Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAbout12.01.08 Council Minutes COUNCIL MINUTES PRE-MEETING December 1,2008 1. CALL TO ORDER The meeting was called to order by Mayor Soderberg at 6:30 p.m. Members Present: Members Absent: Also Present: Soderberg, Fogarty, McKnight, Pritzlaff, Wilson None Andrea Poehler, City Attorney; Peter Herlofsky, City Administrator; Robin Roland, Finance Director; Kevin Schorzman, City Engineer; Brenda Wendlandt, Human Resources Director; Cynthia Muller, Executive Assistant 2. APPROVE A GENDA MOTION by Wilson, second by Pritzlaffto approve the Agenda. APIF, MOTION CARRIED. 3. CITIZEN COMMENTS 4. COUNCIL REVIEW OF AGENDA Councilmember Pritzlaff asked about the waiver of excess liability insurance. Finance Director Roland explained this is the same as previous years and the City is covered up to $2 million. 5. STAFF COMMENTS City Administrator Herlofsky noted there will be a representative of the Downtown Business Association at the regular meeting regarding events that will be held downtown this weekend. 6. ADJOURN MOTION by Pritzlaff, second by Fogarty to adjourn at 6:45 p.m. APIF, MOTION CARRIED. Respectfully submitted, a/?,~~ ~~ ~thia Muller Executive Assistant COUNCIL MINUTES REGULAR Decem ber 1, 2008 1. CALL TO ORDER The meeting was called to order by Mayor Soderberg at 7:00 p.m. 2. PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE Den 4 Pack 117 Webelos led the audience and Council in the Pledge of Allegiance. 3. ROLL CALL Members Present: Members Absent: Also Present: Audience: Soderberg, Fogarty, McKnight, Pritzlaff, Wilson None Andrea Poehler, City Attorney; Peter Herlofsky, City Administrator; Robin Roland, Finance Director; Kevin Schorzman, City Engineer; Brenda Wendlandt, Human Resources Director; Tony Wippler, Assistant City Planner; Jen Dullum, Natural Resources Specialist; Cynthia Muller, Executive Assistant Beve Preece 4. APPROVE AGENDA Councilmember Pritzlaffpulled 7h) Approve Non-Bargaining Agreement for discussion. MOTION by Pritzlaff, second by Wilson to approve the Agenda. APIF, MOTION CARRIED. 5. ANNOUNCEMENTS a) Yellow Ribbon Recognition Farmington is the first City in the State of Minnesota to receive the Yellow Ribbon Recognition. This means that as a community we go above and beyond in support of our troops before, during, and after deployment. The award will be presented by Governor Pawlenty. Annette Kuyper has spearheaded organizing this program. 6. CITIZEN COMMENTS Ms. Linda Johnson, Premier Bank and representative of the Downtown Business Association, invited everyone to a holiday celebration this Saturday. There will be several events in downtown Farmington. Mr. Charlie Weber, 5220 Robin Lane, noted the Council passed a month ago, moving the senior center to the hold City Hall building. He asked about the current status of funding. City Administrator Herlofsky noted he and the Parks and Recreation Director have been discussing options and are not comfortable right now with the numbers. Staff will be getting back to Council around the first of the year. Mr. Weber stated there was $200,000 to tear down the old City Hall. Council Minutes (Regular) December 1, 2008 Page 2 Mr. Weber asked about the 2009 budget and the elimination of the Parks and Recreation Supervisor position. He asked if we are not cutting programs, how can we layoff someone who is doing the work? If programs will be cut, then someone should say so. So far he has not heard about the programs. Citizens have a right to know if programs will be cut and if that is the reason for the layoff. Councilmember Pritzlaff stated when the City was looking at using that site for a Veteran's Memorial park, there was $200,000 to tear down the building. We had it and now we don't. City Administrator Herlofsky stated we did estimate the cost of demolition was $200,000. The Veteran's Park was to be funded through the veterans; there was no money set aside for the park. Staff has determined that money left over from the construction of the new City Hall could not be used for a senior center. 