a uh uh 66 and two-thirds is what it's required to pass these uh uh levies unless it's a supplemental, which is 50 percent, right?

And supplemental two years, and it's hard to do public safety on a two-year increment and hire people for that stuff.

That's the challenge we're facing.

And so STAR, for instance, four times has failed to try to get that uh 66 and two-thirds.

However, we've had 58% of the people say that they wanted an increase in the levy, but because of the state threshold, it's prevented it from passing.

And that's why this buildings stay empty today.

And that's the challenge that we are facing, is just all the different nuances in the laws that are creating our our problems uh uh here with public safety.

And if I could just add one element is you brought up a very good point, is we're up here representing cities and counties, but there's so many taxi districts in Idaho that we're impacted by 389 at all levels.

You know, it's not just the cities and the counties.

We maybe get the attention, but whether it's the fire, fire districts, um, library districts, uh the EMS and everything.

Everything they they all feel the impacts of of these changes.

And you know, they're they're providing the essential services in the same way that we are.

I mean, we have level ones that die all the time, and we got a cemetery districts that have to do with the impacts of these changes.

And you know, I don't think anyone can look back from five years ago to what today and say that your costs haven't gone up one way or the other.

And that's what every government entity has to try to do is provide the service with the cost going up and in a constrained way based upon how we can grow revenue.

And when you when you look at those, I mean the the I think there was like eight cemetery districts in Idaho that tried to have to get a levy increase, and I think they all failed, right?

That's just to create the just to maintain operations in their in their facilities.

So I mean the this impacts a wider range of things that impact all of our lives out there, right?

So I think if you can get a hold of me later, I'm also a fire commissioner for Eagle Fire District.

So I think we should start collaborating our efforts together as fire districts, as we're doing up here with county and cities, so maybe we could have a stronger voice when we're actually talking with our legislators and stuff.

So uh I'd be very interested in having a conversation with you in the future.

So if you leave a card before we leave, if you have one, I'll find one for you and then we'll go that route.

I'm fully retired.

So I was.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, and I've got a lifetime appointment though.

Because I stood for election, nobody ran against me.

And that's that's the way it is with fire commissioner.

You the only way to get out of that job is to die.

I'm not ready.

So you're not ready.

But you won't have an ambulance coming to get you because we don't have any.

I got a catch up to my 99-year-old mother.

She's still out there causing problems.

Thank you, gentlemen.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Mayor.

We have quick other questions.

Oh, go ahead.

Yeah, quick supplemental.

Yeah, they can come up.

This will be really quick.

So, one of the collateral damages on 389 restricting um growth increment.

So there's been a lot of talk about impact fees.

Impact fees are based on a 10-year capital improvement plan.

So you're projecting into the future what your needs are.

It's based on your existing level of service.

You project what the growth is, and you're trying to do the proportionate impact that is associated with that growth, and then you roll backwards and then you divide it by the permitting to try to collect the incremental share.

That's to build the capital to let's say house the police officer to house the firefighter or the truck.

Um when 389 came in, uh it impacted, and and this was one of the things that I tried to bring up to the legislators is is the impact of 389.

Is instead of being able to hire, say, the 10 police officers or just using a round analogy over 10 years, you're now only gonna be able to hire, say, eight out of the 10.

So it has this uh devious as a strong word.

It has um there's these strong implications now where even a lot of people are saying, well, just jack up the impact fees.

The impact fees have to be tied to your level of service and your level of service relative to staffing is tied to ongoing revenue.

So when you get cut at the kneecaps on ongoing revenue, the collateral damage on this is it's gonna affect the level of service that we can obligate onto the future relative to impact fees.

Um so there's again a legal framework around impact fees.

So you're not gonna be able to collect impact fees, they're gonna you're gonna have to downgrade your level of service.

Uh in a nutshell, you're gonna have to downgrade your level of service.

And so over time, you're not gonna be able to keep up with the proportionate share that you would otherwise do to provide quality of life.

So okay.

Easy to say question, but maybe hard to answer.

You asked us for help.

Exactly.

Can you define what can we do to be of help?

So there will be we're gonna try to run some legislation this year to try to make some changes at 389.

And when that happens, the call for citizens is gonna be out there big time.

The honest truth is, and and my friends in the legislature probably slap me when I say this, is we have a hard time as cities uh getting stuff passed, right?

It takes the citizens that vote for these folks to make the change to make sure that they hear what we're trying to say and try to try to make sure that our public safety, our infrastructure and stuff is staying up to speed.

So when this legislative stuff comes out, I don't know, do we have a info at Treasury Valley Partnership.org would be a great place to send us your information.

And then, yeah, and then we will, yeah, perfect.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Um you send a note there, and then when we have a call to action, we will reach out to you to help have you help us uh get out there and try to make some of this change, right?

And then talking to your neighbors, it's the old adage, right?

