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HomeMy WebLinkAboutJuly 30, 1986 COW Committee of the Whole Meeting July 30 , 1986 A Special Meeting of the Committee of the Whole was called to order by Mayor Verbic on July 30, 1986 , in the Council Conference Room of City Hall at 4 :30 p.m. Members present : Councilmen Andersen, Moylan, Shales, Van De Voorde, Waters and Mayor Verbic. Absent: Councilman Gilliam. Consideration of amounts of money estimated to be necessary to be raised by taxation upon taxable property. Mayor Verbic: I felt we should sit down with the City Manager and Finance Director, prior to the Public Hearing, inorder to clarify any questions you may have relative to this matter. As you know the anticipated shortage in 1987 is $501,000 and we were given several methods by which the elimination of this could be accomplished, so I will open up the meeting for any questions that you may have. Councilman Andersen: What is the composition of the $501,000. I Jim Cook: The $501,000 is reached in the following way: We have estimated the revenues and the unencumbered cash balance. If you look at Exhibit 1A, at the top you will see we are projecting, well we know that the beginning unencumbered cash balance as of January was $3 ,036 , 690, which was $91, 645 more than we had included in this year' s budget . Property taxes, we expect to get what was budgeted. The sales tax, you budgeted $4 , 700, 000, last year it was $4 ,500, 000, we are presently running about $350, 000 over for seven months, we are estimating at least $4 , 800,000, it could easily go to $4 , 900, 000, or $4 , 950 , 000 . My concern right now is that we know that in the March payment this year, which was the big one, larger than we had ever received before, there was an accummulation of some hundred thousand dollars carried over from six months earlier that we were not getting our payments on schedule, we were getting estimated payments, and they got around to cleaning up their act and we got a one-time windfall payment . So I cannot really put that into calculations that it is going to continue at that average. By the time that we get to actual budget calculations at the end of September we will have the August and September numbers and we will know whether the increases are going to keep going or not . If you will recall the June receipt was less than June of last year, the July receipt was substantially more, and we suspect it is a combination of what day people sent in their sales tax collections, some more gamemanship with the State on what was distributed, but we really don 't know, and at this point if you wanted to say that could be $4 , 900 , 000, or $4 , 950,000 , I would say it certainly could, on the other hand we may find that it will be $4 , 850, 000 . Committee of the Whole Meeting July 30 , 1986 Page 2 If you recall November and December payments last year were very good because of the car sales that took place in August , September and October of last year. Councilwoman Shales: McGrath had their best month yet last month. Jim Cook: The property tax replacement does not vary too much and there is not much to report on that . The State Income Tax figure, right now we are running about $80 ,000 ahead of last year for the first six months. We had projected an increase in that item from last year, we are projecting a further increase of $50, 000 over budget , that may not be precise, but again what we have done with the six month' s estimates is try to recognize where those are running better. Mayor Verbic: In your 1987 preliminary projections you have $18, 000 less than the midyear estimate for 1987 on State Income Tax. The tax is based on the generation from the State of income tax. With a greater number of people working and greater wages, hopefully in the Elgin area, I would say that is a conservative figure. Jim Cook: Well, I have a number, when we get to that page that I think are conservative, but if I may go down 86 first . The State Income Tax is doing better, its possible that number is going to do better than what we show, the slight increase there, at the present time we have received about $80 , 000 more than we received at this time last year, which is about 640 of the total estimated amount , but again it is one of those things that does not come in every month so that you can develop a trend, but a quarterly type situation, until you get that third quarter and can begin to get confidence in what the number is, unfortunately we have to do this on a six month basis, eighteen months in advance and that is a tough way to go. The other taxes are a bunch of small things, fire insurance, hotel/motel tax, we don 't see anything in there to get excited about . There might be a few thousand one way or the other, but at this point in time, depending on what happens out at the Ramada, it may be down. The licenses include business licenses, dog, liquor and vehicle. The current number is up very dramatically, we are up over $100 , 000 at the end of six months in vehicle licenses over last year, but a lot of that is because we were on a very hard campaign and enforcement of the license early in the year. Until I get through August and see a number that tells me how much of last year' s came late in the year, after the enforcement program that we ran in the summer time and how much of it came early, I 'm just too early to tell you how much of that is extra licenses. Right Committee of the Whole Meeting July 30 , 1986 Page 3 now the numbers are way ahead of last year, but I still have to do some calculating to see what the catch-up is. In terms of liquor licenses, last year at this time you had $121, 000, that is through the end of June, this year you have $132 , 900, there were several big, extra licenses, and you increased the fees. The budget for liquor licenses was over about $6 , 000, over what we budgeted. I can 't project a great increase, but I do think you are probably going to see licenses come in perhaps $10 , 000 to $20 , 000 higher at the end of the year. Mayor Verbic: You are bound to have an increase because of the increased fees and the number of people applying for the $10 , 000 license. Jim Cook: I am saying licenses as a whole, those two plus the business licenses are down $12 , 000 this year, compared to the same time last year, so we have some off-set problems there too. Councilman Van De Voorde: Why is that . We have not lost that much business in a year have we. Jim Cook: I can 't tell you at this point, I just don' t know. Mayor Verbic: What kind of licenses are those. Jim Bolerjack: Restaurant , mobile homes and cigarrettes. Jim Cook: It may be that a group of people came in in July and paid them and they are not in the June report . That is the trouble with dealing with numbers as of the end of June. We don 't have the July numbers, you just don 't know how good those are. Permits . The budget was increased this year for permits, the actual is running much higher because of the high volume of construction activity. Jim has raised the estimate by $5200 . 00 over the budget . If we maintain the pace we are going at right now for the next month, that could easily be another $15, 000 number there without any increase in fees, and if we put in the increase in fees that we have talked about , we had talked about possibly raising an additional $90, 000 to $100 ,000 on an annual basis from the permit situation. Councilman Van De Voorde: The sooner that would be done, the more we could help on 1986 and 87 . Jim Cook: Any of those figures that you can put in you get it now, it goes into the balance and you have it available for next year. Fines, Jim has not projected an increase. However, the impact Committee of the Whole Meeting July 30, 1986 Page 4 so far has been very significant . The police activities, the information we have been reporting to you on the enforcement of traffic, we are up $30 , 000 in the first six months revenues from Kane County. On the other hand we are down $2 , 000 in Cook County, there is nothing happening there, fortunately that is a very small portion of our total fines. In other fines, parking tickets are down $10 ,000, code violation fines are up a small amount , the net fine package is up $40,000 for the first six months compared to last year. If it maintains the rate for the last six months that we have had for the first six months it could hit $280, 000 in the fine structure, compared to the $265, 000. Fees for services, the major item I see in there that looks good are in two catagories. Fire Protection Agreements are up $16, 000, but that was all budgeted. The subdivision engineering fees are $14 , 000 this year, as of the first six months and there were none last year. We have the total amount estimated in the budget in the first six months, but we don't know how many more subdivisions we may get in the last six months. I hesitate at this point to project very much. Certainly if the Highland Springs annexation goes through we should get something on that . There are one or two others that are out there that could develop into something, but we strongly suspect that most of the subdivision plats, people rush to get subdivision plats in once the housing market breaks, but we don't see at this point a lot of them out there waiting to come in. The Hemmens Building fees are up, as you will remember we raised the fees , the budget was raised accordingly, they are doing very well. If they continue the Hemmens Building will do better than we budgeted in revenues for this year. It does not amount to a lot of money unfortunately. At his point we simply don 't have the detailed and length of experience on most of these small fee items. They add up to a substantial amount of money, but the big items are ambulance fees, $114 , 000 out of the $800, 000 is ambulance fees and they are running $2 , 000 higher than they were at this time last year. There is no indication that they will meet the budget . It looks like they will fall at about the $105, 000 range unless we raise the fees. We have budgeted $114 , 000 so that is going to fall short . The Engineering service item and fire protection item are another $150, 000 between them and the Hemmens fees are another $200,000, those look like they will at least pickup the variance in the ambulance, but I can' t really project , I can 't project as much of an increase as Jim has projected at this point , but Jim has projected an increase of $32 , 000 for the year over the budget . Committee of the Whole Meeting July 30, 1986 Page 5 Investment income, at this point we are down $20 , 000 from last year, because we have been using the unencumbered balance funds for capital improvement projects and the interest rate has gone down. We are still hoping we can keep the investment income at the budget level. Mayor Verbic: The million we got from Centel is included in the investment income. Councilman Van De Voorde: That is the one I thought