7. CONSENTAGENDA Councilmember Wilson asked to pull items 7i-n) Fire Department Appointment Recommendations for discussion. MOTION by McKnight, second by Fogarty to approve the Consent Agenda as follows: a) Approved Council Minutes (11/17/08 Pre-Meeting & Regular) b) Received Information October 2008 Financial Report - Finance c) Approved Waiver of Excess Liability Insurance - Finance d) Approved 3.2 Beer and Cigarette Licenses - Administration e) Adopted ORDINANCES 008-593 and 008-594 Amending Zoning and Subdivision Ordinance - Planning f) Adopted RESOLUTION R73-08 Approving Fiscal Year 2009 CDBG Application - Economic Development g) Adopted RESOLUTION R74-08 Approving Collective Bargaining Agreement LELS - Human Resources 0) Adopted RESOL TUION R76-08 Approving Redevelopment Planning Grant Application - Planning p) Approved Bills APIF, MOTION CARRIED. h) Adopt Resolution - Approve Non-Bargaining Agreement - Administration Councilmember Pritzlaff clarified that non-bargaining includes the management team. Finance Director Roland stated it also includes other non-bargaining positions including confidential positions and supervisory positions. Councilmember Pritzlaffnoted in 2005 Council was asked to approve a 2.75% raise for 3 years. It was his understanding that the increase would be 2.75%. Some information was recently received on department head salary history, and throughout the entire spreadsheet he cannot take a salary from one year to the next, multiply it by 2.75%, and come up with the next year's salary shown. City Administrator Herlofsky replied all department heads and employees have a salary schedule associated with their position. Until an employee reaches the top of the range, there are steps. So it would be that amount plus the increase. All employees have a salary range. If the range is $1,000 - $5,000, the midpoint would be $2,500. After $2,500 through the evaluation process, they have to set Council Minutes (Regular) December 1, 2008 Page 3 goals that will provide them with the appropriate merit to get to that next step. Once they reach the top of the range, they will only receive 3% adjustments each year. Steps before that have the opportunity for a step increase plus the annual adjustment. Councilmember Pritzlaff stated he noticed not only was the 2.75% added in, but the total came to an 11 % increase in salary. In 2005 to 2006 two positions have a $10,000 increase. If that has to do with a step increase, he would have liked to have known that when the annual increase was brought to Council. If there was going to be a step increase, he would not have approved the annual increase. There is another position in 2004 where the starting paying was $18,000 more than the person that left that position in 2003. City Administrator Herlofsky stated some of this happened prior to him coming, but thought it had to do with some comparable worth studies. Finance Director Roland stated the Council approved a compensation study in 2002 which was implemented in 2003. At that time, certain positions were not in the appropriate ranges, so it took a 2-3 year time frame for those to come up to certain points in the schedule. She noted Councilmember Pritzlaff was asking about a particular position where the person left and the successor was hired at a significantly larger salary. That would have been up to Council at that time when that person was brought to Council for approval. Their salary schedule would have been given to Council and that would have been approved as part of that agenda item. Councilmember Pritzlaff stated there are positions above that that are significantly higher than the person that left. There was no adjustment to that one position except in 2004. In looking at the numbers, he cannot multiply 2.75% that was approved and get these numbers. Now we are looking at 3%. In the budget under Human Resources, in 2008 we budgeted 2.5 people. In 2009 we are budgeting for 2 people. We have a salary of $149,402 in 2008 and $160,579 in 2009. That shows a 7.48% increase. Finance Director Roland stated that is because both people are getting step increases as part of the compensation schedule which has been approved by Council in addition to the 3% because both have achieved merit goals. Insurance and benefits are separate line items. Councilmember Pritzlaff noted Finance goes up 4.45%. Finance Director Roland stated there are certain employees in the scheduled that are still in the step process because they are in their first three years of employment with the City. City Administrator Herlofsky stated the City Engineer and the Police Chief will receive a 3% adjustment to their salary, but they will also be eligible for steps in addition to that. Those steps are between 4- 5%. Anyone who has a step increase will get 4-5% plus 3%, so they will get a 7- 8% increase. If we hired the Finance Director, Police Chief, HR Director at one amount at $70-80,000, each year we would adjust that by some amount. Instead of hiring everyone at $70-80,000, we may hire someone at $56,000 and it may go up to $70-80,000. The type of union agreements we have include a schedule with a starting rate and a rate for 20 years. There are nine steps. Finance Director Roland stated this is the same set of steps we use with our AFSCME contracts. There is one schedule with nine steps, and 20 different job categories. Each step is identified at a dollar amount. Whether you