02/18/2003 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Council Minutes of 2/18/2003 amounts will fall below the $5.8 million that was originally set as the maximum by City Council subject to the pending legislation tonight. 5) On February 12, he provided a memo to the Service and Safety Directors regarding Canterbury Road; specifically, traffic control devices near the intersection of Sweetbrier and Canterbury and also the handicapped ramp on the southwest corner. 6) On February 15, he attended one of a series of Finance Committee meetings that are being held by City Council regarding the 2003 budget and answered questions regarding the Law Department's budget for 2003. 7) On February 16, he reviewed and revised almost all of the library construction contracts to have them in shape for execution as soon as possible. 8) On February 17, he spent the afternoon with the Cuyahoga County Law Directors' Association attending the annual municipal law workshop. There were two extremely timely topics that were addressed at the meeting. One was a presentation by Stanley Dubowski, a partner at Calfee Halter & Griswold, who gave some good tips on the construction contract bidding process and change orders. That information will be useful as the new library is being constructed. The second good topic was on the relatively new state right-of--way legislation that was passed last October. This is an area that the City of North Olmsted should def nitely get into in the relatively new future. A couple of larger cities, Dayton and Toledo, have passed new right-of--way legislation and the rates are being challenged before the PUCO by utility companies. Depending on how those things shake out before the PUCO and the appellate process, the City of North Olmsted will get some good guidance on how to craft good right-of--way legislation that will enable us to hopefully pass on to the utility companies and the telecommunications providers some of the costs that we now bear from the General Fund in providing engineering inspection services, etc. Finance Director Copfer: 1) With regard to the budget problems going on down at the state level, it seems that the House version of the budget to fix this year's state budget which ends June 30, has taken out any cuts to local government funding. This is the local government fund and local government revenue assistance program, which gets distributed to the county and then gets distributed out. That is good news. It is still in the two-year bi-annual budget, but there are discussion of freezing that rate, which would Limit the growth but is better than cutting it. However, the two-year budget contains a gas tax increase, and the impact of that on the city is not known at this time. The city currently receives approximately three hundred thousand dollars in gas tax monies a year. The increase would be redistributed back to the city, and those monies would go into funds that are restricted by state law for the maintenance and repair of streets in the city. 2) The City of Fairview Park has passed the amendment to the capital agreement. We are in the process of getting the documents prepared and signed by our city and also their officials in Fairview. Once that is completed, within 10 days they will be paying us $347,267.58, which is going into the sanitary sewer fund. These are debt service payments that bring Fairview Park from 1996 through 2002. They will then be current by paying on asemi-annual basis. The city sewer fund has already paid the debt to the bond retirement fund, and the bond retirement fund has paid the debt over those years. These monies should go back to repay the sanitary sewer fund. 2 i