if we had a half a million shortfall and we had a half a milllion dollars in the bank, why not take that . Jim Cook: At the present time in the Centel program, you have taken the first year' s payment, roughly $135, 000, which was based on the formula of 5% times their revenues. The second year was roughly $145,000 , which is this year, so that at the end of this year you will have in the capital improvement fund, in that special project account , $280, 000, the balance of it is still kept in the separate account that we have invested, but are not using until they have processed. Right now the projection is that by 1991 we will have earned all of the million dollars. When we discussed this with you during the budget last fall, your general statement on that was you wanted it used for special one time expense, not used to be put in the operating budget . If you want to change that thinking you could do SO. The interest goes in the operating budget , but the million dollars, by the end of 1987 the million dollars itself will be separated so that $570, 000 will still be unearned in one account and $430, 000 will be in capital improvement program unless you chose to go ahead and spend that for some particular project . One of the things that we will want to discuss in the budget when we talk about the capital program is do you want to wait until you have the million dollars, or do you want to use $430 , 000. Councilman Van De Voorde: If for some reason we badly needed a million dollars today for a project , could we use that money. Jim Cook: You could use it , your financial record would show in effect that you borrowed, you used money you were not entitled to so your unencumbered balance would be decreased by the amount that your used. Councilman Van De Voorde: With the exception that you would not be paying interest on it . Jim Cook: You would not be earning interest on it, you would not be paying interest as though it were a loan. Committee of the Whole Meeting July 30 , 1986 Page 6 Councilman Van De Voorde: But Jim Bolerjack said that if we were to use any part of that in effect we would be taking away from our working cash fund. Jim Cook: It is a separate fund, it would mean your unencumbered cash balance would be deducted so you would show that it would not be available. The expenditures, here we have not done analysis at this point . We have looked at the budget to try and find any outstanding alarming feature. We know that there are a couple of contracts, the one with Baird on the labor union negotiations, the one on Wendland, we know that salaries are going to be down slightly because we have had some vacancies that have not been filled. We do know that in commodities and supplies that there will be a savings in gasoline and some of the other things that have been coming in at about what was budgeted. We don ' t think there are any suprises in the expenditure column, but until we get through the summer months, and really deal with the high part time, park maintenance, weed cutting and these other things that we are doing, we don't have a real good number to tell you.My guess is if we really were going to go through it that number is a little high, we might get it down to $18,400, 00 or $18, 500 , 000. If those guesses on revenue and expenditures are true, what I am saying to you is that instead of $600, 000 to carry over you might have a million dollars to carry over, which would mean then that the $500, 00 deficit is less than that . Councilman Van De Voorde: Jim, that is the gut feeling I had and I told you before I felt we probably underestimated our income and overestimated --- and I think that is good, thats healthy, that is the way I would do it , and I am not complaining. Jim Cook: Our basis for bringing this to you at this time, before the Department Heads have had a chance to really project out to the end of the year where they are going before the revenue, we are required to come to you, we come to you with something, as we say in the cover memo, the number may turn out to be better, we may be able to abate things if they, but right now, based on the data we have these are good, sound financial numbers that you can have reliance, barring major disaster, is not going to be worse than this position. Councilman Van De Voorde: We are low on permit fees . Jim CooK: We are very low on permit fees, and one of the reasons that we talked previously about raising them is that if we have this level of construction our people cannot keep up with construction and keep up with the code enforcement which we want them to do. Committee of the Whole Meeting July 30 , 1986 Page 7 Part of the new personnel I am sure is going to be in Inspection and it should be paid for by fees, it should not be paid for by some other basis. In order to provide service to these people they ought to be paying a fee sufficient to pay for the staffing of the program. The $500 , 000 is made up primarily of an estimated ten new positions , including fringe benefits of perhaps $350 , 000. Mayor Verbic: You are talking about personal services going up $1, 600 , 000 . Jim Cook: No, personal services this year are $13 , 997 , 000 in the budget and because we have had some vacancies we are down to $13 , 904 , 000 . Next year personal services, we say, if with the additional positions, is $15 , 150, 000 . The $500,000 is not made up of calculating $500,000 . It is made up of our projections of where the revenues are going to be and