Your water bill goes up $2.71, the smoke advisory is gone, and Nana's Green Tea gets the Spotlight

Go outside and take a breath. The DEQ lifted the air quality advisory at 11:30 yesterday morning, and after three straight weeks of us writing some version of "the smoke advisory expires at 1 p.m.," there isn't one to write about. Today's high drops to 86, the sky goes mostly cloudy, and there is a real chance of rain tonight for the first time in a month.

In today's issue: the city wants another $2.71 a month out of you for water and sewer, and there's a September hearing where you can say something about it. Meridian Police explain the roundabout rule everybody's arguing about. Another 127 houses are coming to Lake Hazel. Seven things to do — none of which have run here before, though I'll be honest with you about the calendar. And it's Thursday, which means the Spotlight, and this week it's the matcha place at Eagle and Ustick. Let's get into it.

🧠 Trivia: Meridian has the lowest average monthly water-and-sewer bill in the Treasure Valley. What is it? (Answer at the bottom.)

Straight with you: the next seven days are picked clean. Every Meridian event happening between now and Aug 20 has already run in this newsletter — the car show, the market, the fun run, the line dancing, the Monday market, all of it, some of them twice. So this list starts Aug 26 and runs to Oct 3. All seven are new here, and all seven are physically in Meridian.

Wednesday, Aug 26

Friday, Aug 28

Monday, Sept 7 (Labor Day)

Thursday, Sept 10

Saturday, Sept 19

Saturday, Sept 26

Saturday, Oct 3

Know something happening in Meridian that isn't on any calendar? That's exactly the gap this list keeps falling into. Hit reply.

⛅ Today: mostly cloudy, high near 86, low around 58. That's six degrees off yesterday and about ten off last week. CBS2's Wednesday outlook and the live Boise strip both land on 86 for today, so this is one of the rare days where the Meridian point forecast and the Boise number agree instead of arguing.

😮‍💨 The air quality advisory is gone. DEQ lifted it at 11:30 a.m. Wednesday for Ada, Adams, Canyon, Gem, Owyhee, Payette and Washington counties, saying air quality is forecast to improve and is currently acceptable. That advisory, in one form or another, had been running over this valley for three weeks. It is not a guarantee — DEQ notes there's still some risk for people who are sensitive to smoke — but you can send the kids outside today without doing math first.

🌩️ What replaces it is a Fire Weather Watch. The National Weather Service in Boise has one in effect from this afternoon through late tonight for lightning, covering Treasure Valley BLM among a long list of zones. Scattered storms with abundant lightning, gusty erratic outflow winds up to 40 mph, and dry enough surface air that the rain may not reach the ground before the lightning does. NWS is blunt about it: any fire that starts will catch and spread quickly, and outdoor burning is not recommended.

🌧️ Rain odds: 30% after midnight tonight per the NWS point forecast, and CBS2 puts it as high as 40 to 50 percent across parts of southwest Idaho today and tomorrow. Friday is 87 with a 30% chance before noon, and by Friday the rain is expected to be the heavier, wetter kind — which is its own problem near steep terrain and fresh burn scars.

📅 The week out: Fri 87, Sat 88, Sun 90. So the break is real but it's short. Enjoy the eighties.

Fine print: the NWS data feed still hasn't refreshed since Monday of last week, so today's numbers were checked against CBS2's Wednesday forecast, the live Boise strip and the current NWS product text before they went in. All three agree.

City staff are proposing a combined 4.2% increase in Meridian's water and sewer rates. Public Works Director Laurelei Bakken told the City Council at a Tuesday workshop that it works out to about $2.71 more per bill for the average household. Underneath that single number are four separate moves: a 9% bump to the water base rate and 5% to water use, plus 4% to the sewer base rate and 3% to sewer use.

Here's the context the city is leaning on, and it's real. Meridian's average monthly water-and-sewer bill is $65.24. The Treasure Valley average is $101.12. We pay the least in the region, and second-least among Idaho's ten biggest cities — only Twin Falls is cheaper. Bakken's argument is that even taking 4% a year for the next decade would leave the average bill around $100, which is still under what the rest of the valley pays today. The reason to do it is solvency: the Enterprise Fund that runs water and sewer is funded by user fees, and future state and federal treatment standards are going to cost money the city would rather save up for than borrow.

Council President John Overton called it "a balancing act between wanting to remain one of the lowest prices in the valley and also staying solvent." Which is a fair description of the whole thing.

The part to actually write down: notice goes out in your August and September bills and in the newspaper later this month, there's a public hearing Sept 8 at 6 p.m., and if the council approves it the new rates start Oct 1. If you're on a tight budget, the city already runs an assistance program through El-Ada Community Action Partnership — about 100 Meridian households use it, and it's once a year for water, sewer or trash.

BoiseDev (Erin Banks Rusby), published Aug 12 at 2:30 p.m. MDT

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Enough Meridian drivers wrote in about roundabouts that Idaho News 6's neighborhood reporter took it to the police department. The rule, from Meridian Traffic Corporal Chris Jacob, is one sentence: anyone already inside the roundabout has the right of way, and anyone entering has to yield to them. That's it. That's the whole thing.

