10/05/2004 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Council Minutes of 10/5/2004 Finance Director Copfer: 1) On September 22 and 23, she attended the Ohio Society of ;,,~. CPA's accounting show at the IX Center and earned 16 CPE credits, of which she is required to earn 40 annually. 2) July and August have been closed. Leslie, the new Assistant Finance Director, has caught up and has done a great job at it. August was completed yesterday, and it looks like income tax collections in the General Fund are currently over plan, which equates to about $160,000. Hopefully, all things will stay level, even during December which is sometimes a shaky month, and we will have that increase. The estate tax will still be over plan by about $100,000. Building permits and inspections revenue was actually under plan by about 5% or $16,000. Interest income is under plan. Rocky River Court fines are going to be about $14,000 over plan. The cable TV franchise fees are about $20,000 over plan, or will be by the end of the year. However, the bus administrative fee is going to be about $40,000 below plan. They're cutting their expenses and watching because of the reductions in service, and they are making sure that they are operating efficiently. So that negatively impacts the General Fund and the administrative fee. Looking at the expenses, there's nothing that jumps out that's excessively under. A transfer ordinance will be prepared that will hopefully take us through the end of the year as the Finance Dept. will be busy converting to the new computer system. Items to be included in the transfer are legal fees, gasoline oil which is definitely going to be over, overtime for police slightly over, overtime for fire more over. All the items equate to a little over $200,000. With that being said, she expects that there will be some money in the budget that won't be spent because, as long as she has been tracking it, people have always had a 1 % of the appropriations carried over. With the revenue being over about three hundred thousand and expenses about two hundred thousand, she is estimating about a $500,000 carryover. 3) The Finance Dept. has completed and issued two-thirds of the sewer credit checks during the last two weeks. The total number will be 3,300, and the total refunds will be about $86,000. This will also be included in the transfer ordinance. She noted that two- thirds of the project has already taken over 200 hours to enter into our system because of our process. It is labor intensive as the checks have to be torn apart, stuffed into envelopes and run through the postage machine. Extra checks and envelopes had to be ordered. We are probably approaching about seven or eight thousand dollars in administrative costs to do this. She has spoken to the Mayor and asked that this be revisited as soon as possible before the next sewer credits are due because it is just too cumbersome a process. It uses money and resources that could be spent elsewhere. Someone had mentioned, and she believes it is a good idea, that the individuals who wish to have a refund should present their bills during a specific time period and a check will be issued. Another unexpected problem that presented itself was that many widows did not take their utilities out of their husbands names; hence, the checks were written to the deceased spouse and must now be reissued. 4) She also attended the meeting with RTA about the operating agreement, and the negotiations with the clericaUtechnical union. She attended the records commission meeting where she finally got the Finance Department's records retention schedule approved and also aone-time records destruction for those that are already long past what their records retention policy has been approved for. 6 ,,~.,A.~_ ., I