Finance Committee

200 South Hamilton Road City of Gahanna Gahanna, Ohio 43230 Meeting Minutes Finance Committee Michael Schnetzer, Chair Karen Angelou Merisa Bowers Brian Larick Jamie Leeseberg Nancy McGregor Stephen Renner April Beggerow, MPA, CMC, Clerk of Council Monday, December 7, 2020 Virtual Meeting *Immediately Following Regular Council meeting* Meeting Call-in Details: 513-306-4583 Conference ID: 212 677 951# A. CALL TO ORDER Chair Schnetzer called the Finance Committee meeting to order at 9:47 p.m. All members were in attendance. B. DISCUSSIONS 1. 2021 Budget Appropriations ORD-098-2020 AN ORDINANCE TO MAKE APPROPRIATIONS FOR CURRENT EXPENSES AND OTHER EXPENDITURES OF THE CITY OF GAHANNA, OHIO DURING THE FISCAL YEAR 2021. Ms. Bury shared documentation on COVID expenses in relation to the City Budget, which is attached to the minutes. Mr. Larick: Yeah, I think this is primarily some of the ties back to some of the questions I was asking last week and my main focus from all the information and thank you, Joann, for putting all of this together is the $1.27 Million in labor expenses that were paid for out of COVID funds. One question off the top of my head is, is there any estimate or knowledge of how much of those expenditures were beyond normal time and cost? In other words, was any of this overtime that we wouldn't normally have expected? Was any of this an extra staff member that was added temporarily that we wouldn't normally have in our payroll? Or is this ongoing costs that because of what they were doing or basically where I'm going is this substantially ongoing costs but their role was City of Gahanna Page 1 Finance Committee Meeting Minutes December 7, 2020 substantially redirected to COVID really for the time being. But they're going to go back and they're going to and we're we'll have this expenditure as a normal part of city expenditures. Ms. Bury: Yes. So the redirected employees, those were redirected to specifically dealing with the pandemic. Public safety just because of the nature of the department and the way even though they're just doing their normal operations, more than likely a majority of those normal operations are somehow pandemic related. So it's just the normal operations of public safety and the nature of the work that they provide an assumption that even when there's just a normal course of business, probably a lot of their time is spent dealing with something pandemic related. Mr. Larick: Sure. Ok, so I'm just trying to translate my my my thoughts on the topic. The 1.27 Million is an expenditure of the city as a part of our ordinary budget. We have a relief that has occurred because of the care funds. But as we look into the future, this is an expense. This is a cost that is a part of what we must weigh as we're looking into the future and understanding where we are from our expenditures and the expenditures into any cash reserves that we have and how we forecast out and what our situation is in the future. That's what I wanted to try to understand. And based on all of the information here, it appears to me that really the vast majority of that concern sits with that one point eighty seven. The others are very much kind of distinctly different from my perspective. Mr. Schnetzer: The next question is basically an ask of the administration to either show or discuss the impact to the city's operations, whether it be programming or staffing of not tapping financial reserves for fiscal and calendar 2021. Mayor Jadwin: I'm going to start this and Joann and I will tag team on this, so and I'm just going to kind of level set as we begin this discussion. So as as I shared when we initially presented this budget, there is no fat in this budget. I inherited the 2020 budget. This is a budget that I put together with our senior leadership team. And we only put in this budget what was needed. We didn't put 'gee, it would be great if' everything in this budget was vetted in multiple meetings over and over and over again. So there is no fat in this budget. Again, I cannot say that enough. So everything that is reflected in this in this proposed budget in terms of our expenditures have to do with our existing contractual obligations, our legal obligations requirements, council driven initiatives, community driven initiatives and promises that were made to residents by Issue 12 with regard to public safety, public service and parks and recreation programming and amenities that we promised them they would have. So everything that is in this budget is geared toward those five buckets of City of Gahanna Page 2 Finance Committee Meeting Minutes December 7, 2020 items. So the administration certainly is tasked with fulfilling those obligations and responsibilities on a day to day administration. And we are all, I believe, tasked with the responsibility of meeting the expectations of our residents. I think we heard one resident earlier today reference the high standards that our residents have come to expect with regard to our parks and trails at this point. So there is an expectation amongst our residents as to what what they're going to receive. So the general fund itself is comprised as is you look on page. Forty nine of the budget is comprised largely of salaries and benefits from the police department, from the parks staff, not the recreation staff, the park staff and the administrative staff. Also included in that or the contract services that support those various departments. So everything from all the police contract services that are necessary for them to support them, as well as things like the strategic plan refresh and the economic development refresh that we have we would like to do in the budget, because the last one was done in twenty fifteen, a Creekside visioning project. Those are the types of things that are in there. And if you look at contract services, they are, what's being requested is actually down from what was reduced, appropriated in 2020. So we weren't, we weren't raising the bar on what we were asking for contract services. We were asking for less than what was already reduced in appropriations for 2020. Now I would also say I also just would like to share with council what the what the staffing levels have been in the city for the last 10 years. Just to remind I can