Friday, April 01, 2011
 
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City budget, phase 2: city administration, citywide cleanup and a new city administrator

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[April 01, 2011]  Saturday morning at the phase two budget workshop meeting, aldermen reviewed not only expected revenues for the new fiscal year, but also requests for new expenditures.

Alderwoman Melody Anderson had spent the two weeks between the March 12 and 26 meetings attempting to determine which requests from department heads could be granted and which could not.

In the case of whether or not to hire a city administrator, the bottom-line question may not have been "Can we afford to do this?" but rather "Can we afford not to?"

Miscellaneous department administration

Anderson said this line in the expenses is for the city clerk's office, aldermen and city treasurer.

In that department the bottom line will be less in the new fiscal year, Anderson said, primarily because a full-time position with benefits was eliminated in the city clerk's office this year.

At the first budget workshop, Denise Martinek had asked that her office add one full-time staff member and do away with part-time positions.

Anderson said unless the council felt strongly otherwise about it, she was not going to include a new full-time position but would continue with $25,000 budgeted for the two part-time employees.

The biggest change in this budget is in the line for schools and training expenses.

Anderson said this is the expense that funds not only training for the clerk's staff, but also pays for aldermen to attend the Illinois Municipal League Conference in Chicago each year.

Last year the conference had been cut out of the budget, but some aldermen were allowed to go anyway. In doing so, the city busted the budget on that expense.

Anderson said she was adding $10,000 to the expense line, with $2,500 going to schools and trainings for the clerk's staff and $7,500 going to conference attendance.

She indicated the amount would be used first to pay for registration fees to the conference, with the remainder being equally divided among the attendees for their expenses.

Citywide cleanup

Anderson said there is $20,000 in the administrative contingent line in the budget for a citywide cleanup, but she still has a question mark beside that number.

The cleanup is something the city used to do on a regular basis and something that Mayor Keith Snyder would like to see brought back.

"I know the mayor feels strongly about this," she said, "but we can't keep adding. We have to pick where we want to add, what is going to be the priority, and there is a big priority coming up."

Alderman David Armbrust said he wasn't sure that $20,000 would do all that much good. He asked Tracy Jackson, city street and alley superintendent, if he could remember the cost of the last cleanup the city held.

Jackson said the last one they did was perhaps $26,000, but Armbrust said it was higher in his mind. Jackson then confirmed that after that last cleanup the bids for the service increased quite a bit.

It was concluded that for the city to do the curb pickup-style cleanup, the final cost would come closer to $38,000.

However, Snyder said he had talked to the area provider and had been told that they could come up with a program that would accommodate the dollars the city has available, but it probably would not be a door-to-door service.

Alderwoman Stacy Bacon commented: "I like the idea of a citywide cleanup. But I think John Lebegue (building & safety officer) is doing a wonderful job cleaning up our city. It is a slow process, but I think he's done fantastic.

"I do like the mayor's idea, but budgetwise I just don't know where we sit," she concluded.

Alderman David Wilmert spoke up, saying he remembered that when Snyder was running for office, the citywide cleanup was one issue he discussed often. Wilmert said he understood the mayor wanting to follow through with his promises and was inclined to try to help him do that.

"I don't know where we'd get the money, but maybe we could start saving up for this," Wilmert suggested.

To save up for a more expensive event, the city would need to budget the amount, then not spend it, roll it over into the next budget year and add to the amount.

Alderman Buzz Busby also suggested the $20,000 could go in the budget and then double that amount in the appropriations ordinance. Doing this, if the city received some kind of financial windfall, the cleanup then could be done properly.

Anderson then asked: "Leave the cleanup in then?" The consensus was yes.

Even though the amount is in the new budget at this time, it wasn't clear if the cleanup will take place in the coming year or if the money will be held over.

City administrator

At the March 12 budget workshop Snyder introduced a tentative budget for hiring a city administrator.

During the discussion Anderson and several other aldermen supported the idea.

At Saturday's meeting Anderson said the amount proposed was still not in the official budget document, but having heard no negative feedback from the council, she's ready to add it.

She also warned that once this was done, aldermen can expect that there will be opposition from some of their constituents.

"I anticipate there will be negative feedback. I'm not going to kid anybody here," she said. "But if you've been around for more than six months, I think you've probably gotten the drift that we need a full-time administrator, someone who is here on a regular basis to steer this organization.

"I'm going to say it now, and it will be my standard response when I get harassed. I want you to name me one $13,000,000 corporation that is run by part-time people with no training and no education in city business."

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The plan is to fill the position by the first of November for the last six months of the fiscal year.

Alderwoman Marty Neitzel asked about the chain of command -- Would the administrator answer to the council? -- and Anderson said yes. Neitzel then asked if the city would still have a city clerk, and again Anderson said yes.

Anderson said one of the advantages to having a city administrator is that it is a hired position, not an elected position.

"Fortunately or unfortunately, with elected, you get whoever gets elected, whether they are qualified or not," Anderson said.

"With the city administrator, we're going to have parameters of what this person is expected to do: manage department heads, budget, all of that. If they don't do their job, we can let them go.

"They are not a union member, they are not an elected official, and they are an employee, so if they don't work out, they can come out of the budget a lot easier than they went in."

Treasurer Chuck Conzo then asked about a contract for the position.

Anderson said that a contract was a probability, but that would have to be discussed and developed as the city creates the position and job description.

Conzo said in that case, getting rid of someone once they are hired might not be so easy.

Anderson said there should be measurable standards in the contract, so that if they didn't perform, they could be released.

"I will add some additional lines of thought to this," she said. "Here again, I don't think you have to be around very long to know that some of the issues we deal with as a council, or that the mayor has to deal with, are issues that have been ongoing for a long time.

"They should have been dealt with a long time ago, but because of the lack of having a full-time person monitoring and following up, we're dealing with issues now in a bigger way and at more cost to the city.

"From the aspect of a councilman," she continued, "the job that we are doing right now, most of us are not trained to do, and the hours (we spend) are enormous. We're doing a job that should have a professional handling it. We're supposed to be guiding, not doing."

Bacon spoke: "I feel it is much needed and has been needed for a long time. Even before I became a council member, (I could see) as a non-council member the city has needed this for many years. It is crazy that when the city did have the revenue for this, it was never a position that was created."

Bacon concluded: "I'm all for it, and I'll take the guff from my constituents who call me."

Neitzel agreed, saying that when she gets the calls, she plans to ask the caller if they want to try to do what the aldermen are doing, with no training.

During the course of talking about revenues earlier in the day, discussions had touched on the loss of grant funding for the new year.

In this current year, grants were obtained that assisted with specific events, such as funding for the fire department's exhaust system at the station.

Currently there are no new grants for the coming year, even though opportunities may be out there.

One reason is that there is no one person who is specifically dedicating time to searching out grant funding that might be applicable for the city of Lincoln.

Alderman Tom O'Donohue spoke on this: "In every community I have talked to about this, in savings and in grant writing alone in the first year, they (city administrators) pay for themselves."

Anderson brought the discussion to a close by saying: "I think some of us have given this a lot of thought over several years, but now is the time to say, are you for it or against it?"

No one spoke out against the idea of hiring a city administrator. Anderson is going to incorporate the expense into this year's budget, and the city hopes to move forward and have someone hired by November.

The process involved, though, will not be quick or easy. Snyder indicated at the first workshop that a job description needs to be written that will be all-inclusive of what is expected of the employee.

In addition, the city plans to conduct a search similar to that done when they hired Lebegue.

[By NILA SMITH]

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