HomeMy WebLinkAboutProgram Analysis Committee - July - September 1998 PROGRAM ANALYSIS COMMITTEE MEETING MINUTES
August 10, 1998
COMMON COUNCIL CHAMBERS
Present: Chair Vaughan, Alderpersons Manos, Sams, Blumenthal, Farrell, Taylor,
Spielholz
Mayor Cohen
No paper work to show who was in attendance.
Others Present:
City Clerk Holcomb
Director of Human Resources Michelle-Nunn
Deputy Director of Human Resources - Saul
City Controller- Cafferillo
Police Chief- Basile
Human Resources Department:
Director of Human Resources Michelle-Nunn stated that what she had hoped to do was
walk through the hand outs before you and then open up for questions; both she and
Val will walk through this and open up questions that you might have for either of us to
answer regarding the report that you have and the presentation. In terms of the agenda
or the presentation flow, what she'll do is she'll talk a little bit about department
overview, talk a little bit about an HR strategic model, this is a model that she has used
with her previous employer and she has done some modifications, but she wants to go
through it with you, talk about the programs and then do a brief summary with regards
to the program analysis. In terms of the overview, first of all, this is obvious that this is a
major time of transition for the former personnel department. The report submitted to
you last (someone coughed) outlined existing programs as well as some programs that
we anticipate, anticipated programs. A caution that she has for you is that what you
have before you, as she said, is what they anticipate. Part of what they plan to do in this
next year is to thoroughly assess and evaluate what exists, the current environment. In
doing that, she expects that additional needs will come out of that, okay? So, we've
tried to encompass generically the types of areas that we need to focus on in terms of
programs and will continue to focus on but she doesn't want you to be surprised if
something comes up as a result of indepth discussions or evaluation/assessment of the
various processes and programs. Transition to a Human Resource department involves
continuing to do what the former personnel office has done all along. In addition, we will
become more strategic and active. They will work very closely or develop partnerships
with the department heads, the mayor, common council, and the unions. They'll work
closely with all of you in order to provide a work environment that will help us or enable
us to attract and retain the types of employees that we're looking for and that we need
in city government. Her office will, while they will be looking things closely and on a
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day-to-day basis, they'll also be stepping back and looking from say 50,000 feet.
Looking at sort of globally, how do individual things that we do connect to the overall
picture of what's going on in the city government. In terms of the strategic model, if you
just turn to that and sort of how did you describe it Val? The Al chart. This diagram is
sort of a visual display of at least what's a philosophy of what she should only believe in
as it relates to human resources. When we look at human resources, if you have, if you
value individuals, individuals who feel valued in their everyday work, that translates into
effective employees and when you have effective employees, you have an effective
organization, an effective organization results in the customer or in our case, the
resident being satisfied. So, this is sort of the model of the premise of what she sees her
office moving forward in terms of the services and types of programs that they will be
providing for the city. The programs themselves are work force diversification,
employee development, civil service administration, labor relations, benefits
administration and general administration. As far as general administration, she doesn't
spend alot of time in here or any time in here really on that because that basically is
everything that doesn't fall under any of the other categories. In terms of work force
diversification, the goal here and this is the goal and this is not a goal that anyone came
to her and said that this is the goal. This is the goal based upon what she has heard
from common council, the search committee, individuals that she has had the
opportunity to meet with so far. Really what they're looking to do is to develop a work
environment that will allow diverse individuals to work effectively and maximize their
potential. If you think about that, what they're saying here is that they want an
environment where people feel comfortable in it, where they feel that they are valued
and respected for their diversity. We are also looking for an environment where they
can promote diversity of thought, style, and actions. So, it's very much a way of not and
she'll say this about everything, we label it as program, but she is really concerned
about when we talk about putting programs in place because, it's okay to start out with
programs, but what we really want to do is set up an environment where it becomes part
of everyday life. It's just how we work and how we do. So, what she is saying here is
that we want in terms of diversity is for it not to be a program, but for it just to be
ingrained in the way we think, the way act and you know that whole process.
Objectives in terms of this upcoming year is clearly that we need to assess and evaluate
the current environment, the existing programs, education and training. And, you'll see
as she goes through, she always says education and training. She thinks that we are
remiss if we don't say education and training. Training alone, is not going to get us
where we need to be as it relates to developing our workforce and education, in terms
of how education differs from training, training is literally going to a class and sitting
down and being taught something. The education piece is more of experience, it's more
what she would call maybe the non-traditional classroom. It's benchmarking and
understanding what is going on out there, what people are doing more effectively.
Bringing that in to the people who work here, helping them understand, with the
intention of them eventually sort of buying into what it is that we're trying to get across.
So, it's critical to educate and train the work force. So that will be our focus in all of our
programs. Then of course, the effective recruitment and retention initiatives. Now, the
affirmative action committee has put forth a very good plan in terms of goals and actions
to be implemented and we'll be focusing on that plan in terms of trying to implement of
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what's in there around diversity. Employee development, the goal is to implement a
comprehensive city-wide education and training plan that will enable all employees to
continuously develop their skills and knowledge. The enhanced direction of employee
development program will result in maximum benefit for the city's employees and
ultimately the city residents. When it comes to employee development, she looks at it in
sort of a three prongs or three-tiered approach. In order to develop the employee, it's
important to develop and educate the individual. The individual in terms of technical,
and in terms of social skills and she takes social skills because she thinks that we
sometimes put all our emphasis on a technical skill, making sure the people have the
skills or the training in how to do their job, but no so much in the way they do their job
and the way they interact with individuals. So, part of her focus will be not only on what
we do but how we do it. Helping employees learn how to interact with each other so
that this may be pie in the sky, but if there are differences or disagreements that they
can actually be resolved through conflict management or any other type of approach
versus it skyrocketing or ending up maybe in a grievance or arbitration. So, that's sort of
looking at it at 50,000 feet. The second level is at the department level. Once you have
individuals, we need to focus on what it is that the, what we need to provide to the
department so that they can be effective to work together also. So, that looks at it at a
little slightly different approach which is more looking sort of the collective of a group
and seeing what types of training and education needs to be done there. The third part
is city leadership. It includes the mayor, the department heads, the common council,
supervisors, managers, anyone that takes on any type of leadership role within the city
government. For obvious reasons, she means, leadership, we have to ensure that they
are basically walking the talk and we need to provide leadership with the skills and
support what they need in order to be effective supervisors. She still is sort of in a data
gathering stage but a question she has around the common council is she is not clear
yet on what type of orientation, she is sure you have an orientation, but those are things
that she would like to look into, look at and understand and make sure that we're
providing common council to department head with the type of acclimation/orientation
and training that they need. So, that's a part of the three tiers. She thinks that the long-
term positive results will require some evaluation initially. If you look, next is the civil
service administration and she would like to turn that over to Val.
Val Saul explained that as most of you know, she thinks, we run the civil service
program on a daily basis on behalf of the civil service commission. They run it for the
City of Ithaca, we run it for the non-instructional staff of the Ithaca City School District
and we also run it through the Ithaca Housing Authority so there are about 1,000
positions or so that we run it on a daily basis for. In terms of our goals, for the most part,
we run it well. Our most recent audit, this past spring gave us a very good rating. But,
that doesn't mean that there aren't things that we couldn't do better and then there are
specific things that we need to address. The biggest need that we have is the
automation issue. And, that's been an outstanding issue for a couple of years. She
thinks, that hopefully within the next year, we need to resolve whether MUNIS is in fact
going to be able or is going to allow us to automate the way we need to automate or
whether we're going to actually have to go out and purchase the software that's very
specific for what we do, but that will make a huge difference in the way that we operate.
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Right now, we still maintain a paper database on 1,000 positions between the three
employers. The other main goal that the commission is looking at, she doesn't know if
it's as critical to you or to council as it is to the commission, but we do still have some
discrepancies with the Ithaca City School district in terms of just the communication
back and forth, in terms of the workforce, people coming, people going and it's been an
issue both for their staffing turnover in the last couple of years as well as our staffing
shortage, but that is something that the commission has set us a goal over the next year
is for her to spend a fair amount of time over at the school district so that we do clean
up our records and we do make sure that they are in full compliance as well.
Alderperson Farrell stated that she had a question about that, so when you talk about
problems with compliance, it's just that it's not caught up?
Val Saul responded that it's not caught up, people have left, people have come, we're
always caught up with the competitive jobs that we test for, it's the food service helpers,
it's the teachers aids and that type of thing and there is alot of turnover in June when
people leave and retire and new people are coming on in September and we may not
find out for six months when they really should be finding out at the time it's actually
happening.
Alderperson Blumenthal asked so you don't have an accurate database of all?
Val Saul responded they have a database and it's probably right now somewhere
between 80-85% accurate with the school district and she says that now because we're
in August and she knows that there are people who have left and retired and so forth in
June and she knows there are people they are hiring for school starting in the next three
or four weeks and it will take time to get that information, even though it's only a blocks
away,.
Alderpersons Sams stated that they're usually behind themselves on that stuff.
Val Saul stated right, their staffing is worse than our staffing, right.
Alderperson Farrell stated that she had a couple of other questions. So, the total
program expenses for that are $32,740 but the Ithaca City School District pays $25,000,
so they are paying a big chunk, is that comparable because they have the most
employees then?
Val Saul responded that actually it varies. Because when they did this one, she actually
did it on a percentage basis of how we're going to allocate staff time in the different
programs. This was done prior staff allocations and they basically paid 50% of the bill
and that's the actual dollars when Dominick and Steve negotiate with the school district
and come up with something. But, it usually run as about 50% of the program. Because
they're about half, the housing authority has about 30 employees and the rest are pretty
much split between the school district and the city pretty evenly.
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Alderperson Farrell asked if the housing authority didn't pay anything?
Val Saul responded no.
Alderperson Farrell asked how come?
Val Saul responded that they're not entitled to charge them. The way the State law is
written we can charge the school district but they're the only ones we can charge.
Alderperson Farrell asked if we are compelled to do the Housing Authority one though?
Val Saul responded yes, if we have an independent commission we have to do
everything within the geographical limits of the city which includes both the school
district and the housing authority.
Alderperson Farrell asked if it couldn't be like if the school district took it over and we
paid them?
Val Saul responded that right now it's not set up for that, although there have been
initiatives because most cities and counties, for example, many counties have anywhere
from between 8-15 school districts don't like doing them. It's very hard to manage a
portion of the workforce for another employer, but nothing has been enacted at this
point to allow that to happen.
Alderperson Farrell asked if was a possibility though?
Val Saul responded that it's proposed legislatively, but it has not been passed into law.
Alderperson Blumenthal asked how many employees the city has?
Val Saul responded stated that we have about 450 give or take. That's in terms of the
permanent workforce, we have a transient summer workforce as well. The schools are
about the same and again with schools we're only talking non-instructional staff.
Alderperson Blumenthal stated so that's 900.
Val Saul stated right.
Alderperson Blumenthal stated so that's 930.
Alderperson Vaughan asked what the county does, do they run their own program?
Val Saul responded that they run their own program for themselves for all the villages,
for all the towns and then all of the school districts outside of the Ithaca School district.
Alderperson Farrell asked if they could do ours?
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Val Saul stated that yes they can do it.
Alderperson Farrell asked if they could do it now the way things are legislatively?
Val Saul stated right.
Alderperson Farrell asked if there was any disadvantage to that?
Val Saul responded that the disadvantage to us is that we lose alot of local control
because in terms of everything from writing our own job descriptions to determining how
to recruit and so forth, the county would do it on our behalf.
Alderperson Farrell asked if they wouldn't want to take ideas from us?
Val Saul stated that she thinks they would, but it really becomes a staffing issue. We're
not going to be their number one priority, their own workforce is.
Alderperson Farrell asked how many county workers there were?
Val Saul responded 700 and something.
Alderperson Farrell asked if we had our own program, but say didn't want any of the
school district, would the county take that over?
Val Saul responded that they can't.
Alderperson Farrell stated even though it's not, the school district is certainly not all city.
Val Saul responded right. The crazy part for the school district is that if we have it they
have to pay us, if the county has it, they don't. They have a right to the service free.
And, that's just the way that it's set up in State law.
Alderperson Farrell stated so it would be to their advantage,
Val Saul stated sure, financially it would be absolutely.
Alderperson Sams stated that in school laws it's under what they classify as the city free
school, there are two classifications and Ithaca City School district falls under that
classification.
Schelley Michell-Nunn stated that most of you are aware right now that we're doing
some transitioning in terms of responsibility from the attorney's office. We will increase
our role, at the same time, we see a strong need to continue to have the attorney's
office as a, to play a very active role in some of the labor relations issues, they will
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continue to do arbitrations and to serve as consulting to our office, but we are gradually
moving certain responsibilities into the Human Resources department. Also, she thinks
it is important to take into consideration that next year is the first year, if she is correct,
that you will negotiate all six contracts at the same time which is going to be an
enormous amount of resources coming the human resource office and also the
attorney's office. That will start in April.
Mayor Cohen stated that was done on purpose so the city could sit down with all six
unions at the same time.
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that it says here, training of new director of Human
Resources, on labor issues. Can you explain that a little bit? Should we ask questions
now or wait? Do you want to finish your overview and then we'll go back?
Schelley Michell-Nunn responded yes please. The benefits administration goal here is
to orient and educate employees on benefits offered by the city and to administer an
employee benefits program. She thinks that we have major opportunity to enhance the
way we do things and the way that we track them, Val pointed out earlier, our ability or
the need to automate alot of what we do in the office is really high on our list. We are
still doing quite a few things manually, she doesn't mean manually or excel, she means
manually. So there is a strong desire and interest to become more efficient by utilizing
technology. Right now it's not clear what our capabilities are with the current
technology, she knows that we are part of the, hopefully the capital plan, and will be
upgraded. Her only concern is that we have not fully identified our capability, the
capabilities that we will need but yet we have equipment identified in terms of what we
will get. so she is hoping that there will be a match between what we plan to do in terms
of automating and building databases in the office and the technology that we will be
getting in next year. The jury right now is still out.
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that she doesn't understand, you're getting some
equipment, but you're not sure it's going to be?
Schelley Michell-Nunn responded that we are getting an upgrade on the equipment that
we currently have, they were upgraded two years ago to pentiums, they were
purchased back in either '93 or '94, they've been upgraded once to pentiums and now
they will be upgraded again next year. That's part of our upgrades. They won't be
replaced, they will be upgraded. The concern is that we are right now working through
what our needs are in terms of technical capabilities, we want to make sure that what
capabilities we need, what we're getting, that they match. We need to build a database,
we know that, okay, will we be able to do that with the upgrades. She doesn't know.
Alderperson Vaughan responded that they will have to talk about that.
City Controller Cafferillo stated that the it could be done off the network, the central file
database records are not stand alones they're secure and the central database that
we've built on the network and it's extremely expansive plus we did acquire software
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with the involvement of personnel, we acquired the MUNIS software, it has been
expanded and enhanced annually since we purchased it. It has capabilities of being
used by 600 users, probably 100-150 large users including most of the school districts
in New York State. So, you have to give it a chance, you got to review it, you've got to
see what it can and can't do, because it is designed to perform that service and it is
performing it effectively. Every BOCES in the State has purchased that system for all
the school districts in the State, plus cities, large towns and so on.
Schelley Michell-Nunn stated that then what we will be doing is working with Dominick
and Steve to have it up and running because right it's not; so she can't tell what it can
do or whether or not it can meet our needs until,
City Controller Cafferillo stated that we can also have them send a specialist, someone
who is really well versed in the civil service/personnel area and they can answer alot of
questions and show some of the characteristics and flexibilities that
Alderperson Vaughan stated that in terms of the hardware for the capital project, we
had to put that together and submit it by May 15th and you obviously weren't there to do
your overview. We made an educated guess. There's going to have to be some
negotiation there, but there is a general dollar amount that's going to be available based
on a variety of perimeters, what we said, well if you had a pentium system we wouldn't
replace it but we would make certain that it had the capability to handle heavier duty
and we put money aside. Now, there may be other things that your department needs
specifically, that we need to deal with, but given the realities of the timetables, we had to
come up with a number and that's how we got to the number and as she said, you and
she probably have to talk off line to deal with what the specifics are of what you think
you need and how much money we think is going to be available for it.
Schelley Michelle-Nunn stated that she thinks in terms of budget, anything that they do
as they move forward that is not currently in the budget, you know, it will be additional,
we will continue to look for creative ways to meet our goals. Such as partnering with
other organizations such as you know one of the things that we have on our list, is to
explore what types of grant monies are out there and available that they could tap into
and utilize to get some of these programs kicked off. The other area is that we will be
utilizing interns to do some of the work, which is going to require a bit of work on our
part in terms of overseeing and preparing them, but we do need the additional hands in
the office and but in addition to that, she thinks too that we are talking about budgetary
resources that will allow the types of programs that we want to implement, allow them to
become part of the sort of"everyday life." In summary, she thinks that the commitment
and contribution of all employees will determine our effectiveness. When people
resources are managed well, we enable them to service the residents more effectively
and a commitment to human resources is a commitment to provide the tools and
resources necessary to be effective. People plus practices plus technology equals
customer satisfaction. She thinks really that if we invest now, in the long run we save
and as she thinks about this in the sense of educating people around the labor issues,
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we will also limit our exposure for issues that we could have avoided. So, if now we can
.� go back and have specific questions for each of the different programs.
Alderperson Vaughan stated that she would lead off with a general question. That hits
on several of these programs, and the question is, you've talked about the commitment
of new resources from the budget. How much and what for?
Schelley Michell-Nunn responded that first of all, if we are talking about doing sort of an
analysis of the current environment, that can be done in a variety of different ways and
she doesn't think you do one way versus the other. It actually needs to be done several
ways. For example, we do need to go back and get a current snap shot of the
environment by surveying employees. By doing focus groups with a cross section of
employees, she thinks that in order to get the type of feedback that we really need that's
going to be valuable, we will need to have an outside vendor. In terms of who will
receive the results from the survey and will basically do the analysis and all of that and
present it back to us. So, that's going to cost, she has also in terms of funding she was
thinking in terms of the database, but we'll consult and work with the MUNIS system to
make sure that it has what we need, the capability that we need. We're looking for
interns to come in and pick up some of the slack. The education, are we going to do in-
house or in-service training? In addition to having our employees go out. The other
thing around education, we have an excellent resource up on the hill in terms of Cornell,
she was up there the other day viewing their distance learning. That is available to us,
we can utilize Cornell facilities for some of our education and training, but that is going
to cost. She envisions that we can take departments up there and have them go
through training without, you know, having you know individuals travel anywhere. One
of the things that her office is working on is really the infrastructure of the office. So,
they're looking at all of their processes and doing some mapping of those processes
and so that we can, so that we can basically see what we're doing but also identify
where there might be any efficiencies. We can also document and develop standard
operating procedures for all the processes that we have. We're starting it out in our
office, but she anticipates that this will be something that other departments will want to
do. In order for them to do that, they will need facilitation, so there will be some
requirements around having facilitators in to work with her department and with other
departments in doing that.
Alderperson Sams asked if she was talking about having her department, which sounds
good to her, as the central location kind of thing for a standardized process so that
every department isn't doing something different?
Schelley Michelle-Nunn responded that clearly there are several areas that we do have
a hodge podge of processes and procedures around here and when we talk about
exposure really open us up to quite a bit of exposure as an employer. So, yes,
definitely. We're also looking for ways to communicate that. She thinks that you need to
have rules and regulations easily accessible to employees and updated. So, that means
it needs to be electronically done, okay? She knows that everyone doesn't have a
computer but you know, if they don't we need to ensure that they have access to one
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where they can go look up if they have a question about something. She has talked to
supervisors who all do certain things differently and they're looking to her office for
some guidance and some consistency. So, by mapping out the processes we will be
able to do that.
Alderperson Sams stated that leads her to her second question. Before Norma left, she
and Norma had a discussion about the fact that we don't have a central location for our
staff files. Every department has and the legalities that we could really be facing with
not having the police department has their files, the
Val Saul stated no, the HR department has the official personnel files. The departments
maintain their own files but they're not officially recognized. They HR department does
not use them for official purposes, the courts don't recognize them, and so for example
when we get a file subpoenaed it's the HR department's records that exist as the official
record of the employee's history, right?
Alderperson Sams stated that she thinks that was under question with her, because
they were considering their files the legal files and we okay.
Val Saul stated that they consider those working files.
Alderperson Blumenthal asked if there was a problem with people thinking that the files
are official, do all the department heads understand the distinctions and the need to
keep things in your office? Or is that?
Val Saul responded that most, in fact, she would say yes and they even have labor
contracts that point out the distinction as well because that was an issue with a couple
of the bargaining units a few years back as to who is keeping what record on who and
who has access. There are legal reporting procedures and the things that the HR
department has to maintain. What the working file would have would be little notes of
issues that came up or it might be an unofficial discussion that was held with an
employee or evaluations when being considered for a promotion, the sort of supervisory
scratchings if you will is the way that she would describe it. Some supervisors have
diary entries that they use so whatever they use on a working basis but it's nothing
that's a formal record of the employee's work here.
Schelley Michelle-Nunn asked if isn't that information subpeonable? If there was
something in a file, couldn't they come in and say they want to see their scribbling and
scratching?
Val Saul responded sure.
Schelley Michelle-Nunn stated so that in itself, we need to make sure that our
supervisors, the people who are doing that are putting appropriate information in those
files outside of our office.
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Alderperson Sams stated that came up with this whole thing with the police department
boycotting and whose file was whose and all that and Norma was saying that this is
really wrong and it shouldn't be this way and it has to be corrected.
Dominick Cafferillo, City Controller, stated that they also tried to eliminate all the
informal memorandums of understanding because we would run into a grievance or
arbitration and one would surface, so we made it very clear in negotiations that if it's not
in the contract, it doesn't exist. That there are no informal mou's signed by the
department head, that didn't have the authority of council to do so and then when we
when we were in the middle of arbitration it comes and lays on the table, we've tried to
include wording to eliminate all of that. If it's not in the contract, it hasn't been
negotiated, there's no agreement, it doesn't exist.
Alderperson Sams stated so you're talking about getting all that cleared and
Schelley Michelle-Nunn stated that other areas of focus, for example, recognition. We
were talking earlier in regards to the picnic and doing something in that area. Her
opinion as it relates to recognition is that it's not something you do a one shot deal once
a year, it's great to do it, it's better than nothing, but she really thinks that we ought to
look and consider ongoing ways of recognizing employees. She has ideas from things
left over from previous employers that are not very costly, would not be costly, but they
would cost something, in terms of for example, instant recognitions, okay, if someone
does something, you would have little thank you cards, they would be city wide thank
you cards that an individual could fill out. For example, Jolene came down the other
day, her staff was having a staff meeting and she sat in the office for two hours while
they were in their staff meeting and you know we all came out and said thank you and
all of that, but instant recognition would have allowed her department to send her a note
and then for her to have an insert which she could choose either movie tickets, or a car
wash or something like that and she is not saying you have to do that, but she is trying
to give a sense or an idea and it is and it will require funds. She thinks that we need to
think more in terms of what we do on an ongoing basis, one of the things that she heard
loud and clear, when she was in the search process, is that there are issues around
morale. One of the things that has become very clear as she has been here for the last
five-six weeks, there are issues around morale. There is not one thing that's going to
get at it, but we do need to begin to address that and she thinks that there are some
things that we can easily do. - side two of tape -
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that there are a whole range of reasons why people are
unhappy so that what you're talking about and that fixes a certain small thing. So, she
guesses...
Schelley Michell-Nunn responded that recognition is a part of that, but the whole morale
issue is tied into every program that we've talked about today. Employee development,
work force diversification, that is all a component to morale, dealing with morale issues.
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Alderperson Blumenthal stated then the little thank you cards don't exactly, she guesses
she is just wondering how you know, she doesn't know, maybe we should have a
discussion about morale at another time.
Schelley Michell-Nunn stated that it's not that it would solve,
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that she guesses that she would like to hear more, that
sounds too, it's just so, she guesses when you talk about like her son bringing home all
these little things from school, she is sure they have value to him, these little pats on the
back or whatever..
Schelley Michell-Nunn stated that we can talk about it; she has quite a bit of experience
in an environment that, in corporate environment, where it was utilized and meant alot.
It wasn't so much that you got to pick something, but it was that people acknowledged
the little thing that you did and literally people would display their little cards and these
are professionals, people just like you. So, it
Alderperson Farrell stated that it's like setting up a positive climate, it's a positive
climate and so that's just one little piece of it. You're appreciated.
Schelley Michell- Nunn responded yes, exactly and it's not as if we just did that it would
change anything overnight, but right, it's setting the tone and she just threw out one
recognition example. As she was saying, in terms in their office, they have alot of files
cabinets, tall black file cabinets.
Val Saul stated at least 30.
Schelley Michell-Nunn stated that some of them are inactive files of employees; we
need to look at putting them on fiche and putting the extra hard copies in storage.
The other area which she really didn't talk to alot but as she has gone around and
spoken with different department heads and employee groups, and we talked about
recognition and the sort of atmosphere and the tone, one of the things that comes out
quite clear, everyone inquires about a wellness program here and she is not saying that
she is going to go out and put a wellness program in place, but she thinks that it's worth
looking into, what are some things, what are some things that we can do to really build a
true wellness program where people feel like we value them and that we're concerned
about them as employees and their health, so and she hasn't done, she hasn't had a
chance to do really research. The other area that keeps coming up and there's more
investigation that needs to be done around this area of safety. Safety coordinators,
safety training, and it's not that it's unusual, she knows that there is someone in the fire
department who is not an official safety coordinator and then there is someone in water
and sewage and DPW and she keeps hearing a cry that we really need to do something
about this from a higher level. From a city sort of broader perspective. She doesn't
know what that looks like, but she thinks that we have to look into.
12
Alderperson Blumenthal asked if that is mainly with physical work or is that across the
board safety, different kinds of safety, it's not just the dpw workers who worry about
going into manholes for example?
Schelley Michelle-Nunn responded no.
Val Saul stated that it includes OSHA, and the AMAS inspections and citations and it
includes dealing with emotionally disturbed people and all of those different elements.
City Controller Cafferillo stated that we do alot of assessments to do with our workers'
comp and safety and working conditions and lifting and carrying and operating vehicles
and equipment, manholes, that sort of thing, but there are a number of different areas.
We also had a health care committee that spent a great deal of time talking about
wellness and wellness programs, but it has to be done in conjunction with our health
program because that is a negotiated factor and we have to be cautious about what we
introduce and what we provide and how we provide it and so on.
Alderperson Farrell stated that maybe when all the contracts are up, it's time to look at
all those kinds of cafeteria type benefits
City Controller Cafferillo stated that they are going to be looking at that.
Alderperson Vaughan stated that she has a question relating to benefits administration,
this had to do with something that was at the bottom of your overview page on benefits
administration. It talked about raising revenues by collecting health and dental
insurance premiums. Now, she is a little confused because at least the health and
dental insurance that we get, is for common council, is free. So, you're not getting any
money out of us,
City Controller Cafferillo explained, retirees, individuals under COBRA that we have to
cover.
Alderperson Vaughan stated so that's where we get the $128,000;just from retirees and
COBRA.
Val Saul stated and also employees on leaves of absences, but that is a couple of
people at a time.
Alderperson Farrell asked if those weren't collected already?
Schelley Michell-Nunn stated that's what we do, that's what this reference is to
Alderperson Vaughan stated you mentioned revenues raised and she is thinking that it
was free and wondered where you were getting it.
13
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that she wanted to ask on the workforce diversification
program, recruitment, test preparation, design and implement appropriate training
programs to enhance test taking and interview skills of candidates recruited through the
outreach program. Could you talk about that just a little bit?
Schelley Michell-Nunn explained that currently two issues that she sees right now as it
relates to work force diversification, first of all, we're not either getting diversicated to
score into the top range or we're not even getting them to take the test. So, this is
focused on doing/providing some type of preparation for candidates so that they can be
better prepared when they come in and take the test and with the ultimate goal of
ending up in that top range.
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that she was wondering, given the, given all the new
initiatives she hears and all you're talking about for your office which are very ambitious
and probably all very needed, she is wondering if, you're saying the city would provide
the training, or would you, she also wanted to ask about this partnering or partnerships.
Is this getting people to the right places where they can get the training or are you
actually going, if somebody doesn't read at a certain level or what are you talking about
what kind of training?
Val Saul responded that it's sort of a mix because right now, for example, well right now,
in terms of our staffing, we as office staff can't actual give the test prep programs
ourselves because the state won't allow people who administer the exam to run a test
prep program, GIAC does some work for us specifically for like the police officer exam
and the fire fighter exam and we have talked alot with Tompkins County because there
is a similar need about partnership somehow to expand and have a more continuous
program, but also much more comprehensive program because it isn't always just
subject matter it may be remedial reading skills, comprehension skills, math skills, which
are much longer term issues. And, she doesn't know how far we would go with that,
whether it would just be as a referral agency or whether we would actually be looking for
money to help finance people to take those types of programs.
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that is a major thing when you start wrangling school for
people. Not that it's not a good thing to do, but given the realities
Val Saul stated that most of the research has shown too that the traditional test prep
programs that we run are good for people who are already effective test takers, it's fine
tuning the skills, but for the people who really have bigger issues of either just
approaching a test as a whole and forget about test anxiety which is a whole other issue
as well, it's a much more long term effort and it may be something that a partnership
with the school district, for example, might be more effective.
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that she doesn't know how you would make up for a lack
of education or a whole life time of fear of taking tests, in your office because, and to
have the human resources department actually do that as opposed to facilitating that
change and capabilities, she doesn't know.
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Alderperson Vaughan stated that she is in that field and she can say that there are
outside agencies that can provide that, it isn't just her kind of thing, there are also
places like BOCES that are staffed to do that, so what she would see for your
department is that you identify the resources that are available and perhaps make
partnering agreements, but it is very much the case that a great many people that are
products of today's schools have sadly deficient skills when it comes to basic reading
and math comprehension. She talked to Brian about this at some length and his
comment is that very often if they get people who are merely high school graduates,
who want to compete for the fire fighter exam, they're competing against college
graduates and there's no way a high school graduate can compete in that arena without
fairly significant amount of boost. The stuff that we're doing now is really kind of a feel
good thing and it's not effective. What has to happen is sort of a BOCES program that
maybe is part GED, but heavy on that end if on the comprehension area and what can
happen then is that we might be able to partner with both BOCES and the county and
other employers who want to improve their pool of diverse candidates. But, it really is a
very, very difficult issue and it's one that we're going to have to face far more
extensively than we had realized.