When you're running for office, I come to talk to you, you love me, get 10 of your friends to come and vote for me too.

Get them to start talking and start.

And you know what, to be honest with you, these form letters don't do form letters.

That's so impersonal, right?

Be just send your own letter to them so it's not a form letter, so it so it sounds different because when I get a form letter, it just is the same thing.

I'm putting it away.

How does it really how is it impacting you?

What's your concerns and stuff like that on that, right?

If you could put your name, email, and where you're from, and that way we can keep that organized, and then we can get it.

Yeah.

That's a great question.

I'm glad you asked that.

Thank you.

I saw an oh, right there, that gentleman here.

Yep.

Microphone appears to be a little low.

Just a little bit.

Yeah.

Good evening.

Um it was uh gratifying to hear that public safety and quality of life are among your cornerstone points.

Um been here for since 1988 originally.

I'm I'm just gonna toss out there the notion that I think most people would agree to as a broader valiant entity.

We are building toward gridlock in every sense of the word.

Whether we achieve it or not, we do in in certain traffic situations.

We are in schools, we are in certain types of services and care.

How broadly we ultimately achieve uh gridlock is is yet to be seen.

Uh public safety, um, one thing we have nailed.

I I don't know what I was thinking.

I live in North Nampa, my work is off of Eagle Road, so I'm on the I 84 commute.

Um I hit 13 miles an hour today for a little bit, and if um if there's a a mishap at 13 miles an hour, uh the the injuries are not severe.

So I feel pretty pretty safe on so we got that.

Um a couple of nested questions are on the same topic.

Um I think it was I think it was Middleton and a couple of years ago as an entity as a city decided that if a proposed development would cause the the school enrollment at that servicing school to exceed their capacity by 10%.

I think it was a no-go.

So since you have to provide services to a city, and that I don't believe providing services is compulsory or is it a requirement?

They can buy, they can propose to annex, but if you simply don't have the funds for fire, you don't have the funds for police, public safety, pretty significant.

What is Idaho?

46 or 47th in school proficiency, reading and math.

Um I just saw another statistic.

I think it's gonna get talked about in the ratio between primary care physicians to uh population, Idaho's 49th.

It's it's that's where we are.

So uh a number of metrics that tell us we're full, so just tell them no.

Uh the the services simply are not available.

If if middle if Middleton found a way to do it, then okay.

And then my next question, and I'll sit down.

Um I applaud what you're doing, uh, the strength and numbers, the sharing of ideas.

This is a common problem.

It's it's east to west, it's north to south.

We have a horrible east to west commute problem.

I'm I'm experiencing that every morning.

I was grateful since we have an east to west problem that Idaho is spending 636 million dollars on highway 16 to bring more traffic south to exacerbate the east or west problem.

You can't you can't anyway.

Um I guess uh coordination uh at the next level within cities and within departments, uh state government as well.

I sat in this room last night, uh Corey Barton was at it again, 168 homes uh at the southeast corner of the intersection of North Side and Eustach uh planning and zoning commission.

Of course, it was approved.

Um, an intersection that didn't meet traffic standards a long time ago.

Guys like me stand up and say, where are you gonna send them to school?

There's a 1500 apartment unit development that um that Valley View School District said there was no place to send those kids.

We just exacerbated it.

So planning commissioners say, you know, we can't penalize a developer who's proposing this because it's not his fault the schools don't have the capacity.

It's not his fault that the that the roadways aren't up this enough.

So I talked to Highway District One and I say this is what they're saying.

Highway District One says they are building faster than we can keep up.

Valley Booth School District says we can't get a bond passed.

They're they're approving population and development faster than we can keep up.

So left to right and right to left, but out of without a coordination element.

So I again I applaud what you're doing.

My question is could you take this coordination to interagency between counties, cities, and and highway districts and take this to the next level so that the right hand and the left hand can acquaint each other and and maybe a broader approach and maybe a way to I don't know, do things better.

Maybe maybe it puts off gridlock for a little further.

Okay.

Thanks.

Are you looking at me to say some words on this one?

I thought you I thought you grabbed your mic, sorry.

It wasn't so much to grab the mic, but I I think that there's also some reality to all these com all these comments and conversations.

While while we are all up here together advocating for similar things, you know, as mayors, we're ultimately not even the deciders, as most of you that probably attend other city council meetings know.

We have a lot of different jurisdictions with a lot of different elected people with a lot of different viewpoints on all these issues.

Some very strong one way, some very strong the other way.

So I I well I I appreciate the the comment on the collaboration.

At the end of the day, we're all we got under Idaho law.

We have to look at every individual application under very specific circumstances and not able to make broad generalizations about what can or can't be done.

We all have different attorneys that give us different legal guidance on what you can legally do and what you can't legally do versus what you might be sued for.

So I I it sounds really good, but at the same time, we all understand the some of the challenge we we face.