are union or non-union you go through the same step process, it is just a matter of which of the 20 job classifications you belong in. City Administrator Herlofsky noted if someone has Council Minutes (Regular) December 1, 2008 Page 4 been here for nine years and leaves they may be at the top. The new person may be hired at 15-20% less and they work their way up. Councilmember Pritzlaff noted as far as hiring someone at a lower rate, the sheet shows there is only one case where that happened and that is with Community Development in 2003. The Administrative Services Director started at $18,000 more. He noted there is nothing telling him how many steps each of these positions has. There is a 3% increase on the Consent Agenda Council is being asked to approve, but there is nothing telling him what steps these will transition to and there was nothing in 2005. The memo says funding for the annual salary adjustment and insurance contribution is included in the 2009 budget. He said we have already set a levy for the budget. Why was this not approved before September 15, as this has a lot to do with the levy amount. He does not have a total dollar figure as to how much the budget will change from 2008 to 2009 for the 3% increase. It is in the budget as if it will automatically be approved. Finance Director Roland stated at the June budget workshop, Council was provided with the dollar amount for all of the positions in the City at a 3% increase and how it would affect the bottom line of the budget. She did not split that between bargaining and non-bargaining. This did not include step adjustments. The step adjustments are a separate line item or it was discussed at the workshop. Council was also advised what the additional cost of FICA, PERA and insurance would be for all employees, both union and non-union. Councilmember Pritzlaff stated based on this step increase, anyone who would get a step increase and an additional 3% for a total of7%, he will not support that. He will support a certain percent increase if they are at the top, which would be for cost ofliving. To have a 3% on top of a step increase and make it from 7-11 % increase, he would not support a 3 % increase on top of that. City Administrator Herlofsky clarified if someone was at the top, Councilmember Pritzlaffwould understand a 3% increase. In order to manage a salary schedule, in order for people to get to the top you have to have those annual step increases. If you don't those people will never reach the top and that is where you end up with inequities in the salary system. What has been done the last three years is an attempt to keep the integrity of the system, to provide the steps and the annual adjustment that are competitive with other communities in our area to make sure we can maintain the good staff we have. Councilmember Wilson stated the intent of the comparable worth is that if employee A is making $100 a week and employee B is making $50 a week for doing the same type of work, the organization needs to find a way to get employee B up to a comparable value of employee A. The major issue he had with this item is this budget has been more contentious than in the past. Mr. Weber brought up one of the issues of significant concern. He recalled receiving full salary information, but in talking with City Administrator Herlofsky he was surprised at the 4-5 steps within each position. He assumed non-bargaining employees were salaried employees. Councilmember Fogarty noted Council approved item 7g) the Collective Bargaining Agreement for LELS which has the same type of steps with a higher Council Minutes (Regular) December 1, 2008 Page 5 percentage increase, but Councilmember Pritzlaff is not interested in approving this item. She was puzzled as to why he would approve one with a higher percentage and not the other. Councilmember Pritzlaff stated he does not have anything from previous years for the LELS agreement that within the last six years there would be a $30,000 - $33,000 wage increase for six years as two positions have on this agreement. He cannot support that. If there are any positions that have increases left, he would suggest a wage freeze. Looking at a wage increase of 11 % for one year, no one except for a CEO in a big business sees that kind ofreward. This is taxpayer's money. There is 2.75% in 2005,3% here, but when you tack on steps, that is different. The Administrative Services Director between 2003 and 2004, previous Council approved an $18,000 hike in salary, no one starts at those kind of wages. If there are people in this category that have steps for them to receive increases, he would go along with those steps, but to tack on another 3 %, he will not support that. Looking at the Park and