Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAbout03/09/2010 Special Council Meeting Minutes~~A~A ttw°.~ @T' ~1tksau SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING MINUTES 11555 W. Civic Center Drive, Marana, Arizona 85653 Council Chambers, March 9, 2010, at or after 6:00 PM Ed Honea, Mayor Herb Kai, Vice Mayor Russell Clanagan, Council Member Patti Comerford, Council Member Carol McGorray, Council Member Jon Post, Council Member Roxanne Ziegler, Council Member SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING CALL TO ORDER AND ROLL CALL Mayor Honea called the meeting to order at 6:01 p.m. Town Clerk Bronson called roll. Council Member Clanagan was excused. All other Council Members were present. PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE/INVOCATION/MOMENT OF SILENCE Led by Mayor Honea. APPROVAL OF AGENDA Motion to approve moved by Council Member McGorray, second by Council Member Comerford. Motion carried unanimously 6-0. CALL TO THE PUBLIC There were no speaker cards presented. PROCLAMATIONS MAYOR AND COUNCIL REPORTS: SUMMARY OF CURRENT EVENTS No reports. MANAGER'S REPORT: SUMMARY OF CURRENT EVENTS Gilbert Davidson noted that Tangerine Road would be closed at the railroad tracks beginning at 6:00 a.m. on Wednesday, March 10 and continuing through 6:00 p.m. on Thursday, March 11, 2010. PRESENTATIONS CONSENT AGENDA Motion to approve moved by Council Member Comerford, second by Vice Mayor Kai. Motion carried unanimously 6-0. March 9, 2010 Council Meeting Minutes C 1: Relating to Personnel; first reading of a proposed amendment to the Town's Personnel Policies and Procedures, Chapter 8 -Termination of Employment, Section 8-1- 6 Layoff and Recall LIQUOR LICENSES BOARDS, COMMISSIONS AND COMMITTEES COUNCIL ACTION A 1: Resolution No. 2010-25: Relating to Personnel; approving and authorizing staff to implement an amended Separation Incentive Plan (SIP) for fiscal year 2011; and declaring an emergency Presented by Ms. Machain, who reviewed the amendments made to the plan as presented and approved on February 16, 2010. Motion to approve moved by Council Member McGorray, second by Council Member ComerfordL Upon roll call, motion passed unanimously 6-0. A 2: Resolution No. 2010-26: Relating to Personnel; approving and authorizing staff to implement a Separation Transition Program for the remainder of fiscal year 2010 and for fiscal year 2011; discontinuing the Transition Package approved by the Town Council on May 5, 2009 via Resolution No. 2009-63; and declaring an emergency Presented by Ms. Machain, who reviewed with Council the highlights of the Separation Transition Program and the discontinuance of the 2009 Transition Package in favor of the updated 2010 package. Motion to approve moved by Council Member Comerford, second by Council Member Posz Upon roll call vote, motion passed unanimously 6-0. ITEMS FOR DISCUSSION/POSSIBLE ACTION D 1: Presentation: Relating to Budget; discussion and direction regarding the budget strategies to be used by the town manager in preparing a FY 2011 balanced operating budget Presented by Gilbert Davidson, who noted that at Council's direction on February 16, he and his staff were instructed to lay out the overall framework and come back with the balanced budget. Further, that there would be opportunity for feedback and direction at the conclusion of his presentation. He also noted that this would be a broad overview presentation without getting into specifics. Tonight's presentation is a reflection of over a dozen community outreach meetings as well as setting the stage for as quick an economic recovery as possible while meeting the critical needs of the community during this fiscal crisis. He set forth a number of elements beginning with the budget deficit reduction strategies - broken into two parts. There are short-term things that must be done this year to make sure we have a balanced budget. We are looking at very tough decisions during the coming month. Beyond that, we want to begin thinking about the strategic plan structure and what type of model the Council wants to have as we move forward. There are lot of opportunities to engage in good discussion about the types of programs and services that we offer the community and making sure as we provide or add services in the future, it is designed according to our financial structure. Ultimately, our total target reduction is 2 March 9, 2010 Council Meeting Minutes $4M. While that doesn't seem like huge amount, it needs to be taken in context of what has already been done. There are `knowns' that have been identified to cut out this year and move forward. There are easier items to deal with which we'll start with, growing more difficult. We have to get through March to know how many people are taking voluntary separations before making the next decisions. The first is the elimination of outside facility leases. The town has two primary leases within our parks and recreation program. There is a great opportunity