City of Russellville, KY

MINUTES of REGULAR SESSION

of the BOARD of COUNCIL

of the CITY of RUSSELLVILLE, KENTUCKY

held JANUARY 5, 2010

 

The Russellville City Council met in regular session on Tuesday, January 5, 2010, at 6:00 p.m., in city hall. Mayor Gene Zick presided over the meeting with council members Jimmy Davenport, Pat Bell, Jack Whipple, Doug Nash, Russell Jones and Lanny McPherson present.

 

The mayor asked for a motion to approve the minutes of the regular session held December 22, 2009.

 

Jones moved, seconded by Nash, to approve the minutes of December 22, 2009.

 

The mayor asked for any additions or corrections. There were none.

 

The motion passed unanimously.

 

Under announcements the mayor said there had been an article in the Courier Journal reporting the governor has taken $25 million from the state’s federal stimulus money to catch the budget up so none will be coming down to small towns. We have an issue with our ladder truck. The hydraulic system went out; we’ve had difficulty starting it. He said McPherson had previously mentioned gathering a reserve to replace the truck and he thinks the time has come for us to bite that bullet. It will take a year to build a 75 foot ladder truck. Ours is the only one in the county so a lot of people like Logan Aluminum and the new justice center will be relying on us so we need to start thinking about how we are going to do that if, we are going to do that. He said this would be brought up again at another time.  The mayor said for donations, we had scoreboards, playground and goals for the park. He noted one chart on the wall showed Western Kentucky University had 9 donors for its scoreboard. The Bowling Green Soccer Park only has 2 scoreboards for 13 fields.

 

Under committee reports the mayor asked McPherson if he had anything (from Logan-Todd) on the water and McPherson said no, they had not met again. The mayor said council would be talking about the Logan-Todd water increase and if we can tighten that loss (deposits) off it would certainly go a long way to taking care of that $12,000. McPherson told the mayor at the last meeting they were looking not only at adjusting their depreciation schedule, which doesn’t help with cash, but looking at ways to reduce expenses. 

 

The mayor asked Davenport when had the deGraffenried Committee met last and Davenport said it had been awhile. The mayor said he thought there needed to be a meeting while the auditors were here because while looking over the books, interest was being added on bad debts and that didn’t make sense; we were not going to collect them so it did not make sense to keep doing it.  The mayor said he thought the committee should sit down and go through those types of things.

 

City attorney Bob Hedges reported at the request of Councilman Jones he had a copy of all of the deGraffenried Student Loans and thought this was what the mayor had been referring to. Hedges said he has had the opportunity to briefly review those but he also has a long history with them. He asked to be invited to the next deGraffenried Committee meeting. He added he could help with a lot of the loans; most of them cannot be collected but some can. The mayor said if they were turned over to a collection agency we would not get anything out of them. Hedges agreed and said in the past 20 years he has filed many lawsuits on behalf of the city to collect these and we have been successful against those accounts that are collectible but there are some people that are just not collectable. The mayor said he thought Hedges was down to the point he had all of those.  Hedges said he thought there were a few remaining and if the mayor recalled there had been some missing  so there was a hold up on those but they had been found and were being worked on now. The mayor asked Hedges to make sure Davenport was involved in any discussion.

 

Bell had a report on the fire department. She handed out to the mayor and council a sheet listing the total fire runs for the year 2009. There were 100 additional runs than in 2008. The report broke the runs down which totaled 919. Bells commented that fire runs were down but other calls were climbing; all full-time fire fighters were paramedics, EMT’s or first responders. The mayor said he hadn’t heard anything relative to the ambulance service and Bell said she had not either. Someone commented they had heard nothing but good.

 

Next on the agenda was the financial report for the city by City Clerk Bob Riggs. The General Fund started the month of December with $154,000 in cash and at the end of the month there was $37,000. There is no short term debt. Revenue is slightly above the budget level year to date. January will be a large revenue month so we should be in better shape by the end of February. The Woodland Drive project has been completed; we have paid for it but have not been reimbursed. The Rockwell Park project is still at $809,000 spent and we still have $720,000 available. The Streetscape grant of $325,000 status is still the same; we have not received the funds yet.

 

Jones said he thought the Streetscape funds should be here in about two weeks if everything goes through the channels it is supposed to. The mayor said it was now in the hands of Alan Jones who is dickering with historians about brick and cobblestone, etc. He said the Transportation Department has approved everything and hopefully we have supplied answers to all of their questions today.

