Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAbout10-29-2012 Work Session Minutes Meeting of: COLUMBIA HEIGHTS CITY COUNCIL Date of Meeting: OCTOBER 29, 2012 Time of Meeting: 7:00 P.M. Location of Meeting: CONFERENCE ROOM 1 Purpose of Meeting: WORK SESSION Present: Mayor Peterson, Councilmember Nawrocki, Councilmember Diehm, and Councilmember Schmitt. Absent: Councilmember Williams Public Works Hansen went over the Enterprise Activities and General Activities for the Public Works Department budget. Hansen explained that Public Works consist of 13 departments and is funded through general fund and enterprise fund. Averaged about a 1.3% increase over last year. Wage increases of 2.4% over same period. There are rising costs in the construction industry, which is causing a rising trend in costs, materials, and contracted services. Not proposing any personnel increase in any department only step increases. The fixed costs such as insurance, contract costs and fuel costs are going up. Engineering budget up 1.3%, The department is replacing a couple of chairs and software specific to engineering functions. In 2013/2014 the city is taking two years off with the street program. 2013 looking at concrete streets in town and in 2014 will be looking at our alleys. There are a lot of alleys that are in tough shape and need to be addressed. Nawrocki stated there was not any increase in personnel, but yet one position was authorized but not filled. Hanson stated this was correct. Streets had a person transfer in at the top pay rate. PW allocates out for labor and when we are not doing streets we have to count that back in. Alleys have had thin overlays for ones that are salvageable, buying some time. No more alleys will benefit from this application. Shifting some time with problems in other areas, road settlement, do to joints in the pipe and storm sewer washing material out. This will have to be addressed. This also happened in Silver Lake Beach in landscaping at Stinson at the boat landing. Access was a huge difficulty. A lot of hand digging done. Did some spot lining and raise some manholes out there. Nawrocki indicated that a resident stated at the boat landing that some of the concrete was washing away? Hansen stated, not so much washing away, but silt building up on landing. The boat landing itself is in need of repair. Nawrocki asked if the level of the lake was down. Hansen indicated it was approximately down 1.2 feet. The cost of treated salt has gone up over the recent years. We will be using less this year, which is accomplished between training and reduced by over 1/3. Street lighting, no change except for Excel Energy’s increase. There will be lower cost with replacements with new efficient lighting or cost backs with excel. Traffic signs and signals, two year reprieve,. Federal mandate – city wide sign maintenance plan. Schmitt asked if this mandate means the city has to start creating a plan. Hanson stated we have to lay out a plan that has to be brought to council to be approved. Nawrocki asked what has to be changed. Hansen stated you have to bring up to a certain level and then maintained at a certain level all city signs. Nawrocki asked if Main street sign will remain the same? What about stop signs. Hansen stated that weather and UV rays effects it. It makes it harder to see at night and this plan makes sure that we maintain that signs are able to be seen at night, Schmitt stated this is federally mandated and we do not have much choice. Hansen indicated that there is no retrofitting, they have to be replaced. Fehst stated that thestate could mandate the size of the signs. This was dropped from the original mandate. Diehm asked about the signs that light up when you approach them, are they mandated? Hansen stated he was not sure. All of the traffic signals we pay the energy costs of the lights. We have always paid the energy consumption for the lights, but now we pay for the lights above. MNDOT is replacing two signals, do we want to repaint the other ones. We may be interested in 2013/2014. Parks – 1% decrease. Personnel coming in at entry level. Added more area for maintenance. Biggest challenge is park redevelopment have been very successful and good response back from ones that we have done. Waiting pools by federal mandate have changes that have to be made. Nawrocki indicated that the deepest they can be is 1 foot deep. Seems like a lot for each pool. Hansen stated they have pushed back the compliance dates by the amount of complaints that they received. All work done up and down central was to be compliant with ADA for ped ramps. Fehst stated we looked at different options to come in compliance with ADA rules. Schmitt stated some of the public right of ways are not compliant. Hansen stated this changed in 2010. The ADA rules have changed twice. Peterson stated we are going to have to look at either closing the pools. Schmitt if we do the ramp does it eliminate the rest. The last department is Forestry. We are flat in this department but would like to look at treating our trees to start chemically treating the trees at least every two years. Fehst asked would we hire out to do this or do it ourselves. Hanson said we would hire it out first and then look at doing it ourselves. We would like to treat it first as opposed to removing them. Ash trees were thought to have a nice canopy and good Blvd. trees. Enterprise Funds – Hansen went over the operating budgets for Public works, consists of 7 departments which are rate controlled departments. Both sewer and refuse are drawing down on fund balance and will break even in 2014. We have 3 departments that costs are out of control. Our water increased 4%. Our operational costs we are proposing a .9%. Our computer system needs replacements and that will be divided by 3 departments. The contract for cost of service may have an effect on the cost of water from Minneapolis. Good results and timing on lining cleaning and we are proposing on continuing this process. 