City Council

27 WEST ALLEN STREET WINOOSKI, VERMONT 05404 (802) 655-6410 CITY OF WINOOSKI (802) 655-6414 (fax) RAYMOND COFFEY INTERIM CITY MANAGER MAYOR SETH LEONARD COUNCILOR NICOLE MACE sleonard@winooskivt.org DEPUTY MAYOR BRIAN CORRIGAN CITY COUNCIL COUNCILOR ROBERT MILLAR COUNCILOR BRIAN SWEENEY bcorrigan@winooskivt.org Agenda Monday, December 19, 2016 6:00 p.m. Claire Burke Council Chambers I. Call To Order II. Pledge of Allegiance III. Public Comment IV. Consent Agenda a. Approval: City Council Minutes of December 5, 2016 b. Approval: Payroll Warrant 11/19/2016 –12/3/2016, Subsequent to Payout Warrant as of November, and Accounts Payable Warrant as of 12/16/2016 c. Update: Office Manager Job Description d. Update: Recreation Part-Time Staff Job Description V. City Update a. Airport Noise Committee Meeting Review VI. Agenda Review VII. Regular Items a. Discussion/Approval: Fire Department/Code Re-Org – J. Audy b. Approval: Use of City Property for Events Policy – H. Carrington c. Discussion: Demo of NextGen Asset Management Software – J. Choate d. Discussion: Capital Budget Proposal – R. Coffey e. Discussion: Present FY018 General Fund Budget– R. Coffey f. Discussion/Approval: Planning Commission Member Selection Process – R. Coffey g. Approval: City Manager Interim Contract Extension – S. Leonard h. Discussion: City Manager Candidate Interview Process – S. Leonard i. Approval: City Manager Candidate Finalist Slate Recommendation – S. Leonard j. Approval: Assignment of FY016 Operating Surplus – R. Coffey VIII. Adjourn MINUTES The meeting was called to order by the Mayor at 6:00 p.m. The meeting began with the Pledge of Allegiance led by Deputy Mayor Brian Corrigan. Members Present: Mayor Seth Leonard Councilors: Brian Corrigan, Nicole Mace, Robert Millar, Brian Corrigan was absent. December 19, 2016 Agenda Winooski City Council Officers Present: Ray Coffey, Interim City Manager; Carol Barrett, City Clerk; John Audy, Code Enforcement Director; John Choate, Utilities Manager; Heather Carrington, Community and Economic Development Director; Kirstie Paschall, Interim Community Services Director; Julie Hulburd, Human Resources Director; Richard Hebert, Police Chief, John Spittle, Fire Chief. Others Present: Michael Rosenberg, Erika Bailey, Firefighter; Alex Caron, Firefighter; Maura O’Neill, WCP; Diane Finnigan, President of Winooski Downtown Development Assoc.; R H Wooden, Lauren Wooden, Eileen Andreoli, Jessie Baker. III. Public Comment: Mrs. Finnigan said the Downtown Association has many concerns with the hotel projects including the significant expansion of the developable lot to accommodate the size of the proposed hotel, use of the pedestrian walkway as a loading and unloading zone and using part of the exiting community park on Winooski Falls Way as a driveway among other concerns. The WDRAI met on April 14 with the Developer of the hotel and at that meeting we had been promised a legal deposition of the lot expansion from the City. The City and Hotel developer also agreed to meet with the Association to discuss other issues. To date we have not received any other information nor have we been invited to any meeting with either the City or the Hotel Developer. We have had no communication from the City until the filing of the ACT 250 permit. I’m here today to invite the Council to meet with the Association to discuss our concerns and hope we can schedule this before the ACT 250 permits. The Mayor stated this is a public comment there won’t be any decision on this. Lauren Wooden, resident of Cascades in Winooski, and I’m also a representative on the WDRAI. I conquer with everything that Diane has said. We are very concerned and we love our community. We are very concerned that the City Council as well as the Town folk promised us that they would get back to us in 30 days. I’m shocked that didn’t happen. They haven’t asked us for feedback I feel very strongly about open space. There is very little in the downtown. To say we are going to give our open space to a private developer so he can put in a driveway and the fact that you are willing to go ahead an approve the ACT250 permit without talking to us is very concerning to me as a community member. The Mayor stated this is public comment and there won’t be any decision on this. The Mayor said he has one public comment he would like to put out there, that is a very special congratulation to Mr. & Mrs. Brian Sweeney for the birth of their child. IV. Consent Agenda The Mayor removed Item C & D from the consent agenda. MOTION by Councilor Corrigan seconded by Councilor Millar to approve the consent agenda as presented. Voted and passed 3-0. V. City Update -Mr. Coffey updated the Council on the Airport Committee meeting. He said they updated us on the noise exposure map and the newly implemented land acquisition and noise compatibility programs. This has been in the news lately but at this point not effecting Winooski. We are keeping an eye on that and trying to take the long view here of how the current pieces of that program could