02/04/2003 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Council Minutes of 2/4/2003 ,,~,,, conducted. The board made no decisions on that day, but a Board of Control meeting is w.W; scheduled for next Tuesday at which time the board will act upon the issue. 11) On February 4, he sent a draft of the new fire fighters' agreement to the Mayor and Safety Director for review. The contract has been reviewed by the city's labor negotiator, and he would expect that the City Council will be looking at legislation to approve it at the February 18 Council meeting. Regarding Mr. Murman's report, Mrs. Kasler noted she had read it and, as a lawyer, she does have some disagreement with it. As a Councilperson, she does not have authorization to act upon that disagreement. Also, as a Councilperson, she has no authority to affect discipline on a Safety Director who, at minimum, created some misleading information and caused disrespect to a 26-year employee who is above reproach. It doesn't take criminal action to affect discipline. Her question to the Mayor is will there be discipline with respect to this incident? Mayor Musial said he would take it under consideration. Finance Director Copfer: 1) She assisted the Mayor and the administration in completing the budget which was introduced to Council this evening. 2) She has been watching with great anticipation what Governor Taft is going to do with this year's balancing of the budget that ends 2003 and also next year's two-year budget. She is concerned primarily with two issues that have been bantered about in the Ohio Municipal League bulletins. One is that they are looking at the central collection of municipal corporate net profit taxes. They are doing this because they want to make it easier for the businesses who work in multiple municipalities to file tax forms. Since the revenue is split, they would file once and it would be re-directed. However, the monies that they would charge the city to collect on our behalf could be 5% of the collection. RITA charges only 2%. So, we would effectively lose 3% right off the top. The Department of Taxation's report came out yesterday and she plans to review it as it could impact us significantly. Also, the reduction in the local government funding and revenue assistance funds could affect the city by potentially X150,000. These issues have not been reflected in the budget, but we will have to deal with them when and if they come up. 3) Regarding PERS, they are now anticipating requiring the employers to pay at the end of the next month, which is when the employees' share of their contributions is paid. To catch the city up to that schedule, it would mean that we would have to do 14 months of contributions instead of 12 which we normally do. Those 14 months are considered in our budget. President O'Grady reported on a meeting he attended on January 22 at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport sponsored by the City of Cleveland's Dept. of Port Control. The focus of the meeting was to present an overview of the expansion plans for Cleveland Hopkins Airport. The focus as far as the suburban officials were concerned rested cleazly with the question of sound insulation for homes that are affected by the increased number of take-offs. The Dept. of Port Control is well ahead of schedule, and they anticipate that by the end of this year they wilt have completed the sound insulation work on all homes that are affected at an average rate of 65 decibels and above by aircraft noise. With that in mind, they intend to request discretionary funding for the years 2004 and 2005 to move 6