 

Riggs reported the Water and Sewer operating cash was at $66,000 to start the month and ended the month with $97,000. This also has no short term debt whatsoever. Revenue is running right at budget. This is good because this time last year we had revenue shortfalls. To build this cash reserve I think is due to the water and sewer employees being very frugal in not spending anything unless it is absolutely necessary. The 1998 Sewer Bond refinancing is still on hold. We have spent $536,000 of the Rockwell Sewer project on Johnson Street; a small portion of that was for Phase II which might help us in the next portion that is KIA related because anything that has been spent on Phase II can be applied to our matching portion on that. We have spent $708,000 on the Rockwell Water project; we still have $381,000 available. The KIA grant for Johnson Street is an $800,000 maximum loan-grant. Riggs said this didn’t have to be $800,000 it depended on how much the city spent. The grant portion depended on factors like that also; 52% is the way it is written.

 

Riggs continued: The Perpetual Cash started the month with $185,000 and ended the month with the same amount. Municipal Road Aid started the month with $57,000 in cash and ended with $48,000. Riggs said he thought the city would get about $40,000 more in February.

 

McPherson asked on the statement the council had received from Riggs the revenue for the Occupational/Netprofit tax was quite a bit higher than it should have been for that month, November. He asked Riggs why we had been $75,000 over budget in November. Riggs explained it had to do with when larger companies come in; the payroll taxes. Some companies’ payroll might be $25,000-$30,000 a quarter so it must have been something of that nature.  He added they calendarize on the budget what it did the previous year. Riggs said if you look at the year to date we were above budget year to date; December just ended and we are not quite so good in December but still above year-to-date.

 

McPherson asked on the expense side, other professional, if that was the expenses for the Herndon Road project for DDI, the $29,000. Riggs said $10,000 of that was spent on the property tax information from the PVA, other things like that. Riggs explained that the item was for professional services that the city has purchased that are not legal (services); they are a separate line item. Drug tests are also taken out of this, anything that was professional related.  McPherson said salaries were quite a bit over budget on that and Riggs said he thought once you looked at the department breakdown it was primarily administrative and police. He said this was a matter of how many people versus when we did the budget.  The mayor reminded that Ace Danes had been transferred from I&I into administrative and Riggs agreed with this. The mayor said Jeff Rager had been put into Danes’ position and Danes is now doing inventory control for the whole city. McPherson asked did it just shift from one department to another and Riggs answered more or less. Riggs said that police was up because when the budget was done a certain number of people had been assumed; it fluctuates all of the time. It has stayed higher than in previous years. In previous years it has been hard to find officers and we might be down three people. And, when you build a budget assuming it is going to be like that again it isn’t always like that.

 

The mayor said he hoped everyone was aware of the potential storm coming our way; the city is making preparations for it. The state has been out putting brine down. The city also has the new salt spreader so will be able to do hot areas such as the police and fire departments, city hall, ambulance service, hospital and sheriff’s department, hills and intersections. He said there would be people on call, other department’s will be helping the street. Hopefully we will not get the four inches but the temperatures have been very low. Keep faucets dripping and cabinets open.

 

Next on the agenda for a department report was Melvin Smith. Smith told the council a lot of people have already had frozen pipes in their houses and the city has had lots of frozen meters but not near as many as we used to have. He has seen the time when he has thawed out 20 meters in one day. They are burying meters deeper now but there are still some in concrete and gravel which is not a great insulator. Smith said the services his department was actually putting in now that holds the meter, is actually deeper. Smith said the newer meters the city has will actually pick up the drips better than the old meters.

 

Smith told the council the department’s radio-read is doing fairly well. They have had some small problems but overall working good. Smith said the city’s water loss, comparing what the city buys and what it actually sells is going up. This does not take in to account anything unaccounted for. It is somewhere between 36% and 40% right now. He explained they had been noticing the number was rising and have been doing more leak detecting; trying to hit it harder.  Smith told council it was not because they have not been fixing leaks. They have fixed approximately 68 leaks that were actually over a gallon a minute in 2009. He said if you total them all up they total 789 gallons per minute. These are the leaks that have been fixed.  The total gallons are 1.1 million gallons per day and 414 million per year.  Smith said if these leaks had not been fixed it would have been approximately 1.4 million dollars. He said the problems has not been fixing the leaks but finding them.  When they are found they are fixed fairly quickly except for instances where they have to wait for the BUD locates. Smith said of his crew that was actually one that actually goes down sidewalks and streets listening at the meters, hydrants and valves. If he hears something he notes it and another crew comes back and marks the line and listen closer to try and find out where the leak is at.

Whipple asked Smith did he not have to do some of this after hours when there was less traffic and Smith said yes, the second crew. He has also blocked smaller roads off. He said they would like a newer leak detector that has a gauge and a filter on it that filters out noise.