share this chart with all of you. But this is a headcount over the last 10 years within the city of Gahanna. So back in 2010, we had three hundred eighty seven employees. If we were to receive with your approval, all of the positions that we have asked for in the budget, we would have three hundred and eighty three employees, even in the lean Gahanna years, which started in 2015 to 16, 17, 18, we would be still substantially less than the number of employees we had over the last five years. Currently we have two hundred sixty five employees here. We were originally appropriated in 2020's budget for three hundred and ninety five. We're not even asking for as many as you approved and appropriated. Last year we were adding what we believe we need to do to fulfill the initiatives and the directives that we've been given. And I think this chart is particularly insightful when you look at and put into perspective what the original budget request was. Not all of that being said, we have gone back through and we did look at reductions to make. And right now we've come up with a little over four hundred thousand dollars in reductions. Those reductions were compiled from contracts, some contract services, reductions, deferring projects not. And all of these are not cutting them or eliminating them. They are all postponements. So postponing some some projects through contract services and kicking those over to 2022. We've moved several positions into proprietary funds and special revenue funds in order to free up the general fund. The other thing is keep City of Gahanna Page 3 Finance Committee Meeting Minutes December 7, 2020 in mind that this budget presumes that every position originally asked for, and actually I've also cut a position and deferred a position as well as moving some into. And special revenue funds, this budget at the outset presumed that every one of those requested positions started on January 1, they're not obviously going to do that. So if we if we look at the timeline of projected hiring throughout the year, I believe there's probably, we believe there's at least another one hundred thousand dollars that we will save in salaries and benefits simply through staggering what naturally the hiring period for a lot of the positions that have been requested. So right now, we are we are around five hundred thousand dollars in reductions. I would also just remind you that this budget, much like the start of 2020 presumes a regular normal operating year. That means as of January 1, we are at full bore on all programming, full bore on all services. COVID doesn't exist. It's a perfect world. We're all happy. We all know that is not the case. We already know right now that our programming for the first quarter of Q1 is going to have to change significantly. And our team has already been working on restructuring programming. So there's already going to be cost savings just in the first one of how we need to restructure. And quite frankly, depending on how the vaccine rolls out and how it's received and what that impact is, that could extend into Q2 as well. We will do exactly what we did this year and adjust accordingly as we go on based on what we are seeing around us. The situation with COVID is changing every day, every week. And two weeks ago we were purple. Today we're back to being red. Yesterday we've got vaccines rolling out. So it's changing constantly. And we can't, you know, to try to look six months into the future in terms of where we're going to be is even challenging. This budget was a perfect case scenario. It's a budget. We will adjust accordingly. So, again, to summarize, we've come up with definitely four hundred actually four hundred thousand one four hundred one thousand two hundred thirteen dollars in reductions, plus probably an additional one hundred thousand, that would be say, through staggering our hiring deadlines or hiring time frames. And then I'm also going to show and ask Joann to speak a little bit more about what is in the general fund right now and what the impact would be if we did not really have either dip into one reserve fund or the unencumbered fund and reserve funds or perhaps look at some other funding mechanisms. Mr. Schnetzer: I just want to clarify here, I don't interpret item number two as a charge that you must not use one cent of reserves. It was more can you discuss what that, in fact, would look like. I know that there's a page within the budget. With just the fact that there are collectively bargain for salary increases, the fact that there are ordinances already on the books that give year over year cost of living increases, that the baseline is kept going up in 2021 at the same time we have revenue going down. I think you've heard me say at other meetings that to not use any reserves City of Gahanna Page 4 Finance Committee Meeting Minutes December 7, 2020 means that we're going to have to be cutting headcount. So I don't know if you or your staff are prepared to just talk about it, what that means to to use zero reserve just to kind of use the phrase level set the discussion about using any reserves they want to. Ms. Bury: Just wanted to show everybody kind of what we're looking at department wise, so we've had a couple different breakouts in the budget, and a lot of it shows percentages. This this graphic should look familiar. I can't remember what page it's on, but it is in a portion of the budget just kind of showing that general fund breakout and the various departments that are accounted for in it. So in looking at the actual dollar amounts now, so and in looking at, you know, the ask of where can you chip away two point two million dollars, as you can see, kind of starting with council and going down, it would be OK. What department would you like to eliminate or how or would you like to dig into public safety? So that's that's kind of what we'd be looking at with an extreme like that, is that we would no longer offer something. And with public safety being forty five percent or almost 11 million of the twenty four million, that's the that's the biggest target. And unless the desire would be to no longer provide services from a specific department. Mr. Schnetzer: Ok, so in translation, and correct me if I'm wrong, what I'm hearing from the administration is, is