in theory have longer term impacts as the noise map may change with changes in operation at the airport. The meeting was an informational meeting and very well attended and certainly there were Winooski folks there. It was a good conversation and a desire on the airports part and guard’s part to be pro-active and a good neighbor. The other update to share is I heard back from the guard on getting emails concerning the scheduling and things that have a regular impact on the community. When we receive these updates we will be sharing it on front porch forum and our website. He also said the meetings are quarterly. -Mr. Coffey said Chief Hebert announced that our Police Dept will be carrying NARCAN. I just want to commend them for their effort to step in and be on the front line with the opiate issue that we have here in the community. Kudo’s to them. -Mr. Coffey said we were the recipient’s of a municipal planning grant through the PCCD at the state level. This is a $20,000.00 grant with a $6000.00 match which was discussed several months ago. Kudo’ to Heather Carrington to get this grant. December 19, 2016 Agenda Winooski City Council - The holiday schedule this year is a half day on Friday December 23 and all day Monday, December 26 and half day on Friday December 30 and full day on Monday, January 2, 2016. This will be posted on the website. -Regional Dispatch – There has been a lot of discussion and we have been involved with the discussions looking at regionalizing dispatch services for emergency and police. We have had some really positive conversations and a real emphasis on cost savings but also operational improvements. -The Mayor said a big thank you as we wrap up the year to the staff. Hope everyone has a tremendous holiday. We really appreciate all the work that has been done over this past year. VI. Agenda Review – No change VII. Regular Items a. Discussion/Approval: Fire Department/Code Re-Org Mr. Coffey said we have been dealing with this over the last number of months with a number of items with the Fire Dept and working diligently to try and come up with some solutions that will help address those. We had some items in the HR dept. job descriptions that have not yet been codified. We have had some challenges with one position in particular that’s being over worked in terms of number of hours and also looking at the commissions request at some ways to improve our coverage. Right now with a part-time department it’s not always as consistent and guaranteed as we would like to see. John and John have been working on this for a few months. I think this has been a really good process. Mr. Audy stated he would like to acknowledge the rather candid conversations that have been had with several. They’re appreciated, they’re challenging at times. There is a lot of hard work that has made Winooski Fire what it is today. We want to build upon that and at the same time we want to move forward. The memo that was sent to Council touches on many different aspects, Human Resources issues, coverage issues, securing the coverage and expanding upon our coverage. Mr. Audy said Julie played a huge role in the Human Resource piece. You are seeing job descriptions that answers a lot of those that are city owned. In my opinion they are expandable. The employee issue that we spoke about is an important piece. We have to secure our day time coverage. We also have to acknowledge that for some one to work 90 to 100 hours in a pay period is a lot. The budget side we are seeing a lot of benefits and looking at 2 or 3 budgets and how they relate to each other. The functions that we do as fire marshals and on code side relate directly to emergency response. We are able to benefit from some of the cost sharing whether it’s administrative and some of the coverage pieces and realize the other benefit of that money can apply towards staffing. This isn’t the 20 year fix by any means, but we are concentrating on the future. Mr. Spittle spoke about the operational side. He said part of what he inherited and took over was a great system that was originally built and designed and to move toward what we were are talking about. How will we combine functions of different departments to allow for that kind of crossover and that kind of coverage? How do we put that in to an operational method? What we found in the Department is the current status is we are very top heavy with higher management, chief level but through time middle management is where we need actual operational staff had been basically not filled. What we are looking at is part of the re-org for our Department is just re-classifying, what is it we need as far as operations. The next level I need to look at as far as how were doing that coverage is, how can we accomplish that, with two things, crossover from the Departments and the other is getting more people on the Department involved. There was in the past, a level of officers and those were the only one charged with task. In looking at this when I came to the Department when I first took over I