12/03/2001 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Council Minutes of 12/3/20(11 3) Ordinance 2001-156 declares the necessity and intent of the city to acquire the property that will lead to the park-and-ride. Council will soon receive an ordinance either amending the operating agreement between the Regional Transit Authority and the city or authorizing a new agreement whereby the Regional Transit Authority will put up the funds to appropriate the property. Also they will agee, once the road is constructed, to maintain it, which includes repair, replacement, snow plowing, etc. Finance Director Copfer: 1) The October revenue and expenditure reports were given to Council on Friday. Unfortunately, the key characteristic reports for the revenue as a comparison to the prior year were not included. Council will receive them tomorrow. Councilman Miller, chairperson of the Recreation, Public Parks and Buildings Committee: 1) The committee met on Thursday, November 29. The meeting began at approximately 6:05 p.m. and ended at 8:10 p.m. In attendance were all Council members, including Presidern Saringer. Also in attendance were Finance Director Copfer, Safety Director Jenkins, Mayor Musial, Service Director Bohlmann and golf course manager Marty Young. Because of the scheduled Finance Committee meeting at 6:30 p.m. and tree lighting ceremony at 7, various people had to excuse themselves during the course of the meeting. Before the meeting began, the chair announced that the purpose of the meeting was to determine if the currern economic situation would impact Springvale's ability to make payments incurred for golf course improvements and what should be done to rectify the situation. In fairness to all, the committee was reminded that the meeting was scheduled only several days after the previous Council meeting and Thanksgiving was in between. Final answer was not expected to be presented or resolved at this meeting. Marty Young began the meeting with the comment that historically a recession does not hamper golf. Further, it was stated that all contracting in regards to the bidding process was going as scheduled according to the original timeline presented to Council. However, the rain days that the contractor is now counting is up to 30 days. He is now projecting, in a best-case scenario, that the course will not open until Memorial Day. No rain days were allowed for in the bidding process. Because revenue projections were based on full completion of the course improvemerns this year, the administration is projecting that they will not be able to make new debt payments next year, nor will they be able to make old debt payments without completely draining down the carry-over funds, which is not advisable. Finance Director Copfer advised that Council could consider different options. The first option, which is her recommendation, is to use the bond retirement fund for paying the debt service, both old and new, relieving the course of payments for one year with pay back to the fund after that time, possibly in the following three years. No mention was made of payment period or dollar amount. That question was brought up and will be brought up through the Law Departmern for review. Also, there was a discussion as to whether or not there should be an agreement in writing as to payments as this course was purchased with the understanding that it could stand on its own financially. Also, the committee wanted to know if the bond retirement fund can be used to pay into an enterprise fund. Mrs. Copfer indicated that the answer was yes, per advice of bond counsel. The second option was to use general fund monies. Another option was to stop the project and not meet our long-term projections or goals. Refinancing was not an option as the costs of financing this project would go up. A 2 I