Commitee Meetings of April 13, 2009

Ordinance, Planning, & Zoning.

The bowling alley is proposing to install two sand volleyball courts. They hope to have the courts in place with leagues starting at the beginning of June. The leagues will work in correspondence with the YMCA. There were some concerns of the committee regarding drainage, music volume, and the lighting they will be installing. A shed the bowling alley already has on their property will become a concession stand.

The proposal must go before the zoning board of appeals and the planning commission for approval before construction can begin. They will be cutting it close to their goal of June 1 for completion.

There were concerns regarding a drainage ditch that the bowling alley needs to clean up and hand over the easement rights to the city for them to continue the maintenance. The bowling alley is working with the convalescence center across the street to clean this ditch area up. It was said this was an issue when the bowling alley was under previous ownership and this issue has nothing to do with the sand volleyball courts.


License, Insurance Claims, CEMA, & Contracts

A RFQ for legal council has been drafted by Al Hudzik at the request of this committee. The RFQ has been reviewed and edited/amended by both Jay and Mayor Hutchinson. The RFQ will be advertised in the Clarion, Belleville News Democrat, St. Louis Post Dispatch, & a tri-county court reporter. The advertisement will point interested parties to the city’s website where the actual RFQ will be posted. Notification of this RFQ will also be sent to Columbia law firms and firms representing other local communities. Mayor Hutchinson will check to see if the RFQ link can be added to the East West Gateway website at the request of Candace.

I know it has been mentioned in the past what the RFQ is looking for but I have forgotten. It was not made clear if we are actively looking to replace current council or if we are just seeing if there are better choices with better rates available.


Committee of the Whole

Gene started off the meeting by asking chief Edwards to explain the COPS grant (http://www.cops.usdoj.gov/Default.asp?Item=2108) he is applying for today April 14.

The grant is essentially a program that will pay the salary for an officer for three years. The city is then obligated by the terms to keep that officer on the payroll for a fourth year and pay the salary themselves. Chief Edwards wanted to apply for three officers under this program. Edwards said this would allow for three active patrolling officers on each shift and the city would have 17 officers, we currently have 14 after some reduction in force over the last year.

The concerns for the costs in the fourth year were brought up by Jay. Understandingly so. At Edwards projections for the salary costs for the three officers in the fourth year are $235,440, or $78,480 an officer. This is a large chunk of money to add to a budget at any point in time.

Alderman Stumpf started asking questions of Edwards resulting in the following info. The COPS grant is a federal grant, it includes the medical coverage costs for the officers, two officers will have to share a car and not be able to take it home when off duty, and counting the chief and assistant chief there may be 5-7 officers on duty at some times, with three patrolling.

Alderman Hejna then asked Edwards why they had not received the information she requested the last time Edwards talked about this program regarding the grant, Edwards said he did not remember the information being requested but he would have had no problem providing it had he remembered being asked. Alderman Oberkfell then told the chief that the council has said before that they need to see the paperwork for all grants that the city is applying for so they can make a more informed decision regarding if they should apply for any given grant. Chief then mentioned he had recently applied for a traffic grant with council approval and no one had asked for any grant information at that time so he did not think to provide the info for this grant either. (I must interject here, if a department head is applying for anything just make some copies and get it over to the council ahead of time so they can see ahead of time from now on, and for the council members who want info that has not yet been provided, the link I placed above for the grant took me about three minutes to find online, a little research goes a long way and saves time in the meetings while not looking like an attack on someone, while making you look prepared for doing the research on your own)

Alderman Stumpf continued to ask questions of Edwards. Question: Could we see a reduction in force required in coming years? Answer: If the community continues to grow then no a reduction would not be needed. Question: Does the assistant chief teach any classes at SWIC, how much time does that require of him? Answer: Yes but not many hours and it varies week to week.

Stumpf then asked the council how we will pay for the fourth year’s expenses. The assistant chief said there are some provisions in the grant that if the economy does not improve or if the city can not meet those commitments then paper work can be filed to the federal government to opt out. Penalties for this would be that the city would not be eligible for grants under this program for some period of time. Mayor Hutchinson stated that if we were awarded three officers per the grant we would be saving almost $750,000 over the next three years.

Stumpf said we should apply for only two additional officers, Alderman Row said we should apply for three as we may only get one or two or none anyway. Alderman Unnerstall asked if in the case of us being awarded three officers per the grant could we decide to only take the money for two if we change our mind, no one really had an answer for this but the consensus was it may hurt our chances for future grants of this type. Edwards noted we have more calls than both the county and Waterloo and less officers to handle them.

Mary Ellen made a motion to apply for grant money on three officers, Fred said he would vote yes if the motion was for two officers. Votes yes were made by Ebersohl, Niemietz, Agne, & Row. Votes no were made by Unnerstall, Hejna, Stumpf, & Oberkfell. The tie splitting vote went to the mayor and he voted yes. Look forward to more split votes of this kind once Unnerstall is done with his term.


The committee of the whole went on to cover some budgeting items. So far it appears that certain funds are going to be tapped to cover shortcomings of the budget. Most of these projects should and need to be completed as we have already invested some money into them. It is also true that the funds being tapped were created to fund projects of these types so it’s not a misuse of the money. I am disappointed to see that no one has really taken a stance that some services may need to be cut to balance this budget. I know that cutting services is not what an elected official wants to bring up but it may be an alternative to cutting or pushing back some improvement projects that should be in the budget for the next year. I am working on getting the most recent copy of the budget to post here.
Public Comment will be next Monday at 6:45pm.

Personnel

The council went into executive session to cover bargaining agreement updates and employees salaries and correspondence with the FOP.