Schelley Michell-Nunn stated that in terms of how ambitious these goals and objectives
are, clearly they are, but clearly we do not expect to tackle and accomplish everything
that is listed in the next twelve months. Unless, you want to resource that.
Alderperson Farrell stated that when people go to take tests, right now it's that you have
to score in the top three?
Val Saul stated that you have to score in the top three or anybody whose tied with the
third rank or the third score and there have been alot of initiatives at the state level,
what we call ban scoring which is really going back to sort of the A, B, C, D theory that
many people went through in their schooling. So that has opened things up, sometimes
we now look at lists of may be 8 as opposed to 3. But, you still have to be able, for
example, on police or fire which you'll have 8 100's and the person who got an 85 is
never going to have a chance.
Alderperson Farrell stated that she was wondering if there is a way that say, a passing
is this much? You know, because the deals with some of the testing, you clearly
passed, and you may have passed at 80, 75 or whatever, is there a way to do that?
Val Saul responded that it has to be done at the state level.
Alderperson Sams asked if the city could apply and put that application in or is it
because we've already put in for the zone scoring that
Val Saul stated that we can write to Marty Luster to try to sponsor legislation and we
can request, the state legislature traditionally, the rules, it's the whole, what the State
`..� Department of Civil Service has done is try to find ways to work within the legislation
15
that exists throughout the pool and ban scoring is one of those, but you have to
understand that every time a municipality says this is great we have ban scoring,
somebody out there sues somebody because they didn't like it and it gets revoked, it
gets refined and we've spent fifteen years going back and forth, we still don't ban score
police or fire exams other than at the entry level because of intensive litigation that has
gone on and there's a lot of union involvement in that as well, that's the one series that
the State has not converted over to ban scoring yet. So, we still have 98's and 96's and
those types of marks.
Alderperson Sams stated that one of the things that she wanted to say is that she thinks
that the reality is here that if we're really serious about diversifying that we are going to
have to do some education considering the way our school system is and also the fact
that we talk about using BOCES but BOCES just dropped their ESL program and is no
longer doing that and is talking about cutting back the GED, we're seriously looking at
some really bad times for everybody, but if we want to really do what we say we want to
do, she guesses that's part of being serious and she hopes that's where the county for
some of this joint effort will come in because they do have a little bit of money set aside
for some of these things and that maybe somewhere during the educational
components of the program along with the county to be part of doing that and using
some of that money that they, but she thinks that the real reality is that they have to pay
for that, if we're serious about it.
Schelley Michell-Nunn stated that she thinks also too, when we talk about recruitment
and retention, that it's critical to talk about it almost simultaneously or as one. We can
recruit, but what we don't want is a revolving door when we bring people in and sort of
shoo them out the door because the environment is not a workable environment, at the
same time, the employee that we do get here, it is important for them to have critical
mass in their environment and by critical mass she means for them to see others who
resemble or have similar backgrounds and experience so that retention piece also ties
into recruitment, it's important to recruit and in order to retain and to retain you know
and vice versa, so she thinks that it's good that we're looking at it as recruitment and
retention and not as recruitment initiatives and separately from retention initiatives.
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that under the work force diversification and retention,
trainings, you have to disseminate information to staff regarding sexism, racism,
homophobia and class oppression, she is not sure how to ask this, but you know she
thinks that she under stands the class suppression and what it means and what it is,
she is wondering how that translates, she has heard about issues with sexism and
racism, homophobia in the employee base, if you could elaborate on class oppression
in the work force? Is that a person with a college degree with his nose down at the
person who only has a high school education? What is that?
Val Saul stated that it could socio-economic too. Even in classed in this work force you
could even be manager versus line employee and who is better than who.
16
Alderperson Blumenthal responded okay, maybe if that's well. What she started to ask
before that we have under labor relations, program goals, training of the new director of
Human Resources on labor issues. Can you talk a little bit about that or not? That
wasn't part of the hiring or your experience or what you'll feel you need or what that
means.
Schelley Michell-Nunn explained that during the recruiting process, if she understands
correctly, labor relations was not a criteria for selection of the director and therefore she
was selected without labor relations experience.
Alderperson Farrell stated that she had heard sort of all along that more labor relations
was being transferred to your office.
Val Saul stated that she wanted to address that because there are very different views
as to whether labor belongs, how much of labor belongs in the office and the search
committee was very clear that what that group of people envision was this department
moving towards a human resource department which was much more open and much
more welcoming to employees which is very contradictory with the very adversarial
proceedings to get into in terms of disciplinary things and arbitrations and so forth and
so the search committee in terms of prioritization said, she means there are certain
elements that you have to be involved in, the day-to-day contract administration and so
forth and even negotiations done the right way you could probably incorporate
effectively, but the search committee's perspective was that they wanted someone who
was strong in the areas we are trying to move towards and very strongly that they
wanted to keep and she includes herself in that. Certain elements of the labor in the
attorney's office, now she knows that Marlette does not agree with that and she can
fight for her way too, but there are others of us who will fight for the other way and it's a
basic philosophical discussion over what the department, which direction we're going to
go
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that is up to the council she presumes to hear those
discussions.
Alderperson Farrell stated that she actually has been comparing it both ways which has
been pretty confusing because she wasn't in on the hiring either
Val Saul stated that we had actually talked about putting together a transition team if
you will or something that had representation obviously from council, from department
heads, from the work force and so forth to really figure out what the department is going
to be about and what is the balance going to be and she knows that hasn't been put
together at this point but it was talked about certainly during the hiring process so that
everybody had input and not everybody is going to agree with the outcome but at least
everybody will get heard and everybody will understand what the outcome finally is.
Alderperson Blumenthal stated so when you say training of the new director,
17
Schelley Michell-Nunn responded in general regardless of what the level of involvement
her office will have, there is some very general training, she went to school many years
ago in industrial labor relations, so it's been a while since she's dealt with it so it's more
of a refresher and we're looking at some of the courses that Cornell University offers
through their extension program around negotiations in particular dealing with
grievances and disciplinary actions types of training or workshops in that area. And,
then also, in addition to that, she is working very closely with Norma Schwab as she
finishes or completes alot of what she has had in Pat's absence and in her absence so
she works closely with her and she has to say too, that she works very closely with
Mariette with the attorney's office and it is not a forgone conclusion that when this issue
is going to rest in the Human Resources department. We will have involvement, as Val
said, the logical involvement but she has requested and so far has not been turned
down, full assistance from the Attorney's office in these issues. We have to have it.
City Controller Cafferillo stated that it balances in terms of, some of us are looking for an
inordinate balance, that doesn't shift all the way to one side or the other that we find a
reasonable balance.
Schelley Michell-Nunn stated that we're talking through those things, she thinks the
other thing, people will tell you that you don't have to be a lawyer in order to do labor
relations which is very much true, but when you look at people who do it, they do it
100% of the time, it takes alot to keep on top of it and keep current and understand new
rulings that have come down, and educate your workforce on that. So, what you have
when you have non-legal people doing it, is you have people who are committed 100%
of their time to and devoted their time to doing it.
Alderperson Taylor stated that even in legal professions there are labor lawyers who
dedicate 100% of their time to labor
Alderperson Farrell stated that she does think that it's important that we do sort of settle
this and get some, Val if you will, before we go and hire a new assistant city attorney
because if that job doesn't include labor relations and this job didn't include labor in it,
we're going to need alot of education.
Alderperson Vaughan asked the group if there were other questions and are there other
things that the HR department would like to tell us? The questions that we're asking is
what do you do and why do you do it?
Schelley Michell-Nunn responded that the HR department does everything that has to
do with the employee from when we have vacant positions to the time in which they
retire. In terms of what we need, she thinks that for her right now the infrastructure of
her office is critical and you know, if we have the computer capabilities what she needs
is to have it happen, have whatever needs to happen, happen so that we can go on and
move forward because there is a lot of interest in the office, people want to do things
differently, more efficiently and they have some great ideas on how we can make it
better for our employees. So, that's that.
18
L,,,i Alderperson Sams stated that Schelley had talked about the leadership role and asked
how is she going to get us in tune with
Schelley Michell-Nunn responded not to take it as she is going to come in and get you
in tune and she is saying that you're out, but yes, you do have to walk the walk and it's
really coming in quite a, when we do the employee survey we will get feedback on
leadership in that process. So, that will be sort of the foundation or that will sort of stem
or drive directionally where we go. She thinks, as leader, the one thing that she sees
missing and she will try and she's not sure how long she can keep saying that but what
is not clear to her what the vision as it relates to the city work force, she created a
vision, but it's just in her mind, this is what she believes that she wants to do. She
wants to walk into an environment and make sure that she can enable it or facilitate it so
that this environment is an environment where people are lined up to get in here to
come and work and where the people who work here are excited about coming here
every single day, okay? That's the environment that she wants. That's the type of
environment that she wants to work in. But, that means nothing, if she is the only one
you know, so the first step is really to understand what is the vision of the common
council, the mayor, you know and then how the departments will take that, it's sort of a
trickle down affect, that you set the tone and then it goes down to the department level
in each of the department's builds their vision, their goals and objectives, based upon
what you have sort of led or said we want this organization to be. It's critical to have
that so that we're not all off doing our own thing and so that we don't have
L discrepancies around practices/procedures. So that we don't have people coming in
from the outside and getting one story from one area and then from the other area
getting another story. So, in terms of leadership, she thinks it's important to have sort of
a mutual agreement in terms of how you want to lead this environment. And, that will
be the first step, is to work with the common council, with the mayor, with the
department heads on really looking at that and saying no kidding, what is it. She thinks
that you've made a strong statement when you created her position. But, she thinks
that alone is not going to be enough.
Police Department Summary
Alderperson Vaughan asked Chief Basile if he was going to present something to them
and have them ask questions or?
Chief Basile responded that the best way would be council to ask questions. He
explained that they're split into, as an investigative division, it's split into basically three
programs. The criminal unit which handles most of what you perceive as most of your
criminal cases, then there is special investigation which is narcotics and juvenile which
is basically crimes by and against juveniles and some sexual abuse cases and they do,
except for the special investigations, they on occasion, they do kind of help each other
out. But, the special investigations, the narcotics, basically specialize in that and where
the assistance comes is from other investigators that kind of back them up both in the
u juvenile side and in the criminal side. It's rare that the special investigators, the
19
narcotics people will get into a rape case or burglary or robbery or something like that;
unless it happened to be a mutual target or something. But, it does work the other way,
where they will assist them on cases and when they do a raid on a building, they'll all
take part in that.
Alderperson Vaughan stated that you had some empty spaces in your investigation
division; are you now full?
Chief Basile responded yes. That was the last three, one in juvenile, two in special
investigations which actually increased the size of that unit, that's the two extra
positions that
Alderperson Vaughan asked how many are in each?
Chief Basile responded four in criminal, four in special investigations and two in juvenile.
There is one juvenile investigator who has been out now for since before Chief Basile
got here, he's about to have his third or fourth back operation; we're working to get
disability for him as we speak. He wants to come back, realistically he doesn't see him
coming back, he's had a couple fusions and he guesses he's back up for another
operation now, so that's
Alderperson Vaughan stated so, you really only have one juvenile?
Chief Basile explained well, we have two. One juvenile sergeant and one juvenile
investigator.
Alderperson Vaughan stated and then you have a third guy who is not there, okay?
Someone asked how are the three new positions working out?
Chief Basile responded very well, we went to arbitration on the 21st of this month as far
as the contract goes, but he doesn't really see a problem with that. He doesn't see us
losing arbitration, worst case scenario, they may tell him to go back to the chief who
gets to pick the investigators, that's the way it was always done. He thinks it fits in the
contract or he wouldn't have done it. He doesn't pick fights with the union that he
doesn't feel he can win. To him, it fits very well with the contract, within the contract and
the union has no problem with the community taking part in selecting new officers, they
have no problem with the community taking part selecting the chief, they haven't had a
problem with anything in between. He doesn't see a problem with it. They've been to
specialized schools, we were hosting the state juvenile training seminar starting the 24th
through 27th of August at the Holiday Inn. The juvenile officers come here to do their
training and they're offering several specialized courses and our officers will be taking
part in and he'll be doing the opening and closing ceremony, but it's nice to have the
State here.
20
Alderperson Sams stated that she thinks this goes to show, sort of what Schelley was
talking about, getting something centralized, getting a process down that everybody
know and it's not willy nilly.
Alderperson Vaughan stated that the 24th-27th, we can literally say the place was
crawling with cops.
Chief Basile stated that you can do, he doesn't know what the total numbers are yet, but
he knows from his background with the state, we will draw a couple hundred juvenile
officers from around the State.
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that you talk here about a successful conviction rate.
What kind of conviction rate does our department get on those things?
Chief Basile responded that he is not sure the figures are here, but we do have a very
good conviction rate. He does know he has it somewhere, it's above the national
average.
Alderperson Blumenthal stated, speaking of data, do you have, there is all this attention
now, on declining crime in various cities in New York City and across the country and
then there's alot of debate about exactly why that is happening. She doesn't believe that
since she's been on common council, she is not aware that council members have
actually gotten statistics on the different crime rates. She knows that there are articles
in the paper periodically but,
Chief Basile stated that they do it on a monthly basis, they're submitted at, he has a
couple of nasty questions, one was how can New York City do it and we can't, and no,
the first question was when can he see a similar article about Ithaca? and is it easy to
keep control and crime in New York City than here? His first answer was he has no
idea, but we send the journal every month our crime status and we have. And, we've
dropped drastically from probably '92 and last year, the department of crime which is
the heaviest crimes, part one is the heaviest crimes of the FBI categorizes in the United
States. What you're doing is mixing apples and apples across the country. Our part one
crime because the most serious crimes have dropped dramatically since '92 and
probably and there has been a steady decline and we probably dropped 200 below from
1996 to 1997. And, the other thing is you know, we're spared some of the violent crime
here, New York City's drop if your one of the 200 and some people who were killed in
New York City, the fact of 83 less homicides this year doesn't make much difference to
you. So, everything is relative. So, he actually did send him kind of a nice note back
because he just,
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that she thinks it would be useful, she doesn't know if
they need, she doesn't know if people would want every month, but she would certainly,
Someone said annual
21
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that she would certainly like to see annual data.
Chief Basile stated that he can get you right now, the last, because he has it in his
office, he uses it for a couple of different things, he can get you from 1992 on.
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that would be great, she would really like that.
Chief Basile stated that from the top of his head, he's looking at 2300 part 1 crimes in
1992 and he wants to say 700-800 last year, he's guessing though so don't quote him
on that, but he knows that it has been a substantial drop.
Alderperson Blumenthal asked if he didn't have a six-month report for this year then, do
you?
Chief Basile responded that he did, what he can do is the last five years and he can do
first six 1997.
Alderperson Blumenthal asked if he had it broken down by let's say burglaries, by area
of the city?
Chief Basile responded no. We can break it down somewhat, but not as fine as he
wants. The problem is with the computer program that we have, it's not as fine as he
would like. He would like to do it by block, we're working now with the GIS and then
we're hoping to combine both of them so he can pick a block and say this particular
block shows this. Right now, he can show you sectors, but the sectors to him are too
big.
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that one of the things with regard to planning is that, she
doesn't know but like the perception about downtown being unsafe and all of that, and
maybe the city being unsafe.
Chief Basile stated that was done and he thinks that it was shown, Frank Bracken, did
that report and he thinks that it was shown that it was a perception but it wasn't a
problem. One of the things that New York City was very successful with and then we've
been looking at ways to do it here is the comp stat idea is exactly that - you target your
crime to go after it and that's one of the things we talked about last time we were here
that the fourth platoon were directed to patrol to do exactly that, but they need to know
where it's happening before you can go into that area. That's the basis of New York
City's crime stat idea and it's successful, we can do it on a smaller scale here he thinks
and that's what he was hoping to do with the fourth platoon. NEW Tape - instead of
having us rotate the same number of police officers around the clock as we've done for
years, we've had the same number of police officers on the street at 10 o'clock at night
that we had at 4 o'clock in the morning, which doesn't make a lot of sense to him.
Because we're busier at one period of time and the calls slack off then. He was looking
at the fourth platoon which basically reflects working 7 at night to 3 in the morning which
is your heavier times and also have the flexibility then if something is happening to
22
move over to an area to a plain clothes/anti-crime thing if something is happening say
down at State and Plain, you move them down there for a week, you saturate it, take
care of that problem and instead of doing what we do now, leave people there forever,
when a problem is gone away is to move them on to somewhere else, if Washington
Park is having a problem at 10 o'clock at night we move them in there in plain clothes,
hide in the bushes and do that and people have offered their porches and they are
doing some things on the Commons right now we call it the eye in the sky and have
been very successful at it, we don't do it all the time, because of not having enough
bodies to do it, but basically we have somebody, he says up in the air, he is not going to
tell you where they are, but it's the look down, they'll see a deal and then they'll call in
the officers and describe him as the guy with the green jacket and white pants just sold
and it's been successful and the kids just don't look up and it's amazing. We've done
that and we've knocked off a little bit, unfortunately the word is that it's starting to pick
up again, so we just started it a couple of weeks ago and we've been very successful.
Alderperson Farrell asked if the issue with the fourth platoon a contract issue or is it that
you would need an allocation in staff or what is it?
Chief Basile explained that it is a contract issue because he would have to violate some
parts of the contract as far as movement and notice and things like that, but out of
negotiations, now again, he has no idea where that stands and if one affects the other,
they said no it didn't, out of negotiations came a committee made up of union and
, management that was looking at the fourth platoon and at least try for a period of time
and be able to violate or come up with another agreement to violate those sections of
the contract you have to violate them to do that type of thing to see how it works out. He
doesn't think the whatever is happening with the contract is going to affect that. Quite
frankly, we had a couple meetings and then some other things happened, we just really
haven't had a chance to sit down and do it. We have to re-vamp some of the patrols we
talked about and he doesn't know if he talked about this group or not, but to move the
supervisors in a different direction from the police officers. Right now, every 22 days,
they rotate forward, if you're on days, then the next 22 days you're on evenings, and
then on midnights. What he wants to do is have the police officers go one way and the
bosses go another. The sergeants and lieutenants go another direction. What that
does is separate the same boss from the same police officers all the time, one of the
problems that we're having right now is he has alot of members and no bosses. He
needs to change that. So, that's something he thought of, again, he doesn't think it
violates the contract it doesn't say which direction they have to switch. He would have
the bosses go from days to midnights and the police officers from days to evening.
They'll work together eventually, but it's not going to, some of these police officers,
sergeants and lieutenants have been together for four or five years. Unfortunately, it's
tough to discipline somebody that is a friend.
Alderperson Farrell stated so the way the people do on the 22 days, and then evenings
and then late, do they stay on the same teams all the time, so it's like forever and ever
or do people request changes? Or do they?
\.J
23
Chief Basile responded that there are some changes, we've got to re-vamp it again,
especially if we do this fourth platoon and spread some things out, but no, they and
again, it was a question he foolishly brought up at negotiations, you know alot of the
partners asked that can we do something about straight tour of duties? He said yes, if
you don't have to rotate every 22 days, it seems kind of strange, came up in
negotiations and you know they laughed at him. That was not an issue with them. It
might be with the wives and husbands but not with the police officers and that was it, he
wasn't about to give anything up for it. He just thought it would make life easier at home
if you knew that you had a straight tour of duty, but they didn't want it, they wanted to
rotate every 22 days.
Alderperson Vaughan asked when you do a special operation, for example, the
collegetown thing, you said you picked and chose your people pretty carefully, so at that
point you sort of relaxed the normal platoons and pulled people out of all of them for
Chief Basile stated that was because we did it, he can make changes and he thinks it's
7-10 days, he needs to give them notice. The reason we have to change that with the
fourth platoon is he may find out that something is happening tomorrow morning or
tonight and he really needs to change people in hurry and he can't give them 7-10 days
notice, he was able to do that with the collegetown thing basically when it was
happening so he was able to switch tours of duties at that particular point, 7 days or 10
days ahead of time so that he can do and that part of it is easy.
Alderperson Sams asked how he did Hilliary?
p
Chief Basile stated that he brought in the tactical service unit which is a specialized
team and he brought them in in regular uniform and they did the perimeter security.
They're trained in protection and things like that and that worked out very well. He was
very happy when that lady was gone.
Alderperson Vaughan asked when Hillary came in how closely did you have to work
with secret service?
Chief Basile responded very closely, they were extremely happy, they could not have,
they said flat out that there was no way in the world that they could have done that
without the cooperation of our people and we have several officers including Barney
who have gone through dignitary protection school which is a special art actually and
and they said they could not pull it off. They had only six months to do Seneca Falls
and they did ours in less than 48 hours. Which is really something that they don't try to
do and he made a point to seek me out because he stayed outside with the uniformed
people, they wanted all the plain clothes inside and he sought me out and said they
could not have done it without the cooperation of our people and how professional they
were and lot of that was the investigative unit.
Alderperson Sams stated that their advance team person said the same thing, she said
that it was incredible working with our people.
24
Chief Basile explained that they have an advance group that comes in and if they felt
the least bit uncomfortable they would not have come.
Alderperson Sams stated that before they even made the final decision, they actually
walked through the play ground, walked through the alleyways, walked up on the roof,
you know with garbage and the whole thing.
Alderperson Blumenthal asked if he had a number on what that cost?
Chief Basile stated he didn't have that information.
Alderperson Vaughan asked if he wanted to go on to his next, let's see we've talked
about do we need to ask anything about the juvenile unit?
Alderperson Sams stated that she wanted to ask about the Community Police Officer
now that that's back up and how is that, now that you've got the two new officers.
Chief Basile responded that it seems to be going pretty well. (hard to understand) Joe?
is pretty occupied with putting the northside satellite office together in the housing
authority apartment they gave us and Bill has been extremely active in the Commons
area. He's down there all the time. He is really very visible. He's done a couple of tours
with kids through the commons office and really that has worked out very well, he thinks
that he has gone to his first downtown partnership meeting and met everybody. He'll do
very well, Phil is Phil, he just knows everybody and people just universally love him. So,
that's a big help and he knows, Beau has kind of turned him loose on the northside
building, he's getting a conference table in and offering it for community use and really
to make it a satellite office where people can come in and feel comfortable coming in.
Alderperson Vaughan stated that while we're mentioning community policing, at the
neighborhood night's out a week ago, McGruff was there, McGruff is not a uniformed
police officer, but she would like to thank her for, she was wonderful with the kids and
really lovable and hugging people which is really great and she knows that it was hot as
dickens in that suit. She was really, she doesn't know what you can do, Pat knows that
she has to remain anonymous officially, but we figured out it was a she when the officer
is walking away and holding McGruffs hand okay.
Alderperson Vaughan stated that she would like to talk briefly about revenue
suggestions and your revenue suggestions are mainly raising the current fees. Some of
these are things that she thinks you can do within your department, like a copy fee, but
others are things that she thinks that you're going to have to bring either to B & A or to
Community Issues and she would encourage you to do that.
Chief Basile responded a couple things again, again, he is kind of torn on actually the
' , last one is the false alarm fee. He really has mixed emotions about that and the reason
he came up with that is basically he wrote the ordinance in the city of Albany and we
25
' • wound up not going with it, we do alot of false alarms, quite a few, and a couple things
happen, 99 times out of 100 it's a mechanical failure or a human error when it comes to
a panic alarm or something or a bank alarm and because the fact that there's always an
accident, you have a tendency to always assume that it's a false alarm and that can be
very dangerous. The flip side of that is especially silent alarms on buildings, that's there
yes to protect the building but it also assists the police, having an alarm assist us, an
alarm goes off and we can respond and maybe catch somebody in the act and burglary
is not an isolated crime, it's always a series of crimes, so it helps us, so he has mixed
emotions about penalizing somebody for having a piece of equipment that helps us, but
by the same token we'll have several alarms at the same place every time the wind
blows because some tolerance is better than others, they want to go off and we have to
respond. Again, you assume it's a false alarm, but and that can be dangerous. So, it's
alot of responders to it, then you get a certain number of freebies and then they start
charging for a false alarm.
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that she was going to say that the fire department has a
similar problem with the false alarms for fires and she thinks that Brian did some kind of
statistical analysis which he thinks was edifying in terms of understanding what the
changes were over the years, she doesn't know if you have the luxury of doing that or
making that a priority or
Chief Basile responded that he can probably tell you the number of alarm calls, again,
he thinks that it's something, well, he'll give you a prime example, Germany doesn't
false alarms, they charge for decades and what happens when you go to an alarm in
Germany you go full tilt because you know that there's a real good chance that it's for
real, but they've charged for years and it's a substantial fee and what happens, you get
your alarm fixed or you train your people.
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that one thing for example, is in terms of council, if we're
going to make a decision, she assumes that we would be part of making this decision, it
would be interesting to know whether these are home alarms that are going off more or
business alarms or
Chief Basile responded that the majority of false alarms are business alarms. That he
can tell you just from seeing the reports.
Alderperson Sams stated that the curb and home alarms are tied into the fire
department and the ambulance. They do charge, the ambulance does charge you
$25.00 for a false alarms, she has gotten those bills.
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that in terms of the security alarms, there are homes
that have alarms too, she wasn't speaking of just that.
Chief Basile stated that usually with the home alarm it's an animal of some sort or but
he knows that alot of times with businesses, you listen to the monitor in the morning and
at opening time we'll have several alarms around the city because someone will open
26
up and they forget to turn the alarm off. It's not a big deal, we just go and verify it, but
again, it's going to happen that
Alderperson Farrell stated that it's kind of expensive time spent every morning spent on
checking everybody opening their things wrong and they could do a nice employee
training program if they were paying, it would probably be quite cost effective.
Chief Basile responded exactly, and again, he would think of the possibility of a few
freebies just to get them in line, but after that.
Alderperson Sams asked if this ever causes people to hesitate to, is there anything to
say that she would hesitate to push my alarm because she wouldn't want it to be a false
alarm and it really isn't a false alarm?
Chief Basile responded that something along those lines, if you saw somebody in your
back yard, that's not a false alarm to him, that's a person wandering, he is talking about
just flat out, opening up in the morning, didn't hit the button or you're distracted,
Alderperson Vaughan stated that she can testify, that happens, yes, you've trained your
employees and some guy walks in and has 25 seconds to hit the magic code and the
guy goes cornplooey or what happens is the night before the guy from the alarm system
was there and unknown to everybody, wiped out everybody's code. So, it doesn't
matter what code you put in, it won't work.
Chief Basile stated that what usually happens too and it does and he has talked when
he was doing Albany's he talked to alot of departments that had it, what happens too is
your alarm people become a little bit sharper because you know if you're going to have
to pay for their equipment malfunction, the pressure is going to be put on them so they
get a little bit better with what they do also.
Alderperson Vaughan stated that as somebody who was protected for twenty years by
alarms that were direct to you, she can tell you that your response time is phenomenal
and your officers are really great, it's 2 a.m. and she shows up half asleep and these
guys are cheerful, they walk me through the place, they are really just great and but
they really do the job extremely well and we have to assume that it's those cases that
maybe there was an attempt at intrusion.
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that if you do come back to us on this issue, she thinks
that whatever analysis you can provide us would be most helpful in formulating our
thoughts on this.
Alderperson Farrell stated to give you a hint, if you look at what the fire department did
and they just showed the numbers of false alarms and stuff like that and where they
were coming from, they broke it down two different ways, the numbers over a few years
and then where they were coming from, were alot of them coming from business or
home, well in your case it would probably be business then home, it could be
27
Chief Basile responded again, he knows the vast majority, the home alarms are usually
caused by something and they would have to look at some things too, you get an
electrical storm and that's going to happen, but barring that he thinks that alot of them
are just human error and mechanical malfunction.
City Controller Cafferillo stated that some of them relate to servicing the system, having
got the calls here at 2 in the morning because our battery went below normal and our
alarm goes off and they call us in to go in and make sure that everything is intact. It's a
matter, if there was a charge after several free alarm calls, they may be more apt to
have a service contract to make sure the alarm system is serviced, make sure that the
battery back-up is intact so that when you do have a power outage it doesn't
automatically go off because the battery doesn't pick it up. That's really what happens.
Alderperson Farrell asked what the magnitude is of false alarms yearly? Hundreds?
Thousands?
Chief Basile responded that he wouldn't say thousands, but he thinks it would definitely
be in the hundreds because he tells you, just on the way into work in the morning you
can hear the calls.
Alderperson Blumenthal stated oh, so everyday you get some?
\..,, Chief Basile responded yes, maybe five to six a week and sometimes more.
Alderperson Vaughan stated that some of these revenue things look like it's a no
brainer. If it costs two bucks to do a bicycle license, let's get something into B & A that
raises the price from two bucks.
Alderperson Farrell stated that she has a suggestion there, somewhere in Wisconsin
they have something where they charge $12 every four years or something like that,
they try to catch the college students and get the one you know,
Chief Basile stated that one of the things we had talked about, we had talked to Cornell,
and one of the things that, we don't issue alot of these every year, and quite frankly he
would like to get out of the bicycle licensing business, is have Cornell, if someone does
it legitimately, they carry a Cornell license and they carry a city license, and some
people do it legitimately, but they have to register their bike in two places, we looked at
the possibility of changing the ordinance where we would at least accept Cornell's
license so it would get us off the hook for any Cornell bicycles that we would accept that
license and then do our own and raise that a little bit.
Alderperson Farrell stated that the point is you don't want to do it every three years, it's
like do it like the car thing. Just a bunch of years and be done with it.
Alderperson Vaughan asked if there were any other questions relating to revenue.
28
i Alderperson Farrell stated that she is a little worried about the taxi driver business.
Didn't we all just do that thing?
Alderperson Vaughan stated no, this is the license to drive a taxi, that's different.