wanted to build a plan where we start getting everybody, firefighter level up involved with tasking’s and handling more of the work. We looked at this plan on how we can do that, so part of what John has developed and what we discussed with the combination job through the Fire Marshall’s office and daytime coverage is one piece of it, it helps secure that person so that they’re not getting over stressed that includes flexible time within their day to participate in fire Department training as well, so it crosses over. The other piece we looked at is how can we get additional coverage, obviously that person has vacations and there will be times and there are other jobs, how do we want to cover those. We looked at per diem coverage for 16 hours (predicted to be two 8 hour blocks on the weekend). This added depth helps address and identify the need for more coverage as call volumes continue to grow. This will be on a rotating basis and hopefully it’s our own firefighters who are looking to do that. I think this plan has enough openness to it that we can also be looking for firefighters from other departments. When you look at this structure some might say it’s non-traditional and that is a term I’ve been putting out a lot because fire service is obviously is you hear a lot about tradition. A non-traditional format has been seen by some as this isn’t going to work or they’re just not happy with it. We have had good feed back from it as to why, what their concerns are and we are taking that into account while still looking at and how are we going to manage things operationally. I feel this is a good base not to help solve some December 19, 2016 Agenda Winooski City Council problems Mr. Audy said we did take this to the commission. Mr. Casier said we talked very extensively on this and is very much in favor of it. Mr. Rosenberg said we looked at the physical side, we didn’t think about personnel issues until it was raised recently. I listened to everyone’s position. We did not vote on it as a commission and we did have quorum. Personally I would encourage adopting this system. We are extraordinarily proud of our firefighters. The Mayor said from a leadership perspective, he said the roles were inherited and not codified. We have not had previous position descriptions which existed for the roles that we are seeing. Mr. Spittle sad we stepped in historically to what has been done. The Mayor stated that he has looked at other communities and they are looking at this, with a similar re-org. In terms of the farm system it looks like there might be more opportunities to acquire different roles outside of on duty. Mr. Spittle said there will be defined jobs and roles and work per diem, basically a little different from traditional. They will have defined jobs to do. The Mayor asked what’s the general sense in terms of the per diem filed locally. How effective has the additional allotment of on call funds that we made last year? Has that inspired additional on-call activity or volunteers? Mr. Spittle said he wouldn’t say inspired additional, but I think it does add a little more benefit or more importance. It has helped because it does add more to the fund. Councilor Corrigan asked as far as the per diem folks go is there a current group of folks out there that could be eligible for that in case ours are not willing to fill those roles. Mr. Spittle said we have laid out guidelines. The person who we bring on meets the basic firefighter requirements, whether you’re here or from another department. Councilor Corrigan asked if there will be any controls put into place so that we don’t have full time firefighters who have 2 days off to grab the per diem extras. Mr. Spittle said a full time Fire Department would not allow a firefighter to come from their Department to work a part-time job. Mr. Audy said we will manage the part-time maximum, work with HR and be careful of that ceiling. It won’t be the same person working, 16, 16, and 16, that’s not the intent of this. We want to create an opportunity for as many as we can. The Mayor said we have this as an approval item; historically we’ve taken position descriptions as single warned items. Tonight’s vote will be for the overall plan and ask that the positions descriptions come back in the consent agenda next time, unless somebody sees something. The Mayor asked if there was an issue with that being approved on the 3rd of January. Mr. Audy said it is important to move forward and he understands the process but this 3 days make a difference, we are trying to roll out January 1.The Mayor said you can get approval of the plan, and I haven’t heard of any issues on the descriptions so we will put the descriptions on the consent agenda fort he next meeting. MOTION by Councilor Mace seconded by Councilor Corrigan to approve the Fire Department Code-Reorg reflective of the organizational chart provided by Chief Spittle and Mr. Audy, minus the job descriptions. Voted and passed 3-0. b. Approval: Use of City Property for Events Policy Ms. Carrington said she went back