HomeMy WebLinkAboutCC MINUTES 03141992 Meeting Sheet
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Box: 19
Folder: CC MINUTES AND AGENDAS 1992
Document: CC MINUTES 03141992
Minutes from Special City Council Meeting- March 14, 1992
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3 The meeting began at 9:00 A.M..
4 Council Present: Clarence Ranallo, Mayor, Councilmembers Dorothy Fleming, Dick
5 Enrooth, George Wagner
6 Absent: George Marks
7 Staff Present: Tom Burt, City Manager
8 CR: ......you were leaving town this afternoon and I talked with George and about the only
9 time that George really had a chance to meet was late this afternoon and Monday
10 was out so he said to go ahead and have the meeting without him and he would talk
11 to Tom Burt Monday morning and see what we had discussed today.
12 So the two things on the agenda will be a letter to the Governor along with letters
13 to the state senator and state representative and then some ideas that each one of
14 us have that we can give to Tom between now and the Council meeting on the 24th.
15 I know we've got a work session set for March 31st, but this is so drastic that I think
16 we need to look at taking some action at our 24th Council meeting. So, if that's OK,
17 those two items on the agenda. Has anybody got anything else they want to add to
18 the agenda or that needs to be taken care of? Then we'll go with those two items.
19 What I did as far as trying to alert as many people as I could to this meeting is that
20 I had Connie and Tom call the Bulletin, Neal directly, and call Margo Ashmore of
21 the Northeaster directly advising them of this meeting. A fax to the Focus, and it's
22 been posted as usual plus on the Kiwanis board. So far I've had one person
23 responding to the Kiwanis board.
24 Over the past 2 or 3 days, I've talked with the League of Minnesota Cities and the
25 AMM. The first alert that we had was that they were looking at cutting 8% of our
26 revenue base, cutting all cities 8.2% of their revenue base. AMM calculated that out
27 to be $127,316 for St. Anthony. In fact, the maximum of our local government aid
28 and that was only 7.5% of our revenue base. Since then that's been confirmed that
29 that is what the figure is.
30 There is some ontroversey over this 8.2%. The governor said that in order to make
31 up for the big shortfall, he's proposing that local government aid be cut by $71.6
32 million for this year's cities budgets. The cuts are limited to city aid other than
33 HACA. Since then, someone alerted him to the fact that not all cities had local
34 government aid. So now they're saying, "Wait a minute, if all cities don't have local
35 government aid, we still want 8.2% of their tax revenue base so we better look at
HACA." There is a possibility that we could lose some more money.
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1 These are all the things I have tried to talk to Mary Jo McGuire about. I've talked
2 to her via the voice mail thing. Her response was to Roger was "Everything's been
3 taken care of, Tom. But that was in response to the HRA question that you had
4 talked to her about, not this. She called me back and clarified. She said they have
5 been meeting constantly about this. Her response was "We're working on it, we'll do
6 the best we can, but we don't know where it's going to come out." I put a call in for
7 John Marty. I have not heard from John Marty, voice mail or any other way. The
8 League, as you've got in the Alert, has told us several things that we should do.
9 When I met with 22 Mayors, we thought rather than to write a letter to the governor
10 and to the state senators and state representatives saying we,don't want anything cut
11 from us, we should write them a letter and say we were cut last year, and now we're
12 getting cut again. There are other places that you should look at as far as figuring
13 out your shortfall. In fact, we can't have a shortfall every year. You can have a
14 shortfall in one year, but when it becomes every year, that's no longer a shortfall.
15 Then you'd better look at what the real problem is.
16 So, what we'd like to do this morning is to put together some ideas for a letter to the
17 governor saying we are not happy with your$71.6 million cut of local government aid
18 and to look at some other areas like the "rainy day fund". Now, in talking with
19 George Marks (because he could not be here), his feeling is that the "rainy day fund"
ODO should not be cut.
21 DF: Do you mean the reserve?
22 CR: It's not really a reserve. It's a fund balance. The reserve is something different.
23 DF: What are the amounts?
24 DE: I think it's $500 million. What constitutes a "rainy day"?
25 You've got a point there. A shortfall that is consistent, is not a shortfall. It's more
26 budgeting and to live within your means. It's over spending. This is getting
27 ridiculous. If this isn't a crisis, I don't know what is.