Alderperson Farrell stated that we just did our whole taxi thing.
Alderperson Blumenthal responded that was taxi rates for passengers.
Alderperson Vaughan stated this is, if you want to drive a taxi, you can't just be Tracy
Farrell, you have to prove that you have a really clean license.
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that she thinks we should raise the rates on that.
Chief Basile explained that it's a lengthy process, they do a background check, they
also contact all local police departments and do a back ground check, it's an extensive
process because obviously you don't want just anybody driving a cab and he would like
to see that raised.
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that she seems to be repeating herself, but what Jane
does with something like that, that's a big job and she'll get data from other cities on
what does Binghamton charge for a taxi driving license, what does Syracuse or she
`./ guesses cities our size, Elmira, Corning stuff like that so that we know. Maybe that's too
little. Maybe you could charge $100.
Chief Basile responded just to give you an indication, they just raised it before he left,
Alba he thinks was $100 first time out of the box and $20 for a renewal.
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that $50 for what you're talking about is not alot of
money. So she thinks we should get a little chart, especially if you're doing this many
over a year, that is alot of time.
Chief Basile stated that they do alot of cab drivers and he'll probably
Alderperson Vaughan stated record checks, 500 a year?
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that is astonishing.
Alderperson Farrell asked if other places charge for governmental record checks?
Chief Basile stated that he is not sure, but he knows that just for a licensing fee, DCJS
charges $76 for fingerprints now. You have to have a fingerprint check and he is talking
about a police agency or anything else, you have to pay if you want a business permit
or whatever, you pay that $76 whether you're a police agency or anything else. You
29
pay that. DCJS - Department of Criminal Justice Services and it has to be a U.S. postal
money order that they will accept for$76.00.
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that she has a new idea, it seems to her, maybe
Dominick can add or tell her more about this, it seems like what you know this makes
her think that we should have an annual, maybe not annual but a semi-annual review of
all of the fees and permit charges in the City of Ithaca because or rotate it by
departments or do something, but for example, with building department fees on sub-
divisions and things like that, these things just sort of sit around for years and years and
they never get changed and it's all well and good but ten years ago it was $25.00.
Alderperson Spielholz asked where are we? She thinks it should publicly made an
initiative this year and have seen people are changing fees.
Alderperson Blumenthal stated, no, what she is saying is that we, she thinks that one of
the recommendations from this committee is that there be a routinized, automatic
review of fees and permits; not that once in a while we remember to look, but that there
be system in place;
City Clerk Holcomb stated that she could speak on Dominick's behalf, ever since she
has been doing the budget every single year, she has to tell him exactly what every
license is, can we raise it, can't we raise it, how much can we raise it, so he thinks he
looks at that every year.
City Controller Cafferillo stated that the magnitude of the, they look at some areas
where we might raise it but it really isn't, looking at things bi-annually
Alderperson Blumenthal asked if there was a list of all these things, these things are
City Controller Cafferillo stated that some of the copy fees we're restrained by Freedom
of Information restrictions, we can't charge any more than "x" plus the actual cost.
Alderperson Sams asked if it costs us a certain amount to change these, Julie and do
you know wherever they are filed at or anything
City Clerk Holcomb asked to change a fee? If they're in the city code book, then we pay
the codifiers to change the legislation and you know
Alderperson Vaughan stated that if we did a regular thing, say every June or
Alderperson Sams stated that she is just thinking that it costs us to do something to
make something so is it really possible to do it every year, but may be every three or
four years.
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that some things don't cost to change. This fee does it
�../ get printed somewhere? Or, She understands the things in the code and the charter.
30
,,,, In any case, she doesn't know the system, but she thinks that we can make distinctions
between and that's what she is suggesting that we come up with a statement on that.
Alderperson Farrell stated that there's magnitude with some of these, some of these it
might be cheaper to go out of business to say give the bicycle business to someone
else, okay it's cheaper to do that, then you know, whatever.
City Clerk Holcomb stated that some of it is a case where you raise a $1,000 or $2,000
but you know you offend the whole community, so
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that there needs to be a systematic way of making some
realistic changes.
Alderperson Farrell stated that if something seems a little out of line when we're looking
at them now,
Chief Basile stated that alot of things we do, again, we've just done that way but it's you
know time consuming. It really is, it doesn't sound like it, but the visa letters, the letters
that of good conduct, you do alot of that and it takes somebody's time to do that and for
5 dollars it's really it's really not, to him, it's not
Alderperson Farrell stated that before you settle on your fees, check out and it has to be
U what other people are doing too, so to put it in perspective, because maybe it's still $10
just like you know ten years ago, she doesn't know.
Alderperson Vaughan stated that we found out when we were doing the salary thing,
that some of the information that we got from NYCOM was wrong. They would call it
fulltime when it was really a half-time position and this kind of thing, so - because we
checked, she remembers one of them was hours and it called us having a fulltime
something
City Controller Cafferillo stated that the majority of the information is accurate.
Alderperson Vaughan responded that she understands, but if you're relying on it it has
to be right. Is there anything else, anybody else wants to ask Rick? Or, Rick is there
anything else you want to tell us?
Chief Basile responded just basically, he knows that we discussed the last time about
setting goals and objectives and he really have difficulty with that especially in the patrol
area, one of the biggest problems in this job is measuring police productivity. And, you
know, we can, do you really want to increase arrests, we could do that, he is not sure
that's what you're looking for? It calls for a service indicator but he is not sure if that's,
he can say that they'll raise our goals for service but people may or may not call us
more or less or they may call if we're doing a good job and they start trusting us more,
they'll call us more so an increase in calls for service may be a good thing or a bad
31
thing, if things are starting to go bad. So, it's one of the things that we have been
wrestling with in police work since he came on the job in 1972, what is a measure of
police productivity? The number of reports you write? The number of tickets you write,
the number of arrests, again, when we lived at Arbor Hill, if you made an arrest, that
was the last step, you tried everything else in the meantime, but arrest was the last
thing you did unless obviously it was a serous crime. The little stuff that you did you try
everything in the world to get out of an arrest to give the person doing what they're
supposed to be doing but an arrest was the last resort. So, one of the things that he
does want to do and it's unfortunate because he has been playing Brian Wilbur for
while, he wants to get an evaluation program into effect because that does show us
some things about our officers and about the way they do their work, he has asked, we
belong to something called IACP which is a national network and what they call quest
out and he has gotten a couple of responses already, it was something they had in
Albany and to look at a good evaluation program and again, not necessarily set goals
for individual officers but to have the officers and the supervisors be accountable for
what they do and be able to and again not punitive but a goal of good evaluation
program is to get a better officer to show the change of behavior and for the better and
that is something that you can do, he just doesn't really want to quantify things because
he doesn't really know, quite frankly, how to quantify and he doesn't think most police
experts know how to quantify it.
Alderperson Vaughan asked what about things like response times? Is that a
quantifiable thing?
Chief Basile responded that it is, but he is not sure if he wants to tell you that they'll get
there 30 seconds sooner at the expense of playing bumper cars on Cayuga Street, so
again, there is a number of things that you can throw out there, but there's a down side
and upside to almost everyone of them.
Alderperson Vaughan stated, for example, if you look let's say this year at response
time and you found that it was unacceptably high is there a way that you could shave
some modest amount off the response time or calls by emotionally disturbed persons
because we've worked hard on that this year and the last few years and now those
calls are presumably dropping, is that a quantifiable thing?
Chief Basile responded that it is, but some departments will use call screening and if
you have a dog barking call and the units are tied up and they will tell you flat out that
they'll be there in 15 minutes. Right now our units are tied up and it will be 15 minutes.
Some departments he knows, ours included and Albany, all do the same way, if you call
and say that you've got a cellar full of water, a cop will come to your door and say yes,
you have a cellar full of water, depending on what happens after that, is how good a cop
they are, they get ahold of somebody, get ahold of the Streets department or a landlord
or something, you could take action after that. Some departments, Rochester is where
we got our call screening from in Albany, will tell you. Call the plumber. Call the fire
department, certain things they do call screening, and they cut down on the number of
\-0, responses.
32
Alderperson Farrell stated that she thinks that is appropriate, if you're just going to go
look at the water in the basement and go yup you got water in the basement, why not?
Chief Basile responded that his feeling is what the cop does at the point defines his or
her ability as a police officer. If you let that cellar full of water stay there you haven't
done your job. If you say, I'm sorry lady, it's not my problem, is a police problem, is it a
crime problem? No.
Alderperson Sams asked if the call comes in that says they have a cellar full of water,
why can't the dispatcher say, well, here's the number of the DPW or the number for the
fire department,
Chief Basile responded that the big thing is, and he just uses it as an example, but there
are things that we respond to a good portion of things that we respond to that are not
critical. But, that's the nice part about having a police department because you have
someone who can make house calls. We make house calls seven days a week, 24
hours a day. So, people will call the police for things that are not quite police related,
but they call social services at 4 o'clock and there's a recording.
Alderperson Vaughan stated that she wants to ask a question about a particular
program that we can extrapolate to other programs. Because in the next couple of
years, we're probably going to have to look at where we use our resources. There is a
program called DARE, which Rotary of which she is a member of, sponsors, pays a big
piece. Not the staff costs, but all the little stuff and our drug counselor on council tells
her that that is not effective in dealing with the drug problem but it may be effective for
various other kinds of things. Her question to her is for this or any other program, how
do you evaluate its effectiveness?
Chief Basile responded that there are a couple things that are going on with that, there's
been some longitudinal studies of and some of the studies that you've seen that say
DARE doesn't work, they had a fellow on that did one of these, one of the morning
shows and they kind of cut them apart, because there really is no kind of control group
that hasn't ever had a drug message of any type and even he admitted that DARE will
work if its a continuous effort and one of the things and he is going to tell you quite
frankly, he is hoping and looking to do is get a high school program, we just expanded
to the middle school and hopefully will get to the high school also because there is a
continuity with a drug message that he does think works, is it 100% effective? No. Not
at all, but having the cop in the class room makes big difference. It does work, he
doesn't believe the horror stories and he has seen from the time he ran DARE for NYS
and all the way through you see alot of horror stories, but it is very successful, does it
keep everybody off the drugs, no way. But, the continuity makes a difference and also
having the police officer dealing with the kids makes a world of difference. So, the state
is doing some things, several studies that DARE America is doing, you know it's a
balancing act, but he does believe that having the contact with the police officer is worth
the program.
33
�i Alderperson Vaughan responded okay, so on that one you say, we keep this program,
but how do you look really hard a program and say, allright, it's time to cut this one off,
any program,
Chief Basile responded basically it's the worth of the program. There are some other
and also, and he is not telling you guys any of this, there is a political issue also, there
are some things like Julie said, you can aggravate a whole bunch of people by doing it,
you may save "x" number of dollars, yet what does it correspond for a tax payer but
you're going to aggravate a whole bunch of people by doing it.
Alderperson Sams asked if DARE isn't one of the programs that you really can't
evaluate because of the tracking system that would have to take place and then the
type of, you don't know what type of child would do drugs or wouldn't do drugs, so it's
one of the kinds of programs that you can't really, it has no evaluation
Alderperson Vaughan stated that you get a really good control group, but it's pretty hard
to come up with a control group. Where do you get a control program of kids who never
had a drug message?
City Controller Cafferillo stated that they have been kind of with a related/unrelated
issue, we've been working on trying to control the overtime and trying to evaluate the
overtime. He thinks that we're going to have to put together some type of a working
group, department, mayor, himself maybe someone from this committee and we're
going to extract out the elements from overtime that relate to contracts for specific
items. Like Holiday time for example, unless it's overtime, then they're on holiday, but
we've already exhausted the entire budget for overtime through the first seven months.
We have five more months to run. We either have to look at the amount that we're
budgeting for that purpose and whether or not its realistic or we're already looking at the
way overtime is approved and that is another reason for that with rotation is to try not to
make overtime automatic. So, that there is some evaluation of the need.
Chief Basile stated that with that too, is the fact, you know is it more cost effective to do
overtime to replace people on the tour when the tour is short because you're already
once paid the, all the rest of the stuff you've paid, the training and all that stuff and
you're paying just the overtime or hire a new body to not have that opening consistently
and he is not sure, that's one we have to figure out, but a good portion that is man
power driven.
City Controller Cafferillo stated that in the dispatch area, we have to concentrate more
effort in that regard, that was the focus of our negotiating and still is, but we have to look
at what is driving it and ask for that evaluation. Why the overtime is approved and
requested so that we have a feel for it.
34
Chief Basile responded that you do have some bosses that will, he wouldn't say create
overtime positions, but won't do anything to prevent one. A little bit of ingenuity would
prevent.
Alderperson Blumenthal asked if alot of this was dependent upon the sergeants
decisions or?
Chief Basile explained that what happens is we need "x", he doesn't want to say
minimum staffing because that has a particular meaning and we're going to wind up
getting killed in the contract, but we have a level that we can't go below. If it goes below
that level, they will call people in to cover that and not every occasion. Again, this is
where the ingenuity on the boss comes in. If you have somebody that calls in sick on
the midnight tour, and it's Sunday night for Monday. Traditionally, not a busy night.
You would probably call somebody in for the first four hours, you shouldn't call, basically
what you do is hold someone over from 3-11 for four hours, you call someone from the
day tour in four hours early, but normally, if you only one person down, call the person
stay over for the first four hours, they're traditionally the busiest, but go a little short on a
Monday morning, you know, from 4 to 7 or whatever, that's when the boss comes in and
he or she can use their head a little.
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that what she is trying to ask is whether there are some
directives or policy decisions that come from the council or come from you or wherever
that sort of drives this process more than just the individual decisions
Chief Basile responded that it comes down to basically and in a lot of cases a number
game. How many can you fill, all the slots that you have with the working tour and if you
don't, you need to bring somebody in.
Alderperson Sams asked if Susan was saying should there be a directive coming from
somewhere that says, this is what we're looking for and we want you to handle, so we
give the directives to you
Chief Basile explained that the Mayor and Controller made it very clear that
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that these decisions need to have some guidance from
another level that these are impacting this budget and whatever it needs to say.
City Controller Cafferillo stated that the area such as work related disability; knowing
that we're studying it and evaluating it focusing on it that we're adjusting our policies
and procedures really makes a difference in how that operates. We have to do the
same thing so that everyone that approves overtime recognizes that they are being
reviewed, is there a reason for approving the overtime is being reviewed and that
everyone is going to be held accountable for their part in the process.
Chief Basile stated especially because Barney will bring in the supervisor in everytime it
`.s happens and make them explain why
35
Alderperson Farrell asked if this is higher than usual overtime this year?
City Controller Cafferillo stated that last we ran at $415,000; right now we're running at
another$400,000-410,000
Alderperson Farrell asked if it was $415,000 for all of last year?
Alderperson Blumenthal stated and now we've already done
City Controller Cafferillo stated that for the first six months we were $210,000 or
$205,000
Alderperson Sams stated that so in other words, we'll be there by the end of the year.
City Controller Cafferilllo stated if everything keeps up in the second half as it did in the
first, our busiest overtime is December because that is when all the holiday time hits.
36
PROGRAM ANALYSIS COMMITTEE MEETING MINUTES
July 13, 1998
COMMON COUNCIL CHAMBERS
Note: No listing of attendance was available for use at the time
the minutes were done on 9/25/02, January 2003 and finished
March 2003.
Recreation Partnership Report:
Alderperson Spielholz reported that the Recreation Partnership
which is Ithaca and a number of other municipalities; most
importantly Town of Ithaca and Village of Lansing contribute to
the Recreation Partnership which is extending to December 31,
1999 . We' re more or less in contract with them for that . After
,,that date, unless something is resolved, that would result in
dissolving the partnership. They are really working ahead of
time in order to stabilize the Recreation Partnership. It' s a
unique situation in this county because in most places cities
and counties are very separated. Of course, we have an Ithaca
City School District that has sort of morphed this . Kids who
are from different municipalities or different townships really
go to school together and they would really like to stabilize
the situation where children and families come first and all can
be served. This is not so easy because the city is right now,
who is the main contributor, and we also the Youth Bureau is
running the programs . So, the City is also the provider of the
programs . What they are really trying to do is to look at what
kind of relationship we want in the future and to stabilize
funding and so they've been having conversations that have been
going on with particularly people from the Town of Ithaca, who
also realize that they are paying money and want to know exactly
where their money is going and what it is covering. Looking at
the County, assuming that the County is going to cover
everything that really looking at the County to see if in fact
we can have the County cover more. Either in vouchers to
municipalities or someway so that they have a better way of
distributing the city' s resources, such as Cass Park, Stewart
Park, etc. Cass Park is a City Park and that park' s maintenance
is being covered under the Recreation Partnership, but what is
not being covered under their partnership is the Cutia Building
and a number of other buildings that,
Mayor Cohen stated that only 60% of the Cass Park budget' s is
covered by the Partnership.
Alderperson Spielholz stated that the overall picture that she
is trying to bring to Council is that they are going to be
hearing about this more and there is going to be a lot of behind
the scenes working things out with the county so that the City
has more of a relationship with what the City can provide and
what they can do for everybody else. It' s really an unfair
situation at the City, the City is put in a bind by having to
have this lovely resource and should have that resource open to
everyone, she never wants to see it where Cass Park is closed to
all but city residents .
Mayor Cohen reported that he and Alderperson Spielholz have been
working on parallel tracks . They met with Sam Cohen and Alice
Green to start this and then they were given different tasks .
What' s interesting is that they have a long term interest in
possibly having the county take over all the Rec . Partnership
programs as one of the options . What' s interesting is that as
much grief as they might get from their municipal partners, they
are more comfortable with the city running the program than they
are having the country run the programs. That' s been an eye-
opener of late. They don' t want to see the county run these
programs . They think the county dictates more than the city
does which was fascinating. That' s one piece of information.
The other one, from the Town of Ithaca' s perspective, is that
while they recognize from the standpoint of the city/town; our
participation rates are roughly the same yet they are paying in
`./ less from the Town of Ithaca to the partnership as a whole,
they' re paying in more than their participation rates . So, they
see that inequity, one of the things that they are specifically
interested in looking at and he is talking about the 1999 year,
or the last year of the partnership agreement, they are
interested in looking at the participation numbers in the
programs and actually possibly suggesting that some of these
programs are eliminated. This was also surprising too, Cathy
Valentino is taking the initiative on this, and as you know
Cathy is really is considered the "founding mother" of the
Recreation Partnership, but she has come to point where she is
saying that it doesn' t make sense to provide programs where you
have a handful of people, the cost/benefit analysis just isn' t
there for her. So, they' re going to do that analysis with the
town as well and we might be coming with some suggestion changes
for the programs next year. What' s more important and what
Alderperson Spielholz was talking about is the long-term
viability of this endeavor. It' s obviously paying benefits for
everybody, the City wants to continue to see it and he just
wanted to add that .
Alderperson Marcham asked if we were only talking to
municipalities or are we talking to school districts too, at
this point?
Alderperson Spielholz stated that at this point, we' re not
talking to the school district . It' s certainly one of things
that has been discussed when they were doing the program
analysis on it . At the moment, the school districts are not a
part of this discussion.
Alderperson Marcham stated that they have adopted their budgets,
their year has begun. Okay, she just wondered if we were
talking about doing this .
Alderperson Blumenthal asked if the decisions are, piggy backing
on what the Mayor said, if there are discussions going on
regarding 1999, that influences some of the choices that we will
be making. When we had the program analysis on the Youth
Bureau, we were sort of going in a direction of questioning some
of those things here and so,
Mayor Cohen asked if he could anticipate what Alderperson
Blumenthal was asking, he is accelerating those discussions so
that Council have the information in a timely fashion for your
\./ deliberations and hopefully in time for the Mayor' s presentation
of the budget to Council .
Controller' s Office - Purchasing:
Deputy City Controller Thayer reported that he welcomed this
opportunity and he is glad that his family seems to be health
tonight . Last time, he was about to do this, his daughter broke
her arm. He will be as swift as he can about some general
information to Council on the city' s purchasing efforts . Just
so that you have a better understanding of what the city is up
against as far as requirements according to general municipal
law. He did submit to Council back in March, the updated
purchasing policy for the city. He hopes you've had an
opportunity to look at that, if not, he has copies that he can
distribute. He has also presented a brief outline to B & A two
months ago. He will give you a little recent history on the
purchasing department and then he' ll go into some of the city' s
current duties and some of the restrictions under the law. When
he came in 1989, the city had a purchasing department that
consisted of a purchasing agent and a senior stenographer at a
cost of about $57, 000 to the City. During 1989, the purchasing
agent retired, and the position was left vacant with purchasing
duties and responsibilities shifting to himself . The purchasing
\./ agent for the purchaser, senior stenographer, and the data
processing operator for the city. In 1990, the Purchasing
Senior Stenographer was re-classified as city buyer with an
increase in duties and an increase in pay. Other purchasing
duties were given to himself and the data processing operator.
The data processing operator is Connie Baker, at that time. In
1992, the City buyer retired, that was Atta Gray and the
position was left vacant . Purchasing duties were transferred to
himself with minor purchasing items handled by the data
processing operator. No increase in pay for either the data
processor operator or himself . In 1993, the data processing
operator was re-classified to City Buyer with an increase in pay
as a result of a slight increase in duties . From 1993 to
present, the majority of the purchasing duties have been handled
by himself . In 1996, the City Buyer requested a permanent
reduction in hours from 40 to 32 hours per week, placing further
purchasing duties on himself . As you have heard, he has
basically assumed the duties of purchasing agent, without
increasing his annual salary. However, his duties have
increased at least 20% . He enjoys the added responsibility and
the challenge of the purchasing function, but he often wishes he
was being compensated for his efforts . You will see from the
sheets he handed out that currently, the Purchasing Dept . which
is actually not a department itself, it' s kind of an offshoot of
the Controller' s Office, consists of : himself, Connie Baker,
whose title is City Buyer, and Carol Shipe does some fill in
work for purchase orders and vender activities . Currently, some
of the purchasing duties that the so called "purchasing
department" does is they approve all purchase orders, and most
of those purchase orders are from anywhere from $250 . 00 up to it
could be $500, 000 . 00 depending on the project . The City is
producing approximately 8, 000 purchase orders a year. They also
coordinate city wide bids for all purchases required to be
bidded under General Municipal law. Currently, it' s about 20
bids a year and that number is slightly increasing. They also
produce all the purchase orders for the city, they coordinate
with venders on many purchases, including meeting venders and
becoming knowledgeable with various products and services that
local and area venders provide to the city. They maintain and
negotiate many of the city' s maintenance contracts including
contracts for copiers, cell phones, printers, computers,
elevators, and many other contracts . They establish procurement
policy and procedures, they also coordinate state contract
purchasing which has become an increasing part of our daily
routine. They also write, review, coordinate bid rp
specifications . The city is limited as to how it may purchase
public goods and services. This is due to General Municipal Law
103 and 104 . Which provide the legal restriction for which the
city can purchase under. The law sets a monetary threshold for
competitive bidding and currently this threshold has been
increasing over the years, but currently is set at $10, 000 for
purchase contracts and $20, 000 for public works contracts . To
give you an idea of what a purchase contract is basically, if
you were to go out and buy an automobile, a piece of equipment,
any material equipment over $10, 000, the city is required to bid
that item and public works contracts is any item over $20, 000
which includes labor and materials . So, basically public works
contracts include many of the construction contracts that we do
for the city. So, when you sit down to do a purchase, you have
to look at each purchase to determine what type of purchase you
have and if it' s over the $10, 000 or $20, 000 limit, then you
have to bid that item. But, there are exceptions to this rule,
as there are exceptions to many things in life. The exceptions
to the rule or to the law include State Contracts, he said that
the use of State contracts were increasing over the period of
time. New York State is able to purchase in bulk and then
provide that good price to many of the municipalities in NYS .
Over the past two years, they've really increased many of their
state contracts . For instance, telephone costs through AT &T
have recently gone on State contract within the last year and we
\J have realized some savings of up to $6, 000 just in AT & T bills,
thanks to NYS' s great rate structure with AT & T. He knows that
these are small amounts for the city as we try to come up with
filling our budget gap of some five hundred to seven hundred
thousand dollars, but every little bit does count . That' s what
he tries to stress to staff that we need to be sure that we are
bidding the best possible items for the lowest possible cost .
Alderperson Spielholz asked that in terms of the State Contract
for a commitment of any sort, do you have a choice if the State
contract is either higher on the quality of material or cost is
higher or the quality is not what you' re looking for even though
it' s the best bid?
Deputy Controller Thayer responded yes, right . If you' re
looking at a vehicle, for instance, over $10, 000 and if that
vehicle and it' s on State contract is not the vehicle that you
would like, the quality or it doesn' t conform to some
specifications, for instance, DPW can go out to bid even though
it' s on State contract . And then, once the bid comes in, we can
select, go with the lowest price, go with State contract;
however we want to do it, so we do have choice.
Alderperson Spielholz responded that he had answered her
\./ question, she assumes that State contracts generally mean it' s
cheaper, but it' s not always the best .
Deputy City Controller Thayer stated that it' s not always the
case, it' s more of a case now than it was in the past . They
were very restrictive just maybe four or five years ago, but now
they' re opening up things and even computer purchases have
become more of a value to the city. It used to be this is the
price and you had two venders to select from; now you have ten
venders to select from which include all the major brands and
they change the price as technology advances through the years;
so State contract prices change just about every month as far as
computers .
Alderperson Blumenthal asked if some of the local businesses
could be used? Some of the things that we buy are available by
local business, she gets the sense that what we purchase is
largely from big companies, national companies, that would be
good to try to do some of that locally, she' s sure you've got
information on that . How often do we evaluate our purchases to
see if one of the local companies can participate in buying.
Deputy City Controller Thayer responded that is a problem
because they are restricted to what we can purchase, under the
law, so it makes it difficult to go out and buy a computer from
the Computing Center if it' s $2, 000 for State contract holder
say you' re looking for a Hewlitt Packard machine, the Computing
Center sells Hewlitt Packard as a computer at $2, 000 and the
State contract is $2 , 100 or $2 , 200; you are restricted under the
law really to go with the State contract . That is the law and it
makes it difficult for us to do business on a large level with
local venders . To get around that, they include local venders
in bids, but again, it' s very difficult for a local vender to
compete with a large discount operation that is selling billions
of dollars worth of equipment . It makes it difficult .
Alderperson Vaughan suggested that if the Computing Center had
it for $2 , 000, it' s more likely that the State contract would
have it for $1, 850 because the State contract profit percent is
now cost plus 2 . 99% and there' s not alot of local businesses'
that can do business on a profit margin of less than 3% . So,
the local businesses get aced out . The only way we can do that
is that if we include installation and other professional
services involved and then we can start to get local businesses .
Deputy City Controller stated that is what they often try to do
is to look at the whole picture, not just the price but the
whole picture that includes service and on-site service, and
then that way we can look when we' re making smaller purchases .
Alderperson Blumenthal asked if things like paper, pencils, all
that comes from Staples now?
Deputy City Controller Thayer stated that the city did bid that
out in probably 1990, the office supply contract for the city
and we included on the bid Millers, Race and a number of other
local venders; they couldn' t compete with Staples or Boise
Cascade .
Alderperson Marcham stated that it was frustrating that we
contributed to Miller' s moving out of downtown.
Alderperson Blumenthal asked when that was done, 1990?
How often does this happen then, that you re-evaluate or that
you re-bid?
Deputy City Controller Thayer responded that they normally do a
bid for one year, but they have in their bids, they give if both
parties are in agreement, to extend it for another year. The
\./ problem is that back then State contract for office supplies was
not, there was one vender and when you ordered pencils, you had
to order them by the case and it took a month to get your
pencils in. Now, you have office supply contracts, Boise,
Staples, that are under New York State contract, that can get
you your supply tomorrow. If you order 5 pencils, they can get
it to you tomorrow.
Alderperson Manos stated that Staples is not the Staples that we
know downtown it' s a special?
Deputy City Controller Thayer stated that it' s a specialized,
Alderperson Hershey stated that he is confused, number ten, says
for non-bid purchases, quotes will be obtained. Isn' t that
bidding?
Deputy City Controller Thayer responded no. The bid process
requires that we have a list of venders that we send, let' s back
up a little bit . The City decides that it wants to purchase a
vehicle. The City looks at the State contracts and don' t like
what' s on State contract, so we write up specifications for that
purchase. We then send those to a bid list that is maintained
in his office, send that out to the venders, advertise it the
local newspaper so that local venders, anybody that is reading
our newspaper can
Alderperson Hershey responded he understands; whereas something
that is exempt, this is a much more informal process but yet
some one is expected to get, it doesn' t say how many quotes, he
assumes it' s three
Deputy City Controller responded that the City usually requires
three .
Alderperson Hershey responded that there are a number of bullets
under there, eight of them. He doesn' t see local as one of
those eight at all . Not even the eighth one and it' s come up
here tonight, wouldn' t it be reasonable, obviously price is
important, but wouldn' t it be reasonable that somewhere in there
that all other things being equal that we choose for these one
time purchases of under $500 that we attempt to choose local
business?
Deputy City Controller Thayer responded yes . It' s not written
there, but that' s what they do. They look on the smaller
purchases, you can look at what we purchase, we purchase from
all over the local area, so the city certainly does do local
purchasing. It' s just that the city has its hands tied when it
comes to larger purchases, bidding requirements and everything.
Competition is competition and it' s difficult for some of the
local venders to compete .