through and incorporated the revisions that were discussed at the previous meeting. Se said she changed the word “taxpayers” to “residents”, clarified language used to limit number of large events and or events with road closure. The use of “non-sequential events” further specificity was confusing. The new event application also includes John Audy’s email address. Special Events free parking discussion- She said it was a complicated process. She said the Council requested that staff consider options for offering; rentals of garage parking, event sponsors to purchase in order to provide free parking for event attendees. After putting together a spreadsheet, charting hourly garage permit holders it became apparent that there is no garage capacity prior to 5:00 p.m. on weekday. Therefore, weekday garage parking has been removed from consideration. She said there is a possibility of offering 200 event parking spaces for an event from 6:00 p.m. on most week nights. This is a pretty difficult package to put together, so I created a fee structure which includes staff time. See attached. This would be available only for City Council approved special event permit holders over 200. I made this so it would be a 200 space minimum. The rental hours would only be available in increments shown in the chart. I personally recommend against offering the option of pre-purchasing eveny parking at this time. My recommendation is based on three issues: the current community perception of a city wide parking deficit, a desire to utilize, the as yet incomplete, parking study data to drive decision making, and the additional staff hours required to successfully balance permit holder demand with event attendee demand. However, should council wish to move forward with a policy offering special event parking rentals in the garage, I have drafted a policy language as follows? Event sponsors for City Council approved special events with over 200 attendees may pay a fee to reserve spaces in the Winooski parking garage if they wish to provide free parking for their events. Hours of availability, minimum required spaces and fees are outlined in Chapter 28 of the Winooski Municipal Code. Mayor Leonard said the development contract with the next door property which provided a guarantee that the City would not enter into contracts in short or long term for space for the public spaces in the evening time. One of the great things December 19, 2016 Agenda Winooski City Council about that contract though is the spirit of it and I’m sure we will be able to work through it with everybody involved. I’m not overly concerned about that as an issue from a codification stand point. I agree that it would make sense to move forward with out it. Ms. Carrington this is useful chart to look at. It did have an additional impact and what it would cost to do free parking for the events that I had proposed. See attached. The Mayor thanked Heather for all her work. Mr. Coffey said we also looked at different ways to quantify if possible what the economic benefit on the other side of the equation is for offering these. Heather and I had that conversation and we don’t have great access to those numbers. We are happy to keep looking at that and what’s real. The Mayor asked that we put it on our outlook google calendar so that we can look back at it and review it in October. Councilor Mace would like to clarify that it’s still being limited to no more than 2 events per month in a calendar month, with over 200 people and prior street closure. So the non-sequential reference was eliminated but there is still language on the number and admin. The City staff may request an event sponsor that meets specific conditions. Mr. Coffey said a year of this under our belts will help clarify some of that. There was some discussion about lead time when applying for an event permit. MOTION by Councilor Corrigan seconded by Councilor Millar to approve the use of City Property for Events Policy and with the notation we will be removing the optional parking purchase from the garage and that we review it in October of 2017. Voted and passed 3-0. c. Discussion: Demo of NextGen Asset Management Software Mr. Coffey said we heard a lot about Asset Management here over the last two years. Public Works has been working diligently to get there. Mr. Choate will give us an overview of the system and program that we have settled on. We are not there yet in terms in putting this into implementation but we are doing a lot of data entry now. Mr. Choate said we have been using it on a small scale here in town. Asset Management is the buzz word. He presented a power point See attached. Asset Management is managing assets whether that is vehicles, pipes in the ground or manholes. It’s using that information to prioritize your work. The kick off meeting is this week with the company that we hired. We interviewed four companies and we chose NextGen which is a company out of Sacramento They will do the implementation on site. Scope of Service – Mr. Choate said we received a grant