 

Next on the agenda for a department report was Teresa Galiszewski with a report on the water billing office. Galiszewski told the council the office was currently serving about 3,300 customers. The consumption for December was 16 million gallons and the sales for the month of December were $378,200 and there had been 59 leak tags prepared in the month which was quite a few.  The mayor allowed us to postpone cut-off until after Christmas; there were 20 people on that list.  Galiszewski said for the second year in a row the department had received a visit from a Christmas angel who had come in and paid $821 for 8 water customers. Credit card sales are averaging about $5,000 a month with fees of about $94 a month.  The office has recently started taking the Discover card which has lowered their fee to be competitive with Visa and Mastercard. There are now 522 using the automatic bank draft and 73 people using the senior discount. The mayor had a question about credit card usage and Galiszewski repeated the average was $5,000 a month but it was hard to say how many people used the option. McPherson asked for the billed gallons again, was it $16 million and Galiszewski said specifically it was $16,622,000; what we buy one month is not what is billed. Galiszewski said what was bought in November was 26 million gallons. Smith said 27 million had been bought in December then going backwards it was 26 million for the last 3 months. McPherson asked Smith if he had used the 26 million to come up with the 40% (loss). Smith explained in December the figure (gallons sold) had been 16 million and we purchased 27 million so we came up with 40%. In November we sold 14 million and purchased 26 million which was a difference of 43%; then it drops back down to 36%. McPherson asked when Smith had started seeing the trend and Smith said yes but it had been lower in those months and building. They are working on two good size leaks now, one is at 4^th and Bethel but we do not know where it is yet.  There may be an issue with a fire hydrant which the state may actually want moved to the northern intersection but I do not know yet. The mayor said there was other Bethel construction with the bank as well.

 

Next on the agenda was old business. The mayor said he had not known in his absence there had been a discussion on Logan-Todd and McPherson had given a couple of options.  McPherson said he had thrown out anything he could think of to do something to help the ratepayers. The mayor said he had suggested a rate study back in October and McPherson had been very vocal about not increasing water rates and yet that is certainly a potential. There is in the city’s ordinance that the council created a regional Consumer Price Index will be used for any adjustments the council wants to make. The mayor explained that had been put in there so it would not be automatic like when congress gets an automatic pay raise; council would really have to think about what they are doing. So if you wanted to increase the rate to COLA you would have to vote on it. McPherson asked if that came with any particular schedule because if we are going to consider something like that, or do that...the mayor said this is done when the budget was looked at, they look at the southern regional COLA and we track it. He added anytime increase have been looked at we have looked at that COLA and that is the basis for doing it, not the U.S. COLA. The mayor said what he was going to propose while this was being talked about, was appointing a committee of Russell Jones, Doug Nash, Wayne Thomas, Teresa Galiszewski and Bob Riggs to go through the all the rates; the .44 (increase), what are we going to do about it. Obviously we can do nothing and suck it down. He said he didn’t think it was the right thing to do. Was McPherson’s thoughts on 1 ½-2%; is that the right number? He said if we look at what COLA does, what they are doing to us he thought the committee could have a status update by the next council meeting. McPherson said he thought this sounded good.

 

The mayor said he saw in today’s paper that South Logan was still studying (their rates). McPherson said East Logan had passed theirs along and the mayor said he thinks Lewisburg had not made up their mind.

 

The next item on the agenda was the formation of a committee to review vehicle accident policy and procedure for fire and police. The mayor said he has contacted persons with the state police, Bowling Green and Franklin police, State fire marshal, Bowling Green and Franklin fire departments asking them to take a look at the city’s policy and procedures for both departments and critique them; are they doing what they should be doing, are they saying what we should be doing. He has also asked Pat Bell to look at the policy and procedures for both departments. Everyone that he has asked to look both of them over has been happy to help. McPherson asked if Russellville was going to send them our SOP’s and the mayor said yes, they had already been faxed to them.

 

Bell said she would like to make a motion that maybe we have a committee of 3-5 council maybe to look at these and maybe exclude her if it would be a conflict of interest and to make any recommendations of any changes that might need to be made and then to come back to the full council with this. The mayor asked Bell to wait until he had heard from the other agencies then it will be brought back. Bell asked if there would be a charge for the agencies doing this for the city and the mayor said no. McPherson asked if they would take our SOPs and make written notations on them and the mayor said absolutely. The mayor said as these come back to him and he has questions we can go back to them or if he sees a need to gather them all together he will do that. Bell asked if the council would be able to look at the SOP and see if the individuals are not following those guidelines. The mayor said sure they could take a look at that. He added that the existing policy and procedures was another question but he wants to ensure that what we have in-hand that we are supposed to be doing is what we should be doing; not something else and if something is missing. He said he wanted to make sure the policy and procedures are adequate.

 

McPherson said Bell had a motion on the table and asked her if she was going to withdraw the motion. He asked her how she felt. Bell said she just wanted to be sure that something is done about it. McPherson said he thought as long as council got to review those notations he thought… he personally knew nothing about the police department. Bell said she had not seen the police department’s SOP and McPherson said he had not either so didn’t even know what the council would be looking at. The mayor told Bell he would get her a copy of both the police and fire SOP.

