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Admin Committee Minutes 1998 12-08-98 UNITED CITY OF YORKVILLE Committee Minutes — Administration Date of Meeting: December 8, 1998 Time Convened: 6:30 P.M. Location: 111 W. Fox Time Adjourned: 8 :30 P.M. Attendees: Don Garbe Richard Sticka Mike Anderson Richard Scheffrahn Tom Sowinski Jim Nanninga J.T. Johnson Mike Englehardt Jeff Spang Discussion: 1.) Request for Proposal — Fixed Assets Property Account & Appraisal — This is regarding what the auditors asked for. We need to get quotes. North Aurora did this. The challenge is getting an inventory. Assets are not depreciated, but once we get rid of them then you write it off. North Aurora requested a review every year and insurance companies love these kinds of documents. Right now we are just getting bids. 2.) Longevity Pay — Everyone should have received a copy of the police contract. Kim found out a few things are different. We want to be fair to our employees and to offer something comparable to the police contract. We do value our employees and want to keep them here. Sticka does not think any promises were made. Scheffrahn feels they were led to believe that we would take our time and review this. Basically the Public Works employees are interested in the pay. They have basically been told they would get the same thing as the police get retroactive to May 1. There are five employees. Cost is about $6,000. We were using the levy for pay increases but it will not cover the longevity pay. We will not have the savings from the health insurance we expected to have. If we accept it at committee then we can move it to COW to discuss effective dates and amounts. We did make the promise to review it. Committee feels that is should be added, but we need to decide on affordability and effective dates. 3.) Health Insurance — Englehardt is our insurance professional. We need to pay him and he will pay Blue Cross/Blue Shield. Dan has recommended this_ If we do not do it this way then we have to send it out for bid. Nanninga is recommending approving this and moving on. We hired Englehardt as our consultant. Most of the committee does not want to waste any more time. Our costs are only rising. The City attorney is recommending this. Why delay it any longer? With Blue Cross/Blue Shield there is a 10 percent rate increase cap, above and beyond the normal increase, but if the demographics change then this can change. The employees want this plan. Sowinski suggest requesting a letter from the employees stating this is what they want. Take to COW. 4.) Salvation Army Agreement — We do this agreement every year. There are no changes. Take to COW. 5.) Fox River Watermain Intergovernmental Agreement — Watermain has already been started. This is an agreement that we can work on their property. We need to take care of underbrush, but we do not want to clean it up too much. We need to maintain the north bank. Take to COW. 6.) Garbe Water Connection — Garbe wants to tap on to City water. He has a sand point shallow well only about 20 feet down. You do not normally use sand point wells for drinking water. Harkins line was connected by the City five plus years ago. Garbe would like the City to run the line and waive the tap on fees. Garbe is not contiguous until Harkins is annexed into the City. Garbe lives two houses in on Hickory. Garbe and Harkins back yards are back to back. If Henne puts in homes then he would have to put in a street and then we would be able to put a main under the street. If you put in a line on a dead end street you want to loop it so the water does not sit and become stagnate. You usually do not want to run a service line through someone's backyard. Garbe's only other option is to have a well dug. That will cost about $5,000. Most of his neighbors are on private wells, they are not having any -1- z0oz Xyd 8£:bT 66 /£O /TO problems and they do not want to annex. The City would have to run 500 feet of 8 -inch line with the loop. Probably closer to 1,000 to 1,200 feet of pipe. One alternative is to run a two inch copper line but J.T. would not recommend this. We would have to have an agreement with Bristol Township because it is their road and we would have to go under it. It would still cost $4,000 to $5,000. There are three people right in that area with sand point wells that were having problems before the dewatering began. Harkins has not annexed to the City. Sticka feels we should not supply her with water if she has not annexed. Harkins is adjacent to the line. This is a different situation with Garbe and this would be a great expense to the City for one resident. Harkins was only a fraction of what Garbe needs. J.T. suggest that