But I'll tell you right now, me and uh our good president of the Treasury Ballet Party, we disagree very much on on some of these issues and how you go about and try to achieve them in your individual communities, and that's okay.

Um we all have to be responsible to our individual community needs as we try to work collaboratively towards these things where we can.

So, and uh I'll just say this for uh for anyone that may be here.

If there's an open applic application, it's really not a place to mention stuff just because it puts potentially someone in a challenging point um to that.

So generalizations versus very specific project mentions would be great if you want to talk about growth.

Mr.

Chairman, I can jump on that.

Um so this is one of the differences between cities and counties.

As the good mayor just said, the mayor's typically I don't even know if you guys break a tie on a land use hearing.

So the at the county, the board of county commissioners, the three of us, we are uh it's called quasi-judicial.

So so we are essentially a judge during uh a land use hearing.

So we do make the final decision.

Um so that would that would be a difference there for um for the cities and counties, and going back to what I said earlier about those the criteria, depending on what type of application it is, uh we have denied things uh because some of those criteria are the schools, roads, whatnot.

So if certain applications, uh depending on what the roads are, or it's too large for whatever particular school that it's going to affect.

There's some other things, and they're different criteria, I would think, at the uh at the county versus the city.

Um so there is some room there for us to say no, and we have, but again, again, if it meets all the criteria and you can't come up with uh basically like a a judge's decision, they're called findings of fact and conclusions of law.

Uh if you can't come up with a legit reasoning that's going to hold up in front of a an actual judge in district court, um you're gonna have to figure out a way to approve it.

And you do you do if if you do deny something like that, you have to give them an idea of what they can do to change it so that you will approve it.

So in the end, it's gonna get approved one way or the other, uh, unless they're just not willing to do anything, but that's rare.

I guess first, please.

No, you could have coin.

We need a coin.

I'm nervous anyways.

Well, come up, join me and we can be nervous together, okay.

Oh, like you go ahead.

Okay.

Um first of all, I'm glad that there are folks who are willing to step up and run and govern us all because it must be challenging.

And I'm my name is Bob.

Uh, do I give my home name and address like okay?

Um so with Bobby figure I'd get to the basics in something simple.

So the reason I'm here primarily is because the mayors are here, and I like to know what is being done presently because I know there's discussion about it.

The activity and behaviors on the green belt regarding um motorized two-wheelers that are not really appropriate and being operated as such.

I don't mean getting rid of all of them, I don't mean getting rid of assist bikes.

I use an assist bike because it can't pump like it used to.

But I'd like to know, and it's a tragedy waiting to happen, and I figured that my understanding is that you all have jurisdiction over your section of green belts.

So and I'm sure many of other folks from other parts of the valley maybe don't live in your jurisdictions, but they uh use the green belt.

So that was the first thing I wanted to ask about.

Mayor.

Oh, so now I'm gonna be like Joe and not be oh there I got it.

All right, well, hello, Bob, I'm Lauren.

Um I'll talk a little bit about the greenbelt, but I also want to acknowledge um some of the other topics that have come up tonight.

And sir uh the tall gentleman and what's your name?

Brian.

Brian.

The um I gotta laugh because I was driving here tonight, and I found myself thinking, well, thank goodness I'm only going 23 miles per hour because if there was an accident, I would be safer than if we were going faster.

So appreciate the the way you're thinking about moving through this gridlock.

The and the suggestions, ma'am, your your requests um for an ask of how you could help us.

I mean, what I'm hearing, I think what we're all hearing tonight is how much we are all concerned about the impacts of growth on the communities that we call home and the lives that we love live here, love here.

I mean, I want my kids to be able, as I think Trevor said, to be able to buy a home voicey when it's time for them to come home.

And that means McLean's voice, you're gonna need four homes instead of just two because my in-laws are here.

And so, how do we make sure both that we're balancing um the need for homes for our residents so that they and so that they become more affordable for people with the ability that we have to provide services, and we have a ton of challenges, but our cities and our counties have shown that we're trying to be as creative as possible to make sure that our cities stay safe.

Um commissioning get to your green belt question.

Okay, I'm gonna be able to do that.

Because that's safety too.

That our cities stay safe, that we can invest in police officers, that we can invest in fire, that we can build those roads for those of you that are lucky enough to be in charge of your roads, um, that we need to be able to move people.

And we need your help when we talk to the legislature about how we're doing as much as possible in the challenging environment they've created for us with more and more people coming to Idaho because it's such a great place.

But we need your help explaining how important it is to you to them that cities can hire police officers, that we can hire firefighters.

And so just normal conversations about what matters to you in Nampa and in Canyon County and in Boise and Meridian is helpful when you're talking with legislators because you're making life and what matters real, and that then helps us when we get really wonky and in the weeds talking about tax policy and corrections that we need to make.