Deputy City Controller Thayer continued with his report . He
stated that he was going through some of the exceptions to the
bidding requirements and he mentioned state contract, the city
has preferred sources, which is the Department of Correction,
Industries for the Blind of New York State, Industries for the
Disabled. These industries provide us with other means to
purchase that they city doesn' t have to bid and they usually
make office supply/furniture type items, desks, tables, chairs,
and they also can piggy back off Tompkins County contracts which
we have done in the past, a few times . They do it for highway
materials and they usually get very good rates for doing that
and if there is only one possible source for the purchase, and
you can document that there is no competition for that source,
you do not have to bid. Also, emergency purchases, if it comes
up that there is a need to buy an item that is over the
threshold of bidding, in an emergency situation that would
endanger the health, welfare and property of the city, then the
city doesn' t not need to do a bid. Leases also do not require
bids . The other big one is professional services, contracts,
this includes any professional method, skill, character or
standards that one would possess including insurance, auditing,
attorney, and engineering, bonding attorney, doctors, those
types of things, if they carry a license, the city does not have
to bid those items . Then, he discussed what you have to do
basically to bid, he can go into further detail if you have
other questions on that . Items under the threshold of bidding,
in our purchasing policy we require that they obtain three
quotes from venders, they look through those quotes, they don' t
have to select the lowest responsible quote, but if they do not,
they must document and submit that to him to tell him why they
are selecting someone who is higher and that happens quite a bit
because of service or it fits in with what we have purchased in
the past . The City also has a process in here for his offices'
piece, informal/formal processes that you have to go through
depending on the level of purchase. Again, when we' re
purchasing, we' re not just looking at price, they are looking at
quality, benefits versus cost, contracting out, out of house/in-
house, lease or buy situation, environmental friendly goods,
energy efficient, maintenance and service, etc . That is a basic
overview of purchasing. He' d be happy to answer any questions
that you have . His office is always open if you have any
questions, feel free to come visit him.
Alderperson Vaughan informed Council that Steve and she sat in
one sense on opposite sides of the purchasing table for many
years because she was the purveyor of goods mainly under a State
contract and also privately, and Steve and the city were the
purchaser of those goods and she can tell you that the city and
the county are mighty picky. That' s useful . If you have
questions later on about purchasing policy, the rules are pretty
archian sometimes .
Deputy City Controller Thayer stated that it' s a difficult
process; sometimes you wish that you could just go out and make
a purchase but you can' t .
Department of Public Works
Superintendent Gray stated that if you remember in the case of
Public Works, he appeared about a month for a what was supposed
to be a brief presentation, although he seems to remember that
he was here for a fair amount of time talking to you about
public works . Rick Ferrell appeared a couple of weeks after
that, to walk you through the first part of public works . He
spoke with Rick after that meeting and asked him how it went and
L
he said, that he thought it went fairly well, but what he needed
is somebody who can do the crowd control . As it was purveyed to
him, he started to walk you through public works and then it
just exploded and it went everywhere to probably people' s
favorite topics or to the things that were troubling people the
most . The golf course did come up. So, it occurs to him either
crowd control could be done by asking you what you want or they
could naively start back where the explosion occurred and try to
see how far we get this time . He would tell you that as you
know public works represents an awful lot of money. He gave you
a couple of cover sheets just to give you some idea, the first
time we sat down, the city does thirty-five million dollars
worth of appropriations; of that the DPW makes up about sixteen
and a quarter million dollars, 45% of the city' s appropriations .
It' s probably apparent to you by know, that $35, 000, 000 of
appropriations is not $35, 000, 000 worth of expenses. That is to
say, there are charges that go back and forth internally in the
budget and he doesn' t know if you've sat through that or had
asked Dominick to produce that number for you, he' s never seen,
he doesn' t know what the city' s budget would shrink to if you
took out all of the internal accounting. There are a number of
other things that make that budget the size that it is . As an
\../ example, the city' s water and sewer budget is $7 . 3 million
dollars, of that $5 million dollars is devoted to the sewer
function that is the joint activity and the city' s sewer
distribution system. The city' s joint activity fund, which
shows up entirely in DPW' s budget is something that if you sat
down and looked at the revenues and expenses the city pays
roughly 70% of that bill . The other 30% is picked up mostly by
the Town of Ithaca and the Town of Dryden. There are a number
of those things going on and so he just brings this up as an
introductory thought because he doesn' t know where Council is in
its program analysis, he knows that everyone once in a while
when he sits down and he looks at the entire public works budget
and think about sixteen and a quarter million dollars, it' s a
phenominal number and for that matter the city' s thirty-five or
almost thirty-six million dollar budget is a very large number,
but it doesn' t actually represent the amount of money that you
spend on the City of Ithaca and he didn' t know. If you have
actually done that exercise already, he'd appreciate it because
he would use it as part of the information that he comes back to
when we talk about revenues and the balancing act that goes with
those. If you haven' t, then he introduces that as one of those
thoughts, that occurs to him and may have already occurred to
you by now. Rick indicated that he left the engineering
function out, but that he was actually at the traffic control
section when we veered off into the golf course. As he thought
of it, he was sitting down earlier today, and he was thinking
about when we come back and look at revenues and expenses, the
golf course is one of those things that he guesses, it does seem
to come up fairly frequently, but it' s meant to be one of those
revenue neutral items and ideally would not be quite as
important as you look at those things that cost you money and
those things that don' t have off setting revenues . Water &
Sewer obviously are other things where you have millions of
dollars worth of expenses, but they are offset by their own
revenues. You can discuss programming whether it does what you
want, but at least it doesn' t show up in the general task. Do
you want to provide us any guidance or should they naively go to
traffic control and see how far we get this time? In terms of
just getting through. There is a sheet in your package which
shows you want makes up the 8 . 8, 8 . 9 million dollars. They had
made it maybe a quarter of the way down that page. There are
items as you glance down through there, for example, the bus
operations, which are fairly concentrated expenses; solid waste
is its own budget, it has a revenue associated with it . Bus
operations when we come back to it, you' ll find that it turns
out that the city is roughly responsible for about a third of
the cost associated with what is budgeted here for bus
operations, where State and Federal funds make up a third and
the actual revenue at the change collector makes up the other
third and in fact, that' s almost structured by the State and
Federal government, that if it' s not in that balance, they
expect you to adjust it in order to get there. There are a
number of other items here that may jump out here, they would
come back to the paid parking lots and discuss their expenses
and revenues and so some of those things may be, if you want to
raise particular operating points, now that' s fine.
Alderperson Marcham stated that she wondered under paid parking,
is that expense or is it revenue?
Superintendent Gray responded that these are just, this 8 . 9
million dollars is just appropriations, so you are just looking
at the expense ledger.
Alderperson Marcham asked why the Dryden Road ramp cost 50% more
than anything else, she doesn' t understand that .
Superintendent Gray responded that he believes that you' ll find
that it' s the newest debt on our books for parking garages .
Rick Ferrell stated that it' s also the only one that' s open
seven days a week and staffed.
Alderperson Vaughan asked with the parking lots, if the
Superintendent would be discussing at some later point, how they
break out, whether they are revenue neutral or not .
Superintendent Gray responded yes, he had thought that would be
one of the things because for obvious reasons, one of the
decisions that you want to be able to look at are expenses,
revenues, so he was going to sit down and try to do that . He
believes that the Controller' s office,
City Controller Cafferillo stated that it' s budget at $770, 000,
they have been receiving about $730, 000-$740, 000 in permits and
hourly parking sales . They do look better now that the two
original ramps, the original debt is paid, but we have up and
coming projects and new debt that will then throw it to a much
less than revenue neutral position again.
Alderperson Vaughan asked if when the new equipment was
installed, at the Green Street lot, did that change your
collection, because there are alot of variables removed with
that new card system, or didn' t it change much?
Superintendent Gray stated that they are in the process of
monitoring that, but we' re also in the process of taking bugs
out of the equipment, the most recent bug is that they had a
huge thunderstorm come through two weeks ago, and they lost all
the intercom systems, so the police department, for instance on
the weekends, raises the gates . One of the reasons they
installed this equipment, was specifically so that we could keep
the big gates down and then people who went in and people who
went out could surrender their tickets and we would know for
planning purposes as well as revenue purposes, how the garages
were being used. So, the parts are on order, but it' s these
kinds of glitches that make it impossible to do the accounting
and to say whether it' s doing what we anticipated. But, we' re
getting closer.
City Controller Cafferillo stated that by the time we discuss
that at budget, they' ll have a more report of the first 8 months
of 1998, versus the first 8 months of 1997 to give you a better
indicator of where we stand last year versus this year; old
equipment versus new equipment .
Alderperson Vaughan stated that rather than piece meal
questions, she would prefer that you launch into some sort of
systematic report .
Alderperson Marcham stated that maybe we should see if there are
more questions about paid parking before we move on.
Alderperson Vaughan replied if there are more, then we could
just leave parking off perhaps or just gloss over it .
Assistant Superintendent of Streets & Facilities Ferrel stated
that the last meeting did not get into department administration
which is Bill Gray' s office or Engineering at all . As he
recalls, we were talking about traffic control, our sign shops
operation, our street stripping operation, and he thinks it' s at
that point that it got into questions on the various different
functions at streets and facilities and questions. Our traffic
control section, he' ll just pick up there. The City has two
year round full time people in that section, the City has
another fulltime person who spends about half the year working
in that section; mostly for road stripping program, the rest of
the personnel are parttime seasonals, in your books, there' s
some information on the number of signs that are in the city,
the number of signs we replace, stripping information, that' s
under 08300 . The section is very busy, they always have a back
log of sign replacements, there are always new installations,
the Board of Public Works has approved alot of new signage in
the last few years, the City does have a problem with
replacement of stolen signs, the City has a certain amount of
damage from accidents, but sign theft is probably their biggest
problem in that section and
Alderperson Vaughan asked if the City had begun any measures
that are cost effective to cut down the theft of signs?
Assistant Superintendent of Streets and Facilities Ferrell
responded that he thinks they've tried over the years many
different solutions, different fasteners, that the bolts only
tighten up you can' t remove them with a standard wrench, they
grease poles and there' s one sign on Stewart Avenue near the
bridge, that they City has done everything, they've put concrete
balls on the bottom of them, they've greased the poles, and they
still manage to take the sign post and everything and throw it
into the gorge; especially East Hill area, the City has a big
problem maintaining signage . Alot of them are souvenirs or
ornaments in dorm rooms . About two weeks ago, he had a care
package at the door on Monday morning at S & F, there was about
a dozen signs that someone brought back and just left outside
the door. Orchard Place, we cannot keep that sign, and he
doesn' t know why.
Alderperson Hershey asked him if he could put a price tag on
that? On an annualized basis, roughly? Counting both the
equipment and the staff hours?
Assistant Superintendent of Streets and Facilities Ferrell
responded that off the top of his head, he couldn' t, they have
probably done that in the last few years and he can get that
information for you.
Alderperson Hershey asked if there was an effort to work with
the authorities when in fact, a case can be made to make that
case and to publicize it in terms of demonstrating the
seriousness of the vandalism?
Assistant Superintendent of Streets and Facilities Ferrell
responded that on occasion, arrests will be made for sign theft
and especially in the spring of the year and they do get a
number of students that have to perform community service for
the City because they have stolen the City' s signs. He doesn' t
know how well it' s publicized, but they make them work off their
mischief .
Mayor Cohen stated that this is something that they have spoken
to Cornell about and he thinks that they should bring it up at
their next meeting. Of note is that a very recent case, a year
ago, in Florida, where some youth removed a stop sign which
resulted in a fatality and they were convicted, he believes, of
manslaughter and are serving prison sentences right now. While
it might be an extreme case, nonetheless, he thinks it' s one
worth sharing with students at the university.
Alderperson Marcham stated that she had a couple questions.
Have we missed any stop signs that you know of, she hasn' t
noticed that these are taken?
Assistant Superintendent of Streets and Facilities Ferrell
responded that once in a while, we' ll lose a stop sign, IPD has
several stop signs on portable stands, that they will put out at
any hour of the day if they find one and S & F also have
portable stop signs that they will place, but as soon as they
are aware that a stop sign is missing, that' s a high priority to
get it reinstalled.
Alderperson Marcham stated that she would like to say though,
�,. that the last batch of signs that were put up on East Hill, and
she requested like ten, they were all of the signs on Eddy
Street had been taken, like Seneca, Buffalo, all those signs
were taken. They have stayed, they stayed through Senior Week,
maybe this is not the time of year they are usually taken, but
they are still up for the moment .
Alderperson Hershey asked if when people deface signs, does the
City attempt to get those things cleaned up?
Assistant Superintendent of Streets and Facilities Ferrell
responded that they do. They have several types of graffiti
removers that they try to use or they will replace the sign.
It' s a potential liability for the city if they' re not red. The
other function of traffic control is of course, street
stripping, this is a program that starts usually in April and
they keep at it till the whether turns cold or nasty or our
seasonal funds run out . They try to renew the center lines of
our streets, there is some edge line work on the State arterials
that the City maintains and some of our own streets and are
doing more and more cross walks every year. Their program, the
amount that they were able to do last year and this year,
probably somewhat reduced because they had to change their type
of paint to a water based paint as opposed to an alkide enamel
that they city used for years and years. Weather conditions
have to be more favorable for the water based paint, paint and
temperatures have to be warmer, and of course, drier weather is
needed. Last year, they had an exceptionally good year as far
as stripping, they had a long dry season, this year, we've
already had alot of rain days . Their stripping, when it' s laid
down, is very noticeable and everybody sees what was done that
morning.
Alderperson Vaughan asked what effect if the bicycle plan is
passed, what will the effect be on this particular operation?
Will it have to increase its staff in order to get those bike
lanes painted in?
Assistant Superintendent of Streets and Facilities Ferrell
responded that some area will have to be given up, there will
have to be a trade off .
Superintendent Gray stated that this is an example of one of the
types of activities that they do that is taken a hit over the
last number of years . For the first several years, as they were
trying to reduce budgets without doing any firing, one of the
obvious things that is cut was a target in the budget period was
�.. seasonal labor because they' re not permanent; but there are
certain types of work that are seasonal, this is obviously one
of them. He can' t take two people and do the work 365 days a
year even if that is the number of people work days that you
needed to do the task. So, he doesn' t remember the exact
numbers, but Rick, you had a budget of $200, 000 to $250, 000 of
seasonal labor and he thinks that this years it' s $150, 000 . As
an example, this is one of the types of things that they have a
hard time getting down without the seasonal labor, the seasonal
budget to do this .
Alderperson Blumenthal asked how often is it scheduled to do the
painting of the stripes in the parking garages? Is that like
you do the streets every year, or is that less often, what' s the
deal?
Assistant Superintendent of Streets and Facilities Ferrell
responded that it' s generally less often. He knows that they've
done some this year, but he' ll bet it' s every three years.
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that she wanted to go back to the
bike plan. One of the suggestions that was made by bicycle
groups is that the bicyclists volunteer to do the stripping;
there' s an understanding that the cost is a concern. She
doesn' t know if this is the right place, but maybe to ask while
you' re here, whether it would use seasonal labor, which is
probably unskilled, is it possible to concoct a program where
the bicyclists could volunteer to do the stripping of bicycle
lanes? Or, should we talk about that another time, but think
about it .
Mayor Cohen stated that it would have to be done in coordination
with paid personnel, there are liability issues, the City
couldn' t have them out there on their own, there are traffic
control issues, what if someone gets hit, someone would have to
supervise the application itself . They do have citizen pruners
and that is an example of the similar type program; this has
some added complexities to it .
Superintendent Gray stated that he has actually been asked by a
couple of the bicycle representatives, this is one where he said
that he can' t imagine doing this with volunteers, because he
can' t imagine putting them in the street . He can imagine doing
citizen pruners or trying to come up. If your point is to have
some freedom in the budget, he would have to look somewhere else
�..i to find things that were well suited to volunteer labor, but
didn' t involve being in the street, close to traffic. This is
one where he would care for.
Assistant Superintendent of Streets and Facilities Ferrell
stated that as he thinks about it, it' s going to be kind of a
lengthy procedure . He thinks that streets that are designated as
bike lanes, they' re going to have to physically post as no
parking to make sure all the traffic is off when the paint is
applied or we' ll have some liability issues there or just some
application problems .
Alderperson Vaughan stated that she has a question about
seasonal labor, which came up which was prompted by something
that she heard at Senior Staff meeting. She understands that
our union, justifiably, would ask us first to get rid of
seasonal labor before we get rid of permanent labor; but
clearly, there are some things that can' t be done in a 365 day a
year employee and you need a certain amount of seasonal labor
because you need more bodies during our short, warm season. How
are you going to be able to deal with that?
Assistant Superintendent of Streets and Facilities Ferrell
responded that with the budget that he has in his back pocket,
or in the chair behind him, there are a number of fulltime
positions that have, especially for the 6% that have been
eliminated, he, in many cases, have some additions in seasonal
because they have lost the fulltime and in yes, they may have a
battle with the union about that, but it' s the only way, they' re
going to meet their goals, perform their work for the
construction season or the warm weather activities .
Superintendent Gray stated that he thinks this battle is
probably a real one . But just, to cast a light on the other
side of it for a minute, when people aren' t facing losing their
job, one of the comments about seasonal labor that they get
frequently is that it is a very good multiplier in their area
because the people who spend a third, half of the year, kind of
working for each other actually manage to get assigned tasks and
take their knowledge and then go apply it through other people,
that is instead of being the laborer themselves, they get to use
their knowledge and experience with somebody else' s labor, they
can transfer that knowledge to somebody who is learning a task
and he doesn' t mean that they don' t have to do it, but they get
to do it at a different level . So, usually, they think of the
seasonal labor as a way to multiplying their people and to give
them a chance to exercise their experience at a higher level,
directing and using people and using their experiences in
somebody else .
City Controller Cafferillo stated that what was being referred
to is a request, it' s not a mandatory subject of bargaining and
if we' re consistent in the way we budget and the way we operate,
they try to avoid situations where bargaining unit employees
have exclusive right to work because that is a situation that
does put the City in a difficult position. In some cases, the
City uses seasonal labor so that fulltime, permanent employees
can get the time off that they've earned, so there are a number
of different benefits that seasonal laborers provide to
fulltime, permanent employees .
Assistant Superintendent of Streets and Facilities Ferrell
stated that if there are no other questions on traffic control,
he' ll move onto traffic signals or their electricians group.
08400,
Alderperson Vaughan stated that she would have you put to rest
the myth that traffic signals in Ithaca, especially all on a
single street are designed specifically to make you stop and
downshift multiple times .
\./ Assistant Superintendent of Streets and Facilities Ferrell
stated that they've had many controller upgrades over the last
few years. Conduit has been placed through the intersections
and the controllers are supposed to be operating in sequence so
that it makes for a more enjoyable ride and less idling as you
go through the city.
Superintendent Gray stated that over the last probably 30 or 40
years, alot of the inter-connections for traffic signals have
been lost, most of them are installed in conduit in the street
after a certain number of water main repairs have gone on,
certain number of electrical or gas repairs are done, this stuff
gets dug up, gets patched, eventually it doesn' t work; despite
excellent timers available from the computer industry, if you
have three or four signals and two of them talk to each other
but the other two are entirely independent, you try to put in
high quality timers, but they drift and Rick, in the process of
doing the work out here on Cayuga Street, over the next couple
of weeks here, he' s going to be digging up several of those
items, and actually getting the conduit replaced and trying to
tie several of the signals back together, so that hopefully we
can get them so that they talk to each other again and that they
will stay in sequence for longer than three or four weeks at a
time. Which will save the City on the electrician' s time,
having to go out and retime these things and set them up again
to try to get them in sequence.
Alderperson Marcham stated that about five years ago, the City
hired a consultant who reshaped the whole timing system, so that
the lights were longer in duration, but it had, she thinks a
marvelous effect on traffic, you had a better chance of getting
through lights and the whole pace, you weren' t racing to make
lights, so much, somehow. It was a great improvement . She
thinks that some of those lights have gotten out of sync maybe
because of what you' re talking about and she doesn' t know
whether that should, do you have to bring someone in
periodically to reset them? Does that? Is that possible?
Superintendent Gray responded that the City actually has the
information and they have gone back and re-done them a couple of
times, they did buy some new equipment, some better clocks, but
the city has lost alot of that and it' s a major effort to go
through and get them all synchronized and then it will last for
two months, three months and then they start drifting off .
Alderperson Marcham stated that it seems to her that you waited
longer at a red light, but you had a better chance of getting
through a green because you had more time to get through the
green.
Superintendent Gray responded that they were extended from a 60
second cycle to an 80 second cycle, so, yes, you were there
longer, but it was something they needed because our blocks are
so strange, we have some that are longer, some that are shorter,
so it allowed them to have that accordian affect as cars moved
down through and they picked that cycle to try to do that .
They did receive a number of complaints afterwards, he doesn' t
know if you remember, you could see a green light at Seneca, and
Aurora and you could see four or five green lights in front of
you and there were a number of people who appeared before the
BPW to say you can' t do that because it just invites somebody to
race .
Alderperson Marcham, stated that she disagrees, editorially, she
thought that it was a good idea. The other thing, she is
curious about is whether the timing of the traffic lights on the
west end is still being worked on? She thinks that one reason
people avoid going down to Fulton Street and then going south is
because if you turn a corner down there you have to wait forever
at those lights . It' s really not geared for that kind of
traffic at all .
Superintendent Gray stated that it is his understanding that
there is still equipment on order and that was a separate
contract and there are a number of items that they are waiting
to get installed. That equipment, once it' s complete, they are
supposed to be able to call it up on the telephone from Syracuse
and adjust the timings . The whole system will talk to itself
and it' s all capable of being re-programmed so that it' s
supposed to be very flexible . He will check with Dan Cole, he' s
gone back several times, on several specific intersections, and
we' re still waiting for equipment .
Alderperson Hershey stated that aside from talking to each
other, doesn' t the equipment have the ability to talk to itself,
can you set it to regulate at different times? For different
hours of the day? Or, maybe even to go from flashing red, to
flashing yellow some hours of the day instead of simply being a
red light?
Superintendent Gray responded that the City' s equipment, if he
remembers this correctly, there is something like 53 or 55
signal heads in the city, the city is responsible for 30 some
odd of them, the newer ones will be able to do that, of the 30
that the City owns, probably 15 or 20 of them could do that, not
more than 15 of them could do that, they have upgraded
controllers, but they also have to upgrade all of the wiring
between them so that they can use that capability and so, as an
example, Rick is doing some of that this week, that we' re
actually in on a couple of streets where that conduit is in
place .
Alderperson Hershey asked what drives those decisions? Is that
public works issue, or a traffic police traffic issue, who
decides whether in fact, for instance if you have the
capability, whether between midnight and 8 the differential
should be a certain amount and yet in mid day it should be a
different amount of time?
Superintendent Gray stated that they received in a program about
seven years ago that had two different daytime programs, but
most of our equipment was not sophisticated enough to use it and
until we get it all changed out, the city won' t be able to use
that, but they city also has in a request to the NPO, the
planning organization which the city is part of a program which
`,, would allow the city to upgrade in a mass manner, the rest of
the signals in the city and hopefully tie them in to the same
system that the State has installed. . If we are successful with
that, then they can do that kind of work. Some of that is just
what we had the staff at the time do and you have one traffic
engineer and you have two electricians and it takes a fair
amount of time to learn those systems and we don' t have them
right at the moment . But, through the BPW you could implement
that policy. Have I not answered your question?
Alderperson Hershey stated that going back to what Jane said,
there seems to be some concern that commercial traffic is
avoiding meadow/fulton because of log jams and presumably
someone could take a look at that and say well, there should be
longer red lights across, he' s not saying this is what you
should do, but at least it could be evaluated if that' s one of
the causations to having some commercial traffic going through
residential streets because they sense this delay at certain
hours of the day. So, he is wondering, you say you have one
traffic engineer, he is just wondering how much of that we even
do at this point?
Superintendent Gray stated that we have been changing out two or
three controllers a year with our budget in order to get the
kind of equipment in place . We have put in an application
because of the problem you and Jane have raised, we actually put
in an application to do them all at one time if we could get the
funding and we' re waiting to find out .
Mayor Cohen stated that part of the difficulty with what you' re
talking about is that we don' t control every single controller,
the State routes are controlled by DOT; just the other day, he
spoke to Jim Crandall about this intersection right out here
because he has gotten alot of complaints about traffic coming up
Green Street and he said that he has to talk DOT about it
because we just can' t arbitrarily do it .
Alderperson Marcham stated that she realizes that the
north/south traffic on Meadow and Fulton has to have priority
but she just wondered if there could be better synchronization
and she doesn' t think that it' s just commercial traffic that' s
ducking going, she thinks that it' s everybody.
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that she just wants to confirm
something in here, you say of the 58 traffic signals, 44 have
some sort of pedestrian push buttons . That sounds a little bit
high. That would be X. It' s not a big deal obviously, but it
`.s seems like that is pretty high. I don' t know if you want to
check that in light of we have now, the pedestrian/bicycle
advisory council, they may be interested in knowing that number.
That seems a bit off to her; maybe she hasn' t been looking.
Mayor Cohen stated that he thinks you'd be surprised how many of
them have them.
Superintendent Gray stated that a tremendous amount of, he
thinks there were 28 or 30 some odd new ones that went in on the
west end and most of them have some version added to it .
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that so you' re saying that most of
the traffic signals on the west end are on this list .
Assist . Superintendent Ferrell stated some that even speak to
you. At all hours of the night . The traffic signal program, is
kind of a stand alone budget; although it' s traffic signals, it
also includes facility maintenance, installations, which is a
big part of the work load. It' s actually more of the workload
than the traffic signals are. The section wasn' t designed to be
that way originally, but it' s evolved into a pretty much
fulltime facilities maintenance operation. There is a never
ending request for work in all city buildings, our city
`./ electrician does work in the parks, does work in city hall, and
it can be normal household current, it can be high voltage, it
can be computer wiring. About six weeks of the year, for half a
day each, half a day' s work for about six weeks out of the year
is dedicated to holiday lighting on The Commons . Two people.
And, the requests keep increasing
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that the downtown businesses are
not happy with the amount of lighting that we provide for the
holidays . They' re not happy, they say that we ought to be
brightening up much more.
Mayor Cohen agreed.
Alderperson Marcham asked if they are willing to chip in for the
cost
Assist . Superintendent Ferrell stated that the downtown
merchants, they purchase the strings of lights for us. And,
but, we, our crews install the lights, find the power supplies,
actually do some upgrades of some of the power supplies, where
they can; some of the lights you' ll see are not as bright at one
end of the block as they are at the other because the power is
run from a source too far away for its own good.
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that if they keep the stores open
later at night, we' ll put up more lights .
Mayor Cohen stated that he would rather a higher percentage of
stores take over the lighting or accommodation thereof.
Superintendent Gray stated that this is perhaps the kind of
(hard to understand) that we would love to deliver to you but as
you probably realize, we' re about a third of the way down this
list, we've got a long way to go.
Assist . Superintendent Ferrell stated that the last operation of
traffic signals is something that is relatively new to our
department and that is location of underground utilities. Our
electricians are involved in a daily basis with locating
underground conduit for our traffic signals or services that our
city owned. And, we pretty much have one person who spends half
of his day every day doing these locations .
Superintendent Gray stated that this is a state mandate that is
probably has taken over in the last year and one-half. The UFPO
function has existed for a long period of time, but the legal
mandate to do this kind of thing requiring us to just set aside
whatever it is we' re doing and go out and do this, is something
probably that has come into full force in the last two years.
Where it might have taken 1/100th of our time before, it' s
probably a fifth of our time now. In that particular area.
Assist . Superintendent Ferrell moved onto highways . If you look
at the highway budget it is the single highest expense for
Streets and Facilities, the program 08500 we've grouped together
the five accounts that materials and labors are charged to for
road/street, storm sewer maintenance reconstruction operations .
It is our single biggest expenditure within streets and
facilities as far as sections . The group has the highest number
of employees, currently 24 working in that group at one time
there was more . There is wide range of services that the group
is responsible for. Basically, we have 72 miles of street to
maintain, some of those streets are four lane. Many of the
streets have parking lanes; most of the streets have storm sewer
systems for drainage and those that don' t as we rebuild or
reconstruct we upgrade so that we have new and adequate storm
water systems . We should be rebuilding a number, a certain
length of street every year to keep up with the pace of the life
cycle of a road and once, if you reconstruct a street and do
nothing, it has a certain life expectancy. If you do a number of
maintenance operations over its life you can extend the life of
the street before it needs another total reconstruction and
actually if we do all that we can get 50 years out of a street .
But, when we do short comings, we don' t do the maintenance
operations then the street life is reduced and we' re looking at
reconstruction at an earlier period. We use a number of
operations in any one year, we try to do a complete rebuild of
an old street that originally was pavement added to the existing
earth, we try to do milling and repaving operations . The milling
operation removes pavement so that when we repave, we are not
losing what we call the curb reveal or curb height remains the
same. We try to do some just overlays of streets to seal the
surface, to give a new wear surface, we do crack sealing of
streets just to keep the water out of the street base and we've
tried a number of operations, micropaving which is thin layer
over some streets, this year we' re trying a surface treatment
application up on valley road, the road is being prepared right
now that is an improved form of the old stone and oil operation
that was so dusty and dirty. This operation will not have any
dust or dirt . We've tried a number of methods, we' re doing what
we call base stabilization processes, we've been trying these
for the last three years; rather than excavate a street out, we
grind up the existing surface, mix it up, it' s a big rototillar
type machine that comes in, will apply either liquid calcium
chloride which we've done the last two years, this year we' re
doing the same process with an asphalt emulsion injection to
what we call stabilize the base. We' ll let it sit about two
weeks and then we' ll put a fresh layer of asphalt over the top
of it . It' s going to take a few years to sit back and see how
the base stabilization projects are working, but so far, the
first ones we've done, he is seeing what he thinks are good
results and he thinks that will last quite a while . But, it' s a
method of giving us a good product at a reasonable cost and we
can produce more work or resurface more miles of streets in any
one season at a lower cost .
Alderperson Blumenthal asked if this is a new technique that has
just been developed? Or
Assist . Superintendent Ferrell responded no, it' s been around a
few years . A dozen; maybe more.
Alderperson Blumenthal asked that we've been doing only for how
long?
Assist . Superintendent Ferrell responded that this will be our
fourth year.
Superintendent Gray stated that it' s something that can be done
with certain types of soils and certain locations . You wouldn' t
do it on a very heavily traveled street . There' s a full array of
choices; we' re trying this one .
Assist . Superintendent Ferrell stated that we' re doing that on
Fall Creek Drive this year. We did Brindley Street a couple of
years ago, we had to do something with that street, it was very
bad, it was seeing alot of cutoff traffic from the Octopus
people shortcutting to get around the traffic jams and so far
the street seems to be holding up very well .