expenditures are going to be, plus the fact that we have projected an additional ten positions. Without those ten positions we are saying there would be a shortfall of $150 ,000 . I don't want to leave the idea I am talking about ten more people, I may be talking about fifteen more people, because at this point in time where I am thinking about and the departments have not had a chance to justify what their needs are, we have not even begun to talk about what the increased level of production that we are going to get , and started doing any kind of cost benefit analysis, but I am projecting in Inspection, probably the equivalent of another position. It maybe two people part time during the construction season, but I am saying probably the net effect of an additional position. Obviously we have certain benefits if we can work it out in reduced fringe benefits, and reduced extra costs if we can use part time people, or contractural people, or other sorts of things, and we are going to look at this in the best possible way. The $150,000 may well be too high, because we simply had to at this point in time to meet this schedule, tell you what we thought we were looking at . In Engineering, Public Works I am looking at probably two additional people, perhaps one full time, perhaps four part time. The type of thing I am looking at is if we keep the new construction going I have to have more manpower out on the street putting in the new water services and new connections, this makes money. We don 't want to stop construction, I don't think we ever want to be the kind of city that makes it difficult for somebody to get out there and do something, and we don 't want to be the drag. Committee of the Whole Meeting July 30 , 1986 Page 8 Now that shows up in the Water Department budget as far as materials, but the manpower is in the Construction Division of the Public Works Department . I would hope that we could organize something where we could have a part time person during the summer months, work with a full time person and maybe make two crews out of one crew, and speed up that operation. We hire part time, we don't face the next year step increases and so forth. We face a much better control if we can do it . What we are looking at from my point of view are the kind of expenses that are directly linked to an operation, if the operation stops we need to be able to get out from under. Certainly if we go into anything like the kind of paving program called for in the capital improvement program, if we go from roughly $900, 000 to a program of $2 . 5 or $2 . 6 , the amount of work that is going to be involved in getting out there and raising and correcting the manhole covers, the water meters, the small patching jobs, all of the things that we don 't contract out , even if we very carefully contract out the grinding and the resurfacing and the curbs, a lot of the stuff is still going to be additional work in this area. If we do the kind of program they are talking about we are going to have to have more inspectors. The one thing that you don't want to get into is spending that kind of money and not having people out there to seeing that it is spent wisely and the work is being done. Hopefully that could be part time as well, but I am inclined to be very leery of part time construction inspection. The reason I have had difficulty in saying here is the ten positions that I want to do, because again as you have said before, its very interlinked with the capital program and with the growth program. If you are not going to grow, then this is not going to be a problem. Councilman Andersen: In your short tenure here, are you personally satisfied that every employee, in every division is being fully utilized, or is productive. Jim Cook: The easy answer is no. I think that anybody who says they have 400 people working and that they are all working at 100% efficiency is a liar. I would say to you in my opinion you are getting 25 to 30% better productivity this summer than you got last summer, and if you ask me to explain that I will say to you that part of it is just --- you have a bunch of folks that are very excited about getting to do something. Committee of the Whole Meeting July 30, 1986 Page 9 Right now in the Parks Department they have added the softball field with no additional people, the whole softball complex, and I don't know how long I can keep that because it has been strained in other places. If you keep a rainfall going like we have had this year, maintenance of parks is just going to disappear, because we are beginning to run out , the hours and the people just are not meeting. Right now we are doing it, but that is one of the reasons I am nervous about the numbers that we have in here, because I know that we are beginning to eat into overtime in some of the park' s area trying to meet the schedules that are set up for the various levels of maintenance of the various parks. Mayor Verbic: You are using part time employees in the summer for that purpose. Jim Cook: Oh sure, I am not saying we are paying our existing people overtime, we are straining the hours of the part time. You end up paying the part time people overtime too, after a certain number of hours. It is cheaper because you don 't have as much add on costs, but it still costs you money. Right now I believe that either two or three additional people are going to be needed in Police. Again, this may not be additional people, we are hoping that we can