Finance Committee

FINANCE Tuesday, January 20, 2026 – 6:05 p.m. Council Chambers – Olean Municipal Building Present: Members: Chairman McCall, Vice Chairman Crawford, Alderman Bennion, Alderman Keary, Alderman Forney, Alderman Robinson, and Alderman Anastasia. Others: Mayor Amy Sherburne; Lens Martial, City Clerk; James Sprague, Director of Public Works, and Tiffany Taylor, Managerial Confidential Administrative Secretary. 1. Roll Call Alderman McCall called the meeting to order at 6:05 p.m. and asked that the record show that all committee members were present. 2. Approval of Minutes of the Previous Committee Meeting (Tuesday, January 6, 2026) A motion to approve the minutes of the January 6, 2026 committee meeting was made by Alderman McCall, seconded by Alderman Forney. Voice vote, ayes all. Motion carried. 3. Unfinished Business a. Capital Project Updates Alderman McCall explained, per City ordinance, the Council is required to have an update on all ongoing Capital Projects on a monthly basis that are $50,000 and above. Director Sprague explained the splash pad project is not active due to the time of the year. She explained she plans to bring the contractor in during the month of February to get updates and explained they have been working on the finances more recently. She explained she hopes in a month she will have something more definitive for the Council. Alderman Bennion asked about Marcus Park, and Director Sprague explained the project is still under construction. He explained the building is scheduled to be ready for electrical work in February, and the project is still on track to be completed in the spring. He explained there are no financial issues and we are within budget, although we did use some contingency funding built into the budget. Alderman McCall explained the Council would like to see the project budget, expenditures, and required funding, and would like to see that on a monthly basis to see where we are at and if there have been any change orders. Alderman Crawford explained he would like to see estimates to complete and if we are in line with the budget or forecasting over budget. He explained he knows there is a form the Council has seen that includes this information, and Director Sprague explained a Form E is done for projects that have grant funding. He explained for others we can pull a financial report out of the accounting system. He asked how far the Council would like him to go back for projects, and Alderman McCall explained she would like to see anything that is current. She asked that Mr. Martial provide a list of all current capital projects, and explained the Capital Project Update Policy contains all information that should be included in the monthly report. Director Sprague explained there are biweekly status meetings on large projects, and Alderman Bennion asked the notes from these meetings and monthly financials will suffice. Alderman Robinson asked about the pool and if we are waiting to send out bids, and Director Sprague explained we are determining if we make the decision to go out to bid. Alderman Anastasia asked if the Council can direct him today to go out for RFP. Mayor Sherburne explained we are trying to get caught up on what has been established. She explained we already know the money is there to put this out for bid, but with issues at the splash pad, before we put that out to bid we want to make sure we know where we stand with that particular project first. She explained then we will be able to have a conversation about that property in general and determine what order we should complete things and what we should have a handle on. She explained the City met with our bonding agency and everything si stable with that project, but we should first at least get an answer with the completion date of the splash pad and if there are any foreseeable future issues. She explained we can discuss this further and see when we should realistically go out to bid. Alderman Forney explained we have the SWIMS grant, and she thinks the concern is where we are at with several projects where we wait and the City ends up funding more money because the gap between the grant funding and the total project cost grows, especially as construction costs continue to rise. She explained the splash pad was one such project. Mayor Sherburne explained she understands what Alderman Forney is saying. She explained with these two projects being in such close proximity, it would be fair to give whoever is bidding on the pool and doing an assessment know when they will be able to come in and start their work but there is not a clear answer of when construction will start again on the splash pad. She explained there has been some stalling on that project that is out of our control. She explained if the Council wants to push forward with putting the pool out to bid knowing that maybe the splash pad wouldn’t be completed before the pool we can proceed with that, but she would caution that if there are issues with the splash pad then we have already extended funding for the construction portion of the pool project. Alderman Forney explained right now we have no services for our community, and Mayor Sherburne explained unfortunately the splash pad and pool didn’t coincide the way we haf hoped where we could get them finished at similar times. Alderman Anastasia explained he agrees that we always wait on things and Ms. Kerper worked hard on getting this grant. He explained we should get proposals for the pool and it doesn’t matter if the pool is open before the splash pad, as long as both are open eventually. He explained he feels the Council should do a PL to ask Director Sprague to put the RFP out. He explained he doesn’t think we should sit on this and possibly lose grant money. Alderman Robinson explained delaying the pool because we do not want it to get done before the splash pad is nonsensical. He explained we have talked about this going out to RFP for some time, and this is the time to start getting bids. He explained we can talk about start dates when we get bidders. Alderman Keary asked if there is a timeline for the grant. Alderman Bennion explained there is not, but this was a fully covered project and now that we are waiting we are at risk of having the project cost more than the grant and having to put in local funds. Alderman Robinson explained we always end up with different