if the asked the hypothetical situation was to eliminate two point two million dollars from the appropriations request for 2021. That is the equivalent of eliminating a number of departments or significant cuts to public safety. Is that a fair translation? Ms. Bury: Correct. Mr. Schnetzer: Ok, and when we say cuts are reductions, we're actually talking about personnel is that a fair translation? Ms. Bury: No, I wouldn't say that, although salaries and benefits are a large portion. There also are other items within each of those departments, such as their contract services, materials and supplies and so on and so forth. So, yes, salaries and benefits do make up a majority. And obviously, if we're talking about an entire department, it would include their staffing. But when looking at a large area like public safety, yes, again, a lot of it is human capital, but a lot of it is other contracted services that we might have for those same purposes. Mrs. Angelou: I'd like to bring up the reserves that we have, the emergency reserves, and I'm believing that we should be conservative in everything we do. But we have emergency reserves because of City of Gahanna Page 5 Finance Committee Meeting Minutes December 7, 2020 emergencies. And I can't think of anything more as an emergency as the pandemic that we have been going through. Ms. Bury: Just would like to clarify there that we're not touching the emergency reserve or we're only talking about using on reserve fund balance. Ms. Bury added that a sound budget has been presented and there is no intention on touching emergency reserve. Mr. Larick: I'm just trying to keep the keep the logic of conversation. I'll put this on the table and we can either wait or it can be answered. It doesn't. And I don't have a demand that it be at this moment. The baseline and again, just speaking from my own kind of mindset, understand that there are cash balances available, understanding that there are just generically times it makes sense to touch those and understanding that we have an unknown future. I get all of that understanding that we have expectations in the community and understanding that we have limited resources putting all of those things together. My one question that kind of my hand raise is more about the specifics of the four hundred thousand that you've identified. What that looks like at that page is available. That's that's one question. The foundation of kind of my questions goes back to the forecast and I'll just and it's at its highest level. The forecast to me is a reduction of eight percent next year, flat in 22, flat in 23, and a two percent increase in revenue in 24. I think I have those rate that forecast based on that separating COVID funds and I understand COVID funds are there too. So I'm trying to cover the nuances of some of the some of the details. But the rough estimate was a two point three million spend in 21, which would translate to about the same in 22 and about the same in 23. That virtually eliminates the cash balance outside of the emergency fund that we have dedicated is defined as a defined volume of money, and it's that longer term picture and those significant touches that that worry me, which is where the I would like to see the five hundred thousand, what that looks like or the four hundred thousand, what that looks like. I understand the opportunity of the other hundred from timing. So that helps with that and be interested in seeing that. And then finally the last piece is recognizing that while a budget, whatever it ends up being. We've moved away from and it is kind of a philosophical thing, we've moved away from the constant supplementals. That doesn't mean supplementals are bad, supplementals have a purpose and supplementals are viable, and they make complete sense to me as we are dealing with changes in situation, which is very much what we're looking at. So if we do make adjustments to the budget, that doesn't mean those funds will never be available, but it means that we may be looking at whatever a picture is at a point in time City of Gahanna Page 6 Finance Committee Meeting Minutes December 7, 2020 with an unknown forecast that as we get better clarity, that is ideally a better situation. We have the opportunity to supplementally make some changes. Ms. Bury: And that's that's kind of what happened in the spring. It just so happened that we requested a supplemental to drive them down. So in the spring, when we saw what was coming forth, we immediately jumped to action. We did our our best estimates that we could have what we thought would happen, the revenue. And we came forward with a supplemental to reduce appropriations. That would totally happen again in future years if we saw that the course of action was different than what we were anticipating. Mrs. Angelou asked about the Bureau of Worker's Comp dividends being paid back. Ms. Vollmer replied that the city is self funded so will not be receiving dividends from BWC. Mr. Schnetzer: So we've done a pretty deep dive thus far. I think you had already kind of given us a prelude to what I anticipated. Your response to question number three here, which is, if you might discuss a broad outline or a general outline of identified or some sort of expenditure reductions in 2021, the Express asked for three hundred thousand up to about a million. But I'm sure we will hear what you have prepared for us this evening. Mayor Jadwin: My thought was that the summary I gave actually address two and three together. But with that we've identified four hundred one thousand dollars, again, in terms of contract services, cutting a position, deferring a position, moving three positions over into other funds. Beyond that, when we look at what what is left if, we were to eliminate additional positions, then that directly impacts programs and services. So they're not mutually exclusive here. So to try to get to one million, we have to have a broader conversation around what services do you want and do you not want. Do you not want an economic development strategy plan. Do you not want a strategic plan refresh. Those are the types of things that are left to be cutting. So, you know, they go hand in hand. And it's a much broader discussion, which is why it's very difficult to say give us give us everything