What's on Tap

At ACHD's June 24th meeting, which is in the evening so actual people can come, we will be discussing and approving or disapproving two fairly important items.

One is the proposed State St parking/no parking issue behind the Capitol building. As you remember the parking was taken away during the construction/renovations and the State of Idaho wants to keep it that way. St Michael's and the City of Boise are against it - they want parking at least on the north side of the street at the corners. If you have an opinion and want your voice heard, come on down. The meeting starts at 6PM.

The other item is the approval of the 20 year Capital Improvements Plan. This has all the wish list projects that one could ever imagine at a complimentary imaginary cost of only $1.2 Billion. It assumes that around $25 million a year will come from impact fees. Of course, even in the best of times ACHD gets around $12 to $14 million from impact fees, in 2008 we'll be lucky to get $6 million in impact fees and the impact fee fund is currently minus $27 million.

Apparently, we have to put together this CIP because of State law, what I call a "rule" that must be followed regardless of whether it makes sense or not or where there is no real rationale other than "it's the rule". Seems like a huge waste of time and paper though, to put together a plan that really has no expectation of ever being implemented.

Maybe we should redirect some of the $62,000 per year we pay our "lobbyists" and have them actually get the law changed to make it work.

Anyway, that will be on the agenda June 24th as well and your comments are welcome, at least by me.

At a 4 PM Work Session, we'll be discussing the budget and what's been done so far in terms of personnel to cut costs. Should be interesting and I'll be reporting on that.