February 21 Commission Meeting - Preview

The Commission is holding a Regular Meeting tonight at 6pm. Highlights include:


On Consent:
Two different grant applications. One for $500,000  for the Electric Utilities from the US Dept of Energy with a City match of $410,000. This is for the "Beat the Peak" program and probably should be pulled. This is a good opportunity to explain what "Beat the Peak" means and how this software will work and what it means for the average customer. 

The second grant application is for $30,000 from the Florida Dept. of Environmental Protection and is slated to pay for educational and interpretative signage at the Beach. This grant has a one to one matching requirement and part of the $5,000,000 County bond that was budgeted for native landscaping will be used for that purpose.

Also on Consent is a proposal to accept a labyrinth as a donation to Bryant Park to be located near the water south of the boat ramp parking lot. Several citizens have asked for this item to be pulled in order to give the neighbors an opportunity to weigh in. We'll see.

Public Hearings:
Two actions to disapprove two previously approved resolutions (51-2011 and 52-2011) to NOT authorize the non ad valorem method of collecting the "fire" and streetlight assessments.

Unfinished Business:
The first item is Resolution 09-2012, a new resolution to repeal three previously approved resolution (34-2011, 42A-2011 and 42B-2011) which should put the whole fire assessment thing behind us once and for all.

The second item is to terminate the contract with one of the outside ground maintenance companies (again) and hire three part time ground maintenance employees. The Commission approved terminating that contract once on September 6, 2011, based on non-performance but Susan Stanton reversed that action.

New Business:
A. First reading of a new ordinance amending the time to submit advisory board applications. Staff needs more time to prepare back-up material and notify applicants about the scheduled date for interviews.

B. Cleaning up the Candidate's Oath to conform with State requirements while keeping the unique City Charter requirements. This is a first reading.

C. Approve a change order for $77,000 that will be spread over the next 3-8 years, to repaint/repair the South Water Tower. The damage is more extensive than previously thought. Just a thought, but since the scope of work has to be amended anyway, wouldn't now be a really good time to decide NOT to just repaint the City Logo up there as planned, but to incorporate something into the design to honor the Centennial?

D. This is to approve $209,500 as payment for an arbitration award the City is being ordered to pay for not following the terms of the contract with respect to health benefits for City employees back when the 2010 budget was approved. This is one of those lawsuits THAT NEVER HAD TO HAPPEN. I hope someone on the Commission asks how much we racked up in outside legal fees for this in addition to the awarded damages.

E. And finally, this is the first budget amendment for this fiscal year right on time as we enter the second quarter. This is to accommodate what's changed since the approved budget went in effect on October 1, 2011; the loss of revenue from repealing the assessments, the $209,500 arbitration ordered award mentioned above, salary to cover the hiring of a new City Manager (I just don't understand this at all), the Utility money for the third leg of the Beach Redevelopment and the Casino Re-Something Projects, re-budgeting unfinished utility projects (because the third leg of the BRP and the CRP had to be taken from somewhere) and budgeting the Employee Benefits Internal Service fund (again, I don't have the first clue what this is and I can't find anything in the back-up to explain it)

The back-up staff memo says that the overall budget increases and the additional expenses are offset by reductions in retained earnings and fund balances but it doesn't say how much that increase is. In the back-up, there is a budget summary showing what's out and what's in along with 31 different fund amended budgets. The best I can figure out from looking at all of those is $1,307,466 less in revenue and $1,342,912 more in expenditures. 

So maybe the answer is $35,446, but I won't swear to it because I simply cannot follow the transfers in/transfers out thing among 31 different funds. Some of those can be used for other things and some can't and it's impossible to tell by line item where the funds for individual projects in this budget amendment are coming from. 

I am so looking forward to when Steve Carr can return full time to the position of Finance Director and hopefully come up with a way to make these necessary budget amendments a little more clear to non-CPA types, like me.


And by the way, I'm also looking forward to a time when the citizen volunteer Finance Advisory Board gets this kind of stuff before it goes to the Commission so they can weigh in with citizens' perspective and offer their recommendations to the Commission.

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