02-23-2009 Council Minutes (2) - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Search

CITY COUNCIL WORK SESSION February 23, 2009 APPROVED 1 CITY OF LINO LAKES 2 WORK SESSION MINUTES 3 4 DATE : February 23, 2009 5 TIME STARTED : 6:00 p.m. 6 TIME ENDED : 6:31 p.m. 7 MEMBERS PRESENT : Council Member Gallup, O'Donnell, 8 Stoltz and Mayor Bergeson 9 MEMBERS ABSENT : Council Member Reinert 10 11 12 Staff members present: City Administrator, Gordon Heitke; Director of Public Safety, 13 Dave Pecchia; Community Development Director, Mike Grochala; City Planner, Jeff 14 Smyser; Finance Director, Al Rolek; City Attorney, Joseph Langel; City Clerk, Julie 15 Bartell. 16 17 REVIEW REGULAR AGENDA ITEMS 18 19 There were no changes to the agenda. 20 21 STRATEGIC FINANCIAL PLANNING 22 23 Finance Director Rolek reported that the council has indicated that they would like 24 general information on the city's financial picture for 2009 and coming years. They plan 25 to hold strategic planning sessions with a facilitator soon. He envisions that the strategic 26 planning process will be most helpful in looking past 2009. He recommends that the 27 council look at information like the citizen survey and visioning plan and even the 28 comprehensive plan update to develop a strategy for dealing with financial planning. 29 That information can be used to establish the policy basis for the prioritization of city 30 services so the council can balance services according to critical needs and priorities. He 31 recommends the assistance of a facilitator in that process. 32 33 The council indicated that they would like to work on 2009 budget issues with Mr. Rolek 34 (no facilitator necessary for that portion). As a preview, Mr. Rolek noted some of the 35 elements driving the need to revisit the 2009 budget including the governor's proposed 36 reduction ($237,500 to Lino Lakes in both 2009 and 2010), stagnation of development in 37 the community, and loss of investment income due to the market performance. He 38 believes a worst case scenario for 2009 would be a reduction of about $350,000. There 39 are some one-year solutions such as deferring some capital investments and attrition but 40 that doesn't address the situation past the year. The biggest expense to the city is 41 personnel costs (70%) and in that area strategies being used by other cities are such things 42 as retirement incentives, furloughs or four-day work weeks. 43 44 The council suggested the following dates for continuing discussion: March 16, 24 and 45 26, all meetings to be begin at 5:30 p.m. 46 1