WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 14, 2009

REGULAR MEETING

7:30 P.M.

1. ROLL CALL. Mr. Fix called the meeting to order at 7:30 P.M., with roll call as follows: Mr. Sabatino, Mrs. Hammond, Mr. Smith, Mr. Fix, Mr. Sauer, Mrs. Sanders, and Mr. Wisniewski were present. No members were absent. Others present were Tim Hansley, Lynda Yartin, and Linda Fersch.

2. APPROVAL OF MINUTES OF December 10, 2008, Regular Meeting. Mr. Smith moved to approve; Mr. Sabatino seconded the motion. Roll call was taken with Mrs. Hammond, Mr. Fix, Mr. Sabatino, Mr. smith, Mr. Sauer, Mr. Wisniewski, and Mrs. Sanders voting “Yea.” Motion passed, 7-0.

3. FINANCE DEPARTMENT.

A. Finance Director’s Report. Mrs. Fersch stated she had provided a written report to the Committee. She further stated she had attended the District Advisory Committee (DAC) meeting for the Health Department last night. She stated the DAC is composed of Lancaster, Pickerington, and all the Townships and Villages in Fairfield County, as well as, the County Commissioner. Mrs. Fersch stated they did not have a quorum and therefore could not take any votes. Mrs. Fersch stated this was a preliminary meeting preparing for the meeting in March when they will approve the Health Department’s budget for 2010, which as of last night shows about $163,000 in the red, and that is before Pickerington leaving. Mrs. Fersch stated Mr. Harry Myer is the Chairman of the DAC and he requested if Pickerington decides to contract with Franklin County that we give Fairfield County the opportunity to provide a counter offer. Mr. Wisniewski stated if Fairfield County can do something different, why don’t they do it now. He stated they should be giving us the best service for the best price now. Mr. Smith stated the city received very little in health care services from the Health Department and he did not feel our residents were getting any value for the dollars we are paying now. Mr. Fix stated this is clearly a difficult situation and he would urge the City to proceed with caution on this. He stated it sounds like the Franklin County deal might be better for the City, but we do not know that as yet. He stated we also need to be aware of the impact this decision will have on all the other governmental entities in the County, and should the County have to bail out the Health Department, we are still a part of the County and our residents would be impacted by that. Mr. Fix further stated he was encouraged that we had alternatives, and he was looking forward to seeing what Franklin County could offer, but he just wanted to make sure we were not too overzealous in stating how good this was going to be. Mr. Wisniewski stated Council needs to look at what is best for our citizens and he would just remind everyone that the Fire Department did not blink an eye in taking $75,000 away from the City of Pickerington. He stated they did what was best for them, and that is what this Council needs to do, look out for what is best for our citizens. Mr. Fix stated he was not suggesting anything otherwise at all, he was just stating it is not always what you do, but how you do it. Mr. Fix stated he did feel to serve our citizens we should hear all the options. Mrs. Fersch stated the formula for the allocation for the Health Department from the DAC is based on the increase in valuation on years that you do not have total evaluation. She stated they cannot increase their budget to the DAC more than that amount. She stated last night it was stated the County’s valuation increased .008 and the City of Pickerington’s valuation increased .003. She stated therefore our allocation would only be increased by $200 so it would still be approximately $90,000 for 2010.

Mr. Wisniewski stated Mrs. Fersch’s report indicates the income tax receipts were up 8.1 percent and he questioned what that dollar figure would be. Mrs. Fersch stated she did not have that figure and Mr. Fix asked if Mrs. Fersch would provide that information to all of Council via e-mail. Mrs. Fersch stated she would do that. Mr. Fix clarified that Mrs. Fersch has not completed closing out 2008, and Mrs. Fersch stated she will provide a report by the end of next week showing the final figures. Mrs. Fersch further stated Mr. Laramee of the County Auditor’s Office had stated we would lose about $30,000 in Local Government Funds.