to realign what we've been doing and move those functions into the MOC. The majority of the funding we provide to other entities within the community will have to be community. We need to maintain some level of funding for the Marana Chamber of Commerce. When Council adopted the Marana Economic Roadmap one of the key elements of that plan is to create jobs, and it's very important to not be shortsighted and cut everything -because cutting jobs will not help us get out of the fiscal crisis. We will try to maintain some portion of this. Next is fee schedule changes and cost recovery. Fee schedule changes -and we will not balance this budget on development-related fees or other fees we charge. We need to be careful that we are still trying to attract business into our community while recouping our baseline costs. Our staff is working hard to go through line by line of the fee schedule to analyze fees on an item by item basis. That document will come to you on March 30, and any changes you make will be incorporated into the tentative budget. The other piece is cost recovery within areas where we provide certain types of programs where the participants maybe able to pay more to have that level of service. There are breaking points with how high you can raise things. Fourth is the use of grant monies. We will continue to explore every opportunity at any level that provides grants.. It would not be wise to apply for every grant. Some grants have many strings attached and may cost more by getting the money than if you hadn't applied for it at all. Next is the voluntary salary reductions -SIP and sabbatical. Sixth is starting to get into the effects of actual operations by every service and program we provide -service modifications on a program by program basis in order to maintain quality while reducing cost. That would be hours, number of days, etc. Marana will continue to maintain and expand community partnerships so that merging organizations helps programs function better. The savings wouldn't apply throughout the entire organization, but we will be exploring how we can increase those partnerships. The next is furlough options. We have to know what we can cut out of the budget today. Once we have a number from the voluntary separations, then he'll have a better idea of -what has to be cut across the organization. Furlough is a day off without pay. -If there's an excessive amount of furloughs taken, there will be severe ramifications to this organization. We are already very thin in a number of departments. We've already cut over 39 positions, so if you begin to get into the 10, 15 and 20 furlough days, the ability for a department to function almost ceases when you factor in sick and vacation days. This will take a lot of thought, but it is an option that will be looked at to bridge if there is still a gap. The final two items get into major changes within the organization -internal organization and restructuring. We did a little of that last year where we merged departments together to save on some key positions. Ultimately, it's looking at excess capacity. This is the most difficult one, where you begin to deal with individual lives - layoffs, reducing someone's work schedule to where it really impacts their take-home pay. But what we're facing is a crisis - a crisis where we have more expense than revenue coming in, and we have to adjust that. There are areas in the organization that 3 March 9, 2010 Council Meeting Minutes there will be some excess capacity. We will identify that and respond appropriately to match what the community needs. So in the budget provided to Council in April it will reflect that level of reduction. We'll be looking at every department. There will be some departments we will not touch. They are already at the bare bone minimum. If you cut any further, they will not be able to function at all, and we will not be able to meet either the statutory obligations we have. We will continue to look for reorganization and restructuring opportunities. We have to get through March before we can do that. He then talked about what has already been done. He thanked Erik, Deb, Suzanne and Legal for many, many hours of number crunching and computing and re-computing and verifying data.. A lot of work has gone into what we have so far. Again, our goal far reduction is $4M. What we've identified to date is arange - $1.61 to $2.15M that we have potentially on the table today. We've done that through the vacancy savings, through creativity in some of the recreation savings programs, especially with special events where we've created partnerships with the private sector, the leases, the insurance program savings for additional, sizable savings on health insurance coverage and a number of other insurance components. The outside agency reductions, consulting fee reductions, uniform costs reduction and reductions to take home police vehicles. We are trying to identify a dollar amount of savings. Within various