Rec position, we do not have that in the budget, and looking at this and needing to find money in the budget, seeing 11 % increases there is money to take out of this. MOTION by Fogarty, second by McKnight to adopt RESOLUTION R75-08 approving the annual salary adjustment effective January 1,2009 for non- represented City employees. Voting for: Soderberg, Fogarty, McKnight. Voting against: Pritzlaff, Wilson. MOTION CARRIED. i-n) Appointment Recommendation Fire Department - Human Resources Councilmember Wilson noted we are adding six employees and asked if some left. Human Resources Director Wendlandt stated a couple people left and some who were hired did not make it through probation because of the time commitment which is significant the first couple years. This brings their complement up to the level they needed. MOTION by Wilson, second by Pritzlaff to approve the appointment recommendations for Dustin Dingman, Matthew Donnelly, Nicholas Luchsinger, Robert Murphree, Timothy Nielsen and James Oates as volunteer firefighters in the Fire Department effective December 8, 2008. APIF, MOTION CARRIED. 8. PUBLIC HEARINGS a) Truth-in-Taxation Hearing - Finance For 2009 the proposed preliminary levy is $9,313,415. This is $443,496 or 5% over the 2008 levy of $8.869 million. The City with the 5% increase is at $417,557 less than the City's levy limit. The general fund revenues for 2009 are projected at $9,128,757. Expenditures are proposed to increase by less than 0.73% over the 2008 adopted budget. Any increases are due to salary and benefit contractual obligations, PERA increases and other professional contract increases which include City Attorney and DCC costs. The proposed capital outlay amounts to $54,000 which is two squad cars. There is no new staff proposed for 2009 and there is a position scheduled for a layoff. This will be the sixth position over the last three years that would be either not hired or removed from the budget. This includes a Community Development Director, two Building Council Minutes (Regular) December 1, 2008 Page 6 Inspectors, the Assistant City Engineer, a part time support staff for Human Resources and the Fire Department, and the Recreation Supervisor position proposed for 2009. Overall the increase to revenue is less than 1 %. Building permits and City licenses are reduced by 40%. The taxes to the general fund increases by 2.2%. A significant portion of the revenues comes from property taxes rather than building permits due to the decline in permits. The tax levy increases 5% over 2008. This results in a tax rate for 2009 of 44.16% compared to 2008 of 43.8%. The City portion of taxes payable on a median value home for 2008 is $1,066. In 2009 it would be $1,036 because of a decline in valuation. Because of a decrease in market value, the 5% levy increase results in a 2.81 % decrease in taxes. Staff presented a graph showing the percentage increase in the budget, the percentage increase in the tax base, and the percentage increase in the levy in a single year. Normally, staff wants to make sure the tax levy increase would be less than the tax base increase. In this case, this has not been achieved. In 2008 and 2009 there is a marked decline in all three categories. For every dollar a resident pays in taxes, $.41 goes to the school district, $.21 goes to the county, $.35 goes to the City, and $.03 goes to other metropolitan taxing district including the Vermillion Watershed. Ms. Julie May, 18860 Elgin Avenue, stated some things she noted is if we know the values are dropping, we know there is a decrease in permit income, we know there is a decrease in the property tax revenue, she felt we need to look at cutting taxes. It seems Council is being as fiscally responsible as possible, but we need to do whatever we can to try to keep people in their homes in Farmington. We know there is a high foreclosure rate in our community and it is extremely painful for everyone now and it will get worse before it gets better. We see this coming, and even though it is only 5% it is still an increase. Councilmember Fogarty stated Julie May is our Councilmember-elect and while the percentage has gone up, the price per property owner across the board has gone down, so property owners are going to see a decrease in their City tax for 2009. Councilmember Wilson was perplexed by Ms. May's comments under the potential assumption that there is something glaring in here that she was seeing that Council is over-taxing. He asked if she would like to enlighten Council at some point in terms of what area. He agreed taxes are high, but they are decreasing across the board for every property owner in Farmington. He would like to see the budget lower than it is, but he felt that was a little