At a Friday workshop, the McCall City Council and staff reviewed a draft Local Option Tax (LOT) renewal aimed at funding streets- and transportation-related projects and gave staff direction to refine the ordinance and prepare public outreach and ballot materials.

The draft presented by city staff keeps a 10-year term and, as one staff member summarized, makes one substantive percentage change: "The one change ... is changing 3% to 4%," which reflects council direction from earlier discussions. The draft also ties LOT-eligible projects to the city's five-year capital improvement plan and to the city's approved plans while calling out compliance with ADA standards and protections for Payette Lake.

Council members and staff spent the bulk of the meeting debating the wording of the ordinance's purpose section. Staff said the language was designed to be "flexible, broad enough to account for things that are gonna come up over the course of 10 years while being specific enough so that you and the public can understand where the money is going," and emphasized that every individual project would still require council approval through the annual budget and CIP process.

Discussion focused on three linked issues: what to list explicitly in the ordinance (for voter clarity), how specific to be without hamstringing future councils, and whether the ordinance should explicitly reference uses tied to local housing needs. Council members pressed staff for wording that would show the LOT funds could support sidewalks, pathways, bike lanes, public parking, traffic control devices and other multimodal facilities while avoiding language that voters might interpret as funding private amenities.

After several iterations the council and staff agreed to remove a separate subsection that had duplicated items and to consolidate eligible uses into a single paragraph. The revised language discussed at the meeting combines streets, public parking, transit facilities, traffic control devices, sidewalks, pathways and bike lanes under a single heading and then references "related multimodal and streetscape facilities and improvements" in alignment with city plans, including a reference to ADA compliance. A staff member said the council "could put multimodal and public transit facilities" into the main list so voters see those uses up front.

Council members debated whether to enumerate examples such as lighting, landscaping or irrigation. Some members urged leaving those specifics out of the ordinance to avoid turning off voters; others preferred including examples or putting them in FAQs so less technical voters would know what "streetscape" or "multimodal" means. Staff recommended keeping the ordinance language relatively broad and using outreach materials and FAQs to give concrete examples to voters.

Members also discussed whether the LOT should be written to permit funding that helps offset development costs for local housing projects — for example, using LOT funds for required street, sidewalk or stormwater work tied to a housing development or a public–private partnership. Council and staff agreed on language tying any housing-related use to transportation/right-of-way projects and to the public‑project purposes spelled out in the ordinance so the funds would not be used for interior building costs or appliances.

Staff explained section 6 of the draft, which had been intended to show the city has "skin in the game" for repair and maintenance. City staff and the city attorney said McCall already maintains a streets department budget that covers patching, snow removal, striping and similar maintenance, and that the department budget meets the intent of the existing requirement. The city attorney recommended retaining the section in the ordinance to reassure concerned residents while relying operationally on the existing streets budget.

Council asked staff to produce a final draft ordinance and to prepare ballot language, an education and outreach plan, and FAQs that translate the ordinance into voter-facing examples. Staff said they would return the ordinance and the ballot package at the next regular meeting. No final vote on the LOT ordinance occurred at the workshop; the session ended with a procedural motion to adjourn that carried unanimously.

The discussion will inform the ballot measure language and the city's public outreach materials leading up to the election; staff noted the measure will require a supermajority for passage and that outreach should address the public's most common objections.