11/19/2002 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Council Minutes of 11/19/2002 Law Director Dubelko: 1) Since the last Council meeting, he has attended committee meetings on several days. Also, he has spem a good deal of time attending six budget- related meetings at City Hall and follow-up legal work from those meetings. 2} On November 11, along with the Finance Director, he attended afact-finding hearing involving the fire fighter collective bargaining agreemem negotiations. There should be some recommendation being made to Council on that in the near future. Finance Director Copfer: 1) On October 11, the County Budget Commission voted to eliminate the annual preparation and filing of the tax budget in its current form effective in 2003, which is for the 2004 budget. Every community will be able to submit the new and simplified, six-page format, of the tax budget. There will be no need to advertise for and have a public hearing on the tax budget as has been required in the past unless there is a local government requirement. The only two caveats, which North Olmsted does adhere to, are that the new budget needs to be approved by the City Council prior to submission to the Budget Commission and the agenda for the meeting at which Council will consider the passage of the tax budget is provided to the newspapers of general circulation in our community. 2) On Thursday, the Assistant Finance Director and the payroll bookkeeper attended an employer's PERS seminar on the new defined contribution plan being offered by PERS for all new hires, beginning after January 1, 2003, or also is available for all employees with less than five years of PERS service eligibility. They will be allowed to transfer, if they choose, their previous employer's and employee's contributions to this defined contribution option. PERS will be sending information to those who aze eligible to make this choice. The inteirt of the defined conrribution plan is to give the employees more control over their pension investment options. The good thing for the city is that an employee's choice is seamless to our existing reporting. We withhold at the same amount, and we pay our 13.5% employer's share regardless, which is good because our pension reporting is a modification to our software and it would cost about $5,000 to modify for any of these new requirements. 3) In mid-October, the city received notice that our software provider would not support software on certain older IBM operating systems. We are using the oldest version operating system, and the software company's quote was $59,000 in required hardware and operating system software. The price will go up by December 1 i, and the upgrade needs tv be completed by March 31, 2003 as that is when they will no longer support our software that resides on this antiquated hazdwaze. It is a short notice and limits the department's ability to analyze options. Also, we will need three other modifications to the system at a cost of $5;000 each. She is investigating if there are other options and whether the city can somehow buy support for an extended period of time after March 31 in order to explore the possibility of getting a new computer system rather than putting money into an already outdated system. 4) Notification was received from the Bureau of Worker's Compensation on the 2002 rates, which will be paid in 2003 because public employers pay in arrears. It appears that the four hours that she and the Mayor spent in 2001 at a mandatory conference not only got the city $68,000 in a rebate, which will be received at the end of this month and also was included in estimated resources, but it also earned a 50% credit on the 2002 premium payment to be paid in 2003. That equates to about a $130,000 savings instead of having 3