The City Council gathered for a work session Nov. 1 to discuss the city's budget immediately after a special meeting to discuss a new health insurance provider for city employees.
Mayor Peter Christie said that one significant change is creating two new departments -- Human Resources and Information Technology.
Additionally, the initial budget called for new workers, he said, including three police officers, two workers for the streets department, and a code enforcement officer.
While the initial request called for hiring all three officers in December so they could go through the academy in January, Alderman James Wozniak suggested hiring one immediately and holding off on the other two to allow the city's new chief, who will be replacing Chief Ken Farmer when he retires in May, to hire some officers himself or possibly even bring in some he already knows.
Wozniak said this would also save the department those two officers' labor for part of the year.
Additionally, Wozniak suggested reducing from two months to two weeks the overlap time between chief Farmer and the new chief who will be hired.
"If it takes two months to get the new guy up to speed," he said "we've got a problem with who we hired." This, he said, would reduce the length of time they'd both be getting paid, saving the city some money.
Alderman Frank Anderson said he agreed that two months was excessive.
"I would think 60 days, they're gonna get on each other's nerves if nothing else," he said. "Any time you get two bosses up there, all the people working for them get confused."
Farmer said that, while it is a small department, there is a great deal of community interaction and a number of programs are in place to facilitate that.
He suggested the overlap period be no shorter than one month.
For the code enforcement side of things, Christie said, the city would be looking to hire one person.
Chris Suneson, director of Community Development Services, said that the city currently has three inspectors, who also deal with code enforcement.
The city has been divided into thirds, he said, and each inspector has a third to look after, and this has resulted in a significant burden for each worker.
Hiring a new worker, particularly if they could work nights and weekends, he said, would take some of the strain off the current trio of inspectors.
Additionally, not only was an IT Department established, it has plenty on its plate. John Moeckel, head of that new IT Department, said that he's seeing a lot of areas the city needs to improve on for the sake of security.
"I've discovered a lot of outdated equipment, I've discovered a lot of practices that need to be updated," he said. "One thing I want to do very quickly is establish stability and security here. I feel like security here is about a C- at best, and I kinda wanna get it up to an A."
The council also discussed an upgrade for Fire Station 1, located at Town Center. Fire Chief Steve Sims requested $100,000 for the project.
"Fire station number 1 has one shower. We house seven firefighters there at a time," Sims said. "We would like to go in there and renovate not only the showers and bathrooms, but also to replace some of the carpet, the flooring all throughout the station."
The council also discussed building a police evidence building, which would be used primarily to house evidence -- including DNA and vehicles -- that the department is required to maintain indefinitely.
"We have some of our evidence here in what used to be the old elevator," Christie said. "We have some that's sitting up at Blue Mountain Storage, we have some sitting with Benton County."
The building, which Farmer proposed be 50 feet by 40 feet, is intended to be behind the Street Department. The prep work, prior to affixing a metal building, is estimated to cost $19,200 in materials, while the Street Department is expected to provide the labor, meaning there will be no additional labor cost associated with this.
Another major improvement in the preliminary budget, Christie said, is paving Cedar Crest Drive and Suits-Us Drive, which will provide a better connection to U.S. Highway 71 from Cunningham Drive, and improve drainage.
"The current Suits-Us looks like it was attempted to be paved about when the ark was built," he said.
Paving, he said, will prevent the gravel on Cedar Crest Drive from washing out onto U.S. Highway 71 in heavy rains.
This will be funded largely with a State Aid to Cities grant, which will provide $250,000. Estimates place the total cost at around $290,000, he said, and the current budget has $50,000 lined up for the project.
Christie said he called the meeting early to get as much input as possible as early as possible, so that the actual budget can be approved at November's regular meeting, Monday, Nov. 28. That will allow the city to move forward with hiring new officers and starting the search for a new chief before the year is out.
"It went very well," Christie said. "I liked the feedback and questions. When you're dealing with taxpayer money, it's best to have a lot of eyeballs on it."
During the special meeting, the city was able to reduce the increase in health insurance costs from 29 percent to 5 percent by working with Qualchoice, said head of Human Resources Melissa Cruise. This, Cruise said, allowed the city to keep its costs as low as possible without compromising service for its employees.
"We feel like this benefit package keeps us super-competitive with our neighbors," she said.
The council approved the one piece of business, with only one "no" vote from Alderman Larry Wilson, and then moved into the work session.
General News on 11/09/2016