between three hundred and one million. And that's that's just not feasible. Give me a number of I'll do my best to work and work toward it. But right now at the last council meeting, three hundred thousand was was asked if we worked at it, we came up with four hundred thousand. I believe it's really more, it's closer to five hundred thousand and that's, that's where we are without having impacts to City of Gahanna Page 7 Finance Committee Meeting Minutes December 7, 2020 services beyond that. Because if we're going to have services and programs, we need the people to be able to do them. Mr. Schnetzer: Sure, and I may have missed it, were the specific items identified or was it just like we can ship? Of course, now I can go through them. So it's not just curiosity now. Mayor Jadwin: So the administrative assistant and development department, we will defer that for 2022 because we're going to we'll just double load up on the current evidence that we have. We did we did lay off for administrative assistants back in March and April. So in looking at what our current workload is right now, I believe that we can cover that with one, if not two administrative assistants, at least for a year's time. It will get burdensome after that. But through 2021 we will make it work. I eliminated the MORPC intern position. I mean, it's great to have I don't necessarily need that. The 2 public service and engineering team members that were appropriated and approved for the 2020 budget that we did not fill for COVID we can move to proprietary fund. So that takes money out of the general fund for that. And what else do I have in there? The horticulturist position, Parks and RECs eliminated about seventy five thousand dollars in contract services and the Special Revenue Fund with rollovers, that money that they'll have for this year. So they were able to reduce that. So we're moving the horticulturist position over into that with we'll cover that and take that out of the general fund and will allow us to actually finally stop kicking the can on that and to to get a firm plan in place for maintaining everything from our state preserve that we are responsible to ODNR for maintaining, but also dealing with invasive species and everything else that we've got going on in the city that we've not had time to deal with contract otherwise. I know IT had a project that they identified could be deferred to 2022 was an access control system that's related to the COM center but doesn't need to happen in 2021 would be nice if we did. And Chief Spence would prefer that we get it done in 2021, but it can wait till 2022 given where they are now in the construction. HR found some reductions that they were able to make. We also in those are professional services of about fifteen thousand. Planning department. How do we get a reduction of twenty thousand there. Because the contract for the zoning code rewrite ended up coming in less than what we had sitting on a PO so we were able to reduce that by twenty thousand. The courts had about fourteen thousand in contractor professional services that they were able to reduce, again from POs that we're sitting from this year that they can carry on next year. So we were able to take that back out of the budget. Parks also had another fifty thousand in materials and supplies that's currently sitting in the general fund, again, impacted by what they didn't spend this year that we don't we can carry over for next year and they don't need to ask for it. And we City of Gahanna Page 8 Finance Committee Meeting Minutes December 7, 2020 also had about a little over twenty thousand dollars of savings with our change to the new insurance benefits, insurance and benefits program that we implemented. So we just went through the open enrollment period there. And after recalculating what people actually selected, that we had a cost savings of twenty thousand forty three dollars on that. So that actually all of that totals four hundred and one to four hundred one thousand two hundred twelve dollars. Ms. Bowers: Thank you. This is a bit of a specific question, but it was asked of me and I didn't know the answer to it. Is the community liaison position a new hire or is that an additional responsibility to a current hire? Mayor Jadwin: That would be a new hire. So instead of doing what the last two mayors did, who had a full time city administrator to help with programs, that was part of the restructuring that we're doing. It's a cost savings measure overall. It's a part time position us to pursue initiatives such as the Diversity Coalition, which I've not had time to work on, Sustainability Task Force, an economic development advisory board. And I have got a whole bunch of programs sitting on my whiteboard right now that I can't get to because we don't have anybody, I don't have anybody to delegate it to. So again, it was an economical way of adding some assistance here at a very nominal increase of I think it's about thirty five thousand dollars. Mr. Schnetzer: So I do have one question, and this doesn't necessarily have to be right now, you guys may not be prepared to answer it, but with those reductions, I guess I'd like to understand a little bit more about what sort of presumably negative impact to service delivery would occur. While I have to assume that by volunteering these cuts in response to the question of these reductions, in response to the question that is deemed, in your opinion, to be minimal or acceptable, I can't imagine that it's a zero. And so perhaps a follow up on things that would be postponed or put off to a later date again, as far as service delivery. But just a little bit more clarity on that, if I could. Mayor Jadwin: Well, just looking at what we, and I don't want to do this, I don't want to go through position by position. But we have a rental code and a nuisance code that were just passed that are going to need to be enforced, not only by code enforcement, but but also by folks within the planning and building department, the sidewalk program an assistant city engineer, which is not part of the general fund, but the code enforcement people are. So we're looking at adding three substantial programs right now that are going to require additional personnel. We've got, and a lot of this goes back to