which was half paid for by the State. They recognize the importance of asset management. He said we have inputted all this information into a GIS system which will create the maps. We can also expand the software. The Mayor asked what the prioritization and what resources would be demanded. Mr. Choate said if we pull out E. Allen St, it has an older water main. If we had to replace E. Allen St. it would be a challenging project which is why it hasn’t been done. We might take Lafountain St. first. The dollars are more on E. Allen St. than Lafountain St. Mr. Choate said a lot of the prioritization is on the management side of this program. The tailor of the ability of this program is going to be powerful. Mr. Coffey said there has been a bit of hesitation getting into asset management, is there is a fear on that first morning the stack of paper is going to be a lot and there is a reality to that. There are a lot of projects that have been back burned, or in Steve’s head or white board. There are many cases where we can check off because they have been done. I think until we hit that button on the first day, it’s going to be hard to know. There will have to be management responsibilities in stacking those priorities. Councilor Corrigan asked if either Mr. Coffey or Mr. Choate for see in the future this program being able to assist us in writing RFP’s for stuff we are not going to get ourselves. Mr. Choate said whether its over priority or enough to contracting priority by all means it helps us get through all the mass of information and it helps us center in what’s important. Councilor Mace asked if it would be useful in terms of all the new development that’s coming on line, impact fees and we need to talk about that as a council, when we look at the fee structure. Mr. Choate said allocation is a big buzz word. At some point the allocated reserve at the wastewater plant is going to be used up. Mr. Choate said we are not going to combine finance with this. This is strictly infrastructure. d. Discussion: Capital Budget Proposal Mr. Coffey briefed the Council on the Capital Budget. He wants to acknowledge that last year a comment was made about bringing a giant spread sheet about pieces of equipment to show you. I want to acknowledge that this is what we have done again. With that said there are a lot of steps taken behind the scenes to get us away from a situation where were doing our capital budget based on purely finance and instead of reality. We are prioritizing our projects based on operation level and information. See attached capital budget. You will see that some equipment is budgeted out several years. The primary piece that is driving this is roads and sidewalks. We’ve prioritized here the roads that we are trying to address next year. Again, the streets that are listed in eighteen are hope. When we get our NextGen software up that will be less of an issue in the future. We are looking at resurfacing the basketball court at West Allen St. December 19, 2016 Agenda Winooski City Council We need to replace the Thermal Imaging Camera because it was damaged in an incident. In the Police Dept we are starting to get into a five year cycle with our cruisers. Mr. Coffey said the other piece to this is a memo concerning the capital reserve allocation issue. See attached. He said on the revenue side there is a line that carries across into the future $70,355. Back in 2010-2011 there were decisions made by a council to set that money aside towards relieving a deficit and what we are trying to figure out now is there’re varying remembrances of that conversation to say; what we believe is that if the deficit was retired that extra $70,355 was to be swept over to the capital budget and carried forward. Mr. Ticehurst and I have been working with Seth and we are trying to get back into those weeds and figure out what was promised and said. I bring this up here just to say that we have been expensing that and factoring that into capital over the last 6 years. He said Jim has brought this up as an area of potential concern and perhaps reconcile. We have been in talks with legal and searching minutes back into 2007-2010. The Mayor said there was a question we need to clarify; there was a vote we were going to have a certain % amount done and the council took action to add to that later on. We don’t know why there was a vote on a capital allocation, because anytime you vote on a budget it includes capital. The Mayor said tonight’s introduction of budgets is so the people have time to mull this over. Thank you for putting this together this soon we usually get the capital budget last. Mr. Coffey said the reserve funds that are currently allocated towards project are current year projects. e. Discussion: Present FY018 General Fund Budget Mr. Coffey presented the budget message. See attached. He emphasized the schedule and Paul will be helping to get this out. He said staff put together a level service budget basically to do the exact same work next year. Mr. Coffey read the following schedule. See attached. We are assuming the growth on the grand list of 3.4 million by April 2017. We sat down with the assessor and John Audy. This is a number we are going to use in the process budget. We are assuming a modest growth in some fees.