I think the green belt's a great another great example of how we all coordinate and collaborate and how connected we all are to each other.

I jump on the green belt and get to Garden City, love to visit um the mayor's city, and every now and then if I'm feeling up for it, my husband and I get a little further and head towards Eagle.

Um but what what we're saying, and what I experience a lot this summer is more and more people using I appreciate that you called it two-wheely moving things or whatever it is you said, rather than bikes.

You know what I'm talking about.

Yes, because they're going way too fast.

There are kids on them that you'd think they need a driver's license for them, and they're way too young.

Um and there's way too many people on these fast moving things.

And so in the city of Boise, um, and we're talking countywide, the county looked at doing a speed limit.

In the city of Boise, we just did drop speed limits.

We have I I like to think about what can we control, and let's work on what we can control while all this other stuff is happening around us, so focus on what we can do.

And so we have a sole contract with Lyme, and so drop those, and now we're looking at um additional regulations both in the city on the green belt and beyond to where motorized things can be.

Um, and then the let at the legislature actually, my team and many other cities are having the same conversation on the classification of these vehicles for lack of better word, and because if they need to be classified in different ways, so that then we can have some rules around where it's appropriate to be on motorized things and where it's not.

Well, I'd be happy and more than willing to be part of the solution.

I have a number of ideas.

I won't belabor them here in terms of uh, but just one basic one years ago there used to be a sign no motorized traffic, and it was very clear what motorized traffic was.

I want to let me bring this up though.

All the code and regulation doesn't matter unless you can enforce it.

Right.

You can't find it.

Right.

And so putting regulations out there, okay.

The honest ones are gonna code and stuff, the honest ones will follow it.

Those that don't care won't, right?

So unless we're able to fund that, then you know we're helping with the funding aspect so you can actually do some of that.

And I'll pick up on that, because Bob, I'd love to hear your ideas.

Um and since this is such a niche thing, really, because I mean only some of us are lucky enough to have the green belt.

Um would I love to take them and maybe offline and think more through.

But I should share a Mayor Chadwick's thoughts, and I've said to the public before, and to my staff as we think about how we step into the space to keep everybody safe.

I mean, I'd say on the green belt, but also on streets throughout our city where you've got lots and lots of people on these and on the sidewalks, is I want to be as measured as possible, making sure that we're making decisions that will protect our residents, but yes, that we can enforce because I don't want to set up a false expectation that we will have you know cops ticketing every e-bike out there when we can't invest in enough police officers to do that.

And so there is it's a delicate balance of coming up with the right rules and then having the ability to enforce.

Excuse me.

It goes deeper in that.

I'm not the surface is the regulation.

I'm talking about a deeper uh approach to the whole issue.

Okay, one last thing I'm gonna ask this is a question also.

Well, it's kind of a quasi-yeah, but it's also a question is that okay, we talk about density, talk about taxes.

No, I've looked at this over the years, but let my voice be heard legislature, etc.

Um people have to get involved, obviously.

But one of the things that has puzzled me is there's a public hearing about every uh redesignation of land rezoning, a public hearing uh where land that is clearly agricultural is being rezoned to residential commercial, etc.

etc.

I'm curious what pressures you are under or how citizens, if they're willing, would be could speak out other than a public hearing to say, hey, wait a minute, because isn't the density result of a lot of all this agland being rezoned as commercial or residential and the density of the housing is because of that.

If we said farm ground is good enough 50 years ago, 100 years ago, it's good enough now.

We already preserved these areas for that very purpose production of food and not fill it with houses and produce absolutely nothing.

So if you have these reject, Bob, let me interject real quick because Bob is in my city, and I know Bob will.

So you and I can have a dialogue and we can get this information disseminated back to our group because we've been very proactive on the green belt with the the we've I've put out mayor minutes talking about if had law enforcement come and give examples of speed limits of the different classes of the bikes, but the collaborative effort I think is what you're after right now.

So coming up with solutions so we could pass that forward is exactly what you and I can do together, and we can work on this because it is one of your concerns, but we've taken it on to the city of Eagle already, so we will make sure that your voice is um brought through the rest of the green belt area.

So I think it's important to have that.

The land the land use side of that too.

Talk to him about the the rules and the what's and the why we have to do things the way we do it.

On that, because there's a lot, there's a lot of things behind the sure there is, yeah, that we have to follow.

Too too much to this to try to get out in the next 50 minutes that other people want to ask questions.

All right, fair.

That's why I'm saying reach out to to me, and maybe that can be a segue to other uh citizens within your own community.

We're really liaison for just to get passed on and make fight solutions for it.

So but we need to hear from you so we can work forward with that.

Okay, thank you for your time and thank you for your patience.

I want longer than I talked.

Okay, hello.

I apologize.

I'm Janel Warner, I live in Nampa.

Um, Janna Warner.

So um I've seen some faces online a lot, so it's like kind of nice to be able to come in and uh have a conversation in person.