again, deferred maintenance too, how long are we going to let things go unaddressed? Because the more we let them sit, City of Gahanna Page 9 Finance Committee Meeting Minutes December 7, 2020 the worse it's going to get. And we have several things now that, we've got 30 year old buildings that the good example is we're replacing the light bulbs in the ladies room every two weeks. The lighting fixture really just needs to be replaced. But we don't want to spend the money to hire an electrician to go do all of the work where if we had an additional part time person because Adam is running between all of the other facilities, we could actually get some smaller projects like that done. But right now, we're buying light bulbs every two weeks to just because it's cheaper to just do that for the time being. But that's going to get old really fast. That's basic maintenance things that need to be addressed. The community liaison that I just discussed, those are all programs that are important to the community and certainly became extremely important. This past summer, I promised the people a diversity coalition. I got a good start on it, but I haven't had time to work on it because much like Councilman Larick sits in his chair from eight o'clock in the morning, I've been in here since eight o'clock this morning myself and every day's like that. And I don't mind that because that's how I work anyway. But there are other things that need to be done, require me to be not in this chair. Business visits would be one of them. And as soon as we get out of COVID, we'll resume those again. But I need somebody else out in the field to help working with all the other partner organizations and caring for some of the initiatives that I want to get done and that the community is asking for, though I just can't get to. We've got the maintenance workers going from 14 part time vacant part time positions to four full time positions, which will be a cost savings right now, but it will allow us to operate more efficiently as a parks team. Right now, we spend an inordinate amount of redundant time hiring and recruiting and hiring and recruiting because we have these part timers and they want full time jobs. Just last week, we lost somebody who's been here two and a half years in parks because he wanted and needed a full time job. And we lost somebody who was really good because he got a full time job someplace else. So now we've got to go out and hire and recruit all over again. It's downtime. There's projects that aren't getting done. So we bring somebody else on. That person gets trained. We've lost a whole bunch of time that services that are missing to residents that aren't going to get done because we're down on staff time and we're spending it hiring, recruiting and training somebody else. And when that happens over and over and over again during the season, that adds up to significant amount of time. And I think our typical turnover rate within the Parks and Rec department for part time folks is about, I don't know, thirty percent on average over the last five to ten years. And we have that problem. So that's a change that will help with that. The 9-1-1 dispatcher is an important position that we need to have. They are extremely short staffed. They have been for a long time. We had a situation with a covert exposure Councilman Renner just shared that he was he had to quarantine from his family. We almost had to shut down City of Gahanna Page 10 Finance Committee Meeting Minutes December 7, 2020 our dispatch operations and redirect all our calls elsewhere because we thought we were gonna have to quarantine the entire dispatch staff because we didn't have anybody to cover that. And they were working substantial, no substantial overtime hours just to get that covered. In addition, with the new MECH center, new communication center, we're going to need that dispatcher over there. So that is a service that we just can't keep kicking that down the road. We've got a management analyst that we need to have in order to comply with, I don't know, the Ohio Constitution. That's been something that that has been jeopardizing us for a long time. So I can get into what other services or programs are going to are going to be impacted. But that depends on how many how many more cuts that you want me to look at. We're going into COVID. Are we going to have another summer where we can't open pools? I don't see us not opening a pool this summer. I can't do that to our residents. So we're going to have to look at do we need both pools? Do we just open one pool this summer for COVID? Is that something out there we're going to respond to? If we don't open either pool, then we don't need a facilities maintenance coordinator. But if we're going to put a splash pad in and we're expected to open a pool or two pools, then we're going to need the facility maintenance coordinator because that's a that's a full time job. So that's what I mean. They're the services and the programs are intrinsically linked to what else is in the general fund. Mr. Schnetzer: Moving on to question 4. just to read the question, pages 189 and 190 in the budget showed the city's outstanding debt and the information surrounding general bond retirement funds. So the ask is if the administration could please explain the use of bond proceeds on those those debt issuance bids that have been identified in the budget and then also discuss the relationship between the debt service fund and other funds, including the GF various TIFs, the capital improvement fund, as it relates to inter-fund transfers and whether all lawfully available resources have been considered. So let me put this in layman's terms. It's a two part question. The first one is, are there uses or applications of those proceeds that that would qualify or allow some of these other funds to be used. So I guess that's question one. And then if so, are there resources available in any of those funds that could, in turn be used to, I guess, offload some of the burden from the general fund? City of Gahanna Page 11 Finance Committee Meeting Minutes December 7, 2020 Budget Discussion Continued Ms. Bury: Referencing her attachment which is added to these minutes: So the the top part gives what the original issuances were and how those proceeds