City Council Meetings

City of Green River, City Council Workshop Proceedings for May 9, 2017, 6:30 pm, Council Chambers, Mayor Pete Rust called the meeting to order. The following Council Members were present: Gary Killpack, Robert Berg, Lisa Maes, Tom Murphy, Ted Barney and Allan Wilson. The following were present representing the City: City Administrator Reed Clevenger, Human Resources Director Cari Kragovich, Director of Finance Chris Meats, Director of Public Works Mark Westenskow, Director of Community Development Laura Leigh, Police Chief Chris Steffen, and Parks & Recreation Director Brad Raney. Child Development Center Discussion – Brad said the building was not built to the specifications of the plans and that has created some problems. Groathouse Construction has agreed to make the corrections that are required. Budget Workshop & Review – Reed said there are budget cuts across the board. It is important to maintain levels of service and complete workloads in each department. This is the 5th year of cuts and each department head has been working hard to make sure they keep the spending down within their departments. Currently, the budget has a deficiency of revenues of roughly $250k. The City has had across the board cuts, programmatic cuts, decreasing administrative costs, personnel reductions, and has consolidated or centralized functions. Other areas being looked at are reengineering; outsourcing or privatizing and investing in information technology. Total positive impacts from budget changes $1.073 million. Total Negative Impacts from Budget changes $555k. Community service grants requests totaled $94,700. If the city applies a 10% reduction across the board they would total $97,650 and at a 20% reduction it is $86,800. There are a few new requests; Climb Wyoming for $5,000 and Travel and Tourism Event Recruitment for $5,000. If we fund the requests at either 10% or 20% reductions those two would not be funded at all, along with RSVP Retired & Senior Volunteer Program since we did not fund them this year. Reed asked council for a consensus of what funding levels they would like to see and the majority suggested funding with 20% cuts except for RSVP will remain at $1,000 and Life R U Ready, Climb Wyoming and Travel and Tourism Event Recruitment all funded at zero. City Commitments total $1,451,527. Funding at 20% reduction would be $1,267,702. Council Member Maes suggested funding the Art’s Council at the full amount of $22,500 instead of $20,000. Council Members Murphy, Wilson, Barney and Killpack all suggested funding $20,000 for the Arts Council. Council Member Berg said he does not have enough information to say what way he would like to go. The council discussed the fee schedule and possible changes in the Parks Fees and the Community Development Fees. Reed said in wastewater and water funds the rates will remain as built in the rate study but staff needs the direction from Council on what to do with the solid waste fund. He provided Council with a comparison of the city costs and privatization costs as requested. The platinum plan and franchise fee if the city goes private would be $33.00 per month for year one and city costs would be $43.00 per month for year one. With the City’s 4,200 customers at $10 times 12 months is $500k in savings to residents plus $107,000 to the city in franchise fees. Year three at $34.11 vs $53.00 per month equals $925k in savings to residents plus $111,000 to the city in franchise fees. Year five at $35.47 vs $57.00 per month equals $1.085 million in savings to residents plus $115,000 to the city in franchise fees. Commercial customers would see roughly $450k savings per year. Council discussed the options of privatization and no direction was given to staff. ADJOURNMENT: The meeting adjourned a 9 pm. _________________ Pete Rust, Mayor Attest: ____________________ Chris Meats, City Clerk