Lincoln City Council meets under unique conditions
Small business relief, 2020-21 Budget, insurance and more

 

[April 08, 2020] 

On Monday evening when the Lincoln City Council met in City Hall Council Chambers aldermen spread themselves around the room. Only essential personnel were on hand for the meeting. Alderwoman Kathy Horn was not present for the meeting. Most of the department heads were also not present, but called into the meeting as needed.

City Administrator Beth Kavelman was available via conference call, and Treasurer Chuck Conzo and city attorney John Hoblit were both in the room, but seated in different locations from the norm. City Clerk Peggy Bateman was also present and seated in a different than normal location.

Downstate small Business Stabilization Program

Alderman Tracy Welch shared that there is funding available for small businesses in Lincoln through the Downstate Small Business Stabilization Program. This program offers up to $25,000 to small businesses, and is different from other offers available right now in that it must go through a local unit of government. Welch said that the city needs to approve participation.

Welch said that the Greater Peoria Economic Development Council is working on this project locally and have established Logan County Board Member Chuck Ruben as the local government authority.

He wondered if the city should also work with Ruben because he is acclimated to the program through the GPEDC and better versed to assist local businesses. The council agreed that utilizing Ruben would be best.

Small businesses in Lincoln can reach out to Beth Kavelman who will then assist them in getting the process started through Ruben

Future council meetings

Among the action items for the evening were two motions recommended by Hoblit regarding how the city conducts its meetings. Hoblit said that with the Open Meetings Act being somewhat suspended at this time, there were actions the council could take to protect one another from the coronavirus and still conduct business in an altered fashion.

First, he said that the city does have within its policy and procedures a provision for teleconferencing of aldermen unable to attend meetings in person. Under that provision, the aldermen wishing to conference into the meeting must seek permission from the council at the beginning of each meeting. The council then votes to approve, or not, adding the conference caller to the meeting. Hoblit said that this has to be done for each alderman calling in and has to be done at every meeting.

He recommended passing a temporary bypass of that rule, allowing any alderman to join via telephone without the majority vote of the council. The recommendation was taken by the aldermen and a vote later ratified that the group would not require individual voting for conference calls during the Covid-19 Pandemic.

Secondly, Hoblit said that there is a temporary provision that could be passed, eliminating the committee of the whole meetings that are held twice monthly on the second and fourth Tuesday’s of the month. Hoblit noted that the Logan County Board this month has scheduled only two meetings, and that the numerous committee meetings the board usually has each month have been waived.

He said the city could do the same and reduce the number of meetings of the council to only the voting sessions held on the first and third Monday’s of the month. Lincoln aldermen also took this suggestion and voted to temporarily suspend all committee of the whole meetings.


New budget year

On the Agenda Monday night was a discussion of the new budget year, which will commence on May 1st. Conzo addressed the council regarding this topic. He noted that this year, before the coronavirus came into the picture, the council had decided to appoint a committee to do the first draft on the new budget. He thanked the committee members as well as the city department heads who had contributed to the process.

Specific expenditures were not discussed at the meeting. However, Conzo did speak about the projection of revenues for the coming year and said that at this time, setting up an accurate projection of the income of the city over the next year is a difficult thing.

He said that he anticipates that the city will need to make multiple budget adjustments in the coming year based on how well and how quickly the economy recovers from the coronavirus. He said that he would attach a memo to the the 2020-21 budget explaining the current situation and outline that said adjustments were expected.

For this year, he said he took last year’s revenue figures and scaled them back to reflect the losses of sales tax and other revenues during this time. He added that the city also has $2.8 million in un-budgeted cash in the coffers right now. He said that was the city’s reserve that had been set aside over the last few years.

Conzo said that if the city were to experience zero revenues, this set aside money would hold them for approximately four-and-a half months. However, the city does expect that there will be some revenue coming in, so Conzo is projecting that the reserve cash on hand will help carry the city through the next year.

He said that it was still important for the aldermen and department heads to be frugal with their spending. He noted that even purchases that are in the budget should be postponed as long as possible before pulling the trigger and creating the expenditure.

Jeff Hoinacki served on the budget committee with Conzo. Hoinacki said that he wanted to thank all the department heads who had recognized the situation the city was going to be in, and had made cuts to their budgets in order to help.

Hoinacki added that it was to the credit of this council and past councils for having the wisdom not to spend money just because they had it. The money that is now set aside comes from coming in under budget in past years, and opting to hold onto that money instead of incorporating it into the new year.

Kevin Bateman also thanked the department heads for doing a good job of being conservative in their budgets. He noted that most departments had lowered their annual budget versus the year now ending, and some had even lowered it by “double digits”. He added that the police and fire departments had done an excellent job of being conservative, and perhaps some of the departments could go back and look again, to see if they could do a little better.

Conzo asked the council how they would like to proceed. He noted that the budget needs to be passed at the April 20th voting meeting. He said typically the council would host a budget workshop and then wrap-up their discussions at the committee of the whole meeting the week prior to the voting session.

Because the council had just voted to eliminate workshop meetings, we wondered what the council would like to do.

Tracy Welch said the council could accept the budget “as presented,” but perhaps it would be better to have a review of the budget in a workshop setting. He said he didn’t believe the council needed to go through the budget line per line, but that there might be specific expenditures that needed further explanation and discussion.

With no committee of the whole meeting, the aldermen consented to hosting a special budget workshop meeting on Tuesday, April 14th at 5:30 p.m. in council chambers.

Dental and Life Insurance premium amounts frozen for coming year

In other business, the council heard that due to the coronavirus, the carrier of the city’s dental and life plans for employees has decided not to issue premium increases for the 2020-21 year beginning May 1st.

City Clerk Peggy Bateman explained that the annual renewals were supposed to reflect about a five percent increase this year. However, she had heard from local insurance agent R.W. Garrett that the carrier has frozen premiums for the coming year.

Aldermen were asked to entertain a motion to approve the current rate for the insurance coverages and did so by unanimous vote.

New signs at city limits

The council also approved a bid from Manley Monuments for new welcome to Lincoln signs to be placed at four entry points into the city. The bid by Manley came in at $15,340. Also bidding on the project was Dena Memorials, whose bid came in at $22,450.
 

Aldermen reviewed the mock-up of the new gray granite signs. All were in favor of the design. Ron Keller noted that he would like to see the date “1853” added below Abraham Lincoln’s name.

The artist rendering show a portrait of Abraham Lincoln at the top. It then says “Welcome to Lincoln” and “named for & christened by Abraham Lincoln.” The date 1853 will be added as requested.

Lincoln Police Chief Paul Adams served as the technical engineer for the online live streaming of the meeting via the city website.


[Nila Smith]