(i.e. event fees, zoning/building permit fees) which will be discussing in January as we present an updated fees chapter in our ordinances. We have conservatively increased our budget for parking tickets by $25,000 based on 18 months of data. Councilor Corrigan wanted to go back to the grand list. How do you come up with at increase in the grand list? Mr. Coffey said what we operate primarily from the permits that have been pulled or completed and its April 1 to April 1. What we looked at this year; interestingly it’s kind of a slower year for us in the grand list growth. We are expecting next fiscal year you will actually see that number be quite a bit bigger. We have a lot of projects that are moving but we are not going to be at point on April 1 where the value of the property will be relatively higher. He said much of the driver there is a project that is Biotec, so that’s a project that is getting wrapped up this year. This is driving up the growth for us. Mr. Coffey went over the General Administration. He said we are proposing to pool funds for Training/Travel, Office/General Supplies, Postage and telephone as a way to improve efficiency control costs. He said another big piece we wanted to highlight is FY018 had been the year in our TIF model that we anticipated beginning to payback WCDC which you all know is currently the City Council. When that group dissolved the City Council was made the trustee’s of WCDC. In looking through the dissolution documentation for that group and thinking things from a strategic perspective the question was raised to whether or not reconsider an outside entity, made sense in a 1.4 sq. mile community versus leveraging those funds as allowable in the dissolution towards community development but through the City’s control. We are proposing here a poll, the Community & Economic Development officer and Vista, which is a communications and engagements position into an Enterprise Fund, which is essentially being constituted in 18 by funds paid back by the TIF. It’s modeling that’s been done since the TIF started. The money is there to begin to pay back. There is a note that is owed. This is a conceptual piece that I think is certainly going to be a conversation through this budget process. It’s a recommendation and I think it’s the Councils prerogative but we’ve gotten legal to say if the desire to do that we’re there; there is nothing outside the balance to do that. The Mayor just wanted to add that there are other financial considerations that are positive with the TIF that include: #1, we still have developable land that is not turning Tax Increment right now and also that in our wisdom we have been very conservative in our projections even with this. The Mayor said this would have to a rolling conversation. Mr. Coffey said Public Safety will see some increases on the salary and benefit side or anticipate seeing increases there and right now we are in contract negotiations. He said worker’s comp jumped $3.00 and that was not an anticipated increase and that was pretty significant for us. The Public Works increase is utilities, facilities cost and supplies. The Community Services budget we annually do the pool operating fund but this is on the chopping block so that’s been removed and added to the add restore list in the amount of $48,000.00. Mr. Coffey said he is proposing that we pull the Community Programs Fund and add it to the add restore list. December 19, 2016 Agenda Winooski City Council Councilor Millar said the #$20,000.00 was voted on by the residents. Mr. Coffey said, does an approved budget by the voters trump any previous fiscal policy and that’s a question I think we have to ask. He also submitted the add restore list. He said he did not include in this model any use of fund balance or operation surplus. The Mayor asked if the restore add list is prioritized. Mr. Coffey said it is not but he would bring it back to leadership and bring it back to the Council in January. The Mayor said tonight is the initial presentation as Ray mentioned we have a lot of opportunities for public participation and a lot of opportunities for this group to hear the depts. presentation and also review the cut/add list. I want to commend Ray especially for the work he’s done on this, kudos to you and all the staff. Councilor Mace suggested that the commission come to those meetings. f. Discussion/Approval: Planning Commission Member Selection Process The Mayor said the Planning Commission has a lot of statutory pieces around the commission. We have not adopted the same level of policy, procedures in order for the Planning Commission that we actually have for our other commissions. The Planning Commission is now working through the process looking at policy and procedures to propose. We have an immediate need for filling some positions