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12-14-1994 Truth in Taxation MinutesCC-SPMET.WPS CITY Of OTSEGO SPECIAL TRUTH IN TAXATION MEETING CONTINUED FROM NOVEMBER 30,1994 TO DECEMBER 14, 1994 AT 7PM SPECIAL. TRUTH IMI TAXATION MEETING DECEMBER 14, 1994 - 7PM 1. VICE - MAYOR DOUG LINDENFELSER WILL CALL THE MEETING TO ORDER: Vice -Mayor Doug Lindenfelser called the meeting to order at 7PM. Doug Lindenfelser thanked the Staff and Council Members for the time put in on the report. He said any questions, please come to the microphone and ask. He asked if there is any part that is of some concern. Larry Fournier said we should give them five minutes to read the report. The time was given. ROLL CALL: DOUG LINDENFELSER, VICE -MAYOR, FLOYD RODEN, LARRY FOURNIER AND RON BLACK, COUNCIL MEMBERS WERE PRESENT, NORMAN F FRESKE, MAYOR WAS OUT OF TOWN. Also present were Jerome Perrault, Clerk, Elaine Beatty, Deputy Clerk/Zoning Adm, and Judy Hudson, Secretary. 2. DISCUSSION OF TRUTH IN TAXATION INFORMATION ON BUDGET FIGURES: Doug Lindenfelser added that category of 1994 in the report, are from January through September, 1994, not the entire year. Floyd Roden explained further. Jerry Perrault said contracted service for 1994 was the final figure and he pointed out the other ones that were final figures. Floyd Roden brought up Park and Recs. figure on the last page. That was taken out of Park Fund dedicated money. There is no tax money involved in that. A resident asked Floyd Roden to say that again. Hc explained it did not come out of tax money. Jerry Perrault said Antelope Park and Country Ridge paid a Park and Recs. Fee. More discussion of the fee on that. Larry Fournier said our levy for 1994 was 458,829.00. 1995 Proposed levy is $643,560,00. He explained the levy and it went up only 1%. The reason your taxes went up is that the income went down. He explained Interest, Building Permits were less. State made us pay Sales Tax. Somewhere in the neighborhood of $50,000.00. $140,000.00 is the difference in income. 3. ANY QUESTIONS OR CONCERNS FROM THE RESIDENTS TAKEN: Mr. John Charles asked about the City Hall Electric. He asked about the 92 - 95 amounts. Why did that increase at such a high level. Judy Hudson said the big difference is we did not have the new building. 1994 does not include the total amount. There are three more months. It also includes the Old City Hall, which is being rented. Doug Lindenfelser asked if there are any other questions. Jerry Ahlers He is looking at the clean up day. He said it is being used for clean up. He said we are charging a fee, but we still have $10,000.00 we pay. He did not feel the junk would end up in the ditches. He does not think we should have the clean up day. He feels $7,000.00 would go for many different things. He rents a dumpster and he feels a City Cleanup day the City should not pay for. Vern Heidner had the last figures $3,749.59 is for clean up day. Doug Lindenfelser said he agrees, we have been raising our charges and have the expense. Maybe we could charge more. Make them pay what it costs us. Is there payroll being figured into this also? No, payroll was not in there, said Jerry Perrault. CITY OF OTSEGO SPECIAL TRUTH IN TAXATION MEETING OF DECEMBER 14, 1994 AT 7PM - PAGE 2 - Floyd Roden agreed. He said that he had a pile, but he talked to East Tonka and he picked it up for $45.00. $3,300.00 was the amount collected. Doug read the amount of things that were collected. The biggest expense was for stoves, refrigerators, Etc, Mr Ahlers thought the City should not have to take the hit for that. He would like to see fees raised for the Clean Up Day. More discussion on Clean Up Day. Doug Lindenfelser asked if there were any other questions. Bob Amit - What is the State charging sales tax for? Ron Black said we end up paying taxes twice for goods that the City uses. If I am not mistaken School Districts are not subject to that yet, Counties are. He explained further how it works. We also pay taxes to the State of Minnesota. Under Contracted Services, now that the City has a Plan, why do we pay the Planner? Ron Black said one of the reasons is there are always changes made to the Plan. We get criticized for not changing it fast enough. Planning and Zoning is a bazaar area to deal with. There are continual applications to do something different and those applications have to be reviewed. The City practice is for the people that want to do something different, they pay for those services. What you see is what the City is billed. The users pay for the service. In some instances the taxpayers pay for the service without reimbursement. Ron talked about the Third Industrial Site, residents were opposed, we had to pay for the Planning that went into that. There are ongoing demands for services. There will be a rearrangement ofjob functions in the City Hall. Our City Clerk is retiring after 50 years. A rearrangement ofjob responsibilities. We anticipate that a significant portion of the routine P. % Z will be done in house and some of that is also true of Engineering. We have a person coming on