But um I think what I like seeing here is this collaborative effort between Ada County and Canning County.

Um I just kind of sounds like we really got to work with the legislators with adjusting 389, make it a more applicable.

Um there seems to be a lot of misinformation regarding property taxes, and like we know the rates are have actually gone low, it's just property values, and then if you actually say no, no growth, then you're just gonna in lower supply.

I know there's always talk about high interest rates, it seems impossible to buy, which that's an that does impact, but trying to educate people that it's multifaceted and not just one single issue.

Um but I do think moving forward, I do I think I've kind of shared enough with people that I really do think the only way out of the problem solve is basically public-private partnerships, collaboration, and I'm just gonna leave it at that.

And I mean oh, and maybe uh multi-mot multi-dwelling, but like the uh multi-generational homes might be something to really think about, ADU units, like just think about things that might were I guess sometimes families can kind of they problem solve and kind of figure out because we have aging.

I'm I'm I'm not a spring chicken, but I mean we have family parents that are aging.

Um I'm a millennial.

I feel like millennials were kind of stuck in this odd generation, but um we were before all the technology um online learning, and um we yeah the 90s were the best, but anyways, 80s and 90s.

Um speaking of, I just want to make sure that I know sometimes you guys experience like death threats and like you know, I just want to make sure you guys are also staying safe, your families, because the fact that you guys put your you ran for office, sorry, watery eye, but you guys ran for office and put yourself out there, and that takes courage, and I just want to make sure you guys are also staying safe in these times.

So thank you.

It's just a watering.

So thank you.

I appreciate that very much.

We you know, we're all just we are real people up here, just like everybody else.

Uh we pay property taxes just like everybody else.

Uh we don't impose rules on anybody that we don't impose impose on ourselves.

Uh so I appreciate those comments very much.

Thank you.

My name's Jim Hollis.

No, Rick, I'm not here to find out how many signatures I need either.

And uh it's no other so I'm here because I'm a lifelong resident of Caldwell.

My dad's the same, my wife's family is the same.

I raised four kids in Caldwell.

So I'm in the house where I'm gonna die, unless I get killed on the road doing 21 miles an hour.

So uh you know we laugh and giggle about that, but when you're retired, you don't go anywhere between six and nine, and you don't go anywhere between five and seven, because otherwise you've just sat in a car.

And uh my concerns are that uh the schools uh we myself and Ron Dylan have started an organization in Caldwell called Team Caldwell.

So if you guys want help with something, reach out, get a hold of Ron Dillon, because we're gonna be very aggressive from now on in the future, because uh we're disgusted on the schools being destroyed.

Valley View out of all the school districts was in the 60s.

Now they're in the 140s on the rating list in the school district.

If you're curious, check and see where your school district is and what are you getting?

The the disappointing part is one day at a Cowell City Council meeting, this is before you, Mayor Phillips.

The uh uh councilman asked the developer says, Well, what about the schools?

And here's the part that angered me.

You know what his response was?

Well, just do a levy.

So now you want to know the negative facts of a levy.

Well, that developer just put that in my soul, and uh it's to the point that my grandkids are homeschooled because of the lack of services in public school, and that's that's where we're at in our family.

And uh raising four sons here, they're drug dealers, aka pharmacists, but they're uh uh they uh doing it the legal way, and and you know you laugh about that, and it's the struggle.

I tell all my friends that all the time, and they look at me like, wow, guy that used to be a cop, his kids are drug dealers.

Well, it's because I know both sides of that.

So but it's like if you guys need help, there's organizations starting to form that is more than glad to help.

I personally have been friends with Camp Marman for 45 years, Lucas, Senator Blaylock.

Lucas, Senator Blaylock, they they all have helped my kids start their pharmacy because we run into a lot of government regulation that isn't good here, and it's against the wrong pop stuff, and uh it's to the point that we're having to hire an attorney.

So it's like, how do you encourage mom and pop businesses when you have to fight I'll use this name lack of getting sued?

CVS, you know.

How do you fight them?

They own the insurance company, they'll the private benefits manager, and they uh they uh own the drug companies.

And if we want Idaho kids to stay here, then we have to improve the education and and make it affordable.

Uh I I'm ashamed to say it's like uh if I could go back to high school today, I would, because I had a great time in school, and uh that atmosphere is gone now.

Uh my sons and I travel to different schools to see things, and because we we like sports, and uh you can see the schools that are hurting just by walking in to a uh an athletic event.

When you walk in there and four people from two from Caldwell and two from Emmett are an eagle game, and you're like, Wow, were we supposed to be here?

Nobody's there.

So we've lost that.

That's why you've lost the people.

But team Caldwell 2027's coming out, we're gonna be very strong.

We're on Dylan's uh the president, and uh we're more than glad.

Will you uh will you send your contact information to that info?

Okay, partnership.

