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MINUTES OF A SPECIAL MEETING COUNCIL PRESIDENT GAMBER This special council meeting of Massillon City Council was called by the finance committee. The two items on the agenda are Ordinance No. 22 and No. 23, both for second reading. 1. ROLL CALL Roll call for the evening found the following Council Members present: Kathy Catazaro-Perry, Dave Hersher, Chuck Maier, Ron Mang, Paul Manson, Dave McCune, Larry Slagle and Tony Townsend. Thus giving a roll call vote of 8 present. COUNCIL PRESIDENT GAMBER Mr. Mang, we need a motion to excuse Councilman Peters. COUNCILMAN MANG I move that we excuse Councilman Peters from tonight’s special meeting, seconded by Councilman McCune. Roll call vote of 7 yes, 1 no to excuse Councilman Peters. Townsend voted no. COUNCIL PRESIDENT GAMBER Before the Clerk reads the title we’ll note for the official record that Councilman Peters is in attendance. We now have 9 councilmen. 2. ACTION TAKEN WITH POSSIBLE PASSAGE ON THE FOLLOWING ORDINANCES: ORDINANCE NO. 22 2008 BY: FINANCE COMMITTEE An ordinance making certain appropriations from the unappropriated balance of the Capital Improvement Fund, for the year ending December 31, 2008, and declaring an emergency. COUNCILMAN MANSON Yes, the reason we asked for this special meeting is we had these two ordinances for first reading last week. They are the subject of bills from the fourth quarter of last year that we haven’t paid yet. We met with the Mayor about a week or so ago there were some people questioning they needed some more information. We met with the Mayor about a week ago and worked this out where we would advance funds out of the capital improvement fund in the amount of a $105,000.00 and it will be used to clean up those bills from last year. That’s pretty much the story now if you have anymore information you need we have the auditor here. She specifically requested asked me if we would have this special meeting. COUNCIL PRESIDENT GAMBER Are there any questions on this item, Mrs. Catazaro-Perry? COUNCILWOMAN CATAZARO-PERRY – I was the one via email that said I needed more information on this. I think any time when you have something that comes in late that we need discussion on it. That’s the only reason why I had a question on it. Also at the amount that it is $105,000.00 coming in late for old bills in 2008 for and then again to use it from capital improvement I think it all needs to be talked about. I’m just wondering you know of the $105,000.00 exactly what bills are we paying with that. Maybe you know the question could be answered by our Mr. Kaminski as to why such an amount at the end of the year are we pushing it to 2008. So… COUNCIL PRESIDENT GAMBER Are you calling him forward? COUNCILWOMAN CATAZARO-PERRY – That would be great. Thank you. PARKS AND RECREATION SUPERINTENDANT KAMINSKI – This is actually happened on a yearly basis for the last five years that there were carry-over bills that were not paid in the previous year to the existing year. The only difference is this year we had an advance from we asked for advance from the capital improvement line item from Mayor Cicchinelli. In years past we were able to cover those expenses through the parks and recreation department but because this year’s different because we are going to be funding the golf course over these next couple of months just to get it started. We do not have the available cash to be able to pay for those. And as for your first question, on what these bills are a wide variety the biggest expense is the chemicals and fertilizer which is approximately $50,000.00 of that bill. Then everything gets down to as small as the cable bill. So it’s a wide variety of services that have already been paid for or utilized from 2007. I know the second big one is gas and oil as well. COUNCILWOMAN CATAZARO-PERRY – And the chemicals and the fertilizer did we already utilize all that or did we purchase it and we still have some. PARKS AND RECREATION SUPERINTENDANT KAMINSKI – No, those were all put down. Those were yeah, those were all put down. These are all the bills that we don’t have the available cash throughout the calendar year in ’07 to be able to pay these bills. I believe that’s why we had those loans that were spoken about last Tuesday that’s what happened in the past when we got loans from the city. COUNCILWOMAN CATAZARO-PERRY – Well, do we have these funds, Jayne, available from the capital improvement fund? COUNCIL PRESIDENT GAMBER Excuse me are you finished with Mr. Kaminski? COUNCILWOMAN CATAZARO-PERRY – Yes, thank you Mr.Kaminski. COUNCIL PRESIDENT GAMBER Does anyone else have any questions for Mr. Kaminski? Mr. Slagle? COUNCILMAN SLAGLE – Yeah, I have one. The memberships that were sold for 2008 are any of those funds in yet? Are they expected in to cover any of this? PARKS AND RECREATION SUPERINTENDANT KAMINSKI – Those were all in the calendar year 2007 so all that money was used in 2007. COUNCIL PRESIDENT GAMBER Are you now calling the auditor forward? COUNCILWOMAN CATAZARO-PERRY – That would be great, thank you. I just wanted