4% increase of 1.4 million, Sewer overall 1.5% increase. Disposal is going to increase over the next couple of years. Starting to see the signs of an old system. We go in and clean and televise and see more pipe problems. On Arthur and 44th and 45th they will be digging in that area as they lost the camera in the piping system. I and I program is something that starts up again in 2013. Smoke testing completed with approximately 220 homes tested and less than 20% needs repairs, City Hall being one of them. Foundation drains are the main cause. Will come back to council with plan. Argon lift station is almost done and Chattham lift station will be done in 2013. Done a lot of native plantings in certain ponds and those have to be maintained. John Boat for $1000 our current boat leaks. Pond abrader’s. We need one. It will take some time to bring our storm water plans to date. Refuse – 6.7% increase which is out of our control. Where we bring our refuse to they are increasing our cost by 7.5%. We also have a contractual increase with Violia. Central garage is low. Captial Funds are split between equipment and improvement. Proposing 3 pieces of equipment. Replacement of our floor scrubber which is 15 years old. Replace the foreman utility truck. New Vactor. Used in 3 departments and is used year round. Use it during watermain breaks, excavation cleaning out, and new ones can excavate out soil. This will save money with gopher one calls and costs. A new one can also be used for bypass pumping. Motor was replaced about 2 years ago. Nawrocki asked how much to replace the tank. Hansen we are getting beyond repair on most of these items. This is one that would be brought back to council. Nawrocki would like to look at equipment to evaluate it. Capital Improvements 6 fund areas – State aid construction – replacing signals along University and Central Ave. Capital improvement gen government buildings. – proposing to build a lighted canopy over the fueling station used by all city departments, both for lighting and protection from elements. Capital improvements parks – pool improvements, Labell park reconstruction and improvements. McKenna park master plan and study – maybe delay this a year. Ramsdell park lighting improvements. We may have to stager this. Water construction fund - Pump station #3 improvements. Having some valves done that need to be replaced. Water main cleaning and lining and replace commercial water meters and MXU’s. This number could very a little bit. Sewer Construction Fund – sewer main lining program, this is a needed program and want to continue. MCES required I/I reduction improvement program. Sewer line smoke tests in District 2 and reconstruct Chatham lift station. That would complete all the needed work on our lift stations for the next 10 years. Storm sewer construction – reconstruction of Jackson Pond – this may come down with grant monies available. We want to convert this to a dry pond from a wet pond. Silver Lake storm water pond reconstruction for boat landing and Update WRMP. (Water resource management plan) We would redo the wet pond and do infiltration. Captial Improvement parks – pool improvements to meet ADA requirements for three wading pools, Peterson do we have money for the roundabout repair. Hansen stated yes we do and we are in the process of making the repairs. Estimated between 8-12k Nawrocki wanted to go over the budget book and on page 1 asked if this is property taxes. On the revenue side we go back 3 or 4 years. Would like the past 3 years to compare with. Would like to see comparision of other revenue sorces also for past 3 years. Pg 12 Bond proceeds - $500,000 bond. Kloiber indicated we are not looking at issuing new utility bonds. Nawrocki asked what the difference between fund 652 and fund 653 was. Hanson – storm sewer and sanitary sewer funds. Nawrocki asked state aid funds were used and thought we had grants to cover the cost of the bridge. Federal grant, federal money and grant for construction and engineering and all land requisition was paid for by the city. Finance Budget – Kloiber went over the finance budget breakdown. This comprises 4 of the books, Finance, general government, administration and Liquor. This first page covers operating costs. Finance department looks like an increase but this is just a method change as the budget is not actually increasing. We are not directly charging the liquor account and in 2013 we are not doing that. This is an administrative labor transfer. There is no net increase for the finance department which is the second year in a row. Nawrocki asked about the 382,000 in property taxes and would like the 3 years previous. Nawrocki asked why education was up $1000, maybe we need to look at certain limitations and if they want to go beyond that. Magee stated our educational is 100% for course tuition or 50% for promotional opportunity, There is a reimbursement clause in the policy. We have had good experiences for the most part and people have stayed with the city. Nawrocki asked what the Capital equipment fund consist of. Kloiber stated part of a utility bill sorter/stuffer that was initially budgeted for in 2012 and was reallocated to PC’s that were needed. Nawrocki asked what the credit card charges all