It's like uh uh I'm not a very good recall guy.

Me and Rick argued a few times, but we're all right.

Right.

Anyone else want us to say anything?

Is that the line way back there?

Yeah, Trevor, I think you guys can scoot up closer if you want, you don't have to wait back there.

Just for the record, because he mentioned uh speed and arguments, uh he's exercising some sarcasm, I think.

Rick was like four days into his mayorship and he's already worried for the record.

For the record.

For the record, there are no one's taking minutes here.

Um yes, he was very involved with the clerk's office.

I was the former clerk, so there's elections-related questions, and and he was a heavy frequenter and happy to serve the public.

So my name is David Taney, and I'm uh just happy that traffic congestion has a silver lining.

So I uh would say that uh I didn't know the the greater uh Treasure Valley partnership existed uh before I got here tonight.

And uh so I don't know if that's a communications problem or what, but I look at the ten of you up here.

Uh it sounds like most of what you're talking about, there's everybody has their local jurisdictional issues.

We've heard about a bunch of them.

But uh but that sounds like what most of you are talking about are changes in legislation.

And if the fire legislator and the ten of you walked in the office, uh it would make the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.

And uh so I think you have just enormous uh political juice, and I'd be curious to know at a legislative level how do you plan to use it?

I mean, do you have a work plan or something set out?

Uh or you just kind of you know, is it a shotgun approach or what?

I mean, there you can't do everything, but is there five or six or three or four things that you have in mind that are priority?

Uh and I'd be happy to sign up to help out with that.

So you know so the the Treasure Valley Partnership was created uh quite a few years ago, uh basically as a uh time for mayors and commissioners to kind of get together and we can discuss different issues we have and things like that.

And uh it's just a like a once-a-month meeting we get together and talk, and then uh we we supported uh a SAUSA program, which is to pay for a uh federal prosecuting attorney, so that a lot of these uh uh drug gangs and and some of those can be prosecuted federally so that they're not put into county jails or state jails, they're prosecuted federally, which they don't like, so that kind of is a deterrent for them also.

Uh but with the issues that we've had come, we really started looking at doing this uh to do something collectively rather than uh normally we would do it through like the association of Idaho Cities or the Association of Counties uh and and that type of thing.

But so we're doing it in a little different way than we've done in the past, and that's why this is the very first one of these that we've had.

Thank you, sir.

Yeah, and then when you're talking about our points, you know, the three things that was public safety infrastructure and tax policy is what we're focusing on right now as a collective group to try to get some changes there for the collective good of everybody.

And maybe to explain one thing as a general thing, yeah, educationalized items what's called the Dillon's rule state.

Cities can only do whatever the state legislature authorizes us to do.

So that's why when we're here talking about the legislature, is because we don't have the ability to make the changes without them giving us the authority to do that.

And so they they often go in and make those changes that we then have to live with no matter what they are.

And so since I've been attending the Treasury Valley Partnership, this is 90% of what we talk about are the challenges we face from changes to the legislature or changes from the legislature that we would like to see.

It's been different in the past where it was more about clean air uh issues and you know the emissions testing or uh drive-by shootings, and how do we get those off our streets and so they don't go into other communities?

But this has been the biggest issue, and especially for the last four years, where maybe the things were how do we change doing business or what are the impacts, but the financial constraints are starting to really touch base uh dramatically, and the legislature is the only way to solve that issue.

They do give us tools, and I can speak for myself.

You know, we ran a public safety levy this last year in Meridian.

Um so there are things you can do, but that's not what we should have to do.

That's not the way we should have to fund our essential services, is to ask our residents that to go and increase their taxes on themselves.

That nobody wants to do that.

So thank you.

I've been listening to all of you guys uh talking about the things the uh administration and things like that.

I may be in the wrong place, but um I came here on behalf of my daughter, and uh she's she's very proactive on trying to get things done.

Um we've been trying to get somebody to build some kind of shopping center or something that's closer to where we live.

Now, I know there's a lot of shopping areas around this uh state, but we live over on Monarch.

I don't know if you know where that is, Monarch and Eustach.

It's a ways from places.

We have to walk when we go into to Walmart because my daughter has anxiety.

She can get in the car.

It took me five years to get her to get in the car, and it took me another three years to be able to work out our little path to get to where we want to go.

What happens is I have to drive to the back of our community, and then she walks across the park into uh the next community, and then I drive around through through uh Cherry and come back through that community and pick her up, and we go through that community, and then we cross Cherry real quick and go in to the apartments, and then we go and we park at the end of that shopping center, and then we walk wherever we're going.

Whether we're going to the public library in Nampa, whether we're coming over to here to see somebody, whatever we have to do, we have to walk to do that.

And then we're doing it this way because when my wife was alive, we tried to get those places.

She had MS, diabetes, an aneurysm in her brain, no hearing in the left ear, and very little in the right.