B. Review and request for motion to approve draft ordinance amending the 2009 appropriation, Ordinance 2008-92. Mrs. Fersch stated the Committee had received a draft appropriation ordinance and she was requesting a $15,000 increase in the Police Fund for repair to the police building sprinkler system, a decrease of $35,000 in the Street Construction Fund, and a decrease in the Park Capital Improvement Fund of $4,897.56. Mr. Fix moved to approve and forward to Council; Mr. Smith seconded the motion. Roll call was taken with Mr. Sauer, Mr. Fix, Mrs. Sanders, Mrs. Hammond, Mr. Smith, Mr. Wisniewski, and Mr. Sabatino voting “Yea.” Motion passed, 7-0.

C. Review and discussion regarding financing options for Diley Road. Mr. Fix stated he would like to go ahead with the next two resolutions prior to starting this discussion.

D. Review and request for motion to approve draft annual resolution to request advance distribution of tax monies of 5.5 mill Police Operating Levy from the Fairfield County Auditor pursuant to Section 321.34, Ohio Revised Code. Mrs. Fersch stated these are the annual resolutions she requests so she has permission to get advances on our real estate tax money. She stated with this she does not have to wait until the first half of the year or the last half to request our funds. Mr. Fix moved to approve and forward this resolution to Council; Mr. Sabatino seconded the motion. Roll call was taken with Mrs. Hammond, Mr. Fix, Mr. Smith, Mr. Sabatino, Mr. Wisniewski, Mrs. Sanders, and Mr. Sauer voting “Yea.” Motion passed, 7-0.

E. Review and request for motion to approve draft annual resolution to request advance distribution of tax monies of 2.3 mill General Operating Levy from the Fairfield County Auditor pursuant to Section 321.34, Ohio Revised Code. Mr. Fix moved to approve and forward this resolution to Council; Mr. Sabatino seconded the motion. Roll call was taken with Mrs. Hammond, Mr. Fix, Mr. Smith, Mr. Sabatino, Mr. Wisniewski, Mrs. Sanders, and Mr. Sauer voting “Yea.” Motion passed, 7-0.

Mr. Fix asked Mrs. Fersch to discuss the financing options for Diley Road. Mrs. Fersch stated to begin with, we can pay off our SIB loan at any time with no penalty. Mrs. Fersch stated a calculation was done, and if we would go out today for bonds we would have a level debt payment for the next 20 years and we would have an extra $165,000 per year. She stated this was based on the amount of money we would have to pay on the SIB, which is $723,000 annually, so our payment would be reduced by $165,000. Mr. Wisniewski clarified this was calculated at a 4.5 percent interest rate on the bonds, which is what some communities with good credit ratings have received recently. Mrs. Fersch stated that rate could fluctuate however. Mr. Fix clarified that once you go into bonds for 20 years, you are locked in no matter what. Mrs. Fersch stated compared to the 3 percent we are paying up until 2013, and a balloon payment in 2014, when we would have to refinance anyway. Mrs. Fersch stated over time we would be paying over a million dollars in extra interest by going with bonds at this time. Mr. Fix clarified the three percent is locked in only until 2014 when we have to pay what should be a balance of $4 million. Mr. Fix stated then in 2014, depending on what the interest rate is, that money we are saving may be real or it may all evaporate depending on what the interest rate is at that time. Mrs. Fersch stated in 2014 if the interest rate is not a good rate, we could go for notes and you can go up to 20 years on notes. Mr. Fix questioned if it was possible to take that balloon payment and break it off and put that in a bond and continue to pay the rest of the loan at the three percent that we have now and Mrs. Fersch stated we probably could. Mr. Smith stated the three percent would then be based on a lower amount. Mr. Wisniewski stated he felt we should put it all into a bond right now because it saves us $163,000 a year now and that is what our problem is. He stated if we wait six months, nine months, a year, we don’t know where it is. He stated we know that the bond rates are not going to drop much more than where they are right now. Mr. Fix stated he agreed with that and right now we will not be able to get a better interest rate than that three percent. He continued that instead of taking the whole thing and going to bonds and paying 4.5 percent, break that part off and pay less. He stated we would pay a lot less in the long run if you put that $4 million into a bond now and spread that out over 20 years. Mrs. Fersch stated this is a different concept and she would check with out bond counsel to see if we can do that. Mrs. Fersch stated right now we have not borrowed the full SIB amount and she has been trying for the past week to get the total amount we have borrowed to date from ODOT, but she has not been able to get an answer. Mr. Fix stated then Mrs. Fersch would come back to the next Finance meeting with three different scenarios and what the total bill would be, interest and everything. First on the current scenario, on if we did the whole bond this year, took the whole amount and put it into a bond right now, our current payment and total payment over the course of 20 years, and then if you split it up, if that is legal, what our payments would be now and what our total payment would be over the course of 20 years. He stated in reviewing that it would give them three options, and if there are other options Council can think of, let him know. He stated they could then pick the best combination of short term and long term so we are not hurting ourselves today and not killing the Council that has to deal with this ten years from now. Mr. Smith stated he did like the observation that it would lock in the interest today. Mr. Wisniewski stated if we could decrease the SIB loan to a $500,000 annual payment and then do another loan we would still be making it up. Mr. Fix stated that is why he wanted to see how the numbers washed out before we know what direction to go in. Mrs. Fersch stated that would still be a double payment because you would be paying on both, and Mr. Fix stated he knew that but it might be lower than a $700,000 payment. Mr. Fix stated it may be that going for the whole bond right now is the best option, but he would like to have the numbers to look at. Mr. Fix asked Mrs. Fersch to get all this information together for the next Finance packet. Mrs. Fersch stated Mr. Schwallie could not be here this evening because he had another meeting, but his preliminary recommendation was that he would ride it out the way it is now because there are things we can do in 2014. Mr. Sabatino stated if we went with bonds, the problem was we were locked in for 20 years, although we did know exactly what we would be paying each year. He stated in a few years the economic dynamics will be a lot different than they are currently. Mr. Fix asked that this remain on the agenda for the next meeting.

