11-03-1997 WS - Laserfiche WebLink

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the Council's thoughts on this matter Monday. 111 As of Friday,8-MPHA Agreement re: Silver Lake Commons: I have heard of no resolution to the impasse Bob Long discussed with the Council last Monday. He is to have another meeting with Milo Pinkerton on the subject and will report on Monday evening. Item 9-Election Winner and Taking Council Seat: Bob will also discuss what he has determined to work for the election winner to take the vacant council seat. Item 10- Minnegasco Franchise Agreement: The Council has been copied with correspondence between our attorney and Minnegasco on how they would go about getting a franchise agreement in place with the City. They are attempting to service a customer which is the reason this is coming to us in the first place. Bob Long will explain the process and issues for this. Item 11 - Discussion of Final Preliminary Budget: The Council was presented with a list of possible budget changes at the October 20 work session. The primary decisions agreed upon at that meeting were more on the revenue side of the equation than on the expense side. I feel obligated to respond to some of the expense items and recommend they be included in the 1998 budget as expense items and they are noted as such in the packet material. The Council should note that the inclusion of these items will not affect the levy or franchise fee amount as planned. Instead, the funds earmarked for those expenses come as an exchange with contingency funds in the budget. As the items are added back in, the contingency amount is reduced. • The bottom line remains the same. The items I recommend be reinstated are: Association of Metropolitan Municipalities (AMM) membership $4,085 Community Development -training $650 Community Development - enforcement tracking software $4,500 Central Services -web page maintenance $2,000 Parks - lifeguards at Lakeside Park $3,000 Forestry-boulevard tree trimming $4,000 I see the AMM membership as something the City may want to work on in 1998. There is a change in personnel at AMM and it may be worth the City's time to take a more proactive stance within the organization on issues of interest to Mounds View. I have discussed the relative merits of belonging to AMM with another city manager whose council feels somewhat the same as ours and perhaps working with them we can forge some changes that make the membership fees seem more worthwhile. This may be a more politically prudent step to take as well considering we often work with our neighboring metro communities. Mounds View has made no mention of concern with AMM to this point, in fact, the City has been very involved with the former mayor serving in a board position just last year. Another year of work may be more beneficial than dropping out with no explanation.