programs, the Council will have the option over the next month to fund something at the level it is today, or some lesser amount. What's remaining is $1.85 to $2.39M. That's a lot of money to continue to carve out of the organization. The only way we're going to be able to do that will be with bodies and programs -service modifications or eliminations; the separation incentive programs, reorganization and restructuring; layoffs in regard to capacity issues; beginning tomorrow we are meeting with every department again and looking at their internal recommended cuts. We are looking at a 10% cut. Not every department will be able to do that. Across the organization, we've already done a 30% reduction, and other departments have additional capacity to cut but there will be impacts on services. The final piece is some number for mandatory furlough. I would like the Council to start thinking about tomorrow and how we take this crisis and turn it into something positive for our organization. I think this Council's already demonstrated strong leadership and strong vision through the strategic plan and through the economic roadmap -two visionary documents. One of the things we have to do in moving forward is to engage in a dialog amongst yourselves, the community and. employees about what needs to be added into the strategic plan. As you begin to-talk about the types of services that we provide as an organization, ask some critical questions., What are the services, the programs that are needed in Marana? It doesn't necessarily mean the Town does it, but we may identify certain types of things that need to be done, and maybe the town can help facilitate the partnership. Maybe the town can help create a new 501 (C) (3) that spins off and starts to solve acommunity-wide issue. So we can to spend some time on what the services are that the town needs, and from that what services the town should provide. This is where we get into the policy discussion. What is our government and what is it going to provide to our citizens? Within our Parks and Recreation program, we've spent a large amount of money building infrastructure -parks, trails, bike lanes added for connectivity. We also have invested a lot in programs, so moving forward, do we provide the infrastructure and encourage partnerships that will do some of the social service programming, or do we reverse the process. You can't do everything. It's not possible to pay for everything at the level 4 March 9, 2010 Council Meeting Minutes people want. But organizations that select an area and do it very well, they tend to be the ones that succeed for the long term. That's the framework we would want the Council to engage in. Then we must look at providing services at the highest quality -maximize the dollar and have the best value for our citizens. Finally, our strategic plan needs to reflect everything that we're doing and if anyone has a new idea or future Councils have new ideas, they should take that strategic plan and add something -how will that be paid for or what do we remove to add that new idea. He then highlighted the key budget dates of March 11-17 will be our departmental budget review to go line by line their recommendations but engaging in dialog of how we come up with creative solutions to our challenges. March 30 will be the next Council study session, focusing primarily on revenue projects and solidifying the revenue number, and we will also bring the draft fee schedule changes and some of the cost recovery components. You will not have to make a decision on the fee piece at that time. You can give direction to modify, investigate further change, and that will be brought back at a later Council meeting. April 13 will be the study session in which we present the balanced budget. That will entail feedback from tonight and previous meetings and the work we do over the next month. It will take what revenue we have and the recommended cut s and lay that our before you on the 13th. That will then set into motion a series of things leading a to June 2 -the tentative budget adoption. That sets the spending cap. On June 15t~ if all goes well, then we would adopt the final budget. That brings us back to the broad strategies that I've laid out and I'll take any questions. Council Member Comerford thanked Gilbert and his staff. She stated that she knows how hard this has been and how much work the entire town has put into cost savings and reductions. This is very, very serious. I had concerns about this six months ago, and I knew that this was going to be serious. I was really sad that I wasn't here on February 16th for that first budget meeting, because I'm disappointed in our Council. I'm disappointed in some of the actions that were taken that night and some of the lack of knowledge and some of the refusal to learn about certain things. I wasn't here. I could count on one hand the amount of meetings that I've missed in my term, but it deeply upsets me that people on this Council didn't