4. PERSONNEL DEPARTMENT.

A. Personnel Director’s Report. Mrs. Fersch stated she had provided a report to the Committee and she would answer any questions.

5. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Fix stated he had nothing to bring forward.

6. OTHER BUSINESS: No other business was brought forward.

A. Pickerington Local School District Board Meeting – Update. Mrs. Sanders stated the District is looking forward to opening the new schools and they too are having major budget talks. Mr. Fix clarified the schools will have a renewal levy on the ballot in May. Mr. Hansley stated he and Chief Taylor had met with the Superintendent and they are discussing increasing police presence at some events and we are looking at renegotiating the way we do the School Resource Officer and the DARE Officer to change their duties a little bit to give them more of a police presence.

B. Review and request for recommendation regarding Rule (3) Impact Fee Waiver Request. Mr. Hansley stated the applicant and their attorney have been told, at the direction of this Committee, that this probably wouldn’t be granted. He stated further that project is not moving ahead right now for lack of financing, and we have not heard anything from them. He stated he felt we could take their inaction as that they have effectively dropped their request. Mr. Fix moved to remove this item from the agenda until the applicant comes back to the City; Mr. Sauer seconded the motion. Roll call was taken with Mr. Smith, Mr. Wisniewski, Mr. Fax, Mrs. Sanders, Mrs. Hammond, Mr. Sauer, and Mr. Sabatino voting “Yea.” Motion passed, 7-0.

Mr. Hansley stated this request will still be out there, they have still filed it, and when he is sure they are going to take no action he will bring it back for Council to vote it down officially. He stated the way the ordinance is written, staff makes a recommendation to this Committee, and this Committee, in turn, makes a recommendation to Council. Mr. Hansley stated this is just sort of in limbo for right now.