28 TB: St. Anthony has about $200 and some thousand total that could be cut.
29 GW: $127,000, then it will be over $200 thousand, right.
30 CR: When you put these together, you say, well he's not going to cut us again. Now, all
31 of a sudden, comes June, we're not going to get $127,000. It's that simple.
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1 TB: Paul Ogren said it best, that this is a nice make-do way to resolve this year's problem,
2 but the problem is long term. Next year they'll be back and next year we can look
3 at losing our HACA. What we get in aid is about 25% of our budget. This is a nice
4 thing for re-election and a lot of campaign promises of no tax, but the long haul is
5 it's going to severely affect services in St. Anthony and all communities. We're
6 looking at a 25% reduction, some of these cities are zero LGA but they are actually
7 receiving HACA, so it's drastic cut back of services as we know them today.
8 GW: The first line here says, there are no cuts in the aids to counties, townships and
9 special districts.
10 TB: That's right.
11 DE: That doesn't look fair either.
12 DF: How much is in the other account, you said there's two, one is the rainy day fund and
13 the other one's the reserve fund?
14 TB: They are one in the same, the rainy day has $500 million. It's non-dedicated funds.
15 GW: Roger had it listed as $66 thousand, I think that was an earlier indication of how
66 much, now it's $71.6, but he had it on the basis of a prior formula where it only came
17 out to $28 thousand.
18 TB: That was based on the governor's speech.
19 DE: OK, that was including the counties, townships and local districts.
20 TB: Right. They are taking about 13% out of the Trust Fund. That money was supposed
21 to go to help cities so they wouldn't have to have LGA. Now they're taking away
22 LGA plus they're taking the Trust Fund. Taxes will not go down for the residents,
23 they will stay the same. Cities are going to help bail out the state and resolve their
24 poor financial practices.
25 GW: Is money going into the Trust Fund?
26 TB: There's money in that supposed account. But the governor has said many times, he's
27 going to do magic new miracles in accounting. It's pushing numbers around the page.
28 Governor's administrations have moved numbers around from year to year and
29 delayed the deficit. It's there, but I don't know that we're ever going to see it.
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1 CR: One of the things we should point out in the Carlson letter is that on the relief fund,
2 I think that their proposed amount of what would be coming from the rainy day fund
3 should be used when there's a shortfall. They should use as much of that as possible
4 to balance the budget. That's what it's there for.
5 CR: I have not seen any cuts in state personnel. Putting together all of the various
6 agencies that they've got under one head and reducing, I have not seen any of that.
7 GW: I have not seen it either. The fact they're going to do it has only been alluded to,
8 that's all.
9 DE: They relayed a percentage to us to be accomplished through attrition. There's no
10 consolidation. They're not taking this seriously. It's not being done fairly. It's not
11 being done to the counties, it's going to help to other bodies that should be sharing
12 this - school districts aren't being hit at all, are they?
13 TB: No.
14 DE: And higher education is going to be hit again. They've even come out with City
15 officials are paid too much.
66 GW: Distribution of this cut, including counties, townships and special districts, and I'm
17 sure the counties were planning on it. When I was at a meeting there the other day,
18 they mentioned that they were expecting it.
19 TB: One thing is that counties have a collective voice that's much louder than cities. It's
20 just difficult to get that many cities together on a common thing. This might pull us
21 together and create a very powerful group. But each individual city has a very weak
22 voice.
23 The other thing that I wanted to talk about is the report YJs Mark Dayton's office
24has put out. That talks about v
— p bo t go ernment employees being compensated well and
25 receive these outrageous benefits.
26 DF: Yes, let's hear about that.
27 TB: In St. Anthony there's two employees that receive over $50,000 - that's the liquor
28 store manager and myself. As far as what does it do for benefits, we don't have, as
29 he says, the 11 weeks of vacation. After someone's been here over 20 years, they can
30 accumulate up to 4 weeks vacation maximum.
31GW: That's below indust
— ry.