And we had to walk up Eust to get to the to Walmart if we were gonna go.

And what that meant was my wife had to write her power chair on Eust.

And there was nothing there.

There was no sidewalks, nowhere for her to go without falling over or having a problem.

We went to these meetings to say, well, here's what we'll do, what we can do, what we can't do, and so on and so forth.

And we've always been getting these things.

Well, we can't do that.

That's not our fault.

That's not our not where we're supposed to go.

It's not our responsibility.

Okay.

Well, we were talking to these people that were building the road, uh, trying to extend you stick.

And I said, Will you put a sidewalk over the bridge?

Will you put a sidewalk along you stick?

That's not our responsibility.

I said, what is it gonna take?

Somebody getting killed for you to act and do something.

Well, you know what?

It was only two weeks later, somebody did get killed in a wheelchair on you stick.

And I went back to them and I said, now will you put on the sidewalk?

And they put on a sidewalk over the bridge, and we've got sidewalk all the way down to uh Cole Boulevard now.

But on the other side, there's still no side box over there.

And they say, well, that's not our responsibility.

I said, well, you're you're widening the road, right?

Can't you put a sidewalk on that a couple of feet extra on the site?

I said, no, that's the responsibility of the commercial properties putting their things on.

It's uh it's a development problem.

And I said, isn't putting in a writing on the roadway a project?

Isn't that part of what you're supposed to be doing?

You know, we came here from Washington.

We'd been in California, Nevada, and all these other places, and we watched on TV and Idaho said, come to Idaho.

We're accessible.

We're accessible, we have access accessibility here.

Is this accessibility?

What about our kids that have to walk alongside these highways and places?

What about them?

You're talking about the kids in the school?

Yeah.

They're having to walk on those highways.

Okay, that's that's only one of the things that I was gonna talk to you about.

You're also talking about expansion, houses being built, more and more people coming into the area.

They're having manufacturing building.

And industries, these big industry things.

But you're building the houses and these big tracks of houses.

And in those houses and in those places, there are people that are my age.

I'm 81.

And there's people like my wife, who is disabled.

She she died uh in 2001.

And my my daughter who can't get in a car to go anywhere, she has to walk.

Okay.

This close enough.

So we we bring this to you guys their attention, and what do they say?

It's not our responsibility.

It's not something that we can do anything about, sir.

Um I wanted to respond to something important that you said earlier.

Um I know this might be a very particular issue on how we zone our respective cities.

I know I think all the mayors and and our respective planning departments try to be very intentional about the mix of residential and commercial, but you bring up an important point about curb gutter sidewalk requirements, and the cities can impose different standards on that.

But one of the things that the legislature actually recently did was cut off funds to um or restricted the funds to primarily um motorized vehicles.

Um that would require a more technical response, but um it affects it it does affect to some degree the funding of when you're trying to add pedestrian to an already existing uh roadway, uh the funding on that right-of-way acquisition.

If that wasn't required at the initial upfront decision as as a condition.

Maybe it should be.

Yes, uh, you bring up a very good point.

So I just want to say I take to heart the uh the story that you shared, and I think we all cared.

So I just want to say I take to heart the uh the story that you shared, and I think we all cared, I I hope we care deeply about accessibility and how that we require that should require that when we make when we make that original decision.

Sometimes cities can issue deferrals or variances, and sometimes that comes back to bite you because you realize as development continues along a corridor, yeah, you didn't require it of some, and then it's very difficult to go back and try to have that continuity to have a continuous uh mobility network, and and those are very important things.

But I just that's why I said what I did when I came up here, and maybe I'm in the wrong place.

I don't know.

But I'm just trying to get the word out there.

I've talked to the people that are doing the things, but I'm not getting anywhere.

And they're saying, well, it's more advantageous to build houses to house people and bring people into the area than it is to put shopping centers where they can access what they they came here for.

And I'm saying, wait a minute.

What uh what jurisdiction are you in?

Is it going to be in Coldville?

Coldwell?

Yeah.

I I think my suggestion would be get a hold of the Coldwell City Planning and Zoning Department and see what those plans for your area look like.

And I have, and they say that was what they told me.

It's my second week on the job, so some of those conversations were before my time, but I love to sit down with you and talk about it.

Mobility is very important to me.

I think it is to all of us.

We are improving in COBOL.

We're getting closer and closer, but it does take money, which is why this conversation is important.

But um I'd love to talk to you offline about some of your issues in that particular area, which we'd have to then look at zoning, what are we allowed to use in that area or bring in?

And uh yeah, so let's talk offline about that.

Can you um can you get his contact and give it to Mr.

Earr?

Okay, well, thank you.

All right.

Thank you for listening to me.

Thank you.

This will be our last question if we're saying it's kind of manner.

Go ahead and see right here in Office.

And then we'll wrap it up for our first time.

Okay.