C. Review and discussion regarding process to hire City Engineer. Mr. Fix stated a memo was included in the packet and he would ask Mr. Hansley to start the discussion. Mr. Hansley stated Mr. Sabatino had requested a change in the job description at a previous meeting and at his request the job description would include the language that the city engineer would be responsible to the City Manager for the day-to-day activities of the staff engineer and the engineering inspectors. Mr. Hansley stated the engineer will be appointed by Council, but would have an active role in supervising the staff engineer and the two inspectors. Mr. Hansley stated this is similar to the Finance Director, who is an employee of Council, yet supervises the Deputy Finance Director, who works for the City Manager. Mr. Hansley stated this led to a slight modification to the proposed process because the staff engineer was included on the interview panel, but if they will be supervised by the city engineer, then he would recommend the staff engineer be removed from that panel. Mr. Hansley stated with those two modifications he would recommend this process. Mr. Wisniewski inquired what the role of the service manager was in relation to the city engineer and Mr. Hansley stated he thought it would be a customer of the city engineer and/or the staff engineer. He stated they work very closely together on designing CIP projects so he would view him as a customer, and he does not give direction to those individuals. Mr. Hansley stated our staff engineer’s specialty is water and wastewater so we will be looking toward hiring someone who is a little more versed in traffic so we can get more bang for our buck so to speak. Mr. Hansley stated again, this is a recommendation and Council can modify it any way you want, this is a starting point. Mr. Fix clarified this scoring process would simply narrow the field. Mr. Hansley stated this process would take you down to five or so applicants and then Council would take it from there. Mr. Fix stated then we would get the resumes in, the panel would score them based on what is on the resume, and then the top five are recommended to be interviewed by Council. Mr. Hansley stated it would get it to a reasonable number and then Council can do what they see fit. Mr. Hansley stated the Charter states the City Engineer is appointed by Council, so Council can do the interviews; they can delegate the interviews to a Committee, or whatever. Mr. Sabatino stated he would suggest the interviews be done by Finance since all Council members are members of the Finance Committee. Mr. Wisniewski stated with regard to the panel, he was not sure that the Mayor or the President Pro Tempore of Council should necessarily be involved with the selection at that level. He stated he felt it should be more of a staff recommendation to come up with three or five people to send to all of Council. Mr. Hansley stated the scoring by the panel is subjective as each member will be rating each resume and the scores will be averaged together to get the top five candidates. Mr. Sauer stated he would like to see some involvement from elected officials at this level and felt they would represent the people who elected all of Council. Mr. Wisniewski clarified that it is sort of a mutual aid type thing as far as getting two or three City Engineers from other communities to help us with this process. Mr. Sabatino stated when it came to the interviews, when the list gets down to five, turn it over to Council in executive session and let Council decide where they want to go. Mr. Fix stated he felt it made sense to have the panel narrow the applicants down to five and then have Council interview those five. Mr. Hansley stated he felt the panel would just rate the applicants mathematically off the resumes and not do interviews. Mr. Wisniewski stated there is something to be said about the ranking, but just basing an interview off of what their resume says doesn’t always work. Mr. Wisniewski stated he would rather have the other city engineers vet the applicants than to have other individuals in the process. Mr. Fix stated everyone involved in the process brings a different perspective to it. He stated while he does not know anything about engineering, he does know what is going on in the City and he knew what kind of customer service we expect our citizens to get, and while he and the Mayor would rely on the professional engineers to look at their credentials and technical backgrounds, but that isn’t all we are hiring. Mr. Wisniewski stated then the applicants would be limited to five based on nothing other than what it says on a piece of paper. Mr. Fix stated perhaps then it should be limited to 10 and have the panel take it from 10 to 5. Mr. Wisniewski stated he would like to see the city engineer’s rankings weigh more than others on the panel to get those ten. He stated there are a lot of people who are very technically capable of doing this job, but the ranking from the other engineers might be extremely low because the City Engineers in and around Columbus all know each other, they know their personalities and everything else, and they will be able to help filter those people up to the top versus just looking at the resume. Mr. Fix clarified then that Mr. Wisniewski would like to see the professional engineer’s scores weigh 1.5 times versus what everyone else’s would. Mr. Fix stated he felt this process would work if this panel narrows the applicants down to ten, interviews them, and brings Council the final five for interview. Mr. Hansley stated some references of the entire group of applicants would be checked to get the weighted score, and background and reference checks will be done on the top ten. Mr. Hansley clarified that the entire panel would not be checking the references, that would be done by a staff member. Mr. Hansley stated he wanted Council to be aware that once we get into the process some modifications might be necessary such as to the weight factors given to criteria and, if so, he would report that back to Council. Mr. Wisniewski stated he wanted to ensure that this process was a legal one as well. Mr. Fix stated, in summary, the job description has been changed to reflect the supervision of the staff engineer and two inspectors, the staff engineer has been removed from the panel, the professional engineers on the panel will score at 1.5 times the rate of the remainder of the committee, we will get clarification from the law director that this is a legal process, that the panel will be given some latitude as long as it is transparent to Council, and that the panel will narrow the field to the top ten with the top five going to Council for interview. Mr. Hansley stated this will not be a rushed process and would take some time. Mr. Smith moved to approve the hiring process for the City Engineer presented to the Committee, with the changes Mr. Fix had just summarized; Mr. Fix seconded the motion. Roll call was taken with Mrs. Hammond, Mr. Smith, Mr. Fix, Mr. Sabatino, Mr. Wisniewski, Mr. Sauer, and Mrs. Sanders voting “Yea.” Motion passed, 7-0.

