Definition for "thorn" |
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irritant: something that causes irritation and annoyance; "he's a thorn in my flesh" |
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Note: Alderman Sohns at many times does not speak into the microphone, which is in front of him, and rather, he turns his head toward the Mayor when speaking, and therefore, some of his words are unintelligible. You will see [...] in those areas. He was not asked to speak into the microphone until item G7.
City of Franklin Common Council Meeting Tuesday May 20, 2008
G. Reports & Recommendations
4. Resolution to manage vacant staff positions by the City of Franklin
Common Council (Ald. Sohns)
Mayor Taylor:
Contained in all of these resolutions you submitted Thursday afternoon or night you had the language that said, “Whereas Mayor Taylor has publicly pledged to limit growth of the city’s property tax levy for the next three years; and then it goes on next sentence absent a significant source of new revenue. I do have a problem with that, given that what I pledged was, I pledged that if elected to another term as Mayor of the City of Franklin that I will not recommend an annual budget to the city’s finance committee that exceeds 3% in tax levy increase. This pledge is related to years 2008-2011. And while it’s semantics, if we’re going to talk about my pledge, I would hope that, I would ask that you put in the precise language. With that, it’s yours.
Alderman Sohns:
The first sentence of the resolution says Mayor Taylor has publicly pledged to limit growth on the city’s property tax levy for the next three years. I think that’s what it says.
Taylor: No, this is what it says.”
Sohns: We will not recommend an annual budget to the city’s finance committee that we for two years, 2008-2009.
Sohns: The second sentence is not part of your pledge, it is a statement of fact on my part which is absolute balancing the budget increase is likely to be difficult. If anyone here wants to argue that we can certainly do that.
Taylor: Well, I will.
Sohns: O.K.
Taylor: And that is you put in the words, “ will have.” That is a statement of fact and your saying the Common Council there are some Common Council members that may not even be happy with the 3% tax levy increase and may want to have a reduction in the tax levy and so the words Common Council “won’t have” is more of an opinion.
Sohns: I guess I should point out that the City Attorney and I had a conversation about his […] You did issue a memo on April 11th and now announcing that you were freezing vacant positions. […]
Taylor: We might. I think I have the memo in front of me. I think I have a 2 % I do have it ? I didn’t get this…I just got this tonight.
Sohns: I’ll read the first sentence.
Taylor: I don’t have it in front of me.
Sohns: You wrote it
Taylor: I may have [written] it but I think this was just passed out just before the meeting. Alright and your question to me was?
Sohns: […] April 14th, the personnel committee received a staffing report and I’m going to take this to […] there are the 15 seasonal positions which you exempt from your….
Taylor: Is this something I have in front of me?
Sohns: Yes.
Taylor: You mind if I get to it? And that’s in the packet that you? The staffing report and data as of April 14th
Sohns: Correct. 15 seasonal positions were by your memo were exempt from a hiring freeze. A library assistant which this body has no control over once the library has their budget they can choose to hire at their discretion and two police officer vacancies so I ask the obvious question. You ‘ve had a vacant position since February 13th obviously this was part of the hiring freeze; no that position was going to be filled. The job offer has already been made. I’ve since discovered that the offer was made to the sole candidate on the police department and it turned out to be a person who couldn’t be hired for whatever reason, I don’t know what that reason is. The Police and Fire commission is reloading their list of qualified applicants. What we have left is a police officer who is likely to retire or to announce he is to retire in June.
Taylor: Did you say the position was offered?
Sohns: I was told the police officer position was offered.
Taylor: O.K. If I signed off on that position...
Sohns: I don’t know.
Taylor: Then it wouldn’t be filled.
[…]
Sohns: I would like Mr. Patterson and the City Attorney […] to write a ordinance that would take the salary and the related benefits out of the budget from the fund balance and it stays there until we can justify where we will find the other cuts to restore those dollars.