consist of. Kloiber stated most of this is Wells Fargo and their fees are high. We do most of our banking with Northeast. Nawrocki support the library staff patrons – what do we do. IS department spends a lot of time on their equipment and support system. Schmitt asked if we are keeping track of who is accessing city website or number of users? Do we know who is actually watching the live feed or how many people watch it. Kloiber thinks there may be some ability to do that. Do you want the total hit count on the website or number of people looking at demand? Administration overall is comprised of city manager/ Magee stated the city manager budget decreased by and there were not any significant changes. The assessing budget increased 1926.00 and the major expenditure is to Anoka County. The current agreement expires on Jan 15 of 2013. We did receive a proposed budget and as per posed there would be no increase in per parcel in the first year. We really have not had a change in per parcel in several years and language has been in contract since 1989. Legal services budget remains flat. 59 decrease. We have done different surveys of legal fees and the last one was done in 2011 and they are comparable to other cities. Fehst stated if you are happy with the services why would you go out to bid. Nawrocki want property tax amounts for 3 previous years. Schmitt stated there is potential for two new council members and a new mayor, The league puts on a great course. Even if not new, you need to keep up to date on things. When National groups meet here it is nice to be able to attend. Fehst stated that networking you get is very important. When we looked at cutting back and the Metro Council could be one that we let go, but the League we cannot because of the legal benefit. Nawrocki asked what increases in manager’s budget were. Magee indicated part of this fund is pre-employment drug screenings. Nawrocki asked why employee recognition has gone up. Magee stated this varies because we plan on having the current employees when we develop the budget. Nawrocki what did we add under misc in Legal. General Government – Kloiber stated there is a zero percent change in city hall, and zero percent change in capital transfers, which have not increased since he has been here. Have not been keeping pace with anticipated increases in the future. Nawrocki asked in the Capital Outlay what are we proposing to buy for $1200. Kloiber stated it is for two small HVAC units for city hall which serves ease side of building above community development and finance on the first floor. The units are rusting through. Nawrocki asked what is under employee recognition. Kloiber stated part of this is for fireworks. Schmitt asked when the rental space in Murzyn Hall was last modernized. We should be planning in the future to update the decor. It is really bad lighting for the stage and it is really dark in there. Peterson stated 1984 or 1985. The blinds need to be replaced and the hall needs some minor updates. This comes out of the park board funds. Currently we do not have trouble renting the facility. Diehm is there a capital improvement plan? We want to make sure it is marketable in the upcoming years. Kloiber stated there are funds in the operating budget that use is alternated throughout the years. Carpet and resplashing of stucco for the library. Kloiber wanted to explain a couple of items under the capital improvement budgets. One being the $30,000 contingency in there that would come out of fund balance. Liquor includes all non-operating funds. We did some improvements on the store on 50th Avenue to the lighting. Bonds and debt service – They overall are declining and the 2006 bonds will probably be refinanced next year. Current rate is a lot lower than it was in 2006. We do not anticipate issuing new bonds in 2013, and that is a change in strategy, as we have been in a three year cycle and would like to finance internally. Nawrocki what is the estimated revenue on the liquor store this year? Would like the sales figures for the last 3 years. Police - Budget is almost unchanging. Personnel services is less than 1% change which reflects step increases. Supplies and services went up 2%. They are struggling with building expenses. We have been able to get high quality training and have saved over $4000 from last year. A couple of changes in personnel – hiring people with 4 year degree and encouraging management to have a 4 year degree. Looking at a few after school opportunities. Working with joint law enforcement council on a record management system, This will be coming out in 2-3 years. Currently a captain in Ramsey is doing system and he has expressed that they no longer want to do it. We would save money by having Nichols do this. In 2009 we received a grant that was used for over time and have approximately $5000 in account. Community Policing programs have been a success with neighborhood watch, DARE. The animal control budget – Camden pet indicated they will no longer be in business and we will have a three year contract with Brighton which is located in Fridley. We are technically under contract until the end of June, but did receive a letter that we can leave our contract January 1st if we find someone else. Capital equipment budget we brought two forfeited cars into fleet. We are only requesting 2 new vehicles an SUV and a sedan. They are called police interceptors Nawrocki wanted the property tax revenue for this department. If you had to reduce your budget by 2% - Not supplying services for the Jamboree. Adjourned at 10: 06 p.m. _____________________ Tori Leonhardt, City Clerk