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1 TB: That's a little below industry. As far as outlandish insurance benefits, right now
2 insurance costs for family coverage costs about $400 a month. We pay$255 towards
3 that, so an employee still has a large chunk of it coming from their check.
4 CR: I just wanted to point out on that particular item, insurance, private industry is now
5 starting to have the employees pay part of the premiums and it's something like 10
6 or 15% of the total premium which total premium's $400, 10% is $40 which is a lot
7 less than public.
8 TB: You know every time I get into salary negotiations with the three unions, they always
9 bring-up the surrounding communities to us. A police officer, firefighter, make more
10 in every single city around us. The only reason 49'ers are equivalent is because we
11 did joint negotiation for years so that means that the 49'ers, in all the cities are the
12 same rate. We're not talking about a lot of money for the 49'ers. They're making
13 about $25-26 thousand a year. It's very difficult to negotiate with the police because,
14 yes, we're a first ring suburb, yes we have crime, yes we have all the same problems
15 that any other first ring suburb does, but no you're not going to make that kind of
16 money. It's been difficult, but we've held them back. St. Anthony has done
17 everything they can. We provide only the essential services,police, fire, public works.
18 When you get to it, internal fluff, if we have to cut fluff, it means people. What that
19 equates to is service.
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21 What is it going to mean to programs? The Mayor and I have talked just a little bit
22 about some of our programs, like certain programs either in police or fire are going
23 to fall by the wayside because we just cannot take the time and resources to put on
24 certain programs. Some of them are all dear to us.
25 DE: How about some specifics. The letter should indicate what some of those services
26 are which we will have to cut to try and live with this unrealistic proposal.
27 CR: Not that we are going to cut these, but I think these are some of the issues that we
28 should look at. We're not putting these in any priority, but one of the things is how
29 much money do we donate to Northwest Suburban Youth and Family Services?
30 TB: $5,000.
31 CR: VillageFest? We spend almost $5,000, with overtime for police, fire and public
32 works. We're going to have to look at more volunteers on that particular thing.
33 Another one is the D.A.R.E. program.
34 TB: We get donations to make supplies. We don't get donations to pay for the officer's
35 time.
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1 CR: OK. Make a note to yourself - supplies. Counties will pay for our supplies now.
2 There's a fund set up in the counties that we should talk about.
3 DF: The state may be looking at taking this over anyway. I thought they'd been lobbying
4 for that the last couple of years.
5 DF: That's what I thought.
6 DE: What's our overtime for public works and snow plowing, etc.?
7 TB: It's hard to ballpark. Usually we're done in 8 hours during normal snowfall.
8 CR: How much do we spend on D.A.R.E.?
9 TB: We spend close to $10,000 in supply costs. That doesn't include all of Dominic's
10 time. It doesn't include that we have to shift people around which means overtime
11 costs are in there too. The Chief has been filling shifts which means we're short in
12 other areas but that has helped us to reduce costs but if an officer needs to be shifted
13 in where it's not his time to work, he's paid overtime to work that shift.
14 CR: How much money do we get in donations?
15 TB: This year we received close to the amount for supply costs. The
16 Boosters/Chamber/Lions came through gave $7,500, and the Paul Todd concert
17 brought in about $3,000 and there was small dollar donations after that. We ran a
1_8 deficit from the year before.
19 CR: Recycling center?
20 GW: Now that's losing money, you'd have to consider that.
21 TB: Recycling isn't mandated. If the cities don't have a plan, the counties have to do it.
22 DF: How much is that again?
23 DE: About $10,000. We pay that outright. We can drop that and still have recycling.
24 TB: The state says that everybody has to have curbside recycling. That's required by the
25 state. You have to have it. You don't have to use it, but you have to have it. It
26 means everyone's paying for it twice.
27 CR: What other things do we have?
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1 DE: We have to eliminate a fair amount of overtime or we,re going to have to eliminate
2 a person or two. Ultimately, to get down to those kind of dollars, that's what its
3 going to take.
4 DF: A person or two? $127,000 adds up.
5 TB: I haven't talked to the employees yet so I'm not going talk positions, people or
6 departments right now, but I have a tentative plan that we're looking at three to four
7 people.
