10-06-1997 WS - Laserfiche WebLink

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presented as$50,000. This will be reduced to$25,000. Another line that will deserve some thought will be the community center transfer. Ideally this shouldn't have to continue after 1998, but with the anticipated tight operating budget for the community center, we may need to see that continue. For now, we felt it had to be left in the budget. Additional items that can be changed will be. These include the likelihood of changing auditing firms at a savings of a few thousand dollars(on the work session agenda). There is also a state action that is providing some aid regarding pensions which we have not had in the budget to date (Bruce can review). Also, the receptionist position being open, we reviewed our options on this and agreed to try to rearrange our office space and not replace the position at this time, but with an option to do so if necessary. Because there is an intern position budgeted in Community Development, we decided to add the budgeted amounts of these two positions, and divide by two, assuming the intern position will go forward with analysis of the receptionist need to be evaluated later. This will simply give us some flexibility in an otherwise tight situation. It may also be viewed at intern funds for the city administrator if that is determined to be necessary and a receptionist is not needed. These are the short term changes that can be made and Bruce will develop the figures to see the end result. Additional considerations were made and I will review them here. First, a fund transfer will need to be made to reconcile the MSA account. Bruce will address the best way to go about this, but that may be an additional draw on general fund balances (not necessarily the 1998 budget though). Also, a few community development issues could be worked on by the new director. Raising building permit fees, passing through development review costs to the developer, and defining a cost scope of updating the comprehensive plan (something due next year and has $5,000 available from the Met Council) are three that could help in cost control. Suggestions were also made to review some personnel pay practices. Spreading out the step schedule for new hires should be viable. City policy also attempts to correlate staff pay levels to Stanton levels, something that in reality isn't happening but should be decided upon within affordable limits of the City. To do this, I have asked Bruce and Lynette to conduct a market study of pay, and include critiquing step levels, bench marking and cola increases in order to assess where the City's policies are relative to the City's ability to pay. With this taking place, the City simply has to get going on the Hay evaluation. Other suggestions include contacting other cities to possibly share housing inspection needs, reduce the amount of snow plowing to save costs, reducing the cost of maintaining the City's web site and looking into recreation fees and operations. Questions regarding two positions, the Economic Development Director and the Human Resources Technician were also raised. The EDA Director position is paid for out of TIF funds except for 10%,which according to actual work is now probably low. My position is that my work without the EDA Director would be severely strained in managing and coping with development projects, and secondly but just as importantly, Cathy Bennett plays a key role in providing a second head in general management matters with me in City Hall. My time simply does not allow me to address common problems and issues effecting day to day operations, at least at the levels that appear to be expected. As for the HRT position, its value is administrative in simply keeping track of the volumes of personnel related functions that take place. This work has • to be done as there is no one else to do it. Other functions such as recycling have been assigned to