bit of a shot at Council and unfair. Councilmember Pritzlaff stated when talking about individual property taxes going down, he is paying less in taxes this year than last year, but his home value went down $8,000. He will not take credit for that as a Councilmember, nor will he take credit for the amount of taxes going down. None of us expect our houses to go down in value. Everyone does not like paying taxes, but there are amenities Council Minutes (Regular) December I, 2008 Page 7 that go with those taxes so do we think our house should be worth less through the year and a gold mine at the end? He does not look at it like that. His home value is going down and that is why he is paying less. To pay less this year in City tax is only because the property values have gone down. At the last meeting he mentioned some things that could have brought the tax levy from a 5% increase to a 3.5% increase and the majority of Council did not approve them. He agreed we need to keep the taxes lower and make some additional cuts. Finance Director Roland stated she has received a lot of phone calls asking why we do not get more commercial/industrial development in the City so residents do not have to pay so much in taxes. Currently 86% of the tax base is in residential housing. Weare at that point where a lot of big businesses want to come in with commercial and industrial. In 2004 the State changed the way they value properties. Residential housing up to $500,000 in market value is taxed at 1 % of the market value. Retail, commercial and industrial businesses are taxed at 1.5% of the market value. Where we get the idea that the tax base will get more diversified by the commercial and industrial properties coming in, comes before 2004 when businesses were taxed on 4% of the market value, not 1.5%. We want economic development in Farmington. When it comes to tax benefit, it is not what it used to be. It will not immediately solve the tax base problem in Farmington. Councilmember Pritzlaff stated a business may wonder if that is the only reason we want them here. One reason is for shopping, and two it does not look very attractive that the only reason we want businesses to come here is for their taxes. MOTION by Pritzlaff, second by Wilson to close the public hearing. APIF, MOTION CARRIED. Adoption of the final budget and tax levy will take place at the December 15, 2008 meeting. 9. AWARD OF CONTRACT 10. PETITIONS, REQUESTS AND COMMUNICATIONS a) Approve Change Order for Spruce Street/2nd Street Project - Engineering Council awarded the Spruce Street project on July 7, 2008. During the project, on the corner of Third and Spruce Street during excavation workers discovered two buried barrels underneath the sidewalk. The fiber optic cable was bored through the barrels, therefore, the barrels had to be cut out to prevent damage to the fiber optic cable. The change order in the amount of $1 ,662.40 is to compensate the contractor for the extra work. There were no identifying markings on the barrels. It was necessary to remove them in order to install a fire hydrant. MOTION by Wilson, second by McKnight to approve the change order in the amount of $1,662.40. APIF, MOTION CARRIED. Council Minutes (Regular) December 1, 2008 Page 8 b) Approve Change Order for 20Sth Street Project - Engineering Council awarded the 208th Street project on October 2, 2006. The first item was a sleeve that needed to be installed to connect two of the water lines, also a concrete apron for the R&L Trucking entrance, an error in the calculation in the amount of fill necessary for the roadway construction which lead the contractor to borrow material from the boulevard to build the road to the proposed lines and grades on the plan. The borrowed material was replaced by material from the Elm Street project. The final item was the replacement of 41 ft. of curb and gutter prior to placing the wear course. The total amount of the change order is $9,191.75. MOTION by Wilson, second by Fogarty to approve the change order in the amount of$9,191.75. APIF, MOTION CARRIED. 11. UNFINISHED BUSINESS 12. NEW BUSINESS 13. COUNCIL ROUNDTABLE Councilmember Pritzlaff: He received a call from a resident on 2nd Street regarding the plow truck going up and down 2nd Street three times at 45 mph going through the stop sign. They are not emergency vehicles and he did not feel they should be going through stop signs. City Administrator Herlo/sky: downtown on Saturday. Reminded everyone of the events occurring Mayor Soderberg: with the Governor. Reminded Council of the Yellow Ribbon event on Friday 14. ADJOURN MOTION by Fogarty, second by McKnight to adjourn at 8:22 p.m. APIF, MOTION CARRIED. Respectfully submitted, ~~~ Cynthia Muller Executive Assistant