were used and then how that kind of correlates to the fund that's used to pay for the debt service. So that's kind of the first part of the question is how are the proceeds used and have we looked at all available resources? So it kind of two thousand five. Give me a discussion on how those were used. Creekside and and Road, Mawson Road Storm Water. So that comes out of the creek tip when possible. Historically, the creek side TEF has not produced enough to meet the full debt service. So we have looked to what the bond retirement brings it in property taxes and what the general fund has available to pay for that. The Street Fund is is covering the Morrison Road improvements in the storm waters being covered by the stormwater proprietary fund. 2007 bonds, there was an array of things that that were done with that from broadband to broadband for water services, saw services, road infrastructure, stormwater improvements, and then the manner homes development. Based on what those proceeds were used for. We use the bond retirement and general fund for the park improvements in the general services that were done. And then we tap into each of the proprietary funds for the proprietary portions and then the street fund for the road piece and the manor homes TIF for the portion that was just specific to it. Down below is just where those items got refunded. So just kind of showing because when you look at page 189 and 190 speaking to 2013 and 2015, well those were just refunds of the original issuances. So that's why I kind of listed out what the original issuances were used for. When we refund it, it didn't take away from the fact that those same funds could be used to pay for the bonds that refunded the original issuance. So kind of showing that it's kind of the same thing when we refunded the 2005 bonds we continue to use the Creekside TIF when possible for its portion, the street and storm water and then 2015. It's a little lengthy because it was part of the 2005 refunding and part of the 2007. But again, showing how we kept pace and are just using those same proprietary or special funds. And we needed the portion that comes in bond retirement from property taxes in the general fund. The litigation bonds. There's really nowhere else for that to come from except for the general fund. It's not capital related. It's not associated with any special fund. So that debt service from there will be coming from the general fund. And then we have a couple of OPWC loans, all for road improvements, all coming from the street fund. So that's the the basic piece kind of addressing the first part of that question and then looking at the current outstanding balance that's reflected on those pages and what's planned for 2021 as far as that that service, we do have a portion that we're anticipating ****side will be able to produce in 2021 with the City of Gahanna Page 12 Finance Committee Meeting Minutes December 7, 2020 remainder that to do on that particular portion of the bonds coming from the general fund. The street fund is able to cover what it's historically done, same with storm water when we launched the 2015 issuance park improvements and bought broadband mainly from the general fund and also then the bond retirement fund still using those same special funds for that also. The one part that I failed to mention above was in 2015, along with the refunding we issued a little over five million for the Detroit Street rebuilds before 2021 the Street Fund was not bringing enough in to cover that particular debt service so since the gas tax increase that occurred, it was the state's fiscal year 19. So it started coming in the middle of 2019 like around July. And then looking at and projecting what we're planning on bringing in the street fund actually has capacity to cover that debt service now. So we were able to take about them a little over two hundred fifteen thousand because this doesn't include interest since there's principal. So when you add the interest on, it's a little bit more so a little bit north of two hundred fifteen thousand. And we were able to take pressure off the general fund and have the street fund start paying for that debt service related to those Detroit street rebuilds. Litigation again, really no where else to come from but the general fund. And then we have the OPWC loans, which are also street fund related. So we have looked to the majority of items. I do know that, you know, in the legislation that was passed for issue 12, it did allow for capital related debt service. That is one area that we haven't looked to. But we can and see if there's capacity that would be the will of Council to see if maybe the remainder that's coming out of the general fund could potentially come from those capital dollars. Mr. Schnetzer: There's a lot of numbers on this page. I do appreciate the effort that probably went into compiling all this, but I'm hoping that maybe you can point out, is there a particular line that shows what capital related, what debt service that is associated with Capital is still being borne by the general fund. Ms. Bury: It would be anything being paid from the general fund that isn't the litigation bond. So if you look at the outstanding anything that has GF next to it, that isn't associated with the litigation, bonds would be capital **. Mr. Schnetzer: So give or take, three hundred thousand? Ms. Bury: That's just principal, so when you add in the interest piece, it's right around a little over five hundred thousand. Mr. Schnetzer: There's a lawfully available funds and five hundred thousand dollars that basically could be moved from one fund to another. City of Gahanna Page 13 Finance Committee Meeting Minutes December 7, 2020 Is that correct? Moved from the GF to other.. Ms. Bury: Yes. Mr. Schnetzer: And that is not included, obviously, I don't think it was in the Mayor's list of various other reductions that were available. Ms. Bury: No, I mean, I could look and see if there, if that's the will of Council, I could look and see if there's capacity within that capital improvement fund. Mr. Schnetzer: Well, here's the question that I have anyway. The mayor had identified something to the tune of one hundred thousand that is technically feasible. Those were, it sounds like, clearly operating. This is