Olson: Seconded
Taylor: Alright it’s been moved and seconded […]
Taylor: We annually go through a budget process. While it’s true I have made a tax pledge, regarding submitting a budget to the finance committee that would not exceed a 3% tax levy, this is 2008 and the budget that passed was not a 3% tax levy increase it was a 5.7% tax levy increase. Since I first was notified of Alderman Sohns request for placing these Resolutions I had a meeting with Mr. Luberda and Mr. Patterson to go over the Resolutions in great detail because I wanted to find out where we are and what would be needed in the event we would need to take some action. What you have in front of you and I apologize for the lateness of this, but I got this late I would have to say that I don’t believe that these Resolutions went to Mr. Patterson, or Mr. Luberda or the Finance Committee Chair or the Mayor or the members of the finance committee. So you got the packet May 20th of the 2009 budget forecast just before the meeting because we have to pull Mr. Patterson off of other important duties to get this out so that you would have the correct information and most up to date information in front of you. Mr. Patterson is here at my request to go through this. I said to the new Alderman and I know that the current alderman know that there is no more important issue than the city’s budget. And with that I'm going to ask Mr. Patterson to bring us up to speed on where we are financially in 2008 because my tax pledge does not kick in until I recommend a 2009 budget; I wrote the Chapter 13 of the ordinances on the budget process so I think it 's near the end of September. I think it's very important that new Alderman and current Alderman know where we are. And before he does move forward , in Alderman Sohns Resolution he speaks about reductions and ambulance fees and I'm very pleased to say that as the person that negotiated the contracts for all 19 municipalities, for the paramedics contract, the new one. It appears that contract is reaping great rewards and benefits. Alderman Olson?
Alderman Olson:Two comments Mr. Mayor before we hear from Mr. Patterson. I want to response to a comment you just made. I take exception to your comment that anything this Common Council wants to put on this Agenda has to be fed through staff. It’s not true and it won’t happen as far as I’m concerned unless it’s the intention of the person putting it on the Agenda.
Mayor Taylor: That was not what my intent was. My intent was just to state a fact.
Olson: And then one other statement I’d like to make relative to this future ordinances. I view this strictly as a management issue with all due respect. The Board of Directors of this Corporation need to respond to changes in economic conditions. We, like you have got to report to our constituents and if we’re not allowed a voice in decisions in hiring personnel in bad economic times then that is the single largest expense we have in this community and that is why we need to be able to answer to our constituents as to why that happened or didn’t happen and that’s why I support this ordinance.
Mayor Taylor: The motion?
Alderman Sohns?
Alderman Sohns: Well I’m anxious to hear part of what was the genesis for my concern was a document that was discussed at the finance committee. [...] At the last finance committee meeting we had this table on top of it that says budget estimate it has the 2008-2007, the 2008 most likely [...] for general fund revenue best case, most likely, worst case. The most likely case at least on March 20th Mr. Patterson was reporting most likely our revneue would be up almost $280,000, worst case almost half a million. And we have overspending highway overtime, [..] over of about $100,000. So we're looking at $380,000 to over half a million shorfall actually expenditure of the budget. We will be coming into salad days and we're gonna have to watch how we spend. In my mind we don't eat filet mignon this year and hamburgers next year. We start making corrections to the budget and we attempt to preserve fund balance now. We don't wait until 2009 to do it by then it's gonna be too late. Alderman Olson stole my thunder. We have a right to look at our finances and make recommendations to protect the fiscal health of our community and our constituents. So if Mr. Patterson has different numbers a month later than the ones I saw before....
