12/02/2003 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Council Minutes of 12/2/2Q(13 or an employee. Those new rates will go into effect once this legislation is passed. The committee recommended approval. AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION Dennis Lambert, 25057 Carey Lane. ^ Regarding hazards of cell towers, the greatest hazard is talking on the cell phone. A person has a better chance of getting a sunburn in a snow storm from that telecommunications tower than getting harmed by it. ^ Regarding newspaper articles about the library, he asked the Mayor if the old library is going to be sold and is the price still $550,000? Mayor Musial said the matter is before Council. Mr. Lambert feels the city should take the $550,000 from the schools as the use of the property is limited Don Pangrac, 23470 Sharon Drive ^ He asked Finance Director Copfer to clarify the sewer charge question. His understanding is, if you use less than 1 MCF, you get charged for that much anyway. Mrs. Copfer explained that Council passed legislation to give a credit at one point during the year for four quarters. Mr. Pangrac is concerned about Mr. Gareau's comments regarding possibly terminating the credit program His understanding of why this is in place is because the City of Cleveland's billing system cannot handle less than 1 MCF. Finance Director Copfer agreed that their minimum billing is 1 MCF. Mr. Pangrac said he would urge Council to retain the credit-why should a citizen be charged for water they didn't use because Cleveland's billing system can't handle it? Finance Director Copfer explained that Mr. Gareau was just responding to the fact that, when it was determined that we could do this, the original estimates based on a previous four quarters was $100,000. Now, this preliminary number is $164,000. Councilman Gareau said he was not suggesting the program be terminated at this point in time. But, the cost is different from what was originally discussed and it does have an impact upon the operations of the WWTP and the budget for that facility. They have incoming revenue and expenses they meet every year. It is probably one of the most efficient divisions in terms of the budget process that we have in the city. If the budget is calculated and the cost to meet expenses for upgrades that the EPA has made us do is at one number and then we decide that our incoming revenue can take a hit of $100,000 or $120,000 and suddenly it jumps up to $160,000 or more, you have to stop and look at whether it can be done. He understands the fairness argument as he was on the Mayor's task force and heard about it for three years. The reality is, if the program would be continued, the rate they are paying would be increased as everybody would have to pay more to make up for the difference. If you have to have a minimum amount of money and the program causes it to drop below that number, you have to find the money somewhere. It is way too early to determine if the program is going to continue or get off the ground until we have a hard number to work with. If it came in at $300,000, he does not believe the program could continue. Councilman Limpert commented that one of the difficulties at WWTP in billing is most of the costs at the plant are fixed. If we lower the rates substantially for some people, we can only do so much cost costing. i_