board who is experienced in P and Z. In house we expect to do more. Dave Cederberg asked about recycling. He talked about having organized recycling, regardless of the garbage. Floyd Roden said he and Doug Lindenfelser worked on it. It is a tough issue, Ron Black said nobody has come up with convincing evidence to show it is cheaper. You rearrange who gets the money. Mr. Cederberg said four different guys are going down the road. You will elliminate some expenses. Recycling is a flat rate that was set four or five years ago. It does not include garbage pick-up. The haulers are charging the City for the number of customers they have on their route. A flat rate was established four or five years ago. Polka Dot went broke, the Co told us we have to have a recycling program. The decision was to have this done as a general budget item. Next year we will look at instead of a line item in the budget, the bill for recycling would be sent out. More discussion. Mr. Cederberg said Anoka, Coon Rapids have organized garbage. One person is handling it all. He felt it would be more cost effective. Larry F said that was how it was at Otsego. The garbage men came in and volunteered to do the recycling. Doug said the garbage haulers were not equipped to do recycling before, what do you do? Tim Greninger said it is not the City's problem if they have a monopoly or not. tt is not your personal feeling. You are there to run the City Government as cheaply as possible. Floyd Roden said we had another bid but it was not less. Doug said we did talk about organized hauling. Some liked it some don't. Maybe we can get this thing organized. Floyd Roden said the bigger issue is garbage trucks wearing the road out. CITY OF OTSEGO SPECIAL TRUTH IN TAXATION HEARING ON DECEMBER 14, 1994 AT 7PM - PAGE 3 - Donald Tolks asked if the garbage trucks are licensed and bonded. Yes they are. He has three different trucks there on different days of the week. Rates keep going up. Ron Black said there are bigger tipping fees now. They continually go up. Wright Co. now has a $41.00 a year to help support that operation. Co Commissioners just nicked us for that. More discussion. The most troubling issue is the City sets the rates. Donald Tholks discussed more on garbage haulers and they should try to cut their costs. Doug Lindenfelser said we did meet with the haulers and talked about the routes. Jerry Ahlers would like to talk about the Sheriffs Dept. We started $53,000 in 92 and gradually went up, he went over the figures. Now $95,000 to $100,000.00 How many hours are they supposed to be here. At what times? There are peak hours and non -peak hours for crime. How many hours do they service the City in more populated areas, vs the least populated and can we not condense it down? 7AM is not productive as 11PM, he asked how is it broken down. This is a service we have to look at as it is a major expenditure. Doug said we are contracting 56 hours a week. The rate keeps going up said Jerome Perrault. We also have an 8 hour car that roams through the area. 56 hrs a wk at $32.50. When 1 drive home at night, are we paying them for setting and talking to the Liquor Store person? Larry Fournier said we agree with you. We are looking at this issue. We have talked to Dayton and they are giving us costs. We are in that process. We got a quote for one portion of the City which was less. We realize it is a problem. We need police protection. We are working at it. We will continue to do that. Doug - said the protection is there, Jerry Ahlers said we need to look at this and see what is going on. Ron said we do not have any real control over when the 56 hours are spent. We want some sort of reporting and to date that information has not been provided. As a result, we have started looking at alternatives. We have raw data on comparable size depts. for our city size. Dayton has expressed and interest and we should be hearing shortly from Elk River. We hope to have something in the near future. Mr Thaiks said could it be we have 70 or 75 hours of service a week? 1 -le said there is always one in the area. Larry F said we are only charged for the 56 hours. Doug said they try to have someone here all the time because of the population. We get very few complaints. He said the $I00,000.00, why can't we look to see if we can get more bang for the buck, Ron Black said at this point we have only looked for information. A group of citizens who are interested can be appointed to seriously look at it. There are costs and revenues involved that need to be looked at. Mr Tholks said the City would be taking on a large liability. Elk River, he asked about Fire Service. Ron Black said Monticello charges a flat rate. Albertville charges on a computation relying on value of property. IIe explained further. Elk River uses the COP formula (cost approach) Ile explained. We account for 40°/ of Elk River Fire Departments calls. We do not pay For the ladder truck here. A substantial number of calls come from #101. It is based on actual costs. CITY OF OTSEGO SPECIAL TRUTH IN TAXATION MEETING OF DECEMBER 14, 1994 AT 7PM - PAGE 4 - Tim Greninger - The Wages here it is $100,000.00. It averages out to $11,000.00 in wages. Why has it gone up? Jerome Perrault said it had to comply with pay equity. You had to raise some or lower others to get the balance. Some School Districts ended up with over one million dollar fine. We have been going the cost of living 3% each year. It was mandated from the State. Tim Greninger said the employees, how many do you have? Elaine explained we have four full time and one part time Treasurer. More discussion of we having way less employees than Monticello or Buffalo. Commercial and Industrial was discussed, Mr Ahyers talked about keeping the spending in line. Economic Development was discussed. Doug brought up 101 is an issue. Another resident talked about businesses are there any? Larry F said there is a commercial business MRD. John Charles talked about taxes making a major jump, he is concerned. It could be quite awhile. Do we have to wait for 101 and ask them to wait while they build their buildings. More discussion and salt and sand was brought up. He talked about the plowing, police car, etc. , do we need it? He said you may step on 10 people but 4,000 others did not call. Doug Lindenfelser said the safety is an issue. At the rate we are going, in five years it may be spooky. Larry Fournier said 101 is scheduled for completion in Fall on 1996. It is not that far away. We already have a commercial proposal. It is already started. We are working on it. It is beginning to happen. We are working on holding the budget down. This City Council has worked hard to maintain good services and hold the budget down. That is what we re all about. Dave Cederberg. How many things are here that will be one time expenditures. Like School wells, or what have you. Pretty much, the next year don't look for any better. Floyd Roden said we had MarkHurd who did the topos. It is hard to figure out what to do over there until we did the watershed. There was $34,000.00 there. More discussion of items that are a one time item. Floyd Roden said possibly because of this and other things there will be some changes in Engineering, etc. More discussion. He talked about 101 and Commercial. Tim Greninger commented until we get Industrial Zones up and running, etc, T don't think the City should take money out of the budget, as the new school. Mr Tholks asked if when business start coming in will they get TIF? Ron Black said first of all, the City cannot negotiate tax rates. Business will locate here because it is economically reasonable to locate here. Ron explained the tax rates and determined by the legislature. Business pay full blast for taxes. He explained TIF more. Doug asked if any other questions. Gary Durand - Do they put into the paper who will he getting building permits. More discussion of zoning and commercial. CITY OF OTSEGO SPECIAL TRUTH IN TAXATION MEETING OF DECEMBER 14, 1994 AT 7PM - PAGE 5 - Ron explained that now much of the land is zoned Ag. and there is no reason to change it now. NAC - $60,000.00., is that a variable figure, asked Mae Spencer. Larry F explained if the City asked them to do something we have to pay. If the resident ask for a special request it would be paid back to the City. He explained further. Vern Heidner said he paid $497.00 for the CUP. (two of them). He said a part comes back in for P & Z items. Floyd Roden said he would like to lower that figure. With this new person coming on board, hopefully she can help lower it, along with the Engineer. Ron Black said we as residents of Otsego know exactly what planning is costing us because you can look at these figures with a dollar amount attached to it. Many other Cities you will not have a clue as to what is being spent. Here there is some accountability. We can have them show us that they spent that time. There are advantages and disadvantages of that. With Staff it is more difficult. Don Tholks asked if you have mileage on here. Jerome Perrault said in 1990 we had an intern working for us and she was getting paid mileage. Jerry Ahers questioned Park and Recs. $28,000.00 for Parks. What is on the agenda for the other $15,000.00 Floyd said they have started on the Otsego Park. He said they have been putting some of that money for the City Hall Park. We have an ISTEA with 25% match grant. $15,000.00 was the matching grant funds. We also applied for a DNR Grant for ball diamond, etc. Park and Recs. have not spent any money yet. Jerry Ahers said the school is going to have little or none for the ballfields. Mark Straigilrter was in the audience and said he has not been able to look into it yet. More discussion of parks. Floyd explained the ISTEA Grant. Parks and Rees meeting was wrong on the NEWSLETTER 4. COUNCIL SUMMARY OF THE INFORMATION: The Final Levy Figure will be set at the Council Meeting of 12-27-94 at 7:30PM. 5. ANY OTHER COUNCIL BUSINESS: There was none 6. ADJOURN: RON BLACK MOTIONED TO ADJOURN. FLOYD RODEN SECONDED THE MOTION. MOTION CARRIED UNANIMOUSLY. DO s �iFt. ' , VICE MAYORresirjr, •wirwr,ir LA INDEN N BLACK, COUNC (CITY SEAL) TY CLERK /Z,(1NING ADM.