 

Bell said she would withdraw her motion until she got the paper back; only until then.

 

The mayor said the subject was tabled temporarily.

 

The mayor said he had no reason to go into executive session but asked if anyone else had anything.

 

McPherson asked what model the older ladder truck was. The mayor said it was 20 years old. McPherson said he wanted to think when we bought the last new truck that was the oldest truck we had. Bell said most of the time during classes she has gone to they will tell you to take them out of service when they get an age on them. Someone asked how long that was and Bell said 10 years.  McPherson said the reason he has asked the question was because there was a government surplus website he has been looking at that has fire equipment on it. They were selling ladder trucks that were years 1997, 1998 and 1999 models.  He said he didn’t think we would want to buy a used ladder truck but he was just looking to see what other people were (doing), how long they were keeping them and taking them out of service. Bell asked how much (balance) the city liked on the other truck (loan) and the mayor said he thought it was coming due in October. Bell said maybe then the council could look at once that’s paid and if we have to have it. McPherson said the bills would start sooner; we would have to pay some down and the mayor said yes, a down payment. The mayor added we were still looking at grants, there are still USDA grants but we would only get 35% but there are other options to look at as far as financial. He said he thought we were paying about $55 now and if we look at a truck that is $55,000 it will be considerably higher than the new one we just bought. Riggs said they (USDA?) were only going to refinance $140,000 so $550,000 would be 3 times. The mayor said the payments could be stretched over 5 or 6 years. Riggs noted that the Carpenter Center debt would be paid off eventually also and McPherson said he would have to see that happen, he hoped he lived that long.0

 

The mayor asked for a motion to adjourn the meeting.

 

Magistrate Dickie Carter said he had a concern he would like to address. When he had last campaigned there had been a number of older people that live alone. Their social security checks run in the neighborhood of $600 a month and are about the only retirement they have. These older people have asked Carter to do something about getting the water bill lowered. Carter said he knows the city has to have money to operate but he would really appreciate if the council would think about it. The mayor asked Carter if these people were signed up for the senior discount and he said he did not know.  The mayor said that would be their first step and it would mean $10 a month. Carter also addressed the curve on the new road, Woodland Drive; it still did not have an arrow and was dangerous at night. The mayo r told Carter that Pennyrile was supposed to be putting a light up at the intersection; it was supposed to have been installed today. Carter said the yellow line just went to the end and shuts off, it does not continue around the curve. Carter said he has also heard some concerns about speed bumps slowing down the response time for emergency vehicles; 18 to 20 something seconds. He has also had calls about limbs not being picked up quick enough. The mayor asked Carter how quick was quick enough (because) he has reduced people (in that department). Carter said the limbs had sat there for over a month and the mayor said that could be (possible). Carter said there were holes in the road on Armory Drive and the McDonalds intersection. There was also water on Johnson Street in front of the Agape Center; it builds up and gets pretty deep sometimes and a pond every time it rains. McPherson said he has looked at that also and he doesn’t know anything to do with it, unless we can scrape out someone’s backyard and send it back there to retain it is about all we can do. Carter said he thought that was the way it used to be, there was a sink hole below it where all that water goes in. Carter asked about street cuts in subdivisions, on 2^nd St, there were pretty rough that needed to be filled in and also the blackbird problem. The mayor told Carter to talk to his boss (Judge Executive Chick) about that because he had the air cannon but he has had complaints on the cannon. Whipple asked why the blackbirds were a city’s problem.

 

The mayor asked Carter if he and other issues on his list and Carter said no. The mayor asked him when issues build up if he would send him a memo or email so he can work on them. Carter said several of these had been turned in a while back. He added he thanked the mayor for fixing the Second Street Bridge and cleaning out under it.

 

Jones told Carter if there were people that needed some type of assistance and they were only receiving $600 a month they qualify for heating assistance; I see this all of the time. Whipple added they also needed to look and see what their water bill is, not their water, sewer and trash pick-up is. Carter said he has also been asked by the elderly if the entrance to Ryan Drive can be widened where it comes off of Cherry Street. The mayor said the whole road would have to be widened; it is wide at Cherry St and tapers down to the old existing road. If you look at the concrete curbing at the far end where there has been a big mud hole made.

 

The mayor asked Carter to send him an email on all of the items he had mentioned so he should catch them and Carter said he did not do emails.

 

McPherson moved, seconded by Whipple, to adjourn the meeting. The motion passed unanimously.

 

 

 

ATTEST:

 

 

 

_____________________________                                                   ______________________________

City Clerk                                                                                                             Mayor