realize there's already been almost 29-30% in reductions. And I'm just talking from reading the minutes. That they didn't realize that employees had already turned in their vehicles, their phones, and etcetera were turned in. That people on this Council didn't even know that there's a utility tax that's already been collected. This is serious. The refusal to even look or if the public is not even interested in more tax revenue -that's fine with me. I totally can stand behind that. But I think that it's something that we need to be knowledgeable about and it's at least something we should have looked at and brought to the public. Now, like the state, it's too late to even look at that issue. The fact that we just turned it over to staff and said `you do it, and we'll look at your recommendations' and we're willing for people to not even step forward because a lot of these decisions that need to be made are policy decisions. And you look at our strategic plan, and that's all policy, folks. A lot of what we need to do incorporates that strategic plan. And looking at running our town a lot differently than we have in the past, and that all involves policy. So I'm willing to sit down with staff. I know I'm only one of seven, and anything you can help me learn about to make the tough decisions - I want to be there. I want to be part of the solution. I don't want to just nod my head when you're all said and done. I'm offering that service to you. It's not going to be easy, but the one thing that's genuine about the Town of 5 March 9, 2010 Council Meeting Minutes Marana is its citizens and how we can rally through. Just visiting with the Senior program and some of the suggestions they made and the willingness to come through to me shows that. And quite frankly the month ahead of us is going to be really difficult. Now, Roxanne, I know you weren't at that February 16th meeting either, so I just wanted to acknowledge that. And I'm not really picking on anybody because everybody works hard, but I just think that times are changing and that everybody needs to sit back and take a look at how different things are going to be from now on. They're not going to be the same, so let's do what Gilbert said. Take that opportunity to use it to explore areas that we've not explored before. We'll be the new Star Trek. And we're going to come up with some real clever ways to deal with this, and there's going to be some people that are not going to be happy along the process. But $4M, and you've already cut 30%, is a lot. So we have a lot to do, and I'm proud of you all, but I want to warn everybody to buckle your seatbelts, because it's not going to be as operated before. Mayor Honea commented that this has been -these are pretty tough times. This is the worst financial position that our state's ever been in. And we get about 25% of our money from the state. They're bankrupt. This year they were a billion and a half dollars short, so they borrowed a half billion. They sold a half a billion dollars worth of state buildings for one time money for this year, and they rolled a half a billion over into next year's budget. Basically, what that means is next year instead of being maybe two and a half of three billion short, they're going to be four billion short in a $8B budget. The state is currently trying to get into our pocket again. They have taken -and when I say `our' I'm talking cities and towns, not just Marana -the lottery money is gone. Put in numbers, I think that is $150K or $140K for the Town of Marana. They're looking at the transaction privilege sales tax. Right now we're getting about 26% of that -cities and towns are -and they're trying to cut that a couple more percent. That will cost the Town of Marana another $120K. They are trying to figure our ways to take even more of the state revenue sharing. The state's in worse trouble than we are, and we have a lot of serious problems. Actually, our staff's done a very good job, and I think our Council in general for the last couple of years - I think we're in as good or better shape than all of our sister cities and towns in Pima County, but we're still in pretty bad shape. We're going to have to raise fees at least double. Some programs maybe triple. I can tell you that even tripling the cost in some programs will only generate about 25% of the money. We're going to have hours of reduction. We're going to lose some programs. I'm going to be real honest with you. There's just no way around it. We're going to lose some people. This is not because we're horrible, bad people or anything. This is just reality. This is where we are. We're trying to do some restructuring. We're trying to change some workloads. We had a summit about a month ago with the school district and the health center and the food bank and the fire district, and Pima College. Everybody's in the same boat, and virtually everybody gets money from the state. And the state is in such bad shape that potentially June or July they