Treasure Valley Partnership
Meeting Minutes
July 25, 2007

Garret Nancolas opened the meeting by welcoming everyone to the City of Caldwell. He indicated that they are proud of the renovation activity in downtown Caldwell. In the past, the City of Caldwell was extremely vibrant, however, the downtown core of Caldwell lost a good deal of its retail presence at the time of the development of the Karcher Mall. In addition, the city decided to cover up Indian Creek that runs through the downtown core.

Recently a group of downtown Caldwell business folks and a host of community and state leaders joined to reinvent the downtown. They got a grant from the DEA for a study that showed that revitalization would be possible. Garret indicated that they have learned there are a multitude of regulations once you start dealing with water issues such as the renovation they have undertaken on Indian Creek. They have worked with the Army Corps. Of Engineers and have gotten approved, the first urban stream restoration project in the history of the Army Corps.

Garret introduced Jennifer Heidt with the Idaho Lieutenant Governor’s Office who was at the meeting to speak about server training. She mentioned that Idaho is the only state in the area without some form of responsible alcohol server training. Responsible alcohol server training helps servers identify factors associated with when customers have had too much to drink or are going to be disruptive.

In her study she found that distributors, restaurants and bars are surprisingly passionate about the need for server training. From a business standpoint server training helps with some of the liability costs associated with serving alcohol.

Through the use of a small grant, they were able to gain cooperation and institute server training in downtown Boise establishments. The results showed that the incidents of minors in establishments, fights and the presence of disruptive behaviors went down dramatically after instituting server training.

Jennifer mentioned that Mayor Bieter asked her to present this information to the Partnership. It has been found in the surrounding states that when there is regional consistency and participation in the development of this training, server training works well. There is a movement to address alcohol server training in the State. But Jennifer did not know how far along they are in the process.

She felt that the best way to develop support for server training is at the community level. Local alcohol serving establishments know best how server training will impact their businesses. In other states, alcohol server training implementation has been a top down approach. Jennifer indicated that we have the opportunity to include businesses in this process. With this approach, ordinances that make sense for businesses and that are effective will be supported in the ordinance development process.

There are problems associated with server training that needs to be addressed. One is the transient nature of the workforce. Most establishments are not willing to reimburse employees for the cost of getting the training. However this problem can be solved with internal business policies. As an example, some businesses have policies that reimburse employees for the training costs based on their employment tenure. Other problems associated with server training are; phase in time for instituting the requirement for training, requirements for servers to have this training prior to hire and a tracking mechanism for identifying those that have had the training.

Jennifer introduced a draft alcohol server-training ordinance that has been developed by the City of Boise. She indicated that this was just a draft and that if the Partnership decided to take this project on, it would serve as a good base for developing the region-wide ordinance.

Jennifer explained that there are a couple different of alcohol server training programs that are available. She introduced Susan Sterts whom is an alcohol server trainer in the treasure valley and uses a program called TIPS. She described the TIPS training program and indicated that they have trained up to 800 people in the State with the TIPS program in recent years. Susie started providing TIPS training as a result of a lawsuit that happened in her business several years ago. She talked about nuances associated with the training and the resulting costs of liability that may or may not result.

Margie asked if the infrastructure is available to institute an ordinance. Jennifer Heidt indicated that there are a lot of trainers in the valley and there are several server-training programs. Jennifer also indicated that there is a national organization where trainers can get their certifications.

Tom Dale moved and Margie Watson seconded to pursue having the Partnership work together to institute a common alcohol server-training ordinance. Motion carried.

Tammy de Weerd suggested that each of the Partnership members identify two or three individuals in the server industry in our communities to assist with championing this topic when we go to public comment on any proposed ordinance.

Susie Sterts indicated she would get a list of names to the Partnership members of local alcohol establishments that could serve as champions. She stated she would get the list to Bill who would distribute them to the members.

Bill presented information on the Covered Load issue to the Partnership members as a result of a request at a previous meeting. After much discussion it was decided to table this issue at this point in time.

Frank McKeever moved to approve the minutes and budget report. Tammy de Weerd seconded. Motion carried.

Meeting Adjourned.