Alderperson Blumenthal asked how much that costs? Relative to
reconstruction?
Assist . Superintendent Ferrell responded that it costs less than
half .
Superintendent Gray stated that the material will actually be a
weaker soils are all still there, if the chemicals that are
stabilizing it leech out, over time then you' re back where you
were. You' d have a weak soil with a pavement sitting on top of
it . And so it' s a little more dependent on making sure that
surface stays sealed, that the drainage is good, it' s able, he
believes that it will prove to be less tolerant, we hope that
it' s a good buy because if it' s someplace like Fall Creek Drive,
traffic counts are low enough and you don' t get truck traffic
that will stress it and stuff won' t break down. But it' s a
calculated risk. It' s a method of trying to stretch the money
you have and still get just if you have 72 miles of streets, and
a street lasted 72 years which they don' t, you'd do a mile of
street every year and if you did a full rebuild, it' s about $300
a foot; that' s a million and one-half dollars just for one
street . One mile of street . We have to not only do a certain
amount of reconstruction which would be that million and one-
half dollars; we also have to keep all the other streets sealed
and you so every 10-15 years you' d have to back and just put a
coat of paint on just so that it stays water tight . Every 25 to
30 years, you go back, you want to mill it down, and actually
renew the coating so if he made up a zero based budget dollar
figure instead of a two million dollar budget in the highway
area; it would be two and one-half to three million.
Alderperson Blumenthal asked if you have all the streets on a
table and when they were last done, do you have all the 72 miles
and the condition?
Assist . Superintendent Ferrell responded that we have a road
surface management program, yes . That is something that should
be upgraded every year. We had a portion of it upgraded this
Spring, but it' s something that was done about 3-4 years ago and
it has every street, condition, it actually has them rated
number one to three or reverse ratings. That is a tool that we
use when we want to look at what street we should be working on
this year.
Superintendent Gray stated that in the highway budget in the two
million dollars that' s there, certainly there are all of these
types of things where we' re actively making choices and choosing
systems for maintaining the roads, there are other expenses in
there. The street lighting expense which is shown there as
$398, 000 is a monthly check that we write to NYSEG and so we,
that doesn' t reflect any staffing, and it doesn' t reflect
anything that we can easily change . From a program analysis
view point, it' s an area where he thinks you have some options
to discuss; one of them is that the neighborhoods by their
nature don' t have enough street lighting, they want more and one
of the approaches that he takes with people individually is that
we provide street lighting, the level actually varies according
to the use; for instance, the lighting level on the Commons is
different from the lighting levels on Albany Street and the
lighting level on Seneca Street will be somewhere between those
two, Seneca Street being an arterial highway carrying a heavier
traffic load. And, so we that' s resource we look at, we have to
make a decision and so he guesses from program analysis, he
doesn' t know if you' re discussing benefit assessment districts
or other things that are probably ways that citizens could
choose by the street if they wanted more lighting level they
could probably in effect tax themselves . He has said this to
Dominick a couple of times, it becomes
City Controller Cafferillo stated that towns are permitted to
have lighting districts but lighting is a city-wide cost . As it
is a village one . There is no legal arrangement, that he is
aware of, for a lighting district for those .
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that she remembers a couple of
years ago, Dominick showed her the rates that the city pays for
electric lighting and that we pay
City Controller Cafferillo stated that we have a contract for
the street lighting. A separate contract .
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that the per unit cost per
�./ kilowatt or whatever with NYSEG, the public rate was extremely
high compared to the residential and the commercial use if she
remembers, is that right? Or not
City Controller Caferillo responded that some of it; most of has
demand charges involved. Steve maintains the computer databank
for all of our utility bills; we can look at any individually or
in total, but with deregulation; we've already spoken to an
outside consultant and actually that consultant is going to
speak to state wide organization that he is involved with in
August, now the deregulation is getting closer, we' re evaluating
what our part should be, we' re also working with the county. The
county has a committee established; looking at that .
Alderperson Blumenthal stated so you' re working on both
purchasing with the county then? Good.
City Controller Cafferillo stated and individually, we' re
willing to talk about cooperation, but we' re also looking at it
on our own.
Superintendent Gray stated that the last time the city actively
looked at buying street lights, NYSEG raced out and replaced all
of the lighting, all of the poles .
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that she has a question,
Assist . Sup of Streets & Facilities Ferrell stated moving onto
street cleaning, this area involves number one a night sweeping
program for the business districts of downtown and collegetown
plus at night he does get out into the peripheral streets to
some degree. Our spring cleaning of the streets is included in
this program; that' s a six week program where every street in
the city is gone over with the sweepers, the flushers, to
basically pick up the sand that we put down over the winter and
some leaves that weren' t picked up the fall before. The
residents' have the option of raking their tree lawns into the
curb at this time. We post it, we send out the press releases
and we tell them that when the street is posted with the no
parking signs, you may rake your tree lawn into the street, we
don' t want your back yard in the street, but .
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that the posting of the signs is
not always so thorough, she knows that our experiences we never
know when you guys are coming because you only post Linden and
\./ Delaware; Mitchell Street never knows . She doesn' t know if
that' s changed. We never have a clue; sort that could be part of
what she is talking about .
Assist . Sup of Streets & Facilities Ferrell responded that is
true, there are streets that where there is no parking ever,
that we haven' t posted and we should at least do a resident
notification.
Alderperson Marcham stated that she thinks that for quite a
while we've only had one street cleaning a year. We have not
had, one year, she knows last year she thinks it was, they
missed a fall cleaning; there was never, there was early snow,
but it was a real mess and she didn' t know you had two street
cleanings a year. This is new to her.
Assist . Sup of Streets & Facilities Ferrell responded that the
fall program is basically a leaf pick up. And, two years ago,
we did have an early snow that stayed, it snowed in early
November and that snow was on the ground through January 1st and
Superintendent Gray stated that we have the same problem this
year we didn' t have an early snow, but it warmed up in December,
he knows that your crews got back out that stuff; it' s alot
harder to pick up once it' s all fully matted down and has been
frozen.
Alderperson Hershey asked if there was a communications budget
for things of that nature to let people know what you' re doing
and when and why? A communications budget . Communication can be
anything from posting those signs to sending out mailings to
having someone spend some time calling the newspaper.
Superintendent Gray stated that we don' t have a budget for it,
it' s part of Streets administration.
Assist . Sup of Streets & Facilities Ferrell stated that we send
out press releases for general information; we do print notices
which we hand deliver to residences if we' re working on a
specific street; like we' re milling Cascadilla Street tomorrow
and Cayuga Street tomorrow and there were notices hand
delivered.
Alderperson Hershey stated that he understands something of that
nature is extraordinary, but things such as leaf pick ups and
things of that nature . He can tell you that in his neighborhood
there is a huge amount of transients and these are people who
are responsible for their lawns, for other areas and he can tell
you that he doesn' t ever recall and being informed of the rules,
we' re not even informed of what the alternate side of the street
parking rules are, it always struck him that if someone went to
the supreme court on one of those tickets they could beat it
because there is no reasonable way that a person could know
unless; let' s talk about things like leaf for the moment .
Assist . Sup of Streets & Facilities Ferrell stated that for the
leaf pick up there is a public notice or a press release put out
once sometimes twice in the fall; sometimes we' ll put it out
early and then halfway through we' ll put it out again. At least
out once, this is to the Journal and the various radio stations;
Ithaca Times, we don' t do a door to door.
Alderperson Hershey asked about how about the notices that do go
out about trash delivery, isn' t this a reasonable thing to
include in those notices; explaining about leaf pick ups .
Alderperson Marcham asked if those didn' t come from the county.
Alderperson Hershey stated that they come from the county; but
wouldn' t be reasonable to piggy back onto those for Ithaca
because they' re Ithaca specific. The ones that we get .
Assist . Sup of Streets & Facilities Ferrell asked if those were
the recyling notices? Those are from the county and he thinks
that they are county wide.
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that. for Ed and maybe for other
people; her first year on Common Council she thought that it was
important to try and communicate information to the citizenry
about the new laws that we have put into place about exterior
property maintenance and off street parking so she worked on a
newsletter for that got mailed out with the property taxes and
she felt strongly that that was something that should be
continued, but she couldn' t keep up with it because it was alot
of work; but maybe she can talk with about that and well
Dominick has changed the billing form now, there' s no envelope
this time around, but if we had an envelope again that was the
way we did it . We decided that was the least costly way of
doing it and the Town of Ithaca mails a newsletter to its
residents, she is not sure if it' s once or twice a year, but she
has looked at that and the county puts an insert into the
newspaper, the city is really way behind in terms of
communicating, but it does cost some money and it took alot of
time. They did a little bit she thinks about DPW but that was
one of the things that she wanted to do was to talk about the
leaf law change, the way the changes have been made because the
old timers think you can still all dump it in the street; the
new timers don' t have a clue about what' s going on and because
there is such a turnover nobody, it' s like advertising for
downtown, you need to keep up.
Alderperson Marcham stated that we need a way to reach tenants
as well as property owners which the tax bills go to in this
case, we need to reach tenants because so many of the properties
in the city are rentals .
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that' s right, but that leaf stuff;
alot of this stuff is done by; yet, she agrees and that would be
the next level; she was only trying to deal with the first
level .
Alderperson Marcham stated that there must be a way that we can
do it .
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that there is if someone wants to
take it on and work on it .
Alderperson Manos asked if there was any spot checking about the
quality of the street cleaning that goes on. She was at a
`./ neighborhood meeting the other day and South Hill was very
upset . They had taken photographs of the streets and the gutters
and they made a point to say that this was after the streets had
been cleaned. In addition, the corner of Prospect Street and
Aurora Street had been repainted last year in August and some
guy went out and took a picture of it in the beginning of
September and the paint was gone. So, but then the cleaning of
the gutters it' s really, it was salt and that kind of stuff, it
wasn' t like cups and what we usually see in the gutters in the
streets there, that was all cleaned up but it was actually the
dirt and the salt kind of thing; so she just wondered if you
could check on that? Or, how you
Assist . Sup of Streets & Facilities Ferrell responded the next
thing to mention was some of the equipment that we're using for
street cleaning we have two sweepers; one mechanical, one vacuum
sweeper; we have a flusher truck that we use. All three of those
items are overdue for equipment replacement, the flusher truck
is a 1972 , he thinks 6 years ago we were trying to get it
replaced and we keep bandaiding the thing together and keep
using it, both the sweepers are a year or two overdue for
replacement; they' re still operational, sounds like we may have
had a problem with one of them on South Hill if we weren' t
especially if we were windrowing material behind the sweeper. He
doesn' t know what the pictures look like .
Alderperson Marcham stated that we did buy a storm drain suction
cleaner for a couple hundred thousand dollars; and she wondered
how that was working out as
Assist . Sup of Streets & Facilities Ferrell responded that we
haven' t taken delivery of it yet . It' s on order.
Superintendent Gray asked if there was a higher maintenance
piece of equipment in your inventory
Assist . Sup of Streets & Facilities Ferrell asked then a
sweeper?
Superintendent Gray stated yes .
Assist . Sup of Streets & Facilities Ferrell responded no,
nothing is higher maintenance than a sweeper it works in dirt
and mechanical things don' t last very long when they' re in dirt .
We used to keep sweepers ten year life cycle, this was back when
we had more man power in the highway group and we commonly
double shifted the sweepers, we had somebody out all day and
then we had the night crew working, we still had two sweepers;
we found that after year 7 the maintenance costs per mile
increased to the point where there was simply no value in
keeping it after that; you ran it for a mile and you worked on
it for an hour and ran it for a mile and you worked on it for
two hours; so we cut our life cycles back to about 7 years on a
sweeper and he thinks our maintenance cost; well he knows our
maintenance costs are much lower. They also changed the type of
sweeper that we were using, he mentioned that we have one
mechanical sweeper which is a big main broom and gutter brooms
with a conveyor that loads the material into a hopper. The
other one is an air sweeper, it does have main broom, it has a
gutter broom but also uses a vacuum on the street surface. In
the springtime, we will usually start with the mechanical
sweeper because it digs the material out, it will flush the
street down and then go over it with the vacuum sweeper. Most of
the sweeping in the summer months is done with the vacuum
sweeper. It picks up litter and leaves much better.
Superintendent Gray stated but you also schedule fewer hours of
street cleaning when you did that .
Assist . Sup of Streets & Facilities Ferrell stated that' s true,
we may get one day maybe two days of street sweeping the day
now; eight to ten years ago we did 8 hours of sweeping during
the day; well he won' t say 8 hours, but a full shift during the
day and we also maintained our night shift of sweeping. So,
that' s an area that has been cut back.
Assist . Sup of Streets & Facilities Ferrell stated shall we move
onto bridges?
New side of tape
Assist . Sup of Streets & Facilities Ferrell stated that we can
have other maintenance activities in the winter. We do quite a
bit of storm sewer installation in the winter months - weather
permitting. We' ll do some creek cleaning - weather permitting,
we have done creek wall repairs in the winter months. They' re
never idle if that' s what you' re looking for.
Alderperson Vaughan stated that you have a job title which she
finds fascinating - it' s called Working Supervisor and she
wondered if you had any non-working supervisors, but the title
does catch the eye and wondered. Well you tell me what this guy
does?
Assist . Sup of Streets & Facilities Ferrell stated that in the
old days there was a title called Foreman and Foreman is a title
that isn' t used anymore and
Alderperson Blumenthal asked if it was politically incorrect?
Assist . Sup of Streets & Facilities Ferrell responded gender
incorrect he thinks; so working supervisor was the title given.
Alderperson Vaughan stated so it' s somebody that does it but he
also tells the other guys what to do.
Assist . Sup of Streets & Facilities Ferrell responded right, he
works with the crew. Bridges? This is a program with it a
single budget, there are two and one-half full time employees -
one employee works with bridges in the summer months and has
been assigned to Cass Park in the winter months for a number of
years . During the summer months, there are five to six
seasonals which are assigned to this group. The group generally
paints or sandblasts, paints and cleans two bridges a season.
They do minor structural repairs on the bridges; welding truck
`..� is assigned to this section with a maintainer who is a skilled
welder and if there are some minor welding repairs that need to
be done, he' ll handle those . This group also takes care of all
the city hand rails along our creeks, banks, whereever there are
handrails they' ll construct them, they' ll paint and repair them,
they' ll do welding repairs on them. Any large or major
reconstruction efforts for bridges are generally either done if
it' s deckwork it' s done by our highway group, if it' s anything
more than that, it usually goes out for contract repair.
Alderperson Vaughan stated that many of us had a chance to visit
Stewart Avenue bridge last year when you were in process. It' s
pretty interesting stuff .
Alderperson Marcham stated that she wondered, ever since her
husband has been on the county board, for the first time was
years and years ago, she has heard griping about why the county
pays everything for town bridges and nothing for city bridges
and she just wondered if this has been pushed as far as it will
go; whether we should raise the topic again at all or is it
hopeless or what?
City Controller Cafferillo stated that it' s been pushed any
number of times, it' s been discussed in conjunction with sales
tax agreements, the county actually in one of the drafts of the
current sales tax agreement, the county actually referenced the
fact that a portion of those dollars would be and could be
attributed to bridge construction/reconstruction and maintenance
and then in the final agreement they requested that we take that
verbage out and relate it to police protection as opposed to
bridges; so they are very much aware of the fact that we are
concerned about that aspect, but we' re trying to work through
the MPO to get more of the bridges addressed in the MPO program
as opposed to the city being
Alderperson Marcham asked what MPO stands for
City Controller Cafferillo stated that Metropolitan Planning
Organization.
Mayor Cohen stated that what' s also interesting is that the
county is moving in the direction of getting towns now to split
the cost with them on their bridges .
Alderperson Hershey stated that we' ll do that .
Mayor Cohen stated yes, I know, I ' d love to. But it' s just
interesting to see and they held a number of bridge projects
adding up to five a day for long enough that the town has
finally said hey. You know, let' s do something, we' ll kick in.
So, the Myers point one he believes, he doesn' t know about
Comfort Road maybe as well .
Alderperson Marcham stated that these were low traffic bridges
no doubt .
City Controller Cafferillo stated that they' re very much aware
of our request and our need but they' re trying to move in the
opposite direction as opposed to taking over the city bridges
they' re trying to divorce themselves from the Town bridges .
Alderperson Marcham stated so they' re giving us sales tax money
for a service that she thinks you know really the county ought
to be providing or sharing in without you know, this kind of
quick pro quo; but anyway, she wondered whether other cities in
the State have this problem and have managed to solve it . Do
you have a picture of that?
City Controller Cafferillo stated that most cities have this
problem. Cities are predominantly responsible for everything
within their jurisdiction. There are Park/County charges that
would in some instances be levied against individuals within a
`./ county outside cities but in this county they tend to levy
everything county wide . So, it' s a traditional mechanism that
they've used to but cities and villages predominantly are
responsible for those .
Alderperson Marcham stated that most cities don' t have as many
bridges as we do.
City Controller Cafferillo stated no, we do have more bridges
than most and we try to get the state to participate as much as
possible. They took care of Common 5 within the west end
project . We' re trying to and they' re taking care of the South
Albany Street bridge and we' re trying to get them to participate
in several other bridges; Bill, we have funding now Linn Street
and the Giles Street . So, we' re trying to get other
jurisdictions involved in the cost of the bridges especially
when replacement is involved. As opposed to just maintenance,
they are very costly.
Superintendent Gray stated that we've actually had success
through, for years, bridge painting was not considered, it was
considered routine maintenance and not capital maintenance.
This is the first year that they've actually allowed us to
approach them with the cost of painting. We do the smaller
bridges, we have three very high bridges which are very
expensive to do this and we've put it off;
City Controller Cafferillo stated plus we now have to
encapsulate the material when you sandblast the bridge . They
used to sand blast and it would go down into the gorge; now you
have to encapsulate it so that none of the material falls into
the gorge so it' s much more costly.
Alderperson Marcham stated that she is impressed by the amount
of work being done on the bridge like the East Clinton Street
bridge, a small bridge, but the job of repainting that bridge is
enormous .
Superintendent Gray stated yes, and it looks even more enormous
because the way the environmental laws are written now, it' s
actually better to do it almost as handwork and not remove all
the paint; not produce all the debris .
Alderperson Vaughan asked if she was correct that per square,
for the size of our city the number of square miles, we have
more bridges than the average city? By factor of x; compare us
to let' s say Auburn or someplace else. Do you have any sense
`./ that bridges for us are a much bigger deal than they are in most
places?
Superintendent Gray stated that he doesn' t have those figures .
He would tell you that it certainly appears that way. It' s
interesting to note that over, we've probably lost three or four
bridges in the last 30 years
Alderperson Vaughan stated DeWitt, Quarry, Plain,
Superintendent Gray stated Madison,
Alderperson Marcham stated Columbia Street .
Superintendent Gray stated that Plain Street was downgraded to a
pedestrian bridge because of the expense associated with it .
But we' re paying a price associated with the traffic
circulation.
Assist . Sup of Streets & Facilities Ferrell moved onto snow
removal . We maintain adequate fulltime staff to provide for our
snow removal needs . Snow removal is broken into streets; some
of the other sections also have snow removal responsibilities,
the bridge crew takes care of the sidewalks on the bridges; our
parks crew takes care of sidewalks in the parks areas, they take
care of the roadways into Stewart and Cass Parks . They take
care of the walk path along the inlet . The building systems
takes care of the sidewalks in front of the city buildings and
the Commons crew takes care of snow removal on The Commons so
the what he calls snow removal streets, is just addresses the
highways . We have the city broken into five districts that we
plow so that we have four of those being the hill areas and the
downtown area. Anytime there is a snow storm, we send out five
salt spreaders in five different directions or five snow plow
trucks and the five salt spreaders to cover the areas . Heavy
snows we incorporate larger equipment . We have two motor graders
that will be used for plowing snow. We have several one ton
plow trucks that we use for the smaller residential streets.
Especially Cascadilla Park Road where you can' t get a full size
truck down or a fire truck. Snow removal we use salt, sand
combination on our hills on our State arterials, on the flats,
but on the flats themselves probably you' re all aware that it' s
no salt policy and unless we have an icy condition that warrants
salt application and we may have that once maybe twice year but
as a rule we apply sand on the flats and we plow except on the
State arterials where we do apply salt .
�•�' Superintendent Gray stated that he would say that it' s more than
once or twice a year in intersections . The fire department will
call us out onto the flats for specific intersections where we
may salt ; that might be once a week as opposed to once or twice
a year.
Assist . Sup of Streets & Facilities Ferrell stated that the low
salt policy when it was initiated we cut the salt budget from
$100, 000, the first year it was cut to $50, 000 and he thinks
that for a year or two after that was initiated which was the
late eighties . Our current budget has been $60, 000 for several
years . It is a savings there; however, when you apply nothing
but the deicing sand, you spend much more time plowing snow than
if you plowed once applied some salt and allowed that to work to
melt snow and ice . So, it' s a trade-off; personally and he
has done the figures over the years, it' s actually more
expensive for the city to be on the low salt diet than if we did
use it . Our labor costs are higher and our equipment costs are
higher. Street cleaning costs in the spring are higher.
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that there are some new materials
coming out now, she heard about something last year; she forgot
what it is but it' s supposed to be pretty effective in melting
snow or something, do you know? Are we on the verge of using
that kind of new technology?
Assist . Sup of Streets & Facilities Ferrell responded that the
county experimented with it last year and actually alot of
municipalities experimented with it last year; either adding it
to sand or adding to salt itself - it provides a lower, it melts
at a lower temperature than salt does, When you get down about 5
degrees and salt just kind of sits there. The ice ban magic
would activate the salt at lower and allow for fewer tons or
pound per lane mile of salt to be used. He thought that he would
let the county experiment with it and see how they came out . It
is expensive .
Superintendent Gray stated that there are additional non-salt
items which are available that vary from five to thirty times
the cost of salt, we don' t use them routinely although we do use
them in the parking garages . The parking garages have proven to
be such a costly maintenance item that we made a conscience
decision to incur the greater expense for salt substitute there
and they are non-salt and several of them are shown to be not as
corrosive . So, you do incur the cost there .
Assist . Sup of Streets & Facilities Ferrell stated that it' s
`•/ also used on the Commons because it doesn' t track the way salt
does into the carpets .
Alderperson Marcham asked if there was a big difference in cost
between a low salt policy and you know regular salt policy - is
that a big gap would you say? If you have any way of
quantifying it or is she asking the impossible . The reason why
she asks is because she gathers from the response of the public
that low salt is really what Ithacans want . There used to be
great debates about salt, and low salt and no salt and all that
and lately it seems as if maybe it' s because of the weather or
whatever, but partly, but doesn' t hear so much controversy
about it anymore and she is guessing that the present policy is
what people like; now does anybody else have a reading on that?
Superintendent Gray stated that Rick did attach a price tag to
it for a couple of years because it was one of the items when we
were cutting budgets and looking at programmatically he said
well this was a conscious decision, it costs, what was it
$30, 000 a year?
Assist . Sup of Streets & Facilities Ferrell stated that he would
have to go back. It maybe wasn' t as great as some of his crew
would have liked to have seen it . He thinks that one of the
things is we have two to three men occupied at a job of cleaning
catch basins that maybe could be put to better use in other
areas, personalized and biased opinion he guesses. But, the
catch basin cleaning is a big part of our operations anymore.
It' s something that is done until everything is clean in the
spring and summer months .
Alderperson Marcham asked cleaning up the sand you mean?
Assist . Sup of Streets & Facilities Ferrell stated right .
Alderperson Marcham stated but that' s why you ordered, you' re
going to be ordering the catch basin cleaner right?
Assist . Sup of Streets & Facilities Ferrell stated well, that is
to replace a unit that we've used for the last ten years that
has worn out .
Superintendent Gray stated in answer to your question, we
offered it several years running, as a programmatic way to cut
the budget and it was not taken which supports what you' re
suggesting. They' d rather pay that bill .
`,,i Alderperson Hershey asked if they could review just briefly for
him what, is it an environmental issue or is an auto destruction
issue of the salt, what is the 100% and what is your
professional opinion as to the difference between the reality
and the protection of the issue?
Assist . Sup of Streets & Facilities Ferrell stated that he
thinks that it was initiated as an environmental issue because
we' re so close to the lake .
Superintendent Gray stated that in addition, he would tell you
that probably ten years ago, you could look around and see alot
of the maple trees in decline and a certain amount of that was
attributed to salt and he can' t tell you whether it' s true or
not, he would tell you that in addition to that alot of those
maple trees were hitting the end of their life expectancy, the
city did a tremendous amount of planning at the turn of the
century and between 1900 and 1930 we' re seeing alot of that
trees maturing and being changed out; we' re spending more time
cutting some of that old tree growth down and replacing it; so
some of it was that ; some of it was just, there is also in the
last 10 years there' s been a lot of awareness of, there' s point
source pollution and non-point source pollution and the stuff
that comes off streets is the non-point source form of it and
it' s the area that both the state and federal governments are
starting to concentrate on. So, there was a conscious decision
made 15 years ago, this program was adopted, they purchased
another truck for plowing, they actually hired some additional
people, it was a conscious decision.
Alderperson Manos asked if there were any city streets targeted
for non-snow removal? Like Morris Heights, or south Geneva
Street which didn' t get plowed last year.
Superintendent Gray stated that Morris Heights is not a city
street .
Mayor Cohen stated no, it' s not . It' s off Spencer Road.
Assist . Sup of Streets & Facilities Ferrell stated that South
Geneva Street was an overlook. It was plowed at least a day
late .
Alderperson Manos stated so your intent is to plow all the city
streets . Obviously,
Assist . Sup of Streets & Facilities Ferrell responded oh yes . He
has no answer why it wasn' t plowed the first day that it snowed,
it should have been.
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that she wasn' t sure how to phrase
this question, she guesses that she knows your answer, but one
thing that is a real problem for folks who live on streets that
don' t have large tree lawns is the policy of the department to
plow dead up to the last inch of curb on a street which causes a
great deal of problems for people who live on her street, people
who live on any number of streets, Hudson,
Assist . Sup of Streets & Facilities Ferrell stated you' re not
the only ones, there' s a bunch.
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that she is sure that some of
those streets vary in width, her street is fairly wide by her
house, but you guys last year, they plowed her tree lawn,
wrecking the beautiful grass that you planted in the little
parkway when they reconstructed her street . So, there are
elderly people and she means that it is really painful to have
all that stuff you shovel and by golly that crap is right up
there on your sidewalk again, heavier than all get out with all
the salt in it, it is really, can' t we stop short a little so
that it' s not smack up to the curbs on the street so that there
is a little bit of pile on the street? She doesn' t know if other
council members feel about this, but it' s and it' s primarily
where there is either no tree lawn or very, very narrow tree
lawn or there' s no parking on the street .
Assist . Sup of Streets & Facilities Ferrell stated that it' s a
definite problem, and it may be a problem if the street isn' t
plowed all the way back. If we left a windrow out into the
street and we had severe freeze following a snow storm, with a
severe freeze everything turns to ice and there' s the trucks
cannot plow the ice, we get some more snow on top of it, we just
we wouldn' t have room in the street to maintain the proper
lanes . It' s a tough one Susan and you' re not the only area that
has that problem.
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that yes, one person has to shovel
but she is talking about people with 100' or 150' of sidewalk
who are digging up alot of, a tremendous amount of weight and
that' s alot different . It is very heavy.
Superintendent Gray stated that this is a discussion that you
also need police and fire to participate in because we plow
`./ snowed after the March snowstorm, and he remembers having the
discussion with Rick, do we just hold our breath and see if we
get some 50 degree days and the stuff will go away or do we
actually, he can' t remember the overtime bill was $20, 000 or
$30, 000 to get the snow taken care of . Clear out the downtown
parking meters and all the rest and what you' re talking in a
smaller version about the calculated risk, do we just plow it
back and leave it close to the curb and wait and see and
Alderperson Hershey stated that he has a question about the
overtime bill . When you go into a major snow fall, he presumes
that there are any number of employees in your agency who can' t
do their normal job do you have a mobilization in which alot of
those people are pressed into service on a kind of round the
clock the basis or are they not qualified for snow removal and
do you have to use very few employees 12 to 16 hours?
Assist . Sup of Streets & Facilities Ferrell stated that
generally they try to grab everybody that they can and if we' re
in a major snow storm then everybody that is employed is pretty
much doing some form of snow removal . Our highway, parks crews,
are put on 12 hour shifts so and we have a night crew, but the
crews are split up so we' re 12 on 12 off; our garbage crews will
be involved in snow removal, our building systems crews will be
involved in snow removal, our parking lot attendants sometimes
they' ll want to take personal days, but those that want to and
are physically able to get in we will utilize them for snow
removal around buildings or on the Commons .
Alderperson Hershey stated that it' s a fact that we have about
one and one-half major snow storms the last two years, do you
have money in the bank or is it money that was used elsewhere?
Where are we? We've been pretty lucky in this score in the last
two years, haven' t we?
Assist . Sup of Streets & Facilities Ferrell stated that there' s
no money in the bank. If we over extend or overspend our snow
removal budget we' re expected to find it in other areas, highway
construction or wherever. As a rule .
Superintendent Gray stated that Water and Sewer participates in
major snow storms . Our staffing, there is a night time snow
watch crew that is put on, there is a daytime crew, so there are
16 hours that are covered and there' s a four hour gap on either
side . Which either you can call people in, you can hold them
over, that some of how we do that . It' s covered with the over
time budget .
PROGRAM ANALYSIS COMMITTEE MEETING MINUTES
July 27, 1998
COMMON COUNCIL CHAMBERS
Present: Chair Vaughan
Alderpersons (7) Taylor, Marcham, Hershey, Spielholz, Farrell, Sams, Manos
Others Present:
City Clerk Holcomb
City Controller Cafferillo
Deputy Controller Thayer
City Attorney Geldenhuys
Excused: Alderperson Blumenthal
City Attorney's Office - Overview
Presented by City Attorney Geldenhuys
City Attorney Geldenhuys stated that she would very briefly go through the programs
and then she would open it up for questions, then give you more information that you
need or less information. Just as an introduction, it was somewhat difficult for us to
break down what we do into programs. It is a small office, most of us all involved in
most all the activities, so we didn't break things down because we're all involved in it.