8 CR: But I think this ought to be pointed out, that the proposed cut could possibly
9 eliminate three or four people, which adds to the unemployment.
10 TB: And, in some cases may add to our overtime. If you cut or reduce services from
11 police, and if an officer arrests someone he has to go to court. There's court time,
12 there's court costs of doing that. Someone has to fill his shift if he has to go to court
13 during work hours.
14 CR: In the Carlson letter we should say that we are going to have to lay off people and
15 that in turn...The reason they're saying they got into the $560 million deficit is
6 because of the unemployment and the economy and everything else. This will not
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17 help the economy.
18 TB: The other thing, too, is right now we've delayed all capital purchases. And, that has
19 a boomerang effect on us too. We've put off on some things, some heavy equipment
20 needs. This year we have plans for a squad car - no new squad car. That means
21 we'll be running these vehicles well over 100,000 miles of hard use. It means higher
22 maintenance. They may be out of service a little bit longer. Those are all things that
23 we have to consider as well.
24 CR: OK. Have you got enough things there that you can put together a letter?
25 GW: I think the Trust Fund ought to be in there. They will have cut $200,000 out of our
26 budget with the $76,000 last year and $127,000 this year.
27 DF: Carbon copy to Joanelle Dyrstad, Marty, and McGuire.
28 CR: We've covered some of the items just briefly that Tom should be looking at. Tom,
29 I also think that you should have Roger look at how the salaries of the
30 Councilmembers correspond to other cities of our size. We're in the middle or
31 closer to the bottom. Let's bring that out. If we're going to be asking City people,
32 probably not to lay off, but to take a one day leave or something like that, we should
OF3 be looking at all of us. Is there anything that we've left unturned?
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1 We discussed Northwest Suburban, D.A.R.E., VillageFest, and the Recycling Center.
2 I myself think that one of the actions we should take March 24th is to eliminate all
3 overtime. If you want that from us, Tom. I don't know.
4 TB: I don't know that we can eliminate it because we still have the situation where an
5 officer has to go to court, or watermain breaks. And if it does snow....but certainly
6 for the things that we can, we will limit the use of overtime.
7 DF: I'd just like to know what they could do next year because isn't this just about it?
8 TB: No, HACA. If they go after the HACA, we're looking at another $200 plus
9 thousand.
10 DF: One of the things that some people say that if you're doing this it wouldn't be
11 necessarily to hurt here it's to help somewhere else. They're talking, for example,
12 about in stead of having our own police department, merging. Is this part of it?
13 TB: Well, you know we went through the whole consolidation exercise and, to some
14 people's displeasure, the outcome was bigger is not better. We looked at costs of
15 providing basic services and you can compare us to other communities and we may
16 be high on one side, we may be low on the other side, but overall our costs are less.
77 Remember the Citizen's League Report talks about the 96 metropolitan communities
18 and how we rank. We've ranked always within the bottom 10 for our taxes. So taxes
19 in St. Anthony are low. If we go to a consolidated service, we're talking about higher
20 costs and less services. What this plan is talking about is ultimately higher cost and
21 less service, but it takes away accountability. As a taxpayer, when you have a
22 problem, let's say with the plowing of your street, do you think you're going to get
23 the same response if you call a Ramsey County Commissioner?
24 DF: No, I don't.
25 TB: Or any other commissioner in any other county? Or calling a state representative?
26 I've been trying to get through to our representatives for a week. It takes time.
27 They have such a big area that one person's voice is very small. Are they pushing in
28 that direction? They may be trying.
29 DF: That's what I mean because, see, then the control shifts, that's all my point is.
30 TB: I don't know about that. The state would be taking on a bigger problem than they
31 realize. Also, I think for many of the residents, the services we provide here are very
32 near and dear to them. The state has the ability to take that away from us, but will
33 the people stand for it? I don't know if that's true.
OL4 CR: What is your name again?
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1 A: Bob Williams.
2 CR: Bob came in before and we were talking. Have you got any questions?
3 A: It's been very difficult to understand how much the budget has been cut and why.
4 But you went through that before. I don't have any major questions. Someone's got
5 to bite the bullet.