Hello, Nancy Boise, Idaho.

You have outlined the factors that go into our challenge of financially supporting growth.

And our commissioner has relayed the obstacles to limiting development.

My question is, what is currently the active conversation among our legislators about limiting development and what is the role of legislation in limiting development?

That's my question.

You're looking at me.

I don't I don't know what exactly the conversations are.

I know that uh we have a legislature that is very pro-property rights.

So this is this is kind of a fine dance uh between between being just it's your property, you can do whatever you want with it kind of thing.

Uh and then the opposite end of that is allowing some government body to tell people exactly what you can and can't do with it.

Um that's kind of what planning and zoning laws are, right?

Um it just it sounds like you're saying that ultimately it's legislation that could overcome the obstacles to development, but our legislators are the current conversation we may not be sure of, but it sounds like they may not be there on limiting development.

Well, predominantly, I mean that's that's kind of how the system is set up, right?

We we play by the rules that the Idaho legislature creates.

I mean, good to know.

Um the land use planning act is our driving factor when it comes to land use decisions, right?

And they establish the rules uh into that act.

And then we all have to follow them.

So that's our obstacle right there.

Okay.

Well, if I could take it one step further.

And this is just the beginning conversation.

I'm not gonna say it's where it's gonna be.

The legislature is gonna have a conversation about actually making it so that as a property owner, you could tear down your house and put up two, three, four homes on your own property and make that the right of every citizen.

So in some regards, if everyone in this room did that, or every resident, you would quadruple the amount of people living in any community.

So it's it's gonna be a very interesting conversation if those proposals actually come forward where you know you can say, well, we we want to see moratoriums in the city, but if every individual resident in every subdivision has ability to turn their single family home into two or four, then that's that's beyond any of our control.

And what they're talking about doing that is basically saying cities have no say in that topic whatsoever.

That's what you might be seeing come out of the conversation in the legislature here in the next month.

And um I'm I'm personally not excited for that because the the cut we we're talking about infrastructure, we're talking about public safety.

All all those the more people you put into an area, the more you have you know, needs for calls for service, the more our roads get impacted.

Uh I I've asked the question.

I said if we do the if you if you do this, who's gonna pay for the sewer infrastructure upgrades that are gonna be required?

Because those are those are the types of things where we we talk about property rights, but what we're really trying to do is manage service manage cities and deliver services.

Yeah, and when the legislature starts making talking about doing things that basically say well everyone can do what they want on their property in this way, and we get stuck with the saying now go deal with the consequences of that.

And by the way, we're gonna not worry about giving you the funding to do that, but that's that's the conversation.

I don't think they're gonna change the land use planning time soon, but they may give more rights to individual property owners to do what they want to do.

That's really helpful and enlightening, and it sounds like real change needs to come at the level of legislature and our legislators and who we elect.

Thank you so much for this town hall.

It's been really informative.

Thank you.

I just want to real quick, I want to just say we do have a bill that's coming out on 389 to help address some of these challenges.

Sebastian back there holding his baby and his cowboy hat.

Help put that together with Mayor, I think Hogan will help provide some input on that.

When this call to action comes out, please sign up on that so we can get your information and have you help us try to get something changed on that because it's important to all of us, right?

To make sure that the critical infrastructure is there.

I just want to applaud you all for coming out here.

This is awesome.

I mean, this is we really didn't quite know what to expect.

Some of us thought nobody's gonna show up.

What's that?

Neither did you.

So if you don't, we're all very passionate about our communities and our valley and stuff like that out here.

Um we're not always gonna agree on everything 100%, and that should never happen.

Even if I don't agree with it.

No, I'm good.

But civil conversation and civil discourse is the way that we handle things, not the ignorance that we have seen happen in our society.

So please engage positively to make change with all of us that are out here.

Okay, because that's important for everybody.

I don't care what side of the aisle you're on, it doesn't matter, right?

What matters is that we create a nice cohesive community that's gonna be here for a long time that's gonna be successful economically, family-wise, you know, we all love God and all that kind of stuff, right?

And that only happens if we stay civil with each other.

I was gonna ask how is this advertised because I just don't know about it at five parties from some land of perfect.

Yeah, so we'll we're all public cities page now, the whole website and we'll put it up.

But they're just too proactive on looking for that media like Leslie to advertise it when the next things are happening.

So if you want to wrap up, so I I applaud you for getting here at 23 miles an hour from 530.

There you go.

Luckily out of 20 miles away.

Well done.

Normally that'll take you two hours.

I've been lucky contemporary jobs in uh voice beyond it.

I spend three hours a day.

Yep.

Yep.

And I have the animals and comments are not happy.

So Isabel, anything else we got?

No, this is a good one.

All right, thank you so much, everybody appreciate it.

Thank you all.

We do have a Facebook, so make sure you follow that for those that are here and spread the word.

Oh man.

What are we doing?