05/18/2004 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Council Minutes of 5/18/2004 7) On May 17, he received an order from the Court of Appeals regarding the Mayor's public records lawsuit. He will discuss that in more detail with Council in executive session at the end of this meeting. Finance Director Copfer: 1) Also attended the negotiating sessions mentioned by the Law Director. 2) The local government services (LGS), who is doing our GAAP conversion and creating the new financial statement format, requested that the city obtain a 30-day extension from the Auditor of State's May 31 filing deadline to give them more time to ensure that our financial statements meet the new G.A.S.B. reporting model. The extension was granted. 3) March 2004 books are closed and the financial statements are in Council's mailboxes this evening. The first quarter analysis isn't complete; however, she will note that the General Fund revenue is up 5.4% over last year and expenses are up 5.8% over last year. The revenue increase can primarily be attributed to the fact that we have received more in property tax advances in the first quarter of this year than last year. The increased expenses cannot be attributed to any one issue. Several areas are over last year, including hospitalization costs and the Fire Department's costs. Also, several positions were vacant in the early part of 2003 that are now filled such as the Engineer, the Assistant Chief of Fire and the City Planner. In comparison to what we planned for this year, 29% of the estimated resources have been collected as of March 2004 and last year 28% had been collected through March. We are at 26% expended of what was appropriated for both March of 2003 and this year. We are living within our means, and we are living within our plan. On a positive note, there is nothing that requires serious adjustments to be made. 5) A review for Springvale was not done as there is little activity there during the first quarter of the year. However, it should be noted that there was a deficit of $68,830 at the end of March 2004. 6) She was notified by William Strong of the Cleveland Division of Water that they will not be issuing the credits on the water bill for us even though they acknowledge that we have had discussions. They said that they expected the number of credits to be less, and they can't accommodate 3,300 accounts being credit manually. She is making other arrangements to achieve this through the Department of Finance. This can be done in two ways. If the department does the work, she will have to purchase additional checks as they have only enough to make it through the rest of the year. She is looking at possibly hiring an outside company to do the printing. This would require the opening of anew bank account in which the exact amount of money would be deposited. This would allow the present checking account to be clear of lingering issues. With the start- up of the new computer system, she would prefer the checking account to be clear. It might be a better control to put it in a separate bank account and issue the checks in a lump by an outside vendor She will investigate the cost of an outside vendor, but believes it wilt not be significant and could be legitimately charged to the billing fees for the Wastewater Treatment Plant, which is in the budget. 7) It appears from the initial review of our computer system proposals that were received, four to six systems may be worthy of an on-site demonstration. The demonstrations will be scheduled for the week of June 28 through July 2. 3