6 CR: Each year we have a volunteer recognition date and this year it's April 27th. We get
7 together all the volunteers in the City and we have a very small dinner for them and
8 that's the only pay they ever get. I think we should continue having that this year
9 even though we have all our problems. At that point, I'm going to ask each one of
10 those volunteers to go out and get another volunteer. We're going to look at
11 volunteers for some of those areas. We're going to have to really expand our
12 volunteer programs.
13 TB: Mr. Mayor, I compliment him for his ideas. One of the things I've always thought
14 is no overtime - don't pay for people to come out and do snow removal. As an
15 example, the Halloween snowstorm. A lot of people wouldn't have gotten to work,
16 if had waited to do it on straight time. It could result directly on other people's
7 pocketbooks, too. We have to have a balance on the services we provide. We can
18 reduce those service levels, but is it going to cost people more in the long run by
19 reducing certain services? That is an impact and can happen.
20 DE: I think the public is going to finally realize that something like this is going to really
21 hit them dearly and that the government is just running an inept organization. You
22 can't have shortfalls every year.
23 TB: As a city, if we had a shortfall, we'd resolve it immediately. would never carry a
24 shortfall from one year into the next. We've been fairly resilient as cities because
25 we've had money taken away from us midstream for the past two and three years and
26 we've always been able to reduce certain things and manage it. The state has lost
27 that. They're too busy micromanaging everything that they've forgotten to manage
28 their own organization.
29 CR: We have a reserve. But keep in mind you can't use that.
30 TB: That money is set aside for just operational costs. Roger indicated it will effect us,
31 it will effect some of our interest earnings which we depend on to make up some of
32 our revenue. Ultimately what it means is that it's very very close. I put out a memo
33 saying no purchasing until after June because we could run out of money. We get
34 into the point of not having any money to make payroll. This year it's going to be
even closer. That worries me. One of the things I've made notes on is what happens
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91 if we go for one or two day layoffs? No pay, you're out the door, you're layed off for
2 one or two days. How much revenue can we bring in by doing that? Well, it effects
3 everybody's pay. What we're doing is passing the problem on to the employees. It
4 also effects service levels as well. We can't lay off police officers for a day, we can't
5 lay off firefighters. So what does it mean? It means public works and office staff is
6 layed off. That's not that large an amount of money. What does it mean? We could
7 probably lay off people for a couple days but they have to put bread on their table,
8 too. It has a very drastic effect on the people and they're feeling the same impact
9 of reduced services where they live.
10 CR: We have a large amount of medicals. If we don't keep our streets plowed in the
11 middle of the night and these firefighters can't get there...there's got to be some
12 snowplows out.
13 TB: There are some things we can do. We can do less maintenance in the park, not mow
14 the grass as frequently. We can stop weed control in the parks. Some of the things
15 wouldn't necessarily directly effect service levels,but it will have an effect. We always
16 stress image in St. Anthony. Its going to be hard to maintain a good image if all of
17 a sudden we reduce services. There's got to be a balance of that too. St. Anthony
18 has a very good reputation for itself and that is what has maintained its value as high.
19 If we aren't able to keep that image long-term, what effect will that have on the
W-0 community?
21 CR: Anything else? OK. On March 24th, whatever you feel should be put on that
22 agenda that you want us to take some action on, you let us know.
23 TB: OK.
24 DE: We know the cuts are going to happen, we just don't know where they're going to
25 come from.
26 TB: Right.
27 CR: The governor made a proposal he's given to the legislature. They've got to act on
28 it. Wednesday of next week should be the end of getting information from the cities
29 and then they'll vote on it. We've got to get a letter to them Monday just to give
30 them some of our ideas and they can act.
31 TB: The letter is almost complete now. It will go out in Monday's mail under the Mayor's
32 signature.
33 CR: Anything else?
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1 DF: Choosing candidates for state offices should be top priority. We know now what
2 happens when they are not representing us properly.
3 CR: Anything else? Move to adjourn Enrooth, second Wagner.
4 Taken from transcription tape.
5
6 Mayor
7 ATTEST:
8 City Clerk
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