08/17/1999 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Council Minutes of 8/17/99 program offered by the Regional Sewer District. Regarding the ditches, President ~~,., Saringer noted that a city administrator (engineer) some years ago did not like the idea of filling in ditches. He felt that open ditches would simply overflow when filled but covered ditches would back up into basements. As to costs of summer sprinkling, Mrs. Saringer suggested that Mr. Wooten investigate the possibility of a second meter. Mr. Wooten would prefer not to do this because of the cost. Mr. Gareau thanked Mr. Wooten for his comments and pointed out that over the past several years the city has been trying to work on culverting ditches. There is a limited amount of money, but the ultimate goal is to cover all of the ditches, starting with the roadside ditches and working our way up to the big projects such as the one Mr. Wooten spoke about. Joe Bouman, 23950 Gessner Road, said that he was officially withdrawing from the Council-at-Large race. On another matter, at the last meeting he was somewhat "emotional" about the fact that there was a Council meeting during Council's vacation and that he and other citizens did not know about it. Since that time, Council has voted, at another special meeting, on a large amount of borrowing. He does not feel this should be done without allowing the people of North Olmsted to listen and input at three regularly scheduled Council meetings. Mr. O'Grady thanked Mr. Bouman for his comments. He and all of Council would agree that the people have a voice in the process. In a perfect world, that is the way it would always be-there would be three readings at three regularly scheduled meetings. However, for many reasons,. Council is often imposed upon to hold special meetings in order to fulfill their responsibilities to the residents. We are very interested in insuring that we stay as the spokesmen and as the representatives of our taxpayers. As the chairman of Finance committee, he can assure Mr. Bouman that the committee has worked extremely hard to ensure that the city debt has been reduced in every way possible. He wanted to point out to Mr. Bouman, however, that eleven of the twelve notes were not new borrowing but simply replacement notes. The only new borrowing was $300,000 for Springvale, and this money will be repaid from the profits/revenues generated by that facility and not from tax money. Mr. Bouman said he was concerned about that borrowing because the taxpayers are the co-signers and it does add to the city's debt. He has been attending meetings fairly regularly for a couple of years and has gained a tremendous amount of respect for Council and all the time that is put into the job. At one point, he thought it was a pretty good part-time job. However, at this point, he thinks Council earns every penny. However, this is the United States and this is government and we are all here to make sure that we keep each other on our toes. Mr. Limpert noted that, although there was some new borrowing, the total debt of the city did go down in 1998 and will go down in 1999. Law Director Gareau observed that we hear a great deal about debt as if debt is a bad word. As a city government, we are in the business of providing services. You cannot borrow money with notes and bonds for ordinary operating expenses. We borrow for capital improvements. If you pay attention to the titles of the ordinances, they are for street repairs, sewers and things of that nature. The ditch an earlier speaker asked to have filled in may be done as a result of one of those borrowings. If the city did not borrow, roads and sewers would not be repaired. The borrowing is scheduled for capital improvements over a period of time where they can be paid off. Then when they are paid off, the cycle begins again because roads last for 20 years and bonds are only for 20 8