more capital and debt service related. So this is additional, roughly five hundred thousand. If that is the will of Council we're looking at somewhere around nine hundred thousand in relief? Ms. Bury: Correct. Mr. Schnetzer: The next question is in regards to public service and engineering, we ask this to please provide a scope of work for the West Side 2 project. This can be referenced on page 150 where there's an ask at one point two, five million and 2021 from the Super Capital Improvement Fund on page 153, the ask for both the East and West Side is seven hundred fifty thousand. So in sum if you could please reconcile the reasoning behind the difference. Mr. Crawford: Certainly I'll try to keep us moving quickly so we can hit the 11 o'clock time line. So the project will follow our standard RFP procedures. So what we do in that process is we take the three most qualified firms that have been identified in that field, in the SOQ process and request proposals from them. So we don't have the exact wording right now, but it'll be something to the effect of using the data collected in SSES phase one, provide a proposal to identify sources of infiltration and inflow of stormwater into the public sewer system. So basically it will put the onus on the consultant to tell us the best way to accomplish that. Next, we'll rate the proposals and the top three of those firms of those top three firms, and the best proposal will be selected to move on to the next step. Regarding the funding, when the capital needs assessment was first sent out, it did have the one point two five million, all in the first year after the budget review, a further review of what a Phase two could include in the timing of when Phase one would be completed, it was concluded to be split into a two year project to basically beat the weather. With Phase one being completed in spring, it would not provide enough City of Gahanna Page 14 Finance Committee Meeting Minutes December 7, 2020 time to complete the entire assessment and the remaining fair-weather months of 2021. Mr. Leeseberg: Did I hear you say that the fee would be part of this selection process? You SOQs and you get RFPs and then you move on to select one and then you get a fee? Mr. Crawford: Correct. You get the fee after you select the best firm, the best proposal. Mr. Leeseberg: And so right now, right now, who, who prepared this engineer's estimate? Mr. Crawford: B&N, we asked them what it would take and a general thought of a phase two. What would they do if they were to do this, to give us some groundwork, a roughneck, an estimate to put a budget together. Mr. Leeseberg: And they were handed phase one because they were the most qualified, right? Mr. Crawford: They were the most qualified. Plus it was an emergency due to the flooding and all the basements. We need to move forward immediately with it. Mr. Leeseberg: And so changes are going to be the most qualified. And so their estimates probably going to stand. So we won't have competitors won't be competitively bid, then. Mr. Crawford: It will be competitively bid following the RFP process. I can't tell you if they are or are not going to be the most qualified... Mr. Leeseberg: You hired them for the first part. You asked them to write this, go for the second part and they're going to have all the data. Sounds like they got a leg up. Mr. Crawford: They aren't writing in the scope, we're writing the scope and the scope is basically, you know, find the sources of infiltration inflow. Now, they provided options on what that would take, which could be dye testing, could be smoke testing. It's pretty standard testing for that. Mr. Leeseberg: Are you familiar with the OSCC. procedure of folks that do assessment not being allowed to bid on the design worth? Mr. Crawford: I'm not familiar with what you're asking. City of Gahanna Page 15 Finance Committee Meeting Minutes December 7, 2020 Mr. Leeseberg: Yeah, so, again, it's pretty common for folks to go do an assessment of a school and list all the things that are wrong with it. And then when that laundry list of things that are wrong with it, then they hire folks to design a fix for it. But the folks who come up with the list aren't allowed to bid on that because they have a leg up and they know they have all the answers and they would artificially inflate it. Mr. Renner made the point that I think all of the unincorporated Franklin County was two point five million. We're looking to spend one point five million dollars right now and one third of Gahanna. I've got a real problem with this again, there wasn't emergency language when this was originally passed, but the the fact that we're not going to solve any problems for two years and we're going to pay somebody one point five million dollars to do this and we won't have a fix until 2022. Mr. Schnetzer: Just want to jump in and referee here. I understand that this is tangentially related to dollars and cents. But it seems to be deviating from the specific question, which was to try and help reconcile the difference between two numbers. Mr. Crawford: The RFP process, as defined in code, is to pick the top three firms, have them provide proposals and the firm that would do the very best job to accomplish that, we would seek a proposal from a fee from them so we can get something from B&N and then to other firms. The best one would be the one that we would refer to council for approval. Mayor Jadwin: My comment was just to reiterate that I think the number that's in the budget is a back of the napkin placeholder because we needed something to account for what work could possibly be done. I will admittedly say of the Ohio Facilities Construction Commission, but I will look at that. And if that is if that is indeed the case and we've got a curtain vendor who is giving us our proposal or is giving us a bit, I would say it's a bit. It's not even a bit. It's not even a scope. Give us an idea. And that eliminates them from consideration for the next phase, then that's what we'll do. But right now, we just needed something to be able to put in the budget because we had no idea what we'd be looking at. They gave us an estimate. That's what's put in the budget. My understanding is that's a top end estimate because I'd rather overestimate the cost and come in