to know you know I’m not a proponent to use capital improvement funds for this kind of thing. So I just wanted to make sure we have the funds available and then do we have a plan to pay it back? AUDITOR FERRERO – Well we had an emergency meeting with the Mayor over this. I agree with you we don’t want to use these capital improvement funds unless it’s absolutely a dire necessarity. This point it is right now we’re paying $1,188.36 in finance charges from those bills that have not been paid. The biggest one is that advance turf that’s a $611.56 penalty and Campbell Oil is the next biggest one at $265.00 I rounded it up to cents. Right now we have $132,386.00 in the capital improvement fund the thing that we have to have in there is money to pay our lease agreements. The first one that comes due is coming due in March and that is for that’s in our legislation tonight and that is going to be for $17,398.00. So until that Cottrill land money comes in and that’s what we’re banking on and they said anywhere from 30 to 40 days. So we’re hoping that money comes in and then we can put that back into that capital improvement fund. But you’re going to have legislation this evening too to go out for bid for all new materials. So when you do that when you look at that legislation for parks and rec. I want you to note that I did not sign it. So this is a necessarity for the city to pay these bills we’re going to run into a problem where these vendors are not going to supply to us. Right now we have the course looking good and if we don’t do this you know it’s going to backwards is basically what’s going to happen. We can’t hold off these people much longer. You know they gave us the goods we used them and basically that was the reason I felt the necessarity. It started I can also tell you these are bills from July through October. COUNCILWOMAN CATAZARO-PERRY – I do have one other item. I’d like to request from Mr. Kaminski for maybe our work session the next time we could really look at the budget just maybe have him come back Paul and really look at the budget. Because I know we already advanced on salaries for your parks the Legends, correct and now we’re paying bills and I just want to really I think we should take a look at it and really… Because it just looks like we’re in big trouble with the Legends. COUNCILMAN MANSON Well, any other questions? I think you know I had a little conversation about it myself. I don’t think anybody’s been hiding you know that we do have problem and we have some big decisions to make and some of them need to be made rather expeditiously. One that we’re incurring fees for not paying our bills we’re losing ground there and the other thing is no matter what happens we have to run that course. We have to make sure that we keep it in tip top shape or we’re just going to lose play that we have started to recover. So its early in the year that money will be going back in it will either be going back in out of those funds that are being reimbursed to us by Enroc and Clean Ohio or they will be reimbursed out of the parks as the .3 mileage starts going into their account. I mean that’s they just have no cash at all right now they will have they have now they’re starting to accumulate cash daily just like every other department now that income tax is starting to come in. So they will be repaid. COUNCILMAN MAIER – Yes, maybe Mr. Kaminski can answer this would you please come up sir? Not trying to put anybody on the spot but if these bills are from back in July you’ve got July, August, September, October, November did we not have funds for them at that time? Were there purchase orders I mean do we buy things without having the funds or…? PARKS AND RECREATION SUPERINTENDANT KAMINSKI – We had purchased orders for the items that were purchased we just did not have or gained the cash to pay those off. The big expense being the fertilizer and chemicals and all that is one of those ongoing basis and that’s the reason that’s lasted longer than 90 days out. COUNCILMAN MAIER – I guess I don’t understand if we have purchase orders how do we write purchase orders when we don’t have funds in the accounts? PARKS AND RECREATION SUPERINTENDANT KAMINSKI – I’m going to have deferred that to the auditor. I’m sorry. COUNCILMAN MAIER – Thank you. COUNCILMAN SLAGLE – One other Kenn I just had one other question. Who’s actually running the day to day operations at the Legends now? PARKS AND RECREATION SUPERINTENDANT KAMINSKI – Currently? COUNCILMAN SLAGLE – Yeah. PARKS AND RECREATION SUPERINTENDANT KAMINSKI – Myself, Julie Jenkins and Aaron Webb. COUNCILMAN SLAGLE – And do you all have time to do that, do you have the experience to do that in terms of managing a golf course that’s a satisfactory way to do it or do we have to consider any other alternative there? PARKS AND RECREATION SUPERINTENDANT KAMINSKI – Well, I’ll answer that two ways. First of all, I answered that question last week about the experience in the golf business and the second aspect of it is when you look at our budgets for this year you’ll get a true understanding why we can’t