could be issuing IOUs. If they don't take our money and give us an IOU we still don't have the money. Times are really rough. I've been doing this for 21 years. I've never seen it like this. I've been through a couple of ups and downs in the economy. But we will survive. We have great leadership. I think Mr. Davidson and Ms. Thalasitis and their staff have done a wonderful job. It's really, really touch. I can tell you people stay awake at night. I can talk to Gilbert at 10 or 10:30 at night and he's still here in the office trying to figure out an angle, trying to figure out how to save a buck, how to get a dollar, how to keep something going. The truth of matter is, we're not going to be able to keep everything 6 March 9, 2010 Council Meeting Minutes going. We all take our job very seriously -every member of this Council, and we're going to work really hard. We will get through it, but we're going to be a little bit leaner when we get through this process. Do we have a motion? Council Member McGorray commented that she started her day going to Walgreen's in the morning. The lady behind the counter used to work for an engineering firm. Her husband was an engineer. He's been unemployed for over a year. She has taken a meager salary at Walgreen's as a cashier. They are barely making it. This is so widespread. So every decision we make from this dais, we have to consider all the people in the avenue that will hurt the least for the majority of the people, so please be understanding on some of our decisions. Thank you. Mr. Davidson: Mr. Mayor, one final thing. So this list is how we are going to proceed. I will certainly try to outreach and as much education as I can possibly provide to each of you as individuals. If you have questions or want to know about a particular thing call me. I want to make sure that we're getting information out the community, but this list is what's going to guide us forward, and it's 1 through 10. So we're not going to ignore excess capacity. That will be a part of the budget. That means positions will be identified for layoff or some combination of salary impact. I just want to make sure moving forward when you see this again it will be the overall budget that's going to be put together on April 13. April 13 is when you will have basically a balanced budget. Council Member Comerford: My question is this, Gilbert. You say you're talking of bringing it back April 13. Are we going to have numbers at that point? Mr. Davidson: Yes. Council Member Comerford: At that point we're going to be able to see that this program costs $SOOK and this is the reduction. Mr. Davidson: It'll have the reduction; it'll have the impact to staff. We'll also have the knowns to SIP, so we'll have that as an option. So whatever the furlough impact is, or how we factor that in, that will be include. Council Member Comerford: So on April 13th we'll be getting into the meat of the numbers and what we do with those numbers at that point -this is the direction we want you to go in at this point? Mr. Davidson: Right. Motion to approve moved by Council Member McGorray, second by Vice Mayor Kai. Mayor Honea read the motion. I direct the town manager to prepare the FY 2011 balanced operating budget using the strategies and directions as discussea~ Motion carried unanimously 6-0. EXECUTIVE SESSIONS Motion to go into executive session on items E 2 and E3 moved by Council Member Post, second by Council Member McGorray. Motion carried unanimously 6-0. Council left the dais at 6:58 p.m. Council returned to the dais at 8:08 p.m. E 1: Executive Session pursuant to A.R.S. §38-431.03 (A)(3), Council may ask for discussion or consultation for legal advice with the Town Attorney concerning any matter listed on this agenda. 7 March 9, 2010 Council Meeting Minutes E 2: Executive session pursuant to A.R.S. § 38-431.03(A)(3) for discussion or consultation for legal advice with the Town's attorneys regarding the nature of legislative immunity in relation to personnel matters E 3: Executive Session pursuant to A.R.S. § 38-431.03(A)(3),(4) and (7), discussion or consultation for legal advice with the Town's attorneys and discussion and to consider its position and instruct the Town Manager and staff concerning (1) the lawsuit entitled Town of Marana v. Pima County/Pima County v. Marana (consolidated), Maricopa County Superior Court No. CV2008-001131, (2) pending legal issues, settlement discussions and contract negotiations relating. to the transition of Marana wastewater collection and treatment to the Town of Marana FUTURE AGENDA ITEMS ADJOURNMENT Motion to adjourn moved by Council Member Comerford, second by Council Member Posz Motion carried unanimously 6-0. The meeting was adjourned at 8:09 p.m. CERTIFICATION I hereby certify that the foregoing are the true and correct minutes of the Marana Town Council meeting held on March 9, 2010. I further certify that a quorum was present. celyn C. ronson, Town Clerk March 9, 2010 Council Meeting Minutes