10/20/1998 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Council Minutes of 10/20/98 ., discharge division heads. But, if the director discharges the division head, that is not ~w appealable to Council. If the Mayor discharges a division head, then that removal must be upheld by atwo-thirds vote of Council. The Supreme Court recognized it was a strange ruling, but they believed it was how the Charter read. (It may be a good idea to look at this section of the Charter during the next Charter review.) 4) We have received the brief in the case that challenged the constitutionality of our tree ordinance. The city's brief will be filed within nine days. Finance Director Copfer: 1) Amended substitute House Bill 426 was passed. This bill allows a taxing authority to establish a reserve balance account for each of the following three purposes: 1. Budget stabilization, which is limited and cannot exceed 5% of the General Fund's revenue for the proceeding year. (Ours would be $800,000.) Z. Payment of claims under aself-insurance program. 3. Payment of claims under a retrospective ratings plan for workers' compensation. These are added to already allowable purposes for creating a special revenue fund for the payment of the accumulation of employees' earned but unused benefits such as vacation and sick Leave, and capital projects funds for the purpose of accumulating resources to acquire, construct or improve fixed assets of a subdivision. The specific purpose/project must be determined--fixed assets must be specifically identified. (Council, back in 1995, passed a resolution supporting the legislation that created these two purposes.) These are some of the things that need to be considered when talking about the $350,000 from our workers' comp refund or other monies that might become available, such as an excessive estate tax. An argument could be made for all of them except the workers' comp because our city is premium based, not retrospective. • Budget stabilization. Everyone knows what the predictions for the economy are. The state is already seeing a decrease in revenues. The City of Cleveland has already taken defensive strategies to protect for that. We know what is happening in the world markets, which do impact even North Olmsted. • The fixed assets are very important to plan for capital projects that we might be considering instead of borrowing for them. • The self-insurance. The city is self-insured for hospitalization, and there has been some discussion as far as not really having adequate reserves in those accounts. Council should be thinking about all these issues in preparation for the discussion on how to use the workers' comp rebate. 2) The auditors will be completing their on-site field work this week. There is no firm date for final issuance, but she would want it sooner as opposed to later because GASB, the Governmental Accounting Standards Board, regulations came out at the end of last month on disclosures for the year 2000. This will necessitate more field work to be done by special auditors that are adept at testing specific 2000 issues. We did include some of this information in our SEC filing; however, she would prefer to get 1997 to bed and deal with these new disclosures in the 1998 audit, which will be coming up soon. 2