information. Alderman McCall explained we wouldn’t have paid as much and both the splash pad and pool would have been done a long time ago if not for delays. She explained if we have obtained the information from the design consultants, we should go out for RFP. She explained the pool is a separate project from the splash pad and we can get the pool going. She explained there was a big fight to keep the pool in the first place, and we need to get moving on getting it renovated while we have the funding. Alderman Crawford explained the original scope of the splash pad project was to replace the pool with the splash pad. He explained keeping the pool has added additional costs. He explained as far as the splash pad is concerned, he has reached out to the engineering firm, and their plan is to have the pump house building internals built out in February or March and having the system operational by the end of March. He explained that would give them two months to finish and he is optimistic we can open by Memorial Day. He explained we have seen a tremendous amount of delays, one of the largest from the Army Corps of Engineers. He explained the Council changed the scope to keep the pool and we have incurred engineering costs for the pool. Mr. Martial explained those costs total around $45,000. Alderman Crawford explained if nothing else, it is at least worth getting the bids. He explained we don’t want to wait until summer or get bids from contractors that are low on the totem pole. He explained we don’t have to make a decision at this point and can look at the information in the bids at this point. He explained we should get bids sooner rather than later to get a sufficient recommendation. Alderman McCall explained the total projected project cost is $977,158 as of June 2024. She explained the City committed $176,246 for a local share, and that leaves a $95,923 additional potential cost. She explained it sounds like the Council supports putting this out to bid, but we need to be aware the City cost is around $270,000. Director Sprague explained he thinks we can have a bid packet prepared in about two weeks from the engineering firm. He explained all of the design and approvals have been done. He explained if we move forward with a bid it will be six to seven weeks at best before he has bids in hand. b. Credit Card Processing Fees Mr. Martial explained this was discussed last month. He explained for fiscal year 2024-2025 the City spent about $75,000 on credit card processing fees. He explained there are 6,031 in person card payments processed during the year. Alderman Bennion asked about those who pay online, and Mr. Martial explained those who use a card online are already charged a $1 fee. He noted there is no fee currently to pay in person with a card. Alderman Bennion explained the City is still getting charged a percentage fee for cards used online, and that fee the City is charged is more than the $1 we are currently collecting. Mr. Martial explained we have the opportunity to have customers pay for this fee, rather than the City. Alderman McCall explained $75,000 is going out the door right now for credit card fees. She asked if we had discussed doing this a different way, She explained New York has requirements that we have to follow when passing along this fee. Alderman Anastasia explained $75,000 is one percent of taxes. He explained the City should not eat this and it is a user fee. He explained this is money we can save taxpayers. He explained it is a cost of living, and explained bills can be paid wish cash or check if someone does not want to pay the fee. Mr. Martial explained there is also no fee for ACH drafts. Alderman Keary asked the cost to the City for employee time to process the ACH drafts, and Mr. Volz explained it takes about five minutes a month. Alderman Robinson explained this is probably something people will not wat to pay, but if the City is paying this is has to be recovered from somewhere. He explained when we first talked about setting up ACH drafts online he went to do so, and found out you have to fill out a form to submit and it cannot be set up online. He explained this is a lack of technology for Olean. He explained if we can get that tuned up as well as presenting the fees to card users we may see a shift in numbers from people paying with a credit card to paying with a bank account. He explained 48% of people are using technology to make their payments to the City, and explained with everything we do the City should move forward and get more advanced and into the modern world. Mr. Volz noted we have about 800 ACH drafts a month. Alderman McCall explained it appears this is something everyone is onboard to looking into. Alderman Bennion explained this is an echo of every prior conversation on this topic. He explained when it was brought up before there were laws discussed and the Council wanted the City Attorney to look into the legalities, and that has yet to be done. He explained he knows there are ways it can be done and we need to know how to handle that. Mayor Sherburne explained she will look into this further. She explained between herself, Mr. Volz, and Mr. Martial, they will look at different options for taking payments that are secure, possibly handled by another processing company. She explained they will put this all together and will have answers for the Council. She explained they need to look at the percentage that is being charged and transaction fees to ensure they are the lowest that they can be. She explained this is a very large volume of credit card transactions and we will ensure we are following legalities when we pass these fees onto people who use cards. Alderman Bennion asked that a plan be put together and presented to the Council to implement this change. c. Capital Projects – Security Cameras Mr. Volz explained we were going to have the company do a site survey last week but they didn’t make it due to the weather. He explained they will be out later this week and then he will have the costs for installation. He noted he already provided the equipment costs to the Council. Alderman McCall asked for a follow up in one month. 4. New Referrals for Consideration None 5. Committee Reports None 6. Adjournment A motion to adjourn was made by Alderman McCall, seconded by Alderman Forney. Voice vote, ayes all. Motion carried. Meeting adjourned at approximately 6:50 p.m.