proceed. When I explained to council with Mrs. Catazaro-Perry’s request we are going to have a very difficult time bringing in true golf personnel this calendar year. I’ll give you an example our budget’s $460,000.00 for this calendar year after this advance and we spent $750,000.00 last year. Last year council approved an $891,000.00 and this year it was $563,000.00 minus the $105,000.00 advance this year. COUNCILMAN SLAGLE – Does that sound then isn’t that kind of defeating purpose if we’re not covering in order to keep this a course that’s viable and creating income to cover its debt isn’t it kind of defeating its purpose we don’t have someone out there that’s able to manage a golf course? PARKS AND RECREATION SUPERINTENDANT KAMINSKI – When you look at it that way, yes. But when you look at the budgets that we have and what has happened in the past even when we have professionals out there we had the same situation. The only difference in why council didn’t know about it is parks and recreation picked up the bills. So when we did have all the professionals out there even when we had the 7 full timers out there we were in the same situation. There is nothing that’s changed this is not something new that has occurred over the life of the Legends. Nothing, the only thing that’s changed is maybe you guys are more aware now that parks and recreation has picked it up for years. COUNCILMAN PETERS – I’m sure somebody would take over the golf course for free downtown concert tickets or something you know in trade. I mean it’s obvious we don’t have the money to pay somebody and that’s all I have to say on that dumb remark. COUNCIL PRESIDENT GAMBER Mr. Slagle, are you finished? COUNCILMAN SLAGLE – Just strikes me as the place where we should be giving a greater deal of thought to it. COUNCILMAN MANSON I think we are. COUNCILMAN SLAGLE – I mean other than this body. COUNCIL PRESIDENT GAMBER Let’s please address the questions to the chair or to Mr. Kaminski. COUNCILMAN SLAGLE – I mean I would go back to Councilwoman Catazaro-Perry’s suggestion that we actually do form some sort of a blue ribbon committee and call it whatever you want with the number of people to actually get down and see if there’s any way to deal with this because I frankly in today’s market don’t see anyone purchasing this property which only makes it worse. According to your numbers. I mean would you object to that? PARKS AND RECREATION SUPERINTENDANT KAMINSKI – Object to a committee? COUNCILMAN SLAGLE – Yeah, having get some golf professionals in some golfers in, some citizens. PARKS AND RECREATION SUPERINTENDANT KAMINSKI – Sir, I stood here last week and told you we have six weeks now we have five. We’ve got five weeks before these bids come back and we either know one way or the other and we need to have a plan b. This is a recommendation that came from the recreation board after doing almost a year of our due diligence and expressed every bit of a concern to representative of council that was at every single one of our meetings. We feel that we have laid out a plan that will help with the golf course and if that plan doesn’t go through I am asking for your help for a plan b to get us out of this situation. If that is Mrs. Catazaro-Perry’s request last week if that’s what we need to do but we literally have five to six weeks here. I can’t speak for the auditor or the numbers but from what I know it’s going to even tight when that happens. COUNCILWOMAN CATAZARO-PERRY – I know, I know why you dropped the budget for the Legends because you couldn’t afford anything. But you know and I realize we need to pay these bills but I continually think that you know plan a might not work and we should have a plan b. I think you know that can be put together quickly and might not have the answer in five or six weeks but if the land doesn’t get bid on you still don’t have an answer. So at least somebody else is putting another set of eyes on it and maybe brainstorming and maybe come up with an answer. You know Kenn I told you believe I feel bad for you because you’re stuck in this situation. You know because you want to do parks and rec. stuff and unfortunately you can’t you’ve got you know you’ve been handed a problem and nobody’s blaming you. PARKS AND RECREATION SUPERINTENDANT KAMINSKI – I appreciate that, but don’t feel bad for me feel bad for Aaron and Ritchie in the back right there who’s dealing with this on a day to day occurrence. They’re the ones dealing with the frustrations I said this last week they’re the ones dealing with the frustrations of having the vendors calling and not being able to do the job that they’re out there to do. COUNCILWOMAN CATAZARO-PERRY – Right and I do agree Paul. But I really think maybe you can come back and we’ll you know really hammer your budget and also the parks and rec. and you know see what we can come up as council members. We can you know understand it more fully because you know we are in a bad way and maybe one of us can come up with something or maybe somebody out in the community will hear what were talking about and help. But we’re in