on the Planning Commission and discussing that with the members, I wanted to propose that Council provider representative and staff provider representatives and the Planning Commission provider representatives to do interviews for potential applicants. We believe we have more people who are interested than we have spaces. It is not a formalized thing and that council actually gets to make the appointment. What we decided not to do is having the Planning Commission make the appointment and a formal recommendation back. I wanted to run this by everybody and it would be an impromptu way of dealing with the short term and until something more formal comes back. If that’s agreeable we can move forward with that. The Mayor said he would volunteer himself and he is the liaison to the Planning Commission. MOTION by Councilor Mace seconded by Councilor Corrigan on an interim basis to utilize one planning commission member, one member staff, and the Mayor to make a recommendation to council for Planning Commission selection from the outcome pool. Voted and passed 3-0. g. Approval: City Manager Interim Contract Extension The Mayor said this is a contract and as such I recommend that we take a moment as Council to go into Executive Session to review and to see if anybody has any contractual questions. The contract is public and this would give you an opportunity to ask questions of me and the proposal that might otherwise put the city at a dis-advantage because this is a contract negotiation and with that I would entertain a motion to go into executive session MOTION by Councilor Corrigan seconded by Councilor Mace to go into executive session at 8:03 p.m. to discuss the Winooski Interim City Manager Employment agreement addendum as presented and to come back out and take action in open meeting on this item. Voted and passed 3-0. The meeting reconvened at 8:10 p.m. The Mayor said what we proposed was to extend the contract for one month with the understanding what ever happens and unfolds could possible be back again and talk about what the future looks like. At this point in time we have an addendum to the original Interim City Manager agreement to extend until February 1, 2017. MOTION by Councilor Corrigan seconded by Councilor Mace to approve the Winooski Interim City Manager Employment Agreement Addendum as presented. Voted and passed 3-0. h. Discussion: City Manager Candidate Interview Process The Mayor said once we have progress we will be reviewing a slate of finalist. He said he has proposed an amendment to the City Manager search and hiring procedure. The length and context of interviews and with a little more flexibility to be provided next time, so this is kind of the initial draft and would get amended at our next meeting to formalize what that schedule will look like. See attached. i. Approval: City Manager Candidate Finalist Slate Recommendation The City Council has received a recommended slate from the City Manager search committee which included its business last Thursday. With that recommendation, came a slate of candidates and at this point in time because placing those folks in public session would put them at risk that slate is not to be discussed publicly at this time. We can review the results in Executive Session except the slate at the time the public interview is scheduled that’s when names will become public and this is to protect somebody who maybe otherwise employed. MOTION by Councilor Mace seconded by Councilor Corrigan to go into executive session at 8:15 p.m. for the purpose of discussing the hiring of a City Manager and acceptance of candidates provided by the City Manager search committee and we also invite Julie Hulburd into executive session. Voted and passed 3-0. The Mayor said we will reconvene to vote in open session. The meeting reconvened at December 19, 2016 Agenda Winooski City Council 8:50 p.m. MOTION by Councilor Corrigan seconded by Councilor Mace to advance the candidates recommended by the search committee and reviewed by City Council in executive session Voted and passed 3-0. The Mayor said candidates will be made public once interviews are scheduled. j. Approval: Assignment of FY016 Operating Surplus Mr. Coffey said to be clear tonight what we want to go through is a quick accounting move here to get the operating surplus in the right space in the budget. We are not here tonight on how to assign this at this point what I’m looking for is guidance from the Council. We don’t want to have the operating surplus fund balance piece coloring the conversation about the budget. I think there is risk in that. Tonight we are just looking at the landing spot for that money. Mr. Ticehurst said there are questions of what do you do with the surplus. See attached memorandum. He said the charter language does govern everything. It supersedes any policies, procedures of what ever the case maybe. We asked for legal opinion primarily because in the charter language says. The surplus/deficit will be carried forward into the fiscal year; primarily because you never