Corporal Jacob knows it isn't landing, because it didn't land on him either — he was off duty about three weeks ago, in his own truck, inside a roundabout, when somebody failed to yield and hit him.

The specific one people keep complaining about is Eagle and Amity. A shift lead at the Jersey Mike's on that corner said she's watched at least three crashes get cleaned up from her counter, and that the roundabout "always feels a little dicey." The number behind that feeling: ITD counted 40 crashes there in 2025 alone. ACHD has since modified it, making the outside lanes right-turn only — which is aimed squarely at the other failure mode she described, drivers realizing too late they're in a turn-only lane and cutting across to get out of it.

Police say call them if you're in a crash or you see someone driving recklessly.

Idaho News 6 / KIVI (Kalkidan Meyer), published Aug 10 at 6:15 p.m. MDT

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Permits filed with the city show plans for 127 single-family homes on just over 19 acres on Lake Hazel Rd. near Locust Grove. It's called Ravenna Subdivision, and the application describes it as a "compact" and "well-connected" infill project — two-story houses with front-facing garages, in three-, four- and five-bedroom layouts.

It'd be built in two phases: 84 homes and a common area on the north end first, then 43 more on the south end with pathways along the Rawson Canal. Amenities are a playground, picnic space and a 250-meter fitness path.

The interesting wrinkle is the canal. The Rawson cuts right through the middle of the property, and rather than pipe it, the developers want to leave it open — their filing says piping it isn't feasible — with homes on both sides, walking paths alongside it and a road bridging over. That needs special permission from the city.

If Lake Hazel between Eagle and Meridian Road feels like it's been under construction for years, it has: Ravenna sits next door to Brighton's Pinnacle, which brought the library branch and the Costco, and joins the Keep, Keep West and Lavender Heights in the same few square miles.

BoiseDev (Sydney Kidd), published Aug 10 at 3:45 p.m. MDT

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This one's at the far north end of Highway 16, up by Star, but it's the same corridor a lot of Meridian uses to get anywhere. ITD shifts traffic around the SH-16 / SH-44 intersection starting tonight, Thursday Aug 13, then does the same at SH-44 and Moyle Ave. on Aug 20. Work runs 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. with flaggers directing and a reduced speed limit.

Once the shift is done, northbound and southbound SH-16 traffic runs on the new on- and off-ramps, and the SH-44 intersection moves east to line up with them. It's the northern bookend of the same project that's been closing I-84 ramps down here all summer.

The point of all of it: when SH-16 is finished next year, it becomes a limited-access freeway between I-84 and SH-44, with interchanges at I-84, Franklin Road, Ustick Road, US-20/26 and SH-44. Two of those five are ours. No more lights on 16.

CBS2/KBOI, published Aug 10 at 10:02 a.m. MDT

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Featured tea house: nana's green tea

Overview. If you've driven past the corner of Eagle and Ustick in the last two weeks and wondered what the line was for, this is it. nana's green tea started in Tokyo in 2001, grew to a hundred locations across Japan, and picked Meridian for its first café in Idaho — ahead of Boise, ahead of anywhere else in the state. It opened Aug 1, and it is a genuinely unusual thing to have twelve minutes from your house.

Highlights

Ambiance & Experience. It's a small, bright, calm room — about 1,364 square feet, blonde wood, a counter to order from, a tea bar, and one long table with twelve seats that's clearly meant for strangers to share. There is also, per CBS2's walkthrough, a Japanese-style smart toilet, which is either a detail you needed or a detail you'll now go check.

Location & Contact

Operating Hours. Sunday–Thursday 11 a.m.–9 p.m., Friday–Saturday 11 a.m.–10 p.m. They're two weeks old, so hours may still be settling — check before you make a special trip.

Final steep: a Tokyo tea house looked at the whole state of Idaho and picked the corner of Eagle and Ustick. Go be worth it. Visit nana's green tea →

This is a free editorial feature — nobody paid for it and we didn't contact the business. If you'd like your Meridian business considered, or want to sponsor the slot, hit reply.

Brought to you by Meridian Local Scoop. What's faster than word of mouth? The Meridian Local Business Spotlight! Keeps you up to speed on what's happening around town — and connects local businesses to our community.

$65.24 a month.

That's Meridian's average combined water and sewer bill — the lowest of any city in the Treasure Valley, and about $36 a month less than the valley average of $101.12. Statewide it's second-cheapest among Idaho's ten largest cities; only Twin Falls beats us.

Which is the whole argument in the rate story above, running in both directions at once. It's why the increase looks small when you see it as $2.71. It's also why some people hear "we're the cheapest in the valley" and reasonably ask why that's a problem worth fixing. The city's answer is that the Enterprise Fund pays for water and sewer entirely out of what you're billed — no property tax, no debt on the current projects — and the treatment standards coming down from the state and the feds are going to cost real money. Small annual increases now, or a large one later.

The hearing is Sept 8 at 6 p.m. Being the cheapest in the valley is a decision, not a fact of nature, and that's the night it gets made again.