06-22-15 Common Council Meeting Minutes

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REGULAR MEETING JUNE 22, 2015 are out who have trucks that have the ability to haul trash away responsibly. Allow that to happen again, that will create jobs and also revenue for our city. I'm here with you, I'm not against you contrary to popular belief. I just don't understand how we come up with these ideas with these numbers I just ran off when the numbers have been consistent for the last four years. Eric Horvath replied so one of the issues there, as I'm not opposed to privatizing any of our amenities if we think that it can be done as well as the city or better. The reality is we have certain benefits that they don't have. We don't need to make a profit, we are taxed exempt, so we should be allowed to compete with them if we are doing as well as the private sector and that should be our responsibility. One of the issues we have right now with looking at privatizing is that I got a location of where they are, I got the equipment, and I got the employees. They would need to depreciate their equipment over the period of the privatization, if we did a five (5) year privatization contract, they are going to buy vehicles at $300,000 a piece times the number of vehicles it has for trash to yard waste which is about 15 to 17 vehicles. You are looking at significant dollars they need to depreciate over that five (5) year period. What do we do with the equipment that we have now, we would have to sell it on the market at a used basis. We will lose money up front, we would need to pay back the grants that we received for a clean city. When I looked at privatization I don't think it was good route for us to go. Councilmember Dr. Fred Ferlic — What are your employees are they teamsters? Eric Horvath replied yes, they are teamsters, we have 17 Teamsters. Councilmember Dr. Ferlic stated I don't think the word privatization will work. Secondly, there are five (5) cities in California that are currently bankrupt, and Detroit filed bankruptcy. They cut their services drastically, and the Mayor of Detroit even cut their water off. Even we go along with this 9% or we cut services period we don't have much of a choice. As far as the question who is responsible for this, of course it is the Mayor who is responsible for this. The Mayor proposes so he has to be held accountable for it. I'm not saying he's wrong for that, he may need 10 %, he may need 8 %, but I don't know, but this is the Mayor's budget so there's no questions there. If that's what he wants then he has to justify it. I don't know how you are going to get out of this but I'm sure there are a certain number of ways. Councilmember Dr. David Varner — I think in the same way that people want to see yard mows and streets clean. We adopted city operations probably 20 years ago. Two things I remember we had independent people picking it up, there was trash on the street every day, as every pick up was on a different day. A lot of people found that to be objectionable, I agree too. Fairly consistently when done comparatively the city's efforts have been in line with privatization and in line with the cost of other folks. So over the years I have not had a lot of issues with it. Eric talks about running and operating efficiently I know there some places where we had some let downs where we can do better. But by in large the city had done a pretty good job. If we have to have a second look in the fixture I would encourage a look at privatization. That would give us some other options other than this is what we decided. The 92 cent less than the proposed 85 cent reduction and sewer insurance will make it a 7 cent increase for 2015. It will be $1 in 2016, so 50 cents over two years. If we are going to explore this, we can't do this at 9 o'clock on a Monday night. This needs to be done in budget. If this is something that we can look at over two years, Eric I would be. I hope we can take a good look at privatization in the fixture, if we can go two times a month I would be open to that too. Eric Horvath replied if I can make a reference our neighboring communities Mishawaka and Elkhart. Mishawaka's rate is $13.77 a month and Elkhart's rate is $12.43 a month which is going up to $12.68 next year. (Councilmember Henry Davis, Jr. interjected when I stated privatization, I meant independent) Councilmember Derek Dieter— So the monthly increase that the council would pass, just to clarify Dave's statement would be how much a month increase? Eric Horvath answered on a dollar basis it would be 96 cents. Councilmember Dieter asked then through the first year to the second year would be? Eric Horvath replied similar 96 cents. Council President Scott — With the fee increase starting at 2016? Eric Horvath responded it will be set for August 1st, 2015. Council President Scott stated so the ordinance needs to be changed prior to that? The ordinance has to be changed minus the budget or anything. Eric Horvath answered that is correct I can make projections on revenue budgets but we can't charge a fee until it goes through council obviously. 21