at a lesser price than to do it the other way around. So the placeholder number that's in there is nothing more than that. It's a placeholder number based on based on a best estimate from somebody who gave us an idea as to what what it could require. But we won't know what it actually requires until we finished phase one. They give us the data, we then prepare the scope and then we bid it out. City of Gahanna Page 16 Finance Committee Meeting Minutes December 7, 2020 Mr. Schnetzer: So I think we've deviated pretty far from from the topic of the budget. And now we're we're down in the weeds about process and things of that nature. I would simply ask the parties that you take your concern off line with the administration on this particular item. It seems that we've got an explanation for the discrepancy in the two numbers that just simply a page wasn't updated. But it seems as though the total number spanning two years is one point two five million, and it's not one point two five and an additional seven fifteen the way I heard it. So I just respectfully asked everybody, is that conversation offline here to just recognize that it's late? And we've got one more question. I'm sure everybody wants to wrap this up as soon as possible. Moving on, we've got one last question with regard to Parks and Recreation, if the administration can please explain the long term impact of the requested edition of four full time versus part time beyond fiscal 2021, including any mandatory pay increases of benefits, benefits, costs in the out years. So in layman's terms, this has been presented as a cost savings of somewhere around six thousand dollars, I think. And there's been some qualitative benefits that have been discussed in previous meetings and tonight about time and things of that nature. But has there been a longer term cost impact *** as it relates to what what those costs would be with with full time people presumably ** pensions and automatic pay increases and so forth and so on, as opposed to the part time model that we're currently operating under. Ms. Bury: So I'll just start with the salaries and benefits piece and just note that the difference between the 4 and the 14 is going to remain relatively consistent, as I would consider the six thousand. I mean, yeah, it's a savings, but when you look at it, it's it's not a huge savings basically between the two. It's it's kind of a cost neutral move. The steelworker contract ends in 2022. In volatile times, I'm not willing to make any assumptions as to what those negotiations are going to look like, I will say that the steel worker contract and the unclassified ordinance tend to track fairly closely. When we go into negotiations, they're a little more amenable to seeing what their unclassified counterparts may be getting and are more willing to take those same increases, whether it may not be ideal or not. We also made a change for the part time plus which we're required to offer benefits to by federal law. And basically they're getting the same level of benefit as a full time person. So even moving into the future, it's going to be fairly close as far as cost, the salaries and benefits. What the true purpose is or what is really the problem is the inconsistency in services, the amount of time taken to constantly recruit on board and train, and how those hours could be used for other betterment of the city instead of just consistently doing the same thing over and over. So that's really the true purpose, consistency in service and freeing up the time that's spent constantly rehiring these part timers to do other things. City of Gahanna Page 17 Finance Committee Meeting Minutes December 7, 2020 Mrs. Bernard-Ferrell: And if I may jump in here, I'll be brief and aware of what time it is. Just reiterate, there did a great job earlier about our turnover rate is over 30 percent. So we're getting staff in and we're training them. We're acclimating them to their surroundings where they're learning the equipment and then they're leaving their gated. They're gaining opportunities outside of the city of Gahanna with full time opportunities. So, you know, we have really good people that we've that we've seen in and out of the doors. And we want to keep them here. We want to create the opportunities part of the team. And this is a good a good way to do that. Mr. Schnetzer: We've had discussion thus far in the last hour and a half about what I would suggest is significant cost savings, potential and more, I guess I'll ask Council to chime in here is what's the desire or any thoughts about the next step? We have one formally scheduled meeting remaining, which is obviously a week from now on December 14. We're currently on track to take the vote on the 21st. Are we asking the administration to to implement those cost shifts and reductions in full, in part, not at all. I'm just looking for a little bit of direction. Mr. Larick: I think we'll probably spend I mean, my opinion is we spend most of that time next week on that topic. Generally speaking, I think what the mayor has put forward is, is the right path with the reductions that she's already identified and the bond information I need to consider that a little bit, but I think that makes sense potentially as well. I think that gets me where I think there's a place to be understanding we can supplemental or we can do a variety of other things as we get a clear perspective down the road. Mr. Schnetzer: Ok, question I have for the group is at this point, are we just simply taking this information that we've been presented with today and digesting it and then coming back with some sort of consensus, trying to form a consensus on Monday? Is there additional follow up or exhibits that are needed? I guess here's my concern, because we have a vote scheduled on the 21 on this budget, I would like to have some sort of resolution on the 14th. Can we commit to that, do we you know, is there agreement that there's enough information out there that everybody is concerns... There was a request from Ms. Bowers to see an amended document with the changes reflected before Council votes on the final budget on December 21st. Committee was adjourned at 11:16 p.m. City of Gahanna Page 18 Finance Committee Meeting Minutes December 7, 2020 City of Gahanna Page 19