Also, the program categories are somewhat artificial, one project, for instance might
start out as a request for advice and say the Planning Department has asked us for an
opinion on some planning issue. That might then go to the planning board, decision is
made, someone is sued on it; now it's into an Article 78 and tied up in litigation and the
same issue as a result of the litigation we might decide a new ordinance needs to be
drafted to correct the problem. Now we're into a third program which is ordinance
drafting. So, alot of issues meander between categories and therefore somewhat
artificial to the categories. They did their best to come up with all the categories to give
you some idea of the kind of work that they do. And, broadly speaking it basically
breaks down in three major categories. One is litigation, one is labor related work, and
the other is basically everything else. In the litigation category, we divided that up into
really five different categories. One of them is labor related, the civil defense is basically
when we are defending the city when we are being sued for money damages. Alot of
that work, a majority of that work is handled through our insurance carrier. We have
insurance for all property damages, property liability also for public officers' liability.
That is when an officer of the city is being sued for something they did in the course of
their work. Like Julie for instance. She would say upwards of 90% of public officers
cases actually involve the local police department, in some kind of police responding to
something of that nature. Those cases we also have insurance coverage but our
deductible is very high, so we do get involved in those cases initially. We take a
deposition of the claimant to find out what the basis of their claim is and do some initial
investigation. If they then pursue it and actually commence a law suit, we hand it over
to insurance council. Anybody suing the city needs to file a formal notice of claim within
three months of the incident. So, once we get this notice, we can have a deposition, find
out more about the claim and then they have a year and 90 days from the incident to
sue. So, we do get involved in this kind of defense litigation even though we have
insurance coverage for public officers. Also, we do not have any insurance coverage
that covers construction claims. That comes up a fair amount; not often does it result in
full fledged litigation. One example recently with the Alex Haley Pool bid, but there are
often questions about construction contracts. We get alot of that from DPW, maybe a
suit is threatened or a sub-contractor files a lien against the city because they haven't
been paid, so there is a fair amount of that that comes through our office as well. Now,
the special proceedings, that's the Article 78, the high proceeding, the most common
example probably is the BZA makes a decision, the applicant doesn't like the decision,
they sue us and they take us to court on it and we have at any one time probably two or
three of those going. There seems to be every month when there is a term in court to
hear these cases, we have one of them or two of them going on so that is very constant.
Sometimes it's a planning board decision, sometimes it's the landmarks preservation
commission, the Sage Hall litigation was a huge case, it was about a 9 month session
and planning board decision. Those don't involve money damages, it's about a decision
that was made by some board or officer or commission in the city. Then the third
program is the prosecution in city court of building code violations. This is something
that they would like to be able to spend more time on. Because this is actually revenue
generator and fines are generated by these cases and she thinks that if we could free
up more time to focus on this, she could actually produce more revenues and there's
also the benefit of clamping down on violations of the building code; particularly where
tenants are involved and making sure that landlords do comply with the regulations.
Then the real estate litigation, the different categories here. Tax foreclosures is a big
category that if somebody hasn't paid their taxes for a certain period of time, eventually
after notices and many warnings, we actually file for foreclosure and you may re-call
that we changed the tax foreclosure procedure within the last year. We used to have
this procedure where we basically just gave ourselves a tax deed without going to court
and filing a foreclosure action. We found out that there was a case saying this
procedure is unconstitutional because it doesn't give adequate notice to the property
owner. So, we changed our tax foreclosure proceeding to require us to go to file a tax
foreclosure proceeding in court and get a judgment. It's more work, but it means that we
have clear title to the property and if nobody acquires it at the foreclosure, we're in a
much better position to then sell that property and not run into a title problem down the
line. So, this is a category that is going to create more work as we go along. It's a three
year cycle, so we are not seeing that litigation yet. But, probably two to two and one half
years from now, we're going to have to start streamlining that process. Then as
mentioned in our program here, we have started using the litigation by which the city
can acquire abandoned properties and this is a mechanism whereby a municipality can
go to court and ask the court to basically give it title to abandoned property and there
are certain requirements, that the owner has not maintained it, that the owner has not
paid taxes for a period of more than two years. It's a very useful tool. It's helped us in
two specific instances get rid of something or remedy a situation where the was
complaining about a boarded up property, nothing is being done, the bank doesn't want
to foreclose because the property isn't worth anything, so it gives us the opportunity to
step in and then try to find a sponsor who remedy the situation and renovate the
property. Eminent domain comes up once in a while, we haven't yet, but may have to
use eminent domain in some of the park land acquisitions, we cannot get agreements
with the owners so next year might be towards the end of this year we might see alot
more of that kind of litigation. The labor category breaks down into three components,
one is labor litigation, that's pretty well detailed in the program materials, we do
arbitrations, disciplinary hearings, unemployment, workers' comp, the whole array of
labor litigation or arbitration type work. Then labor unit negotiations, obviously, are the
contract negotiations with our civil unions and when contracts are up it takes a huge
amount of time for a block and then it comes down to where we have the occasional
grievance on a contract. But, that's very, very time intensive once negotiations get
underway and then there is labor advice. Basically, department heads and others
calling up and asking questions, what are the rules for dealing with certain disciplinary
issues, etc. Those three categories, five, six and seven are the ones that we're basically
in discussion with the HR department to see whether to what extent we're going to
divide the work up differently from the way we have before. We had gone to B & A to
get authorization for Norma to act as back-up on labor matters. This will be temporary,
the authorization was for$6,000.00. This is money that is being transferred from the
personnel line in HR. What we anticipate will happen is Schelley will be familiarizing
herself with the workload in her department, and the expectations for her department as
HR personnel department. We'll being through the search process for the assistant city
attorney in our office and in the period between now and the end of the year, we're
going to have to figure out how that workload is going to be divided up and obviously
we'll be getting input from council, from senior staff, from the departments and there are
different schools of thought. Some people feel strongly that HR should not have
anything to do with labor negotiations. Our office has an interest in moving away from
some of the labor work that doesn't require an attorney skills. But that somebody with
negotiation skills could handle, so that is all really influx, we are hoping to not have as
much labor work as we had in the past because that really has precluded us from doing
more of the work that we would like to do such as building code prosecution and some
of the other things she will mention later on. And, also, to turn work around more
quickly than we have been able to do. But, she cannot say that the shift is definitely is
going to happen or nor can she say to what extent. That's all influx. We have back up
from Norma for the labor work, Norma Schwab for the labor work and we have back up
in our office until we have a person in the assistant position.
Alderperson Vaughan asked who ultimately will make the decision on that emphasis or
that division between HR and the Attorney's office. Will it be this body, that is Common
Council, or will there be some kind of negotiation between you and Schelley trying to
decide what's the best approach. Because there is a philosophical difference, it's really
a policy issue.
City Attorney Geldenhuys stated that she doesn't think that it's really been clearly
defined how that is going to happen. She is not sure how that is going to happen.
Probably this is going to be something that is worked out by the Mayor with input from
our department the HR department. This is not something that (hard to understand) that
affects job description or require a charter change, so in that sense it's basically an
administrative work allocation decision, but she knows that there is interest among
council and senior staff in seeing how this develops. So, she is not sure, she thinks that
you probably need to speak to the Mayor about it as well as to how this is going to
happen. Her real concern is that they really need to know what we're doing as we go
through the search process for her office. Whoever ends up in that position is either
has the skills or realizes that they are expected to acquire the skills to handle whatever
is retained. Obviously, we would like to free up more time, however it comes out, she
shall make sure that the combination of (hard to hear, someone crumpling paper)
Training and risk analysis is another thing that we would like to do more of. We do
things like training for bza when a new board member comes in, for the planning board.
They put together hand books about procedures, standards to be applied, design forms
for decision makers so they know what the criteria are. And, also when an application
comes up with a board or commission, if you know that it's coming up and we know that
it's contentious, we try to put out a legal memorandum, obviously not saying how the
issue should be decided, but clearly outlining the legal criteria and trying to give some
guidance on which steps should be followed in the decision making process so that
should there be litigation, they're in a position to defend it. This is the kind of thing that
that the (something) to cut down on litigation or at least make litigation easier,
something that she would really like to do more of, but unfortunately this kind of thing
ends up at the bottom of the pile when they are busy with lawsuits coming in the door
and there's other things that have deadlines.
Alderperson Vaughan asked if this was something that interns can help us with in terms
of putting together handbooks or doing some elementary stuff.
City Attorney Geldenhuys stated to some extent yes, and actually this summer a couple
of interns are working on projects related to that. One intern is researcher what notice
provisions for all land use decisions, to try to determine if we can streamline it, if we can
have a comprehensive guide that everybody, staff and boards can use so that there is a
clear reference to notice provisions when we have hearings, so everytime we don't have
to scurry around find out what they are. So, yes, this is the kind of thing interns can
help with and putting together the overall materials we would have to coordinate but we
could certainly send interns over to compile the information to do legal research on a
couple of issues.
Alderperson Farrell stated that she noticed that somewhere in the County was offering a
training for planning board members and it was sort of a county wide thing and she
doesn't remember what that was, but she thinks that it's good to coordinate those kinds
of things in case there is a grant or level.
City Attorney Geldenhuys stated that is helpful and probably two years ago now, when
the new SEQR regulations came out, the environmental review regulations the planning
department actually with some other municipalities had a workshop on that and had
people from DEC come down and some other attorney's and we had she thinks five or
six municipalities in here at the same time getting that information from DEC. So, yes
that is something else that would be really great if we could coordinate and she thinks it
would also help with those projects where we do have municipalities involved because,
as you know on alot of the planning and zoning decisions, we have to notify the county
planning department and they have some input in the decision. There is a project now
for Cornell where part of the project is in the Town and part of the project is in the City.
So, project coordination has to happen at that level so if we had more of these joint
training opportunities she thinks that would help that as well. Office administration,
basically, the day to day running of the department probably not different from any other
department, the only thing that has been unusual this year and she hopes that it's a one
time occurrence is that we have had personnel turmoil without end in our office. We've
just had, with Pat being on leave and then now leaving and Khandi having been hired
last October and having someone in her position for only six months before that, there
has been constant turnover and it's meant that alot of time has gone into hiring and
finding substitutes just to keep things running. We of course have a training and
learning curve every time someone new walks in the door. But, she does anticipate that
that is going to settle down. Khandi, our legal associate, should be back hopefully by
late October and sometime by the end of the year we should hire somebody for the
assistant city attorney position. So, she does not expect that the amount of time and
effort that went into personnel hiring and supervision will have to be repeated. Then,
program ten, meetings, obviously that program overlaps with everything else. If a
meeting is about something, we just try to get a sense of how much time we do spend
on meeting attendance and the main goal there she guesses is to try to make sure that
they do what they can to make the time they spend in meetings as efficient as possible
so that we're there and available for the portion that needs legal expertise, but that we
don't spend time that could be spent on other things. Non-labor contracts is really a
very broad category. We get contracts in from just about every department. We get
alot in from DPW, alot of contracts from Planning, the IURA, we do all the legal work for
the IURA as well and they have alot of contracts, HUD money, all those have to be
programmed pursuant to contracts; all the independent contractor contracts comes to
their office, so there really is a very large volume. Alot of these are fairly standard and
we don't have to spend alot of time on them. Other contracts are huge, like the TCAT
contract, GIAC contracts take alot of time, and then there is the joint water-sewer
arrangement that we've been trying to work out with other municipalities, so once in a
while there is a contract that is very large in scope and take alot of time.
Alderperson Vaughan stated that Mariette had a note here to raise the dollar level for
which attorney approval is required. Is that something that we should be looking at, at B
&A?
City Attorney Geldenhuys stated that would be helpful and we had actually talked about
that earlier in the year, but we hadn't pursued that.
Alderperson Vaughan asked what are the magic numbers now?
City Attorney Geldenhuys stated that it's $500.00
City Controller Cafferillo stated that the form, as long as all the information is there. Alot
of them are with individuals that are not formed companies. So, there are a number that
are compunctory and alot of them are duplicate. At the Youth Bureau for example, your
officials, and so forth. There is more time involved in the elements that are with
companies with contractors and our primary concern with non-company contracts is that
the individuals have their own workers' comp coverage or they sign off that they do not
need ours. We can look at that aspect and see if there are effective ways of stream
lining it.
Alderperson Farrell asked in terms of that workers' comp stuff, if somebody signs
something that they have their own, do you also have to check that they do?
City Attorney Geldenhuys responded that it's a state mandate that we need to see the
documentation, we actually need to see documentary proof.
City Controller Cafferillo stated that we have to see the certificate of insurance.
City Attorney Geldenhuys stated yes that and disability insurance coverage. She has
streamlined some of the contracts where if it's a situation where someone is a referee
for the soccer games at the youth bureau for the summer, we let them check the box
saying that they don't have any employees and so we don't require the level of
paperwork that would otherwise be required. If they do have employees then they have
to provide documentation, but we have tried to streamline that. This is an unfunded
state mandate which is really cumbersome for every single contractor, permit, license,
anything that we have to this, so she has worked on some standardized language to try
and speed that up, but we still need to do it. That would be helpful if maybe you could
consider raising the dollar limit, even though the contracts don't take alot of time, just
the act of having to look them, sign them, put them back on the conveyor belt, some
days, she spends an hour just doing that for a whole stack of contracts and that is an
hour that she feels would be better spent doing other things. Legal research, opinion
support, that really runs the gammat, any kind of legal issue that comes up whether it's
with council, boards, commissions, staff, we get alot of that. On a daily basis we
probably four to six requests of that nature. The one change that we've seen this year,
that is really helped that program is that we have gotten West Law Book online research
has been tremendously helpful and West Law actually offers this program, for those on
the B & A from the city prosecutor's office as well, for governmental offices they offer
access to all state's databases as well as the federal database. The usual flat fee
program is only New York State material, not federal or other states, but they have a
special program for governmental entities and the way that works is the more
governmental offices to sign up the cheaper it gets. She thinks the price has already
dropped, the monthly price has already dropped ten dollars from the time that we signed
up until now, because it's really getting up and running. That's been tremendously
helpful because before we had no federal research materials outside, it's just too
expensive to maintain so we had to rely on law students who go to the library or the
courthouse which has odd hours and is inconvenient; now it's all on line. So, that has
really helped alot. We do need to get more training on using this new toy, but West Law
does actually provide a fair amount of training, it's a matter of scheduling and getting
everybody together to do that and Patricia Dunn is going to be filling in in our office, has
absolutely West Law skills having worked as a law librarian so she is hoping to have her
train the rest of us to use it ultimately. It's the kind of system that you can really use
quite effectively with minimal knowledge, but you can use, as she is sure with any other
computer program, it can be ten times as fast if you really know how to put a search
together. We've only had it for about a month now. So, we're all still feeling our way,
but even in the past month, it's really been tremendously helpful and a very effective
way to get our research done, so that's really been an improvement and we're really
happy to have it. We only have one password for the office which seems to work.
Generally speaking, not more than one person is doing legal research at one time and
we can usually work it out, but if more than one of us has research projects, then we
would need another password.
Alderperson Marcham stated that you may have heard that the city prosecutor's office
also would like to have this.
City Attorney Geldenhuys stated right, we actually had a joint meeting with them and
West Law when we first tried to do this, we're trying to find a way for all of us to be on
the same password, but we realize that that would just not work, it would be impossible
for us to coordinate with them, that they not be on it when we want to be on it and it just
got too cumbersome. So, they will be getting their own as well.
City Attorney Geldenhuys stated that the next category basically is drafting ordinances.
All ordinances regardless of who first initiates or does the first draft or first
memorandum, it ends up going through our office because we need to make sure that
it's the correct legal form and in the correct format and the City Clerk and she have
really been trying to work on some ways to make sure that the materials come to both
us in enough time so that we can catch problems with formatting and the language;
often there is a huge rush to get something done; often for a very good reason, but we
do need some time to study the post ordinance to make sure that the correct legal
language is being used and also that all the legal requirements are being met so that
when it goes to the publisher it doesn't get bounced back with questions or problems so
this is another item that we would like to put in the risk analysis and training category
and she knows that Julie has produced these kinds of documents in the past, but she
would like to do a refresher for council and the boards, commissions and senior staff, a
hand out that this is what they need to look like, you can do it as closely to this as
possible, but if by the time it reaches my office that would certainly be helpful. So, it
does save substantial time to draft the ordinances because you need to carefully
consider the language being used, make sure there are no conflicts with other parts of
the code and as you know, we're constantly revising and updating the ordinances so
this is a project that does take a significant amount of time. Finally, real estate, it's a
fairly broad category. The city is involved in alot of sale and purchase of real estate on
an ongoing basis, she probably always has at least two or three closings that she is
working on. All the parkland acquisition has increased the real estate workload
significantly. This has been not only doing the closings, but trying to negotiate the
\.s contracts with those people who we are going to be using eminent domain and in the
southwest park, acquisitions (hard to understand) and all the bills we received so now
we're going to start in on that and something about the falls, so there is quite alot going
on there. We have other real estate documents that you usually don't hear about, that
go to public auction and or encroachments, easements, leases that kind of thing, so we
do have alot of those documents going through our office all the time. One aspect of
real estate that she has been working on for the records perspective and would like to
keep doing is making sure that eventually for every piece of property the city owns that
we have the deed, that we have an abstract, and that we have a survey. She usually
assumes that we would have them or that is fairly standard for any kind of real estate,
that the owner would have those documents, but for a variety of reasons, we don't have
that and often we get a question whether we own a certain piece property and rather
than basically going to our real estate records and seeing if we have a deed and doing it
in five minutes, it can take days of tracking down, does anybody have a deed for this
property, sending somebody to the post office to find out, then maybe find out that we
do have a deed, but we don't have a survey so we can't tell from the description where
it is and if you're trying to do something with the property, if often doesn't have an
abstract and then that needs to be done. Now, this is something that we could do
without significant expenditure or money. A new abstract costs about $500, so what
she has been trying to do rather than systematically try to get these documents (hard to
hear) is whenever an issue comes up, with a property if you then make sure we get all
the documents, get the deed, or get a copy of the original, get it surveyed and get an
abstract and certainly with everything that we've been buying, she has been making
sure that any new acquisitions we have a survey, that the survey coordinated with the
planning department so that it's on the GIS system and can be plugged into, but this is
going to be an ongoing process. It is another project that she would really like to do a
more comprehensive survey. The mandates, the records management touches on this
some, but there is more that needs to be done in that respect and it would certainly
make the work, for any real estate work that our office and other departments do, much,
much easier if you then eventually end up with the right documents for the real estate.
Alderperson Vaughan asked if she had anybody that put input to the SARA grant
process.
City Clerk Holcomb stated that Pat Kennedy and Cindy sat in on those.
City Attorney Geldenhuys stated that we did explain these issues and concerns to them
as well. So, they understand how our office plugs into their system, but that project is
not going to get us all the documents.
City Clerk Holcomb stated that a good tip that did come out of one of those meetings
and she can remember if Pat was there or not, to relay that to you. But, coordination
with the city's engineering department would really be helpful to you in that if they knew
what properties; they're out surveying all the time, and if they know there is a property
right next to what they're doing that we don't have a survey map on or whatever, that
they could take the time at that point and survey that property, so that may be
something that you want to talk to Tom West or Bill Gray about.
City Attorney Geldenhuys stated that would a great idea. The problem is and there was
a really good illustration of that, is often we need these records in a hurry, for instance,
there was a grant application for one of the Cass Park projects and our office needed to
write an opinion on title. Which basically means that you search the title and we have
clear title. So, the planning department is putting together this grant and they needed
this thing in two days and of course, it was no simple matter to find whether we owned
this parcel, find the deed, this was a portion where a specific project was happening,
this is related to the boat house project, and then located the specific deed for that
parcel, we had to do all of that without a survey and we ended up sending in the grant
application saying it was the opinion (hard to understand) which is not a great thing, and
then we had to go through and some of the pieces of that puzzle haven't fallen together
yet, so it's not just because she likes nice neat records, it certainly has practical
application and she will keep working on that. There's not any solution without
significant funds being spent. Finally, she just wanted to make a couple comments
about goals, she had mentioned that not alot of specificity is in the materials about
many of the goals and when goals would be met and it was difficult to come up with
measurable goals, one thing that we do want to do and that we mentioned in a few
places here is get up and running with our contractor software. We have the software,
it's been installed on the network, we need some training on it and we need to also be
using it. This has been bumped a few times with staff turnover, we just haven't gotten
that up and running,
Alderperson Taylor asked who would be providing the training?
City Attorney Geldenhuys stated that we would probably need to get a consultant to
train, it's not a very complex program, it's quick books which is actually an accounting
program for offices and she knows the program because she uses it her own office and
we wouldn't have to use any of the financial aspects, but it has a really good contracting
feature, we've put in different portion on what project they're working on, how much time
they need, read the database and different configurations. And, she knows a couple of
consultants that could probably in maybe one three to five hour training session for one
of our support staff, give her a good grounding and them beyond that be available for
questions. So, we need to make a commitment to a date which she hopes will be
January 1, 1999, we need to find the money and the time to get the training and then
just start doing it. That she thinks would really help for any future analysis, then we'll
have a sense of how much time we're spending on various projects. Of course, this
process has been useful, now we at least have the categories of projects and we can
plug the various projects in under that. The other thing that she would really like to do
which we have done in a somewhat haphazard fashion that she wants to get organized
better is to have a really comprehensive log of all the requests that we get into the office
to basically indicate when a request came in, who it came from, what it is, what the
deadline is and when it was completed. To give us a sense of how long it takes us from
receipt of request to completion. That time period is often longer than we want it to be
just because of the volume that is coming at us, and we get involved with litigation. But,
we have that kind of system for some aspects of our work, but since we have a contract
log, and contract that comes in, gets logged in, logged out. She really wants to have
something like that for all the work that we do. For two reasons, to get a sense of how
long it takes; also to keep track so nothing gets lost in the shuffle and it also will give us
a better sense of exactly what it is we do and what categories they fall into. We'll have
to give some thought as to how log somebody calls us on the phone, have a quick
question. So, this needs some fine tuning, she is not sure that it is really efficient if we
get a phone call, you ask question for five minutes and put that on the log as well. But,
maybe it is, maybe we do need to get a sense of that, then somebody calls and says
you've had that for a while, we can actually go back and look where we received it.
What she is also going to try to ask people when they give us assignments is to give us
a sense of urgency and deadline. Obviously, everyone wants and answer as soon as
possible, you know, sometimes it's in the yesterday if not sooner category and if it really
is that we need to know. We often get a question without any indication of when an
answer is necessary and then the day people really need to know for a meeting we get
the follow up and then we feel bad because it's not done yet; on the other hand, if we
had known a week ago, we could have put it in line in the correct slot, so she doesn't
want to over load the paperwork, but she is going to try to encourage people to give us
a better indication of when they need it by, or when the next meeting is when this might
come up. So, those are overall goals, the contracting and tracking of assignments
through the office are the main ones that we came up with in the course of this process.
Alderperson Vaughan stated that you had mentioned several places of that you wanted
staffs or computers. If the project goes through for the work station upgrade, your
computer which is a 486, then one that the law students use which is_ machine and
the one Khandi uses would all be replaced with fairly hefty pentiums. Now, they will be
run of the mill but run of the mill for 1999 is a pentium II, is a much heavier machine and
presumably that would give you a little more fire power when you're on West Law, you
might find that your connect time drops and you probably find that downloading
becomes better.
City Attorney Geldenhuys stated that as far as a modem, it really helps with that to do.
In her other office, she just replaced her modem with the high speed that is now
available and the connection time to West Law and the down loading is probably less
that what it was before.
Alderperson Vaughan stated that is something that is going to have to go into your
operating budget. You've listed 14 projects, 14 programs. That's alot for four people,
she went through your ball park estimate and she assumes that these are a little firmer
than a wag but not necessarily a swag or are you comfortable that these are sort of
close?
City Attorney Geldenhuys stated what we did, if she tells you the method they used that
might give you a bit more of an idea. She is not comfortable about the accuracy
because it really was something that they estimated. But, Pat and she each, they came
up with the categories and then each of us allocated our time among the categories,
what percentage of our time we thought we spent on each of the categories and then
we added those together and divided by two. So, this is basically percentage of
combined attorney time.
Alderperson Vaughan questioned if it was just the attorneys and not the support staff?
City Attorney Geldenhuys responded that the reason they did it that way is because
usually, the way our office functions, the support staff time is driven by what we're
doing. If we're working on litigation, then support staff will be working on putting the
papers together, collating, copying, that kind of thing. It breaks down in some
categories, for instance, meetings. Although support staff does have alot of work to do
to get the materials ready, so the correlation might not be as direct as when you're
talking about litigation or something else. The only way to be more accurate would be
the time tracking.
Alderperson Vaughan stated that one of her questions here, is that she listed them all
and it turns out that six of the fourteen programs account for about 70% of your time.
There are special proceedings at 13, labor at 9, meetings at 12, legal research at 11,
ordinances is 9 1/2 and real estate is a 101/2 and except for labor negotiations, most of
the other things aren't things that you aren't going to be able to hand off. And legal
research it probably can't be done let say the finance department or clerk's department,
it has to be done by you guys, so we have a core of stuff, pretty heavy duty legal piece
as we all know what the time stuff gets done, not only in your in basket, sometimes it's
stuck in Shirley Egan's in basket instead but you seem to be on the critical path of a
long project.
City Attorney Geldenhuys stated that alot of things come through our office sooner or
later and probably we're involved throughout the process as things are being
negotiated, but even if we're not, towards the end when the final contract is being
written or an agreement is being drafted or a settlement agreement is being drafted, it
ends up in our office sooner or later and unfortunately, yes, sometimes things do back
up there because other things came in ahead.
Alderperson Hershey stated that he also runs an office with four people so when
institution wide pronouncements come down and they seem to apply perfectly well to
staff of 60's, they don't quite seem to apply the same way to staffs of four. He is
wondering, how have you approached this 036% edict in terms of this program first of
all or have you and secondly, in so far as you possibly could, not on the items that you
were just discussing and which you were sort of passively involved, he doesn't mean
passively involved in terms of not being appropriately aggressive, but in terms of they
have to pass through your office, of those programs that you institute, are there any
here that apply even in the short term for greater revenue enhancement if you become
involved with it in a greater way so that the city is liable to realize any gains?
City Attorney Geldenhuys stated that the one area in particular is the building code
enforcement. That produces fines for the city and of course that's driven by whether
there are violations out there, we cannot manufacture violations, but we have noticed
that there usually is no shortage of violations. Maybe if you do that very well for a few
years, the violations will disappear, she doesn't know. But, that is one, that's probably
the only area they work in where there is a direct link to revenue generation. The rest of
what we do is really reactive. We're part of the process, we need to defend the city, we
can try to save money by training and risk analysis if we see the same kind of claim
come through our office twenty times, we can call somebody say in the DPW, and say
you know we've had seven accidents with this kind of vehicle, could you maybe see
what's going on there. So, that could be some sort of preventative work, but in terms of
direct revenue generation, that's really the one category where it's the responsibility of
the (hard to understand)
Alderperson Hershey asked about direct revenue savings.
City Attorney Geldenhuys responded that direct revenue savings, training and risk
analysis of the others, expense savings, it's hard to do and that's ties in with the -3%
and -6% question. The whole minus 3 and minus 6 percent issue is all up in the air right
now, she is not quite sure what we're doing, but she is sure that we'll find out by the end
of this week, since the budget is due. She must admit, it's been an artificial exercise for
our office. They really haven't been able to say we will no longer have a legal
associate, or we will no longer have a confidential secretary, what we have done is we
have tried to scrimp and save on things like staff development and training, we have
scrimped and saved on equipment and in some years, it's simply been staff
replacement where we anticipated lower salaries of incoming people which makes it
really easy to do minus 3 and minus 6, but it's really an artificial way to do it. Yes, it's a
savings in the short term, but it's not really a reduction in programs offered and she
doesn't really see a possibility of reducing programs, we're seeing if there is a possibility
of shifting part of a program, but it would just go elsewhere in the city, it's not as if we
going to say we don't deal with labor issues anymore, it has to be dealt with, it might be
in our office or not, but it's very difficult for her to see how we would save expenses. The
West Law program saves some expense in that we would be able to get out of
maintaining some of the publications we have maintained up until now; although we
keep a very, very bare bones library as it is. We run things on somewhat of a shoe
string and she hasn't come up with any good ways to save money beyond what we've
suggested.
Alderperson Marcham asked if there was a new division of labor with regard to labor
negotiations, she remembers that somewhere in here, you said there is something that
you would like to do with that time and she said you mentioned a few things too, during
this presentation but how would you like to use the time that you might gain if there was
a change?
City Attorney Geldenhuys stated that the first priority would be building code
`,, enforcement. Since that is a revenue generating item and something that we could do a
lot more of if we had more people to do it with and once we have funneled additional
time and energy into that, we would do an assessment of the other areas and see
where we need all that time that we freed up for that or whether there are other things
that we can do. There are many things that we basically have on a wish list that we
never touch such as standardizing some kinds of contracts, there are contracts that are
standardized that we do from contract to contract but there are other kinds of contracts
that we do, public works for instance, that we would want to work harder to standardize.
Some other materials (hard to understand) that we would like to standardize. There is
alot that can be done in terms of ordinance revisions, streamline things, clean things up,
take ambiguities out of it, contradictions out of it, and that would be another area that
she would have an interest in spending more time. We do some of that now, but it's
usually because we're working on a project to revise the ordinance and then we
uncover other things in the process and fix them while we're at it. An example is we're
working on changing the code from referring to the personnel department to the human
resources department and that certainly seems like a very simple, straight forward
project. Well, first of all the references are scattered all over the code, so first we had to
gather them together, now in the course of this process we also discovered that there
are several provision in the city code that were passed by resolution and were never
formed into an ordinance or local law. And somehow were incorporated, now that's not
really the way it should be done and in order to protect ourselves it really should be an
ordinance, so now we're in the process of fixing that and reenacting those things as
ordinances. But, this isn't a fairly haphazard fashion, it's not being done in a
comprehensive, organized way as she would prefer to do it.