develop a program that will allow increased hours for the reserve officers, who have got the training, or additional trained reserve officers, but it is dollars, it is money spent . Right now this year I have not done what I said I might do earlier in the year, I have not come back and asked you for the additional traffic officer, because again getting back to the question of increased productivity, they have been much more productive this year. Certainly the number of moving violations is an excellent turnout . We have hit the accidents and more importantly we have hit the injury accidents very significantly. We have raised additional monies it would appear in the fine program as a by-product of that . I would not be hesitant to tell you that they probably had justified funding of an additional position because they raised it , but that is not why we are in the business. We are not out there leving fines to hire more people. At this point I cannot justify in my mind another traffic officer on the street . I think we have the patrol people doing good traffic. If we don 't solve some of the burglary problems and theft problems, however, then we are going to have to start making the patrol people more involved in that program than they are. Committee of the Whole Meeting July 30, 1986 Page 10 Mayor Verbic: My thought is that maybe the answer might be to have more people see the uniform out there. Councilman Andersen: I checked over there one day and there were 19 people assigned to City Hall, and I made the statement then and I will make it again, one of two things is true. Either modern day police work requires extensive administrative work, or City Hall is a hell of a crime area. I know it is not my job to assign people to tasks, but when there are things over there that I see which are not productive as far as fighting crime is concerned, and when citizens come to me and tell me they are going to spend $4 ,000 to have their house wired, because they are afraid, how do you answer those people. Mayor Verbic: Well that is my story, the fact that you could add another 100 people and you will still have the same kind of robberies. Councilman Andersen: I know that . I made the statement once and I will make it again, damn it the best deterent to any crime is a policeman out on the street , I don't care if he is just standing there. Jim Cook: I will say that for the first time since I have been here, the nine months I have been here, the last two months, we have reduced response time. We are getting to the calls quicker. A patrolman on the streets is very important , a patrolman getting to the scene of an incident in a timely fashion is critical. If we can keep response time within what I consider critical level, then we can move into some of the programs that have to be done, which I think are important , like Neighborhood Watch Development and some of the other programs. There is no doubt that we can use reserve officers in some of those programs, that we can use reserve officers in places like the booth over there to deal with the public, but I added a level over there this past fall in the youth crime and I have to tell you that if nothing else you have one young officer who has earned his bread and butter this year, and he can' t work by himself in that area, that area is bigger than one man can handle and we cannot ask a person to continue to put in 60 and 70 hour weeks, the way that youngman has. We have arrested five of the leaders of the gang activities this year and if we can start with the police end of it and identify and remove the leadership, and if the kind of mobilization of the various groups that are really trying to take over and move into this and the development of the Neighborhood Watch Areas, if we can continued what has been started, we can turn this around to where it becomes just a bunch of teenage hooligans that we can handle. Committee of the Whole Meeting July 30, 1986 Page 11 My major concern is that it could get a whole lot more serious than graffito, it can get to where people are getting killed and drugs are not on the street except in a few places but everywhere. We have already in 1986 made more drug arrests and confiscated more drugs than we did in the entire year of 1985 . Councilman Andersen: I have no quarrel with that, my quarrel is you have highly trained police officers over there sitting shuffling papers and I personally do not think that is the kind of job that their training ---well Jim Cook: I would be glad to take them one by one and talk to you about it Pete, unfortunately I have to say a lot of it has to be done. The Court system, the Miranda system and a whole lot of our problems that we talked about in terms of personnel, it just has to be done by highly trained people. Councilman Andersen: I think there is some empire building there too. Jim Cook: At this point in time don 't hold me to these numbers. I have not come to you saying there is going to be three police, but if I had to say right now, I believe there has to be an increase in the Police Department , and it could well total the number of hours that might be equivalent to three additional people. Councilman Andersen: I certainly did not mean or imply to hold you to any kind of numbers. I merely was playing the devil' s advocate, are we getting all we should be getting out of the people we now have. Jim Cook: No we are not and I am going to keep working to get more, but I also have to be frank and say I