Garbe try to have his sand point dug deeper. With the two -inch line, only one resident would be able to use it. Garbe said we did not have any test wells where they were having problems. We put in 10 test wells and only two of them on the west side. City will not get easement from Bristol Township. Garbe could get an easement from Steve Bison and then he could go through his yard. It would cost probably $4,000 in labor and another $3,000 is materials. The City can not afford to spend $7,000 for one person and no one else would be able to hook on to this line. A deep well might cost less then $5,000. At the time with Harkins the City acknowledged orthought that it could have been our fault, but now we know that the City had nothing to do with the water levels. Garbe has been dealing with the City since Don Peck was here. He just expects us to do the same thing we did for Harkins. Sticka does not recommend doing this. He suggested Garbe to talk with Wywrot to find out about the size of the copper tubing and to get some prices together. Tap on fee including a meter is about $1,100. We would waive the tap on fee. Most wells are 100 to 120 feet deep. 7.) Tower Ordinance —Using ordinance from Batavia. Everyone seems to like it so we just omitted Bataiva's name and inserted Yorkville. Nanninga is looking for feed back. North Aurora requires that their water tower be used. That is how they get their tower painted. We have contacted three major telecommunication companies to let them know we are interested. Sticka would like to be able to get some money for our tower yearly. Sticka would like to get some clarification on telecom. 8.) Tax Levy — There is a public hearing scheduled for Thursday Holding the rate. Some rates may climb and some will go down depending on the assessment. Rate will be the same. Probably will be a little short if we include longevity pay. If we have some new businesses then it may cover it_ Take to COW. 9.) Nicor Franchise — Based on the current census, the franchise states that we have to use the census. Is what we get in free gas comparable to what they want to give us in cash? Nanninga said it is about the same. We are not loosing but we are not gaining. There will be in increase in the gas rate at a later time. SchefFrahn thinks that the State may have requested Nicor to do this. Nanninga and J.T. have figured this out. It is a wash. In two years when the census is redone then we will be paying a higher gas price. Sowinski thinks we should take the cash. Recommend at COW. 10.) Budget Review — There are a few items over. The health insurance really killed us. We can not afford anything extra. We spent our insurance savings before we actually got it. Auditors have reminded us yearly that we need to increase the cash in out accounts. 11.) Additional Business — Manual Entries — Spang is looking for an explanation. Nanninga would like to get with Kim and maybe Dan from Pandolfi for some guidance on this because Spang does not understand. Dan Thur comes every month, He feels a lot of the problems is software related and the software is making one sided entries. We will have Pandolfi in to work on this. We will at some point have to discuss putting last year on the new software once it is installed and what the advantages are. Bidding Ordinance — Anderson said we need to review the 1975 ordinance on bidding. Spang said this was revised in 1984 to be inline with the State amount. Our ordinance is more comprehensive then the States, but the amounts are the same. Review ordinance next year. Treasurer's Report — The report reflects the final auditors' entries. The closing entries. We are financially better off then last year. Interfund borrowing has been reduced by about $300,000. We tried to improve by half, but this is where we are. Take to COW. Heidi Brucker — Brucker fell on a sidewalk that we just repaired. She twisted an ankle and had to have medical attention This was over a year ago, before the sidewalk was repaired. She fell on the City right -of way, There is a 12 -month window on insurance. At first she only wanted $1,000 now she -2- £00 XVd 8£ :VT 66 /£0 /TO wants $3,000. She told Dan she would not sue, but she wanted her medical expenses covered. It was never turned into insurance. Dan recommends paying her the $3,000 so she does not sue. Nanninga thinks the original claim was less then a $1,000. Nanninga thought we started the process. If we pay her we will have to ask her to wait until May. Dan has seen the bills and they are direct. Nothing for pain and suffering. Nanninga will talk with Dan and get some more information along with some recommendations. Minutes by: Mollie Anderson I I I -3- 600n XV3 8£:6T 66 /£0 /TO