Mr. Smith stated two residents have contacted him to find out if there is a way we can begin a dialogue with the Fairfield County Board of Elections now, in advance of November, to see if there is any way we can get a voting machine in this part of the County for the early voting period. He stated then everyone from the north end of the County would not have to drive all the way to Lancaster for early voting. Mr. Hansley stated he thought it was a reasonable request and we would see what could be done.

Mr. Smith stated the Federal government seems to be trying to give out a bunch of money and Columbus is asking for some infrastructure dollars for various projects. He stated he felt we had three viable infrastructure projects here in Pickerington; improvements to the Refugee Road/S.R. 256 intersection, the Hill Road expansion to four or five lanes south of Diley, and the Town Square extension by-pass of downtown. He inquired if anyone was aware of any way we could request these funds. Mr. Hansley stated everyone is getting ready to request funds for projects on a program that has not come out of Congress as yet. Mr. Hansley stated he has asked Mr. Drobina and Ms VanCleave to have the projects we have already engineered ready so once they announce the details of the program we hope to have some projects to get into the pipeline. Mr. Hansley stated he will keep Council informed when he get further information and hopefully the region will benefit no matter what happens.

Mr. Sabatino stated he had received some e-mails dealing with the Lions Club and their concerns about the Labor Day event. He stated he had contacted Chief Taylor and he was preparing an estimate on the cost for the police to provide the services they want. He stated he would distribute these e-mails and perhaps this could be discussed at the next meeting.

Mr. Fix moved to reverse the Rules Committee and Finance Committee meetings so Finance would start at 7:00 P.M. and Rules would immediately follow Finance; Mr. Smith seconded the motion. Mr. Fix stated this would allow us to give individuals invited to make presentations to the Finance Committee a better idea of the time they should be here. Roll call was taken with Mrs. Hammond, Mr. Fix, Mr. Sabatino, Mr. Smith, Mr. Sauer, Mr. Wisniewski, and Mrs. Sanders voting “Yea.” Motion passed, 7-0.

7 MOTIONS:

A. Motion for Executive Session under Section 121.22(G)(1)b, Matters involving an employee’s or public official’s employment, Section 121.22(G)(2), Purchase or sale of public property, Section 121.22(G)(3), Conference with law director regarding pending or imminent court action, and Section 121.22(G)(4), Matters involving bargaining sessions with public employees. Mr. Fix stated an executive session was not required this evening.

8. ADJOURNMENT. There being nothing further, Mr. Smith moved to adjourn; Mr. Sauer seconded the motion. Mr. Sauer, Mr. Fix, Mrs. Sanders, Mrs. Hammond, Mr. Smith, Mr. Wisniewski, and Mr. Sabatino voted "Aye." Motion carried, 7-0. The Finance Committee adjourned at 8:55 P.M., January 14, 2009.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED:

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Lynda D. Yartin, Municipal Clerk