01/06/2004 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Council Minutes of 1/6!2004 {~,,,' quickly fill the vacant position on the Commission. (4) The city's ethics code. The procedures of the local Ethics Commission probably should be modeled more closely after the state Ethics Commission. There are some good points to be made to reorganizing the commission. It does pose some problems having city officials judging the behavior of other city officials. (5) Springvale, this ties in a little bit with the city's ethics code. City Council should look at the matter of pricing at Springvale for public officials. Springvale management should not in the future be placed in the sometimes awkward position of negotiating rates for Springvale events which are held by public officials who either have the authority to appoint andlor remove Springvale management employees, or for that matter who have legislative authority to set the compensation wages for those employees. Springvale needs to continue to have authority to compete in the market place and to set rates. (b) Director of Law settlement authority. Councilman Gareau will sponsor the first piece of legislation in 2004 regarding this issue. Right now neither the City Charter nor the codified ordinances provide for anyone in the city to settle claims. This is a legal housekeeping detail and will be good legislation for the city. Items desired for the Law Department in 2004 include the Law Department composition and Law Department location. Last year, awork-study grant from Cleveland State University was obtained that partially funds the law clerk's position. Because of the large number of cases in Rocky River Municipal Court, our city law clerk devotes a lot of his time to assisting the Prosecutor in handling those cases. He proposes that the city create a second part-time law clerk position. With the work-study grant that the Law Department received last year which goes into this year, and by judicious use of that position on a part time basis, it can be accomplished without any significant increase in funding for the department. It is his goal to keep funding for the department, as close as he can, the same for the four years of his term. One of his goals was to relocate the Law Department into acity-owned building during this term in office, but it seems that is not going to happen. The best possibility was the old library building, but it appears the city has made the choice to sell that building. He fully supports that because it wouldn't make much sense to have the Law Department taking 1,500 square feet out of a 13,000 square foot building with no other plans for the rest of it. He will request legislation to approve the department's office lease in their current building. Hopefully, all the information contained in the written report will be helpful for Council to understand the operations of the Law Department and also for use in planning legislative work in 2004. He looks forward to working with Council again in 2004. Finance Director Copfer: 1) For the last couple of weeks, she has been dealing with a lot of year-end issues. There are a lot of issues that go on at the end of the year to make sure that the budget is in line with what Council appropriated. She has also spent considerable time involved in labor negotiations that have been going on in the last month and will continue in January. 2) She is reviewing the RFP for the computer purchase and will be bringing that to Council in the form of a resolution hopefully in February. 3) The RITA income tax collections ended 1.5% over plan, which is $170,000. That was primarily in withholding. There were actually declines in net profits, and individual income was pretty much even. There is $170,000 in the pipeline for estate taxes for }' 2004. This first-half collection is usually the larger portion. 2