Mayor Taylor:
The problem I have with Aldermen is that, you are the Board of Directors I don’t have a problem with that, that’s just matter of fact. And as Alderman and Board Members policy makers. You set policy. As the Mayor of the city I’m the Chief Executive officer and I manage the city. . . One of the things that gets managed is how budget gets controlled and how budget is spend and how positions are filled. All due respect we had an incident this morning with a very large drug bust signaling to us that there is trouble in River City on 34th and Sycamore and there may be other trouble. If I’m to wait for the action of the Common Council to decide should we fill another police officer in the time of an emergency I think that that is a problem that we are going to have in coping with some of the problems of the city. We just had an election and there are two new aldermen and one that was returned and I was just reelected as the Mayor of the city by the constituents of your Aldermanic district. And now what I have in front of me is a resolution that would basically take away the CEO’s right to manage the workplace. That’s the way I’m see it. And I have not submitted my budget and will not submit it until September. And this is not the first time that this subject has come up about taking control or putting the control about filling vacancies in the hands of the policy makers versus the hands of the Mayor. When I came into office there was a memo I found from then former Mayor Klimetz, not the Common Council, that said from this point forward we are going to be stopping vacancies. That is a CEO decision. Now, it’s very true that the Council Members assisted the Mayor in that decision because they basically well, we’re not going to be giving you anymore money. And the Council clearly owns the purse. I give you that, I mean, that’s just a matter of law. I mean, we have a part-time Mayor…I say that loosely. And things are difficult enough around here without putting more handcuffs on me and the staff of the city. And, you know, going through this whole exercise of the budget and having what I would say is another budget process on top of another one when the staff of the city is already taxed is very frustrating. We put out a memo; I put out a memo, saying we’re putting a hiring freeze in place, a reduction of 2% in the budget and that doesn’t seem to be enough.
Alderman Sohns?
Alderman Sohns:
You’ve created a hiring freeze. [...] If you want to rehire them all you have to do is tell us where you're going to get the money from. Now I got the same phone call the rest of you, or a phone message, about this morning's police situation. [...] All I'm doing is suggesting that if your freeze means something you won’t have a dilemma taking money out of the budget or the fund balance. If that’s a problem then your hiring freeze doesn't mean a thing.
Mayor Taylor:
Alderman, to be very frank, I think you have a problem with my taking the tax pledge and I think you are playing with the organization of the system. It’s true I did take the tax pledge the reason I did that is when I talk to the people out there, your constituents, my constituents, they’re barely hanging on by the fingernails, they don’t know here their next is dollar is coming from. This had nothing to do with…I should say that, I was very reluctant this last budget to go to 5.7% and wanted to stay at 3% so it did not take a great deal of . I just think you’re playing around with the organization of the city at a time when your staff is totally as well as your part-time.
Alderman Soloman:
Well, we’re still on Item 4, O.K.?
The information that was handed out by Mr. Patterson this evening obviously is very, very fruitful information but I just received it as I sat down in my chair at 6:31 since I was in the Licensing Committee with my two fellow colleagues, so I have not had a chance to look at this whatsoever and I know Mr. Patterson is not gonna go through it line by line this evening but I will do that this evening probably at 3:00 this morning because this arming doesn’t arm doesn’t stay sleeping all night it does get up and walk around. But let me say that your letter on the hiring freeze, the part that means more to me on this letter is the 98% of your budget that means that over 2% of the budget must be saved. So if you commit a 3% increase and everybody cuts 2%... Hmm…that comes up to a total of 5% and we should be able to fit this size 12 foot in a size 10 shoe. Now it should squeeze in there; we should make it. So that’s my only comment on that. I would hope that all of this information get’s to the Finance Committee in a timely manner. Probably not in time for this month’s meeting, but obviously in time for next month’s meeting and I would suggest that all of these issues be put on the agenda for next month’s meeting and can digest this information in the next couple weeks and we can save ourselves probably about three or four house tonight and I am not ready to move forward except for listening to Mr. Patterson and quite obviously we would need to do that and then come up with some reasonable fixes and or alternatives and I don't think that anyone is prepared to do that tonight. so Item #4 I would move to if my colleagues want to withdraw a motion. There’s a motion on the floor. I know that I 'm just suggesting that if it would be withdrawn it would be referred to the Finance committee.
Sohns: I'll withdraw my motion. I’ve made my point. I’m not playing games here. [...]
Solomon: Thank you. I’ll second that motion.
Taylor: I appreciate that motion. [...] Is there other discussion? All In Favor Aye. Ayes have it.
