03/15/2005 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Council Minutes of 3/15/2005 6. The Service Director has a concern about the tree replacement program and the fact that trees are not being replaced quickly enough. This subject will be fisher investigated at a later date as there are funding issues as well; 7. In Fleet Maintenance, the computer costs were once again reduced from $2,500 to $500 because it is a centralized computer cost and that will be discussed at another meeting. • In the Law Department, few changes took place. Some of note are as follows: 1. An increased amount appears for law clerks due to the reduced cost realized last year which will increase this year and the change in the amount that Cleveland State reimburses through the Work Study Program; 2. Contracted legal fees was reduced to $8,000 this year. Last year the expenditure was around $29,000 to defend the lawsuit brought by the Mayor against the City with regard to Public Records. Since an appeal has been filed with the Ohio Supreme Court by the Mayor, this $8,000 may be insufficient to defend this case further; 4} A Finance Committee budget meeting was held on Monday, March 14. Present were President O'Grady; Councilmen Limpert, Gareau, Kasler and Miller; Directors Dubelko, Driscoll, Farver and Copfer; the Mayor and guests. In the absence of a list of potential and discussed changes to be made to the budget as well as a request of add-ons should funding become available, the committee deferred this discussion to the next scheduled meeting on Wednesday, March 16. The committee continued to discuss any leftover items that needed additional information or new topics that had not yet been discussed: 1. A question by Councilman Gareau requesting the approximate cost of demolition of a condemned home and whether those demolition costs had been included in the budget. They have not as yet, and that cost will be determined. 2. Street striping. The cost is $68,000, and those costs were explained. 3. Solid waste recycling includes the cost of leaf pick-up in the city. This topic was discussed, and the suggestion was made that in-house services be investigated for the leaf pick-up. It was brought to the committee's attention that Service Director Driscoll has partially investigated this topic and determined that manpower needed to perform this job in-house would be detrimental to the performance of other service-related duties. He was asked by the committee to further investigate how other cities perform this service if they do in-house as well as to look into other providers. That is again a funding issue to see whether or not our charges are in excess in any way. He agreed to do that as well. This will be done at a later time, however, because we are in the second year of a three-year contract so that no changes could be made at this time. 7