05/15/2007 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Council Minutes of 5/15/2007 transferring this money to either or to both the Fire Station Bond Retirement Fund or the Library Bond Retirement Fund. Those are both voted issues. By transferring the money there, the amount of property taxes that are going to be paid will be reduced and, in effect, the money is refunded money back to the taxpayers. Finance Director Copfer said this situation was talked about in the budget hearings. The wiser course that she is recommending, and that bond counsel agrees with because these monies were to pay sewer debt, is to put it in the General Obligation Bond Retirement Fund in which we have a substantial amount of post-1987 sewer debt that is getting funded through user charges from the WWTP. We have stretched out our rate from 1996, and this year in budget hearings it was decided these monies should go into the General Obligation Bond Retirement Fund to help alleviate what the Sewer Revenue Fund has to provide for their debt service for the post-1987 sewer debt. That is in effect assisting in keeping our rate constant for this year to do that. In effect, you are giving it back to the taxpayers, but instead you're doing it by not raising the sewer rates this year. The other issue Mr. Burns alluded to was that somehow we purposely didn't assign the appropriate millage. For years she requested and tried to convince the county to reduce the amount they were levying. She kept requesting less, and they would not do it until they finally realized in 2003/2004 she was telling the truth. They did start reducing the millage probably three years before the end of it. What was happening was Fairview's money was sporadically being collected and paid. That also goes in there; and, therefore, she thinks what they were looking at was the total debt and taxes paying that debt. She did finally get them convinced to start lowering it, but it was too late. This was not her doing, but it was the County Budget Commission which sets the taxing millage and how much they feel is needed to pay specific debt. She feels it should go into the General Obligation Band Retirement Fund to assist in paying sewer debt because that's what it was collected for to begin with. Mr. Burns said two problems with that is that the sewer rates are based on water usage and not on property values. And he doesn't see a companion ordinance giving taxpayers a credit or a reduction in sewer rates so homeowners can recoup this money. Finance Director Copfer explained it's not a reduction of the sewer rates, it's that it didn't go up for another year when it was intended to go up in 2000. The 1996 rate was only supposed to last until 2000. We squeaked out another year of 2007 that it has not gone up. While the city is doing the rate and operational study, this assisted in assuring that rate would not have to go up this year. While a user fee, it's still paying debt service that was for sewer bond retirement. Mr. Burns suggested that Council not pass this issue under suspension and take it back into committee. Councilman Miller said, if the suspension vote does not pass, it will be taken back into committee for further discussion. 2) Dennis Lambert, 25057 Carey Lane, spoke about Ordinance 2007-50. He believes the city cars should be labeled because the public has a right to know where their property is at all times. This government should respect the fact that the property is owned by the community. The federal and state governments have no problem labeling their vehicles. He thanked Mr. Orlowski for being one of the sponsors of the legislation and displaying honesty and trust in the people who put him in office. He thinks any responsible Council member would have no problem asking that the city label their vehicles as city owned property. If not, that would raise some serious questions as to why they wouldn't want the people to know where their vehicles are. 8 4