Alderperson Sams stated that she has always wondered what good was resolution
anyway? She just thinks that it means an intent to mean something and somehow it's
always been in her mind wondering why if we wanted something done we didn't do an
ordinance. She is concerned about the fact that your office sounds like it is just over
extending itself with alot of things. She is also concerned about, she adds up this 19%
of some of the work load going to the human resources office, being kind of put in that
direction, and she has expressed this over and over of her concern about that office
being understaffed and not putting more on that office and what is not going to get done
and some of the direction is that council has said that they want to go in and the
commitment they've made, and then we've also, when Khandi comes back and then we
hire for Pat, will that be able to be helpful to kind of eliminate some that so that all of that
may not have to go that way?
City Attorney Geldenhuys stated that we talked a little about that before you were here
Diann, we need to straighten all that out and figure out what is feasible and realistic for
both departments and know what we're doing before we hire for our department. So,
that once that it's determined what labor work is being done in our department that we
hire some who has or will acquire the expertise to handle it. Because, there's no point
as you say in shifting a body of work and making us breathe us easier but then making
it impossible for another department to function and that's totally counter productive and
non-sensible. So, we are going to need to figure all that out by the end of the year
before we hire someone to replace Pat, so that is definitely is something that we're
looking at. Now, another change which is alluded to in here is that we will have
hopefully by January a third attorney in the office because Khandi's position was
changed from a para-legal to a legal associate, that's a two tiered position as you know,
one is somebody with law degree eligible to take the bar and the second level of that
position is somebody who is being admitted to the bar and she is taking the bar exam
this week and if she passes and gets admitted in the ordinary course, she'll be admitted
by next January.
Alderperson Sams asked if would be two full time attorneys and one half time?
City Attorney Geldenhuys responded yes, now of course, it's not as if we're adding an
attorney, we changing a paralegal into an attorney so the paralegal work still needs to
be done, but it would mean that there would be one more person who could go to court.
For instance, if might not necessarily her, but she could handle some or all of the
building code enforcement or certain kinds of cases like abandoned property cases,
now that we've done two or three and we basically are familiar with the proceedings and
worked out all the bugs. This is something that she could easily do and it would free up
more time for herself and the assistant city attorney. It would be really helpful to have
someone else who can go to court and handle some of that. So, we'll have to see to
what extent that helps.
Alderperson Sams stated that you also mentioned in here in the training section, is that
training throughout all the departments that you're talking about? Because she has
been concerned about some comments that she has been getting that some things that
we could have avoided such as what happened at southside with the plumbing and
what's happened with GIAC and that we might have been able to avoid some law suits
and not quite knowing...
City Attorney Geldenhuys responded that often what really helps is if we're consulted
early on in the process. The reasons it doesn't happen and one of them is probably that
we're so busy that people want to get their project done and they think okay legal knows
about it, I'm just going to go ahead, what she is hoping to do is free up enough more
time so that people will be encouraged to bring us in early so that we can hopefully
avoid some of the problems that otherwise pop up further down the line.
Alderperson Sams asked if a standardized contract would do some of that if you have
standard?
City Attorney Geldenhuys stated in some instances. The bigger construction contracts
are a little more difficult to standardize. There are standardized contracts out there that
the architects use, there are standardized contracts for architects for owner builders etc
that we could use as a model but they still would need some additional input, but yes,
standardizing contracts is one way and making sure we have a written contract before
someone does something.
Alderperson Sams stated that the other part of this is would you see that training money
being a portion that would be put in your budget for training or looking at that as part of
human resources training big pot of money.
City Attorney Geldenhuys stated that she hasn't really given that a whole lot of thought.
This is not training that she would think would take a whole lot of money, it's more that it
would take time. We want to have the time to do as we do for the bza, have two nights
of three hours scheduled and basically giving them training on the materials, answering
questions, that kind of thing, it 's more of a time involvement than money involved.
Alderperson Marcham asked what she thought of the staffing set up in the attorney's
office, with the half-time city attorney and full time assistant city attorney, does it make
sense? Do you feel it works?
City Attorney Geldenhuys stated that it makes it difficult because well from her
perspective, she is there part time and she has alot of administration to do like the
hiring, personnel, and staffing and being on those committees and it makes it very hard
to get to the legal work. Some days, she spends most if not all of her time on
administration related things and that really makes it hard. She doesn't know what a
good solution is to the situation. She would like to, if this system is going to be kept as a
part time city attorney and a fulltime assistant city attorney, she thinks that it would be
helpful if more of the administration were done by the assistant city attorney rather than
the city attorney just because of the time allocation. Now, this position has been
structured this way for a long time, for a reason. It's an admirable position and most
people would not want to give up their own practice in order to do something for four
years or maybe four days who knows, things happen. So, in that sense, she is not sure
there is an easy solution to the situation, but some municipalities do have a full time city
attorney and they hire someone who wants to make more of a career out of that and is
willing to take that risk it being an admirable position. That could be considered or as
an alternative as she said, it would be helpful, internally, to shift more administration
around.
Alderperson Vaughan asked what sort of administration do you see the assistant city
attorney being able to take on?
City Attorney Geldenhuys stated some of the day to day personnel issues. Obviously,
all attorneys supervise all support staff because we work with them on projects. Other
than that, dealing and this has happened to some extent, she is not saying that it hasn't
happened but maybe we can be clear about how we define, dealing with the technology
issues and internal organization of the filing system and those kinds of day to day
things, dealing with the law students, interviewing the law students, hiring the law
students, filling in their forms so we get the money from Cornell and elsewhere. That's
alot of busy work. Maybe the legal associate could handle some of it. It just makes it
very hard to focus on legal work in a parttime position when there is a heavy load of
administration as well.
Alderperson Vaughan asked if it was also difficult for you that the assistant city attorney
which is not an at will position, become, Pat for example, has been around for a long,
long time, so she knows ins and outs and history and things like that, is it then more
difficult, she doesn't want to say to supervise such a person, but the person is different
relationship to the rest of the professional staff than you do because you're sort of,
nobody knows whether you're a keeper.
City Attorney Geldenhuys stated that it's an unusual situation certainly and there are
pros and cons. The pros of course are if somebody comes into the position of
somebody who has been around for awhile and who knows alot of what is going on and
where the files are and what has happened with this project, that can be very helpful,
but you have mentioned the other side, that it could also make it somewhat more
difficult to set a direction or decide how you want things done or having one to allocate
work if there is already an established pattern. That's another kind of policy decision
which probably needs to be considered whether both positions should be at will. The
prosecutor's office works that way, the city prosecutor and the deputy city prosecutor
are both at will positions and most municipal attorneys offices actually work that way.
She actually at some conferences just ask people how they do these things.
Alderperson Sams asked that they're civil service positions, can they be kind of at will?
City Attorney Geldenhuys stated they can, we would have to change the charter,
depending how, it may or may not need a referendum, if the appointment powers are
being affected it would need a referendum, if it's only the nature of the position, it
wouldn't. For instance, right now, it's the search committee process, the mayor
appoints, we have a search committee, select three and then it gets referred. A similar
kind of process is followed, but it's the nature of the position that changes, she would
see it needing a referendum. So, it depends on how it's done. She thinks that is
something worth thinking about.
City Controller Cafferillo stated that it should be reviewed somewhat carefully, because
of the continuity issue, that was one of the main reasons why we structured it this way in
the first place because you could have both people going out the door at the same time,
you have law suits or activities that are continuing and you need some level of
continuity, it's really, if both individuals were at will and as soon as one administration
were over they were either asked to leave or chose to leave, there would be a
tremendous loss there.
Alderperson Sams asked if we had other assistants who are under civil service or is that
the only one that is under civil service,
City Controller Cafferillo stated that the deputies, they're all under civil service. They're
still appointees. There are only a few positions that are at will positions.
City Attorney Geldenhuys stated that not all of them are under C 75, we have charter
provisions that are similar to C75, some of them
City Controller Cafferillo stated that there are only a couple that are at will. City Attorney,
Prosecutor
City Attorney Geldenhuys stated that typically legal counsel for positions are whether it's
for local or state or federal it's the hired gun. Those positions are often at will positions.
And, certainly there are pros and cons to doing it either way. It should be carefully
thought about. She thinks that we're the only municipality around here who does have
a civil service position for an attorney, based on her calculation, it's very rare to do it this
way. That doesn't mean it's a bad idea, it's just unusual.
Alderperson Hershey asked if we could get back to the criminal prosecution of code
enforcement cases for a moment. Are you saying that there are cases that are ready
for prosecution for violation of fire or building code that are not being prosecuted simply
because the three percent is not enough time and you don't have enough time to do it
or would this require a concurrent redeployment in fire and building to get the cases
ready for prosecution.
City Attorney Geldenhuys stated that it's a combination. The cases that the building
department, it's primarily building, but sometimes fire. The building department have
gotten to the point when we can prosecute we do prosecute. They obviously need to lay
the ground work with the inspections, etc. to get it to that point. But, building has told us
that if they knew that we could process more that due to routine they could put more of
a focus on that area as well. But it's not as if we have 20 in the pipeline right now and
we're just not getting to them. It would take some additional effort on their part but her
understanding from discussing it with them is it's not something that would be out of the
realm of their usual inspections. We would just decide to prosecute more. Now, we just
decide to prosecute the ones that are really out of line where it's a huge problem or the
neighborhood is very upset about it and we tend to focus on that, but we could widen
the scope of what they find in their inspections and prosecute more.
Alderperson Spielholz stated that she wanted to make an observation that although we
tend to look at how we can increase revenues in some of the other departments, from
her point of view, she doesn't want to give the impression that the essential thing is to
increase revenues and in this particular department because in fact by efficiently using
time as you suggested by tracking time, by really making priorities by tracking requests
and how they come and out and whether they're being logged in and out in a timely
fashion, that saves so much more than we could ever possibly look forward to in terms
of revenue, in terms of creating more revenues out of fines. And, as you just said, the
fines that really stand out that are ones that come in because of complaints do get
attended to, she certainly wouldn't want your department and especially after there is
another attorney coming also, this is a great opportunity to upgrade the system, really
upgrading the office in terms of professionals. And, really moving things along that this
is a program/department working different programs or whatever, that impinge on every
single part and the least important thing in her mind this whether or not we're able to
create more revenues out of it.
Alderperson Vaughan asked if there was ever a place other than the special litigation
where a proactive role, so to speak, is more useful or is your department because of
where it has to respond to what other people sue us or whatever, is the reactive role
really the posture that is appropriate and typical?
City Attorney Geldenhuys responded that no, she thinks that there is room for proactive
work and that goes back to the reasons we get sued. We get sued for decisions by
boards, commissions and city officials, now if we know and we consult and there is an
issue for a board or commission and at that point give some legal advice on not what to
decide but how to go about making decisions, that certainly can help cut back litigation.
This typically, is an article 78 where a zoning decision is being contested or a planning
board decision is being contested, the ILPC or the building code board of review one of
those discretionary bodies. The court's authority to overturn a decision is fairly limited.
They need to decide whether the decision was made in accordance with the correct
criteria and have to be satisfied that it wasn't arbitrary or capricious and alot of proving a
decision was not arbitrary or capricious is having a good record. What kinds of things
were mentioned as part of the decision, what kinds of questions were asked, what went
into the resolution making the decision, what it clear that all the relevant legal factors
were considered, was it clear that the public outcry was considered but did not
inappropriately drive the decision, that kind of thing. So, yes, there is certainly proactive
work that can be done, now it doesn't that if we get involved at that level and maybe do
a confidential memorandum to a board or commission sometimes they decide not to
follow our suggestion as is there right because they are a judicial body with decision
making authority. But, she does think that those things are helpful and we have seen
instances where it has been helpful and part of the proactive work is this kind of training
for the zoning board, they actually designed forms saying okay, you're doing an area
variance, here are the criteria and a space for the criteria and a space for them to fill in
how they discussed it and a space for the findings and that's for very basic stuff.
So, they have a notebook, they all have these forms as they go through the process,
they're all making notes and then they do their findings from that. That way you make
sure all the criteria get covered and also often, she works, most of the board of the
planning department as she works with them because that's the way their workload is
divided up, and she works with them alot on how we write resolutions when we're doing
environmental review. What goes into the resolution, planning board resolution when
they're denying or approving an application. It's really important to make sure the
correct findings are in there, if you go to do a negative declaration, you have to motivate
it and do the LEAF in a way that backs it up, that kind of thing. So, there is quite a bit of
proactive work that can be done and some of it you just basically cannot prevent. If
someone is going to sue you for a decision even if it was properly made, they're going
to sue you and we just defend and do the best we can.
Alderperson Hershey stated that you mention occasionally insurance counsel coming in,
he assumes that's on behalf of the insurance company, do we have money in our
budget to hire special counsel for certain specialized cases or is it all handled through
your office with staff?
City Attorney Geldenhuys responded that if we need specialized counsel, we make a
special request, there's nothing regular in the budget and that does come up, we
sometimes have situations where either we don't have the time or the expertise or either
to cost effectively defend or pursue an action, but no, we don't have a regular account in
the budget. The insurance counsel handles the case, but we still coordinate with them.
Because they need to talk to city staff, get depositions and get information from our
office and we basically oversee and direct the work they do, so it's not as if we have
nothing to do with it, but we are involved with the work being done.
City Controller Cafferillo stated that because of our deductible, if we feel that we can
take care of it at a level below the deductible, we can save that money and the company
that we deal with allows us that option. Otherwise, it's an automatic 5 or 10 or whatever
the deductible is, so there are instances where we make those decisions.
City Attorney Geldenhuys stated especially with public officers where they do the
depositions,
Alderperson Vaughan stated that since she's been on council there have been a couple
of cases where we think that we're right, but we look at the cost of defending ourselves
and say it's cheaper to settle, and she is assuming that no matter what happens, we will
continue to make an economic rather than a moral decision on a case like that.
City Attorney Geldenhuys responded that she thinks that would continue to happen and
that is just very general and prevalent with any kind of litigation whether it's the city or
an individual or corporation that's involved. In a certain sense, yes, but that's
unfortunate because it would be much preferable if the issue were heard and the correct
decision were made, but often there are economic obstacles in the way.
Alderperson Vaughan stated that we face that in individual terms. She has been in
situations where she is sure she can eventually win, but the out of pocket, you know.
City Controller Cafferillo stated that in many cases the court or the arbitrator is
encouraging us to settle while this goes on, the judge in some cases encourages us to
settle because they don't want to have to make a decision one way or the other.
City Attorney Geldenhuys stated that's true and when you're in a situation where a
judge is in a conference saying look, they really think you should settle for "x", you go
into the trial and they really annointed you for (hard to understand, many people talking)
You have to read those kinds of subleties and no do something fool hardy.
Alderperson Vaughan stated that she is hoping that next year when these kinds of
things come up that you'll be able to come up with some level of maybe quatifying the
program and she realizes that in some cases it could be simply to hand off 25% of the
labor work to HR, but a date or get legal, she realizes that is a joint thing. In doing
quantifiable goals is a really, really tough thing. She has been doing some reading on it,
it's clear that this first time through, just to come up with the goals is really something
that we'll be looking for in a future year and recognizing that this year; all right, we're all
learning. She never knew that before we did the program. She thinks really that this first
round is making us think about the tools we need to do the analysis properly. The next
phase, we'll hopefully have time tracking and project request tracking, then we'll have a
better sense of how are we doing and once we have the tracking of projects coming
through and the time they take, then we can start setting some goals. Well, we'd really
like to reduce the time from when somebody comes in for an opinion/request from 10
days to 5 days or two weeks to one week or how can we achieve that. She thinks that
we will be in a better position once we have better information gathering systems in
place.
Alderperson Vaughan asked City Attorney Geldenhuys if she had any questions for us
or some other thing that you'd like to tell us?
City Attorney Geldenhuys responded that she didn't think so. She thinks that she
covered most of the things she wanted to highlight.
Alderperson Farrell asked a question about something (very hard to understand, people
were crinkling paper by microphone)
City Attorney Geldenhuys responded that is on their plan for community issues.
That ended the city attorney's office presentation.
Alderperson Vaughan explained that here is the question, we have not quite half of
DPW program that has yet been unexplored in anyway by this committee and the
question is what does this committee want to hear? It seems like there is alot out there
that should be looked at in some way, what do we want to hear and more particularly
when do we want to hear it? As she looked at the schedule that we currently have for
this committee, it looks like if we're going to keep any time at all to deal with broader
questions and recommendations, it may be very difficult to feet dpw, shoehorn this into
a shared meeting for example with let's say planning. And, so one possibility is to
arrange for another meeting of this group on some Monday night. She would suggest
August, but there could be some other possibilities and she would like to hear what the
will of the body is and she thinks that Bill needs to know what you want to know.
Superintendent Gray stated that he and Pat spoke briefly and although he appreciates
the level of detail that you guys are getting mired down into, he thinks that at some point
you're actually asking either questions you haven't had an opportunity to, he hopes that
you're learning some things that you want to know or need to know, but it wasn't going
exactly the way he thought we intended to do which in this case, he guesses it was
getting into more detail which was okay with him, but might not be so okay with Pat. Pat
was trying to keep the stake moving forward and we haven't, there are a number of
things in your program that we haven't even begun to touch. If you wanted to know
what we do and why we do it, we were getting into that fairly deeply, but we hadn't really
gotten to the related revenue streams, we hadn't talked about possible revenues and he
thinks deep behind what you're trying to do is what he wrote down was justification for
what we spend and there's kind of the internal bench marks, how are we doing
compared with how we did last year or the year before, there are external bench marks,
what has the city of Auburn spent for similar services if that's appropriate and then
there's kind of a third level, the term in the seventies was zero based budgeting. If you
were starting up a city today, what would you and he had to sit down and give you a
budget for the department of public works, how would he justify it and so a number of
those things that he has listed like, all of the external bench marks, it turns out going out
to other communities and trying to find out what they spend for similar services gets
pretty complicated in an area as large as public works. It's going to take a degree in
auditing and some help from probably Dominick and Steve and a few other things to
sort out some of that. Because they don't all divide it up the same way we do. There
are expenses in different areas. Just the thing that you're dealing with internally with
what our programs cost. There is a state mandated system but inside of that people as
you probably know by now, people keep their books slightly differently. So, as he and
Pat talked about it, he asked if he could come back to you and kind of get some
feedback. How you felt we were doing, what it is you particularly wanted, what we can
do to get you to the point where you want to be able to kind of pull it all together and
then if you expect us to come back and help you over the next year dig in more detail
and different areas. You may, he doesn't know if there are departments you're going to
want to assign certain things where you feel that you need more level of detail. Just, he
got the feeling that it would take a year of fairly concentrated effort for him to try to make
the department of public works compare with he doesn't know, Syracuse, Auburn,
Seneca Falls, so that you can say well okay that's comparable or those figures are
useful. So, he is getting lots of silence here, why don't you all jump in?
Alderperson Spielholz stated that she is not defending herself since she was certainly
as guilty as her colleagues in getting side tracked on the (hard to understand) She really
thinks that the scope of dpw is so great that you as a Superintendent are having a
problem in trying to make definitions and move along and we as a body who are not just
looking at dpw are having just as much trouble if not more trouble trying to sort and
figure out what does this all mean in terms of our doing the budget and once again, she
is going to talk from her point of view, since she has been thinking about this. That is
that she would find it more helpful not to knit pick on dpw stuff, she has read through the
tone that you gave us all as well as she could. It's not like there's things we're getting
tested on tomorrow, thank goodness! But, she thinks that when the budget process
comes along which it is coming along and already departments have to have their
budgets in and you are making the decisions and the department heads and leaders are
looking over it yourself and going to make presentations to us, that is more important to
her, she doesn't know for herself, and again she is speaking for herself, she is not
speaking for other people, that she is getting enough worthwhile out dpw program
analysis because the scope is just much too big for her to analyze. When somebody
speaks up and says can you give us this from Auburn, she doesn't want you to do that
because that's just more for her to think about and she is having a hard enough time
�,, thinking about what it is we're doing and what it is necessary for us to do in this
community. She doesn't know how other people feel about it, but she would like to be
able to not concentrate so much on dpw program analysis, but maybe what we have to
do is spend more time when it comes to dpw presenting the budget because it is such a
vast range that at that point as we go over the budget we have something that's in front
of us with actual numbers attached for the next year. We will be asking questions and
we will have things explained to us.
Alderperson Vaughan stated that traditionally, we have what? A whole evening for dpw?
Alderperson Marcham stated that she believes so.
Alderperson Spielholz stated that her suggestion in response to whether or not there is
another meeting of program analysis necessary, she would want to defer that to
possibly having to do a second meeting where we actually have a budget in front of us,
she thinks it's more helpful.
Alderperson Taylor stated that she has to agree with Joan on this one. She can't see
making you keep coming back so that we can get more bogged down in detail that
when she leaves here in two hours later she has forgotten half of what you've told me.
She found this booklet to be enormously helpful, she doesn't think that we need to get
into any more finer detail than what it tells us here and she can't see making you bring
back more numbers just to justify something. She has to agree, she tends to think more
in terms of tell me the program, give me the bottom line on it, let her see the numbers,
let me see how it jives and it makes more sense to her that way.
City Controller Cafferillo stated that based on the procedure that the Mayor changed,
and the presentation that was made to this committee a couple meetings ago, or at the
last meeting when the discussion of the change, the departments are going to be
putting together lists of potential changes and impacts of those changes and council is
going to have to ask questions and then be involved in making that determination as to
where those changes and cuts or potential cuts are made. So, it might take more time
in going through the budget and the budget information than it did previously. Because
you'll have a zero percent budget and then a list of potential adjustments.
Alderperson Sams stated to add to what Joan is saying, she has to agree with her. She
is really, sometimes she doesn't think comparing us to other places is all, maybe other
places would like to be compared to us and we really have to look at what we need and
our needs and what's happening here. She sometimes don't think comparisons do a lot
for her, just to say that they maybe they should be more up to speed to where we are or
we're not up to speed enough, but she really likes to stay focused on Ithaca. She know
for alot of people that's great, that does really good things for you, but she is just saying
for herself, it does nothing for her and it just means more added time she thinks for the
departments. She does think that Ithaca in itself it should be and sometimes we are far
ahead of other places and sometimes we're far behind and we need to come up to
speed, but she thinks that is a decision that we need to make as a body without
comparing it to anybody else, she thinks we need to decide what we want for our city;
not what somebody else is doing in their city and that is kind of the way that she looks at
it.
Superintendent Gray stated that he thinks council's purpose for sitting here is because if
he goes out to buy one car, and he really likes the car and he pays a little more for it
than he should, it probably isn't going to drive him into bankruptcy. It's one purchase, he
makes it every seven years or ten years or whatever, okay and he picks a really neat
car. Part of the reason for you guys sitting here is you don't buy just one car and there
are things that you make decisions on and if you choose to be unique in those areas
whether it's level of police enforcement or deciding to go on a low salt and you ask for
busy snow plowing route. That is a conscience decision that you decide to make over
and above and you're willing to pay for it. He thinks the purpose and believe him it
represents alot of work and he doesn't see it all coming out for probably two years, the
purpose for him is to know that you are paying some reasonable based rate to get your
streets plowed or to get your roads resurfaced and that if you choose to put granite curb
on because you think in the long run that will last longer and be reusable and yes it's
slightly more expensive up front, but we all agree and make that decision. That's the
kind of decision he thinks you want to make. At some point, we have to tie it back to
what the rest of the world pays for its cars and then we're not really out of line. He
thinks that we are all willing to be unique.
Alderperson Marcham stated that she has some of the same feeling. She agrees with
those who don't want to go through a program by program discussion. She thinks we've
gotten the jist and we have our notebooks, we can look things up if we have questions
in that regard. But, she has some of the same feeling that Bill is talking about that she
thinks that it is germaine the amount of money we spend on parks compared to other
cities, municipal parking, she has already seen some figures on youth and recreation
which are really pretty astounding what the City of Ithaca spends compared with other
places and she thinks that we do have to be at least aware of this kind of comparison.
The other thing is and she doesn't know whether we want to spend alot of time on this
now in this program analysis series of meetings this year, but she thinks those
comparisons are fairly important. The other thing is you mentioned revenue
possibilities, she thinks that is crucial, she really wants to know what your thinking is
about that. There may be things that we want to do, there may not, but she thinks that
she would like to hear about that.
Superintendent Gray stated that he, of course, would be happy to have you all down in
the detail, the more you know about what he does, the happier he is because it's very
easy to forget, ignore or just take for granted the public works that spends a tremendous
amount of money, he has joked many times and it will go on being true that probably
we're at our best when we don't have to think about this. If you get to drive over the
roads and don't drive in the pot holes and you get where you're going on time, you
might not give us a thought at all, that means it works, he guesses. But, it also means
that come budget time, he has to remind you that you got to your appointment on time.
He thinks that in that sense we don't want to be taken for granted because as you do
that then it's easy for you to kind of trim us down to go on being unique in other areas.
But, he thinks that in terms of the rate at which we're going, he has to believe that when
you sit down to write your report and your summary, what you're going to do is set
yourself or us some homework assignments and assume that you're going to have to
come back for a meeting or two next summer or however you're going to do this
because a few of us, we don't fit in the box easily and in fact, we're having trouble
defining our box and so he guesses he kind of expects to have a few of those things
come out and you guys just trying to formulate the information for you has set a couple
of tasks trying to absorb some other cities budgets so that he could do for you what for
instance the planning department did. It turned out to be, it will be a challenging task.
Then, he guesses maybe based on what Jane is suggesting, it probably would be a little
easier to fit into the next meeting if we limit the scope to some of the other items like
revenue related items, possible revenues and some of those items, try to fill out that
portion which is fairly compact or is predetermined and then the holes that we leave in
that presentation, he guesses, you may point out in your summary as areas that still
need attention or that you want that information sent back to you.
Alderperson Marcham asked if others have a feeling that they'd like to hear about
revenues?
Alderperson Vaughan stated that she would certainly like to hear more about revenues.
That's one whole piece that your book doesn't tell us much about. The book gives us a
lot of your detail, but the revenues are a real critical piece, she thinks we have a couple
questions here.
Alderperson Hershey stated that as someone who was not here for the great golf
course debate, he can tell you that the second session which was his first he found very
edifying and he learned alot. He also finds this book to be what it is, a very good primer
and sort of an almanac and a good reference book. He said he agrees with almost
everybody, he probably don't agree with the Mayor as correctly recalculated by
Dominick, he thinks that probably that when it comes time to budget crunch as he said
last time, Bill, we pay you to come to us and to say this is what you recommend and
suggest, he is not saying you can't have two or three fall back positions, but you should
be coming to us and in that spirit, he wants to thank you for coming today and saying
listen, let's use our time wisely, and his suggestion for using it wisely would be for you to
say to us in this very, valuable and limited time that we have, bring us up to speed on
the things that really matter in terms of the upcoming budget. These are the four or five
areas that are really going to be the areas of decision as you see them. Nobody in the
city is more able to flame those issues and he would be more than happy to put himself
in your hands and let you see, Jane is correct, we may say to you wait a minute, how
come we're spending "x" and then sort of sending you out to find out what Auburn or
somebody is doing in that specific area if it looks like it stands out. Not to have you take
this entire book and give us a comparative with three other cities.
Alderperson Marcham stated that the budget review still will all have to be done in six
nights, as far as she is concerned.
Alderperson Taylor stated that she thinks what would be helpful for her and really this
has alot to do with what Ed just said, she thinks that what we really need to do in order
to spend our time a little bit more efficiently is to figure out what our priorities are for the
city; knowing what kind of budget season we're going into and then relying upon our
department heads and those who have worked in these programs for years to say in
order to operate a city we need to be able to do x, y and z. This is how much x, y and z
costs. Then if we have questions about can we do it more cheaply, can we use
something different, those would be the times to ask those questions, but she doesn't
think that we can continue to ask questions and not really know what our priorities are.
She knows what hers are, but that's, that's a personal preference and doesn't mean that
we all would be in concensus on that.
Alderperson Sams stated knowing that some things may not fall into the priorities that
we set up. They're going to have to be done anyway. Because she doesn't think that
some of Bill's stuff would fall into some of the priorities.
Superintendent Gray stated that his twenty-two year old ten ton roller probably isn't real
high on your individual lists of items, but it happens to be, when we can't lay the asphalt
because it's broken, then
Alderperson Vaughan stated that we actually had a discussion in this group some
weeks ago about seeing if we needed to deal with priorities and at the time we said no,
and at this point it's too late in our season for us to put together a priority list. What she
sees us doing is the meetings that we have next year in January and February, we
spend on some fairly heavy brainstorming and goal setting that we would have to set
those priorities which then the departments could use, unfortunately, for the 2000
budget, but at this point, we're way behind and she never envisioned that this process
was only going to be a one year process and she thinks that it's become clearer and
clearer as the year goes on that one year isn't enough. What we got this year was an
enormous education in how the departments worked and they answered sort of what
they do and why they do it in certainly a heavier level than we've ever had before. Now,
what we have to do is deal with the priorities and set up homework for these guys for
next year big time and our immediate question is, if we want to have Bill come again, it
means, would we like him to talk about, for example revenue stream and as said, the
hot issues for this next year. Is that something that we could do and could we do it for
example, on either the 10th or the 24th?
Alderperson Sams stated that she would rather wait until budget time and have Bill
cover this then.
City Controller Cafferillo stated that in all fairness to the Mayor and the change that was
made, Bill was one of the primary requestor of that change, so it's now a process so
that list will be important, that list of alternatives and evaluation of that list because
whether or not we can reach the zero percent objective within our revenue stream is yet
a question.
Alderperson Vaughan stated that the Mayor is the one who gets to see Bill's whole list
and make a choice at that point a policy decision which he presents to us as council.
We can agree with his list or we can pick something else.
City Controller Cafferillo stated because you would also see the list.
Alderperson Sams asked if we have to do this twice? Can we not do it one time and do
it at budget time?
Alderperson Vaughan stated that we need to make sure that this department and the
other departments who spend alot of money have adequate time.