know what the surplus is going to be if there is one after the audit is done. Our attorney gave her opinion that the next fiscal year is the year after the audit. In this particular case in FY016 audit produce for you a $411,432 surplus. The question is what do you do with it? The outcome of operations basically goes to into your fund balance. In our particular case this would go into General Fund balance. Within the general fund balance we are allowed by GASB 54 general accounting standards for ruling 54. He said you can take that and have a single account called fund balance or you can break that up into multiples, you can have an assigned category and an unassigned category, a restricted category, all variety of things. In our case the outcome of that accounting operation for FY016 basically posted $411,432 into an unassigned category within the fund balance. Then we revert what the charter language basically says you will carry it forward into the next fiscal year which is FY017 the year we are currently in. Our recommendation to you and probably the easiest recommendation is simply that we just make a journal entry and take the $411,432 out of the fund balance unassigned category and we place it into the FY017 other revenue item. It doesn’t have a budget but it’s going to have an actual figure which is going to be the surplus that was transmitted by FY016. The other thing to off set that would be, once it’s in the budget, you as the council has every right to use it as you see fit. You can transfer it all into the capital fund, or you can use it for unanticipated expenses, you can buy equipment and do what ever you want with it. That pretty much suffices with what the charter language was intended to say. I would recommend that as your treasurer that the City should ever decide to make any other charter language changes that the legislature has to approve that might be one of them you would want to put a little clarity in, so it’s very clear. In the next coming months we will re-write the financial reserves policy which states ”otherwise” it will change that so it reflects the intent of the charger language. We will bring that back to you for approval. The Mayor said he has real concerns over that from a protection stand point and don’t really like the idea of operations in any year being driven away that result in a surplus intentionally. Mr. Coffey said the timing in that sense is tricky because the budget process and the end of the audit sort of align, it’s definitely it’s not a strategic timing on staffs part, just kind of the process that goes. You don’t want to incentivize savings for the purpose of having basically free money in future years. Mr. Ticehurst said FY016 was an unusual year, which generated a farly large surplus, we had an extremely mild winter and didn’t use up all of our winter resources, had vacancy that didn’t get filled for what ever reason. The Mayor said his perspective on it is that he is not interested in entertaining a policy to the ham strings what future councils do with it. I certainly have in my mind what is and isn’t appropriate in terms of use. Mr. Ticehurst said why don’t we ask the attorney, what if we took the $411, 432 an assigned it rather than un-assigned does that suffice to satisfy the intent of the charter language. Councilor Mace said we need better clarity around our capital needs and better results of our parking study etc. This is going to be really important. I’m still not sure we are still underfunding our capital budget. I’ve also heard we can’t spend the money that we’ve put into capital budget. I think it’s important that we get a handle on our capacity to spend the funds that are allocated for capital and make sure that were not continuing to under fund our capital needs. It’s and educational opportunity for us to put together this budget. The Mayor said we may not have all the information necessary to feel a 100% comfortable with those decisions but I think what we could do is put a portion a way to be designated towards long term expenses that service our capital needs. We can functionally do that and if you want to split some up and take care of some short term needs. I think in your terms and perspective on how we proceed, are you looking for guidance now on how we would like to see that approach in terms ow how we would like to spend the money on. Mr. Coffey said step 1 is to move it per the chart for FY017. Mr. Ticehurst said we need council approval in order to make the journal entry and move it out of the fund balance. Mr. Coffey said we have a list of recommendations that we can bring forward. MOTION by Councilor Millar seconded by Councilor Corrigan to allow us to take it out of fund balance and to move it into the FY017 budget. Voted and passed 3-0. December 19, 2016 Agenda Winooski City Council MOTION by Councilor Millar seconded by Councilor Corrigan to adjourn the City Council meeting at 9:10 p.m. Voted and passed 3-0. ATTEST:___________________________ City Clerk December 19, 2016 Agenda Winooski City Council