a bad way and we need to pull together and work on this. PARKS AND RECREATION SUPERINTENDANT KAMINSKI – And any type of recommendation or suggestion or things that we could look at would be absolutely fantastic. We and I speak for the rec. board on this would appreciate that type of input to make sure that we’re okay with the process that we’re going to be taking. COUNCIL PRESIDENT GAMBER Alright, let me remind everyone we’re talking about Ordinance No. 22 which has to do with an appropriation. Mr. Manson? COUNCILMAN MANSON Yeah, while we’re talking we may as well continue or we can start it again after we get out of this meeting here. COUNCIL PRESIDENT GAMBER – That’s my suggestion lets get moving on the ordinance and you all can talk as long as you want in the committee meeting. As long as we’re talking about that the suggestion as far as going over the budget or doing a recap of the financial picture at the Legends my opinion that properly belongs in the park and rec. committee. Mr. Mang is involved with the sale of the property through the community development committee whether it’s a golf course or any other city property that belongs in his committee. Mr. Manson is involved wtth this particular item because it’s an appropriation everything else we’re talking about I think belongs in park and rec. Mr. Townsend if you would take the suggestions you’ve heard today and from Mrs. Catazaro-Perry and you’ll more or less be our point person from here on out. Because at this point we’re now talking operations and management and that belongs in your committee. You’re very welcome. Mr. Manson, you have a motion? COUNCILMAN MAIER I wanted to ask the auditor one question real quick. COUNCIL PRESIDENT GAMBER Alright, our we finished with Mr. Kaminski? Thank you. Mrs. Ferrero? COUNCILMAN MAIER Yes, Mrs. Ferrero, I know you just got there and I guess is it common practice to do purchase orders without money in the accounts? AUDITOR FERRERO – What they do is they encumber some purchase orders. But what happens and again I am new to this position but what basically happened in the park and rec. and the Legends fund are they are swapping money back and forth to make ends meet. A lot of it was it was to do with the buyout of a contract, things like that and they’ve gotten kind of behind on bills, behind on making their payroll, behind on making on a lot of things. So basically what we’ve done is we’ve robbed Peter to pay Paul and we’ve put money in different line items to make sure that we pay employees and things like that. Some of those funds were taken out of those because the p. o.’s hadn’t come thru yet. COUNCILMAN MAIIER I just a follow up to that. I realize that you’re new in there I appreciate that I just it’s confusing to me that we you know and from July on we should have probably realized a little sooner that the accounts didn’t weren’t payable. That’s all. COUNCILWOMAN CATAZARO-PERRY – And Mrs. Ferrero I just wanted to make a comment that you know the report that I created last year did in fact do that it talked about you know the purchase orders that were outstanding and had you know the Mayor had everyone complete those till the end of the year we might not have this in our lap right now. AUDITOR FERRERO – Well, I know the report that you’re speaking of and I have seen it somewhat in some of the old files. But I can tell you that this particular report that I learned in and out tells me that as well. The outstanding encumberances and the unencumbered balances. So any time you want to look at the cash position that we’re in with the city I want you to feel free to come and take a look. I invite any of you to please come down to the auditor’s officer its very interesting and its mind boggling as some of you Mr. Hersher’s been there and Mr. Manson of course and you know they’ve studied some of it along with me. It’s mind boggling to me as well. COUNCILWOMAN CATAZARO-PERRY – It’s just unfortunate they didn’t complete those reports you know until the end of the year. COUNCILMAN MANSON moved for suspension of the rules and passage, seconded by Councilman Hersher. The rules were suspended by a roll call vote of 9 yes. ORDINANCE NO. 22 – 2008 WAS PASSED BY A ROLL CALL VOTE OF 9 YES. ORDINANCE NO. 23 2008 BY: FINANCE COMMITTEE An ordinance making certain transfers in the 2008 appropriations from within the Capital Improvement Fund, for the year ending December 31, 2008, and declaring an emergency. COUNCILMAN MANSON Anymore questions otherwise I’m going to ask to waive the rule. COUNCILMAN MANSON moved for suspension of the rules and passage, seconded by Councilman Hersher. The rules were suspended by a roll call vote of 9 yes. ORDINANCE NO. 22 – 2008 WAS PASSED BY A ROLL CALL VOTE OF 9 YES. COUNCIL PRESIDENT GAMBER Let me also state for the record we have the following city officials with us Auditor Jayne Ferrero, Safety Service Director Mike Loudiana, Engineer Keith Dylewski and Park and Recreation Director Kenn Kaminski. 4. ADJOURNMENT COUNCIL PRESIDENT GAMBER This meeting is adjourned.
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