think there is more work than we can do. You have one additional position I know will be in the budget and thats the downtown position working out of my office which you approved my doing using some money created by vacancies this year, that is Pat Andrews, that will be an extra position next year. If you recall we had a vacancy in Betsy' s position in he Hemmens Building and we had another vacancy in the parking meter situation and we have had some savings up in Planning. I used the money from that combined savings to fund that position for this year. So next year when I fill the position in Planning and I fill the position in Hemmens, both of which have been hired, then we will have an extra position with Pat . Committee of the Whole Meeting July 30 , 1986 Page 12 The last three positions will be made up , a guess estimate, between the Park' s budget and the Fire budget . Jack Henrici is working very hard trying to add a number of functions in the Fire Department , including the school education program, all inspections out in the housing and so forth and he and I have to watch that development and see what that does to our coverage. We get to the point where we can' t provide coverage, then we are going to have to start talking about additional people in some fashion, whether it is overtime, call back in of some officers or what, to make sure we are not depriving ourselves of enough people to respond to the basic emergency situations. Now whether it is additional people, whether it is call back, whatever it is I am not sure at this point . Councilman Van De Voorde: Fringe benefits amount to what percentage of salary. Jim Cook: Thirty-eight per cent . Councilman Van De Voorde: The point I am making is time and a half is not that much more than fringe benefits. In other words a person working time and a half the fringe benefits basically are the same. Jim Cook: Well, that depends, pension goes up and it would depend where they are on the salary bracket . Mayor Verbic: George, you remember at the time when the information was brought in regards to putting up the new fire station on Summit , that over a period of time we were going to reduce overtime and a possible reduction of employees. Councilman Van De Voorde: We in effect had too big of a job, too many stations to man with too few people, and one answer was overtime and the other answer was to reduce the number of companies and number of stations. That has been reduced and certainly the cost did not go down, but there are a number of reasons for that . First of all wage increases, and there have been a number of injuries and those things are really expensive. I know one fellow who has been off a year and a half and every day he is off you are working with minimum strength. The Council also granted more personal days and that is a direct cost , everyday you give a man a personal day on the Fire Department when you are running short , you are in effect hiring an another individual to pay time and a half. Jim Cook: This year the Fire Department has cut overtime by almost $30 ,000 compared to last year, and they are working very hard at what they are trying to accomplish. They have really done some good things. Committee of the Whole Meeting July 30 , 1986 Page 13 Mayor Verbic: Is what you have described the total picture on the employee matter, Fire, Parks, Downtown, Public Works, Inspection and Police, which comes to ten. Jim Cook: I am not looking for massive increases and I don ' t know whether these ten constitute two new people and the equivalent of eight in part time, contract, or extension of callback, but in terms of additional time that I feel may have to be covered, I think it would be unwise not to look at the likelihood that when you get through with the budget this year that in personal services, whether it is in overtime or part time, or whatever, there is going to be some kind of a mix approaching eight to ten additional positions , if the funding can be there. I can tell you the Steering Committee are recommending on the question of the sewer service fees that sewer service fees be instituted, that they be instituted in such a way that they would raise about $900, 000 per year, of which about $600, 000 would go for the capital program and maintenance, and $300 ,000 would go for the men and materials to do the thing in the construction budget . The average homeowners charge would be based on water consumption, so it would be varied charge, but the estimate was about $3 .00 per household per month. Mayor Verbic: I congratulate this committee for the time they have spent on this project , but it is very difficult in my estimation to come up with a program that is not going to cost a lot of money, and this is exactly what we have in front of us. I think it means well, and perhaps if we were in Northbrook or Glencoe some of these things would fly. To think in these terms of expenditures from the recommendations of these committees it does not appear to me to be a practical solution in supplying all these things. Whether you have $3 .00 sewer fee that is a tax no matter how you look at it, when you add all these things they really mean a tax, which is also not deductible. At least with property tax you can deduct it on your income tax, but these other taxes you cannot deduct so you put the consummer in a very difficult position. Jim Cook: I cannot argue with you Mayor, but on the other hand if you are not going to raise the property taxes, if you