03/18/2008 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Council Minutes of 3/18/2008 of North Olmsted for the year ending December 31, 2008. The evening meeting was dedicated to discussions as follows: an overview of the budget and estimated resources; discussion of the budgets for the Finance Dept., Human Resources Dept., Planning Dept., Law Dept., the Mayor's office, and City Council. The Saturday meeting was devoted to discussing the budgets of the Community Life Services Dept., Safety Dept., and Service Dept., and then a budget wrap-up. To begin with, Finance Director Copfer advised of several issues with respect to finances: 1. A change in property tax methodology resulted in a change to the General Fund from property taxes in the amount of $390,000.00; 2. Municipal income taxes decreased slightly in 2007. Withholding decreased by $116,000, primarily due to out tax credit and changes in other municipalities tax rates; and net profits declined by $50,000. 3. Charges for services decreased by $200,000. This covers things like EMS fees, RTA payments which we no longer have, administrative fees, and administrative fees from Enterprise Funds. 4. Cable fees increased slightly over the prior year. 5. Engineering and building permit fees have leveled or declined slightly. 6. Fines and forfeitures have leveled off. 7. Intergovernmental revenues have decreased . This includes local government funds set by the state, estate taxes and CAT tax reimbursement. 8. Interest earnings have increased significantly due to the interest rates. 9. Hotel /Motel receipts were the highest since 2001. The General Fund budget for 2008 is $22,345,513. The total budget, inclusive of all other funds, is $57,127,638, which will be off by a couple of dollars due to a change. In 2007, we had 246 current full time employees. Director of Human Resources Cheryl Farver provided a timeline of how many employees we have had in the past versus what we have now. Biggest losses and changes since 1998 include the loss of all 65 bus line employees; Engineering from 9 employees to 4; Storm Crew from 13 to 5; Forestry from 12 to 7. The total full time employee difference from 1998 to 2007 is a decrease from 336 to 246, with 65 of the total change coming from NOMBL. This results in a 25 employee difference over the course of the past 10 years. About 85% of the $22 million figure is used to pay wages and benefits. Interesting figures include the government share of retirement plans: for each employee enrolled in PERS North Olmsted pays 14% of that person's salary toward the pension; for each employee in the Police Retirement program, North Olmsted pays 19.5% of that person's salary toward the pension and for those in the Fire Pension program, the City contributes 24% of that person's salary. Those are mandated by the State of Ohio and are not figures set by the City of North Olmsted. 4