are not going to raise the other sources, then the programs that go into such things as Randall Road Interchange, the I-58 widening of Summit and Dundee, and resurfacing of streets, which constitutes four million dollars out of the first year' s program, are going to go right down the drain. I will give the Committee a lot of credit , I did'nt think they could do it this year with the data that was available. They took a hundred and thirty million dollars worth of Committee of the Whole Meeting July 30 , 1986 Page 14 programs and cut them down to about seventy million dollars, they went a long way from approving everything that they got . Councilman Waters: I think that all of us on the Council went into that program with our eyes wide open, and if we had gone into it not anticipating this kind of a return, then I would suggest we were naive from the outset . I think we understood what that kind of a community process we were going to identify a lot more projects than what will be coming to this table, and the fee probably was going to be higher, I fully expected that . I think it is an open process, I think it has gotten to our attention a lot of things that would not have otherwise and I would suggest to you that those people who participated in the process have spent a whole lot more time reviewing those various projects and activities and looking for the alternatives for financing and establishing priorities, than what this Council would have been able to do given the other things that were involved and so I am not suprised at all, and I think we went in knowing thats what was going to come. Councilwoman Shales: They are saying that those are things that are worth spending increased money on. Mayor Verbic: I fully realize that , but I am also considering approximately 67 ,000 people, you know there are some people who cannot afford this. Councilman Waters: I think there is also a difference Dick between thinking in terms of constantly saving taxes and constantly trying to improve our community to make it a good place for people to raise their families, live and make an earning. Mayor Verbic: I concur with this, but I am thinking about the practicability more so than the ultimate result . Sure I want these results, sure I feel it should be done, I look forward to those things as well as anyone else, but I still have to think about what the average person can afford. Councilwoman Moylan: But you have to make an investment in the future. You cannot say I am going to save, save. Councilman Andersen: Then why was 'nt somebody looking at this over the last fifteen years. Councilwoman Moylan: Its too bad, but you have to start somewhere. Committee of the Whole Meeting July 30 , 1986 Page 15 Mayor Verbic: Once you begin the tax you are looking at not four years, but a lot of these which have been mentioned, are just continued, and once a tax has been put on it has been my experience it is very seldom it is removed Councilman Van De Voorde: That is not the reccomendation, it is a five year plan. You know we really have not received a presentation and I am going to reserve my comments. Councilwoman Moylan: We may whittle it down further, who knows. Councilman Waters: Well, I can tell you one that is not in there and it should be. Jim Cook: The reason I raised the question is that alternate B does provide one of the ways for raising $500,000, is to recognize that they are going to call for that sewer fee. If you don 't want the ambulance fee, if you do the permit fee and if you install it now, instead of next January, you have the opportunity to mix or match those packages, if you don' t want to exceed the 4 . 9%. If you want to wait and decide what to do later, then you either have to make a decision that accentuates the most optimistic situation and says we will take the 4 . 9% and we will make it out of revenues or something, or you have to take the position that we want to reserve judgment until we get all of the numbers and all of the facts, in which case I think you are going to have to set a tax levy higher and then abate it . You basically have four choices. You can decide right now that you are going to raise some other sources of revenue, either through better projections as we get closer, or through new rates. You can decide you are not going to have increased services and tell me that you want a budget that lives within the amount of money that is here, with no new rates. You can leave your option open by passing a tax levy and then make a decision when you get the budget in front of you, and the capital budget in front of you and you decide what you really want to do, or you can mix and match those things, you can pick some of the things now and start the rate increases earlier, increase the balance that we estimate for this year and have it for next year to reduce what you need to raise next year. I think that was the purpose of the meeting, to try and get a better understanding of what the choices were. Committee of the Whole Meeting July 30, 1986 Page 16 Councilman Waters: I personnaly am confident we can come in within that 4 .9%, with the provisions of additional fees, but until that is determined I think we have to go with the hearing and abatement . Councilman Waters made a motion, seconded by Councilwoman Moylan to adjourn the meeting. Yeas: Councilmen Andersen, Moylan, Shales, Van De Voorde, Waters and Mayor Verbic. Nays: None. The meeting adjourned at 6 :15 p.m. Marie Yearman, City Clerk