Alderperson Spielholz stated that it's time more wisely spent if we have something in
front of us that has directly to do with the 1999 budget.
Alderperson Hershey stated that not to beat a dead horse, as long as it is evaluation
and not abduction, he agrees, that it's potentially a good exercise but it shouldn't be an
exercise in which somebody comes along and okay, here are your choices. We want
the city, the mayor and the department head to say this is what we propose to do and
why and oh, by the way these are the other options. At least that is what I would like to
see because he thinks that you should take ownership of what you're recommending
and he hopes that will happen. But, he also agrees with Joan, he just thinks that when
you sit there and say to us, my roller doesn't roll or as you did last time, my leaf, my
garbage filler upper redeposits half the garbage that it picks up, we need to hear that so
that when we do make those choices that they new program suggested we make, we
have a background of whys, we're going to have a program analysis, it seems to him
that in this department particularly, because of the volume, we almost have to be
guided somewhat.
Alderperson Marcham stated that she just wanted to say, okay, if everybody wants to
defer to the budget process that's fine, but she thinks that revenue enhancement,
revenue possibilities aren't going to mix very well with the budget process. We aren't
going to be able to change policies during that process, so maybe pick that up later,
maybe we don't pick it up this summer, maybe we pick it up after, at the end of the
year, she doesn't know when, but it's going to be separate she thinks from the budget
process.
Superintendent Gray stated that you still have a follow-up, you said there might be
some time left over with planning or something?
Alderperson Vaughan stated that it looks as if we have three more meetings that are
scheduled. August 10th, where we have the leftovers from the police department, and
the new human resources, August 24th we have planning, but that's a two hour meeting
so that one is limited in time. The 7:30 meeting on the 10th is not, and September 8th,
when we hope to finish some recommendations and we could conceivably have a
September 22"d, but that is getting so closer to the Mayor's submission that it really
seems impractical for us to do that.
Superintendent Gray stated that he is not interested in abdicating, he feels very
incomplete in terms of the information transfer, but he certainly recognizes the volume,
but he still wants you all to have a grasp of that. He feels like some of the revenue
streams not only discussing whether it's why we think the golf course is more or less
balanced if that's the case, just taking some of those groupings and so that you know
what, those things idealy can stand alone or even discuss them as a group - revenues
and expenses. There are also a couple of items, he knows that for two months, he has
been making notes in a file about possible revenue sources just so that as you're
thinking about them, there ought to be at least presented to you in an outline form just
so you could glance down through them and think it's never going to happen, we're not
going to do that or we should think about that and develop more information. If nothing
else, he would try to outline some of that and present it to you and then if you wanted to
call him in one of the meetings, he doesn't know how to do that.
Alderperson Spielholz asked if that would fit into the September 8th, if there was an
outline made of suggestions and also we're supposed to wrap things up on the 8th, so
that would be fitting.
Superintendent Gray stated that he has alot of work between now and he guesses
September 1st, not only getting the Mayor's budget in, but he has to pull a water
package together,
Alderperson Vaughan asked him if he would be comfortable if they did something on
September 8th dealing with revenue or would you like, she means that we could
conceivably do something like September 15tn?
Superintendent Gray stated why don't we see how some of this unfolds, if he can pull it
together and present it to you, you can distribute it to your group and he'll go off on
other things, if you want to call him in that's fine. But, very shortly, he has to present a
fair amount of information to Dominick probably in the next week to ten days just so that
he can start taking some of it apart and we can collaborate and then give you something
to look at, collaborate again and then put that out in front of them. If we're sitting down,
he doesn't have his calendar, if we're sitting down with Bolton Point on
Alderperson Vaughan stated that we're sitting down with Bolton Point on the 10th of
September and they want the proposal from you by the 1st
Superintendent Gray stated so we have to have it out of our hands by then.
Alderperson Vaughan asked him if he would be comfortable having something to us that
we could look at by the 8th? Actually, we'd have to have it by the 4th in order, because
our meeting is Tuesday, but Monday is a holiday or could we set up a possible meeting
where you have a, you get a package to us say by the 11th and we do something on the
14th? I'm talking about September.
Superintendent Gray stated well unless it really blows up, he supposes that after
September, if he has a little leeway after September 1st, alot of it exists, it's just a
question of pulling the data together in a form.
Alderperson Vaughan stated that she doesn't want any department to go away feeling
incomplete because she thinks that everybody here has recognized each department
head has recognized that this is an opportunity to have a sort of captive audience and in
some cases it's the first time they've had this many of us available, so it's a question,
we're asking for a piece which is in your case maybe more complicated than some and
we're asking for it at a time when you're especially busy, so she wants to be
Alderperson Sams stated that she is confused here and if she could? Bill, she hears
you saying that you feel incomplete, but yet you feel pressured, you're not sure if you
can get this because of all the other stuff you have, so she guesses, she is a little
Superintendent Gray stated that in one sense he guesses he should be relieved if you
guys are willing to let it slide, but he certainly didn't, he hasn't accomplished anything
that he had hoped to accomplish three months ago when we were starting into this and
talking about it. He knew then that it was going to be a multi-year effort, he thinks to
develop some of it. He thinks that some of these items, the revenue items we can pull
together, he is under, he is going to Oneonta to talk to Senator Seward about an eleven
million dollar application for bond funds on the sewer side. There are a whole series of
sewer discussion that come out of that if we're at all successful and even if we're not
successful, there are alot of sewer discussions that have to come, the water issues that
we're trying to bring to a decision point, the budget that, basically, he has let Rick Ferrel
put the budget together this year because he is doing other things and there's just a
tremendous amount going, it's all valuable, it's all important, but you guys are getting
shorted at some level on that, he hasn't produced for you what he wanted, but the truth
is he is not going to between now and
Alderperson Vaughan stated that what she is hearing then is that unless you feel
strongly, perhaps what we say is today is it, this is it and we won't ask you for more, we
may hit you with more questions as we go through the budget process. If you feel
strongly that we haven't given you the time that you need, we could make other
arrangements, as she said she doesn't want any department head to feel incomplete.
We're going to have to do with the revenue piece then during the budget period.
Bill Gray stated that he will try to and at least produce, he'll collect his notes about
extraneous revenue thoughts which are things that are more policy issue. There are
revenues that are already programmed into the budget and every year you have to deal,
for instance, with the revenues from the garage or the rates right and you can hand that
stuff to the board of public works, those revenues exist, but he thinks that Jane was
talking about and what he thinks requires something separate, are things like what are
the items that have never been discussed, drainage as a utility, there are some places
`., where storm drainage is actually handled as a utility. He is not recommended it, it
would take a while to gear up and there are things like that. There are ways to separate
that out,
City Controller Cafferillo stated not so much in cities though.
Alderperson Sams asked if we could say Pat, that by some time near the first of
September, Bill and have a better picture of what happening and whether you know you
can give us something or he can't and at least kind of wait until then to see what that
picture looks like because if you doing it then and you might want to give us something,
then you know you can deal with it then instead of trying to figure it out now.
The meeting adjourned for today.
PROGRAM ANALYSIS COMMITTEE MEETING MINUTES
COMMON COUNCIL CHAMBERS
September 8, 1998
8:00 p.m.
Present: Chair Vaughan, Vice Chair Cohen; Alderpersons Sams, Blumenthal, Hershey,
Spielholz, Manos, Taylor
Excused:
Alderpersons Shenk, Marcham, Farrell
Others Present:
City Clerk Holcomb
City Controller- Cafferillo
Dep. City Controller- Thayer
Next meeting September 14, 1998 from 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. to clean-up details.
Summary Re-Call Questions:
Inter-municipal commission - to look at issues/questions that cross governmental
jurisdictions.
Is prepared list complete - or are there other questions?
Should items be removed?
Talk to Mike Lane TC Board Reps. to discuss these items and see if we can meet with
him committee (need a committee to discuss what this committee should be ... new
standing committee for 1999) - Members selected to discuss this: Alderpersons Manos,
Sams, Vaughan, Cohen will meet in November.
Consolidation issues already underway:
Water
Wastewater
Recreation/Parks
Fire Services
Basic Structure & Reorganization Committee:
Should there be another committee to discuss inter-departmental issues?
Should hear from community - what do our citizens want/need from us? B & A Comm.
is following up on project with CU graduate students - 1999 Spring Semester.
Extensive discussion followed on the floor regarding time tracking in program budgeting.
Research/Suggestion Questions:
Questions were distributed to each member for research within city departments.
Preliminary information due September 14th
Manos not available next week - possibly Taylor
Adjourned at 9:00 p.m.
Transcription Begins:
Alderperson Vaughan explained that last time we met, she took some of the questions
that Julie had put together for us and put them in their own section and those two sets
of questions, one was for a possible inter-municipal activities committee or whatever
and the other was on basic structure reorganization and she would like to talk first, she
would like to hear your thoughts. These are the first batch, the intermunicipal
committee, it seems to her that the committee is probably not the right word, it might be
task force or some other ad hoc group, but some combination of buzz words which
implies that we are looking at some of these things that when we cross governmental
jurisdictions. She put together ones that she thought would be most pertinent from the
list that we put together and she would like to know if there are others; if some of these
u should be taken off and how do people feel about establishing some sort of short-term
group, probably not until actually late in the year after budget or in the beginning of next
year to look at some of these questions. Are there thoughts on how we might do that?
This list came out once before but she put it again with this weeks agenda because she
thought it would be easily over looked.
Mayor Cohen asked what exactly Alderperson Vaughan was asking for from them?
Alderperson Vaughan responded that she is asking three things, is this list complete or
are there other questions that we might examine that relate to other jurisdictions, some
of these questions have to do with some kind of sharing relationship, for example with
Tompkins County or with the Town. Second, are there things on here that should be
removed? And third, is some kind of investigation of this inter-municipal stuff a fruitful
thing?
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that she would phrase it another way. She would ask,
should we do an intermunicipal activities committee and then leave it to that committee
to either, we could talk about whether to add or not tonight, she is sort of brain dead
tonight, but and then the committee to add to it or subtract to it based what they think is
reasonable and she thinks that it makes a lot of sense to do that, she thinks that there
are some valuable questions in here, she is not sure about the civil service one because
she thinks that we make some money doing that, she was believed that she was told
that somewhere along the way, maybe that's not accurate but even so that might, we
could look into it anyway. But, she thinks that these are worthwhile, she thinks
especially that we provide specialized services and should we get some support from
the outlying districts. So,
Alderperson Vaughan asked what she thought would be a useful format? Task force,
adhoc committee,
Alderperson Blumenthal asked what are these things usually called? They're usually
called a committee. They're a committee and then we have joint representation from the
city and the county and she thinks that one thing we could do is talk with the county first
before we make any decision,
Alderperson Spielholz stated that the county has a similar committee, we as common
council members aren't necessarily included, but people who are specifically when
they're addressing things, for example, facilities or parks or something people are
invited and
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that Mike Lane chairs that, isn't that his committee? So,
she thinks that somebody ought to talk to Mike Lane about this idea and these subjects
and go from there.
Alderperson Spielholz stated that Mike Lane has been in contact with us, in the youth
area, but that's not the only thing that they've been covering.
Alderperson Vaughan stated you've been involved mainly in the youth bureau,
Alderperson Spielholz responded yes, mainly in the youth.
Alderperson Vaughan asked if there was anyone who has been involved in any other
area with the committee?
Alderperson Blumenthal stated well, the planning department, we signed, the common
council passed a compact with the county for sharing of planning staff an interchange in
exchange of county and city planning staff so that's sort of an example. We haven't
used that yet, but it is in place.
Alderperson Spielholz stated that the certainly the staff that does the presentation that
we went to, that maybe we would share with other people here is an example in her
mind of what the city and county planning if that were to go forward would work on.
Alderperson Vaughan stated that what she is hearing is that we would have in effect two
parallel groups. Mike Lane's committee which or would you prefer that we somehow try
to coordinate with theirs?
Alderperson Hershey stated that he is confused. Is there a standing or an ad hoc
intergovernmental relations body that meets regularly involving the town, the city and
the county? And, are we proposing that there be one? Does the Mayor meet regularly
with Cathy and Barbara, what happens that ...
Mayor Cohen stated that as was pointed out, Mike Lane chairs a county committee, it's
a standing committee of the Board of Representatives which only involves county reps.
He attends that as frequently as he can but he probably has only been to about half of
them. The town has not sent a representative to any of them, so it's really more of a
county exploring ideas to consolidate or collaborate purchasing is an area that they
looked at earlier in the year, youth services they looked at, they looked at consolidation
of police services earlier in the year, but there is nothing resembling what you discussed
and as Susan pointed out the agreement between the county and the city and town is
the closest that we have ever gotten on the planning issues to any sort of joint activity
like that so there is no standing committee persay.
Alderperson Hershey asked if the Mayor wouldn't be more comfortable were the city to
insert its sovereignty as part of a three-way clearing, even if it was unofficial rather than
you going to their group?
Mayor Cohen responded that one of the venues that he thought was helpful to at least
get the discussion started was the joint city/county meetings that we were having and
we need to have again. Common Council met with the five city reps to the county board
and some of those issues were discussed and that helped jump start some of Mike
Lane's discussions.
Alderperson Vaughan stated that his is an official committee and the five of them
meeting with the ten of us is really just 15 people.
Mayor Cohen stated right, talking about ideas, when you really get to the nitty gritty it's
not going to be Mike's committee or anything else, it's going to be representatives from
whoever getting together to talk about it.
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that she thinks that we should approach Mike and then
tell him that we're interested, that common council is interested in doing this and then
have an agreement that a couple of us
Mayor Cohen stated interested in what? Most of these are not county related, if you
look
Alderperson Blumenthal stated oh, the school district, town,
Mayor Cohen stated that there are some county ones in there, don't get him wrong, but
Alderperson Vaughan stated that it seems to her that first we need in effect a committee
to think about the committee and what its functions might be and how it would interact
so that we don't go off half-cocked.
Alderperson Hershey stated and then you could go to Mike Lane and say you have a
committee, we have a committee should representatives of our two committees meet to
discuss intergovernmental relations and perhaps ask the town and school district to join
in and then that protects your interest as opposed to
Mayor Cohen stated that may be we should put together a standing committee for either
now or next year, think some interesting issues are going to come up, the town nis
already chirping about the fire contract for 2000 and their desire to see more of a
partnership, Dominick and the Mayor have had initial conversations about that and what
that would mean not only logistically, but more importantly financially. The county just
voted to give the city 35, 36, or 38,000; what was it?
Alderperson Vaughan stated for the tower
Mayor Cohen stated for the fire tower but what he hasn't been able to ascertain yet is
what are their expectations for that contribution? Do they expect us now to provide free
access to all the volunteer departments in the county for this when we're putting
hundreds of thousands into this? You know, these are issues that we have to look at.
So, it's more than just a logistical, joint of services, it's making our money back or being
reimbursed for our expenses and we're reviewing the waste water situation, the
conversation has been off and on as Paulette has pointed out, we are now discussing
water, and there are other areas, the recreation partnership board is now interested in
creating more of a joint activity situation. Particularly, this is coming from the Town of
Ithaca reps but they seem to be speaking on behalf of the rest of the Board of Reps,
right now the Rec. Partnership contracts with us for this service, they would like to see
more of situation that we have going with the waste water plant. So, there's alot that's
going to be going on in this area and it might behoof us to put together an act to work on
that.
Alderperson Sams stated that was the reason Mike Lane asked her to come and see if
the city was interested in doing something and if they were spinning their wheels to
even think about us and talking with us. That was what she had said that she knows
that Joanie had been sitting on the recreation partnership had been doing some work,
that we weren't separating ourselves, that we would be interested in communicating and
doing some talking with them about how to look at that and they also brought up at that
time and she doesn't know if it was before Alan came or after he came in, but that the
school district needs to be in on this conversation also, so that they're very much aware
of that and that was where we had had that conversation. So, they are interested in
working with us. But, also making sure that the school district is in on what it is that we
have to do with the youth.
Mayor Cohen stated so the perspective of access to facilities if not a financial
contribution but facilities access would greatly enhance our program offers.
There is another side, by the way, Sam Cohen has started some informal discussion
about Cass Park and possibly Stewart too with the county, he is not even sure who he
is talking to but before he continued, he wanted to get a sense from this body as to
whether or not you were interested in some sort of asset turnover essentially; having the
county take over what some consider to be a county wide assets, Cass Park and
Stewart Park.
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that she'll ask the same question, as she asked about
the merry go round, why wouldn't we want to do that?
Alderperson Vaughan stated that we've got all the liability and all the expense and we
don't get much
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that it sounds like a great idea.
Mayor Cohen stated that he won't tell you that it will happen, but before we move
forward on it, he would want to break this issue up so that everyone is informed okay,
and to make sure that we have the appropriate input.
City Controller Cafferillo stated that many of those areas, it depends on what they
expect the shared cost arrangement to be. If they want to take over the management
but expect us to still pay the amount that we're currently paying, that's a question for the
park. If they expect us to still pay what we're currently paying, the other municipalities
to pay some amount and they would take over the management that's substantially
different than them taking it over and the city tax payers paying 23% of the cost of the
operation and maintenance and operation of the parks. You have to get the whole
picture.
Alderperson Vaughan stated that she guesses what should be our next step because
she thinks that this is a good forum for that kind of thing, for us to move forward and the
question is do we have a committee to think about how we put this together, do we,
some of us probably need to go talk to Mike Lane or many of us need to talk to Mike
Lane. Are there other, it sounds like there are issues involved, wider than just the
county.
Alderperson Manos stated that she's not sure she would look at it that way. She would
think that a committee on intermunicipal activities would be a committee of council
members who look into each one of these areas. So that at times, they're speaking with
the school district, at times they're speaking with the county, but really that it's our
interests, something that some little group that is representing our interests with all
these. She doesn't think that it is something that needs to be a combination committee.
Alderperson Vaughan stated that she wasn't proposing that it combine in any particular
way, but rather that we simply got that information from him on how, but it sounds to her
like we might actually be able to do this, this of course is the mayor's call, but it could be
one of the standing committees.
Mayor Cohen stated that is a possibility, but in the meantime, council has the right to set
up the committee earlier.
Alderperson Vaughan stated sure and we certainly could get that moving. She thinks
that once we finish with budget we have a couple of months where everything is
relatively quiet and perhaps that's a good time to do it. How would council like to go
about doing it?
Alderperson Spielholz responded that it is hard for her to respond since this is all very
new, she would have to think about it.
Alderperson Vaughan stated that she would like to suggest that perhaps we set up
maybe three of us that worked on that particular problem and came back around the
first of November with some thoughts on the subject and what she would like to suggest
is that it would be Paulette and Diann and herself. Would that be a reasonable group?
Alderperson Manos stated that she will be gone until October 3rd, so if the meeting is for
October that would be great,
Mayor Cohen stated to point out to Pat that she has a slew of budget hearings in
October.
Alderperson Vaughan stated that was right, maybe we'll have to do something in
November instead. Is there somebody who would really like to do this who has been
left out? She doesn't mean for it to be an exclusive process but she knows that Diann
you've done some thought, has some thoughts on it and Paulette.
Alderperson Manos suggested Alderperson Spielholz.
Alderperson Spielholz stated that she will speak for herself, she is actually doing a
bunch of things that adjunct to them on another level, so she doesn't want to spread
herself too thin to be
Mayor Cohen stated that as much as he is reticent to volunteer, it's probably
appropriate given the information that he has access to and what he normally, in
addition to who you've already said, not as a substitute.
Alderperson Vaughan stated that let's plan, in October we will figure out when we're
going to meet in November. Is there anyone else who would like to volunteer?
Alderperson Vaughan stated that she supposes that we've sort of disposed of this
particular issue, and the next question has to do with some of the things having to do
with basic structure. This year on program analysis we really had one thing on our
agenda, for most of the year and that was to learn what departments do and why they
do it and would like to think that most people got an awful lot laid of them. Next year, we
really have to get into a lot more detail and frankly alot more philosophical question,
these are some of the questions that came up that she pulled out that she thought were
questions that related to basic structure or departmental reorganization or basic
processes and things like that. For example, assessing true program costs, you know
the prosecutor's office is always saying geez, we make so much money for the city
because we get all these fines and the police are saying wait a minute who wrote the
ticket? So, what are the true program costs of that whole traffic fine program? Clearly,
the way they talk about them is that each of them,
City Controller Cafferillo stated that they all get a portion of it, but it's distributed
proportionately.
Alderperson Blumenthal asked why do we care, she means tell us why do we care if we
know that?
Alderperson Vaughan responded why do we care? Because, it might not be
intellectually fascinating but if we find that we have a huge effort on it and that it is, it
has been in effect losing us money then we make a decision that irregardless of the
income, we might make a quality of life decision on that but that' different.
Mayor Cohen stated what if council decides to prioritize programs and deems one
program to be less of a priority and it turns out that program is self-sufficient, it doesn't
make sense to eliminate the program if it's paying for itself. So that's very useful
information, it's useful information for you to know how much the general fund is
subsidizing a particular program versus other programs
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that she thinks that it is valuable to know that, but not
about every program that we do.
Alderperson Sams stated that she doesn't know if she wants to make a decision that a
program is self-sufficient, her thing is, is it what we need? And is it addressing the
issues that we need?
Mayor Cohen stated first you look objectively at prioritization and then you might decide
that something is lower priority but then you find out that it's self-sufficient, so why would
you cut it?
Alderperson Hershey stated well, because of what Pat said, you can look at these
programs from three different vantage points, he has never heard an auditor come into
a government who didn't explain how he or she gets back $6.00 for every $1.00 that
was spent on the and he just thinks that we should give them a million dollars and we
could make six million! Of course, that's not the case. Each of these programs can be
looked at different ways and you can make something look self-sufficient and yet we
can look at it a different way and see that it's not self-sufficient at all.
Alderperson Taylor stated that she thinks we need to prioritize first, that's something we
did not do this year, we learned a great deal about programs and what each department
does within the city but she feels like she is still going into this budget not knowing what
the city's priorities are, she knows what hers are.
Alderperson Vaughan responded that she will have to bring those to this years hearing.
Alderperson Taylor stated that she thinks that when we begin looking at the
restructuring of the process for next year, she thinks that our first thing is to sit down
and say okay, these are our priorities. And, then begin to look at programming and cost
benefits in order to make good decisions.
Alderperson Vaughan stated that setting priorities is an interesting thing because we're
10 people and we bring different lists and some of it is give and take but it could be a
very interesting function. Are these the kinds of questions that people want to ask? For
next year?
Mayor Cohen asked which questions?
Alderperson Vaughan responded there's a package went out,
Mayor Cohen stated no, no, but what page are you looking at?
Alderperson Vaughan stated that it's either the first or second page, questions for next
year on basic structure reorganization. She simply pulled a few out of the ones that we
got from, the question is, is this a fruitful line of inquiry and if it is, should we pursue it
next year? That's one of the recommendations from this committee is what we see as
its future. If all we did in the committee is the only we defined the committee is as a
committee that found out what departments do, well, we sort of have accomplished that
goal, but if in fact we defined it as a more fundamental examination of what the city is
doing and how we look at things, then these are some of the questions probably we
need to look at, but one of our recommendations should be then if we see these as the
proper scope that we want to follow up on this line of inquiry. So, for example, avoiding
duplication of services. How do we avoid duplication of services between departments
or is duplication necessarily a bad thing? If GIAC provides that service can the Youth
Provide it but to a different group of kids?
Alderrperson Manos asked if we could not clump these and create two or three sub-
committees to look into each? Two or three of them and meet together as a group to
discuss them specifically? So that it would be a little bit different format from what we
have this year, but
Alderperson Spielholz asked if this wasn't very much related in someways to the
database question that we're also asking of how we can create a city database where
it's accessible for both input and output from every department so that the fire
department has access to what's happening in the building department and the police
and prosecutor's office and also looking at things across the way, we were talking about
that as a priority that the city is going to be looking at for the next few years also and
she sees that sort of fitting into what you're saying here, it's not so much duplication but
to start out with but really having access to information and having clear access to it; not
have to input it more than once.
Alderperson Vaughan responded that is certainly one thing that we need to look at as a
priority is one of the things that might be looked at but that being pursued fairly
vigorously now by a group within the city.
Alderperson Spielholz stated that she knows, she is not trying to say that that is
something that in itself hasn't been done, but that could be worked into what that
committee is finding could be something that maybe could be expanded into this, so we
know where we have duplication or where we need to have more overlap.
Alderperson Taylor stated that she thinks too we need to look at how we can begin
getting in put from the community as a whole in terms of what they would like to see the
city doing, what do they see as being the top of their list as far what the city provides.
She knows that we had looked at the survey tool that Chief Wilbur had shared with us.
Alderperson Vaughan stated that the B& A Committee is actually following up on that.
Alderperson Taylor stated that she thinks that would be a very important tool to bring
back to this type of process, she thinks that if we're making decisions on this grand of a
scale, we need to have what the citizens of the city are saying to us.
Alderperson Vaughan stated that B & A is actually following up on that. There is a
professor who has now expressed interest in helping us do that; although on a
somewhat smaller scale than Lokeland did, she said, her comment is "well, if you're
going to use her graduate students, you're not going to get the high quality finished
product that Loveland got." But let me talk to you about what you could get so, she
needs to call her back. She called Pat on Friday and
Alderperson Blumenthal asked what department is this?
Alderperson Vaughan stated that it's now called PAM program - Program Analysis and
Management - Policy Analysis and Management. Human Ecology.
Alderperson Hershey asked what they're proposing to do?
Alderperson Vaughan stated that back in when Brian Wilbur from the fire department
came to speak to us he had a copy of a survey that was done to the citizens of
Loveland Colorado and it was a pretty interesting document which basically said, hey'
how are we doing? You know the Ed Koch question and b. what do you want us to?
And, the people told them. B & A decided at that point decided that it should follow up
and see if there were ways that it was a pretty good idea but there was no way that we
could afford to do/ spend like cash money for it. So, we went to see if there was a way
that we could exploit people from Cornell and it looks like we found somebody that
might be willing; now, we're going to have to dance a little dance around here to figure
out what they do and what they could get and what we couldn't get and what we would
spend and what we didn't, but that is a first pass. It would happen in the spring
semester.
Alderperson Sams asked if we had an experience like this before?
Alderperson Blumenthal stated like what?
Alderperson Sams stated that she remembers people from Cornell did when we were
hiring the chief and
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that was different Diann, yes, that's, that was concept
mapping.
Alderperson Hershey stated that he was going to say that (something - hard to
understand) even for free because there was an ILR group that did a study of lake
source cooling, he won't comment because he involved except to say that it was very
amateurist and silly and he has seen other products like that come out in the five years
that he has been around so we should really know that whatever we're getting is
legitimate even if it's modest.
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that it depends, Cornell does, the faculty does alot of
work in various communities around here depends partly on the professor and the level
\./ of interest and the level of supervision that the students get, so she doesn't know who
Pat is talking with, but, it bears broad range, we could get something that would be very
high quality. Just depends.
Alderperson Vaughan explained that the one thing that we do have going for us is that
there is in effect a template that is we have the Loveland survey and so there is a sense
of what we're looking for. So, the holy graille was held out there, but that's the next step
has to be for one or more of us to sit down with this professor and find out what she is
the first say caviat, it's not (hard to understand) she's the first one to say hey even with
grad students it ain't perfect and so we'd have to find out where we were. What we
could get for that. That, she thinks, is a really, that's already an ongoing process and
that could help us in the priorities if we were trying to do some prioritization. Okay,
where do we want to go with this basic structure? Anything?
Alderpersons Sams stated that whoever you're going to sit down with, this professor,
and whoever you talk with when they do it, to make sure that they get an overview of
the city, that it's not just a spot here.
Alderperson Vaughan responded absolutely.
Alderperson Sams stated that she thinks that was why we ran into some problems
before.
City Controller Cafferillo stated that he thinks that we have to emphasize the
departments. We still, we had departments break their activities up into programs,
estimate the allocation of their personnel services and other costs as it relates to those
programs. But, to actually show what the cost is for a given program, they're going to
have to allocate their costs on an actual basis. There are still departments that want to
automatically distribute an individual's time as they had originally estimated or allocated.
If an individual was broken up into five programs, 20% in each program, they want us to
cause the system to divide that individual's salary up 20%, 20%, 20%, well what's that
going to tell us? That's going to tell us that the computer can divide by 5 and spread the
cost as we had originally estimated it doesn't tell us anything. What we need is for them
to keep documented time records so that they can input the actual time allotted to that
program or the actual time that was incorporated and take the attorney's office for
example, and they had said at one point that 75% of Pat Kennedy's time was
attributable to negotiations during a given year. What was that based on? The
negotiations may take one or two sessions, they may go to arbitration, so there might be
a 5% allocation and there might be a 50% allocation. A given grievance may take one
session and it make take 5 sessions and go to arbitration so there's a market difference
between what you may estimate and what the actual time involved is. And, for an
accurate picture to be provided to council, departments have to keep that record. And,
they have to input their time on a weekly, bi-weekly, monthly basis so that you can show
at the end of the year, they estimated that the time was going to be this, the actual time
was this, is it actually worth continuing that program in its existing state or current state
or should it be adjusted or eliminated. That's the only way you're really going to know
u what the real cost is.
Alderperson Sams stated so what you're saying Dominick is that what we probably
should have been doing is saying to people keep track of your time this year, give an
estimated time, at the end of the year next we can compare them to see what it's going
to be.
City Controller Cafferillo stated correct, you estimate it for 1999, we should actually
keep records during 1999, we don't want to keep every ten minutes, every fifteen
minutes, the planning department, for example, keeps track of its time and you can do it
in half hour or hour increments and they say well you can get a phone call, that relates
to something else, you use your primary effort if you're working on economic
development and that's your focus and you get a call relating to something else, that
hour relates to economic development. You can use some reasonableness in how you
do this to come up with a real.
Alderperson Vaughan stated that the building department is doing it too, starting mid-
year they began to do it. She thinks that it could be that some of the other departments
are doing it also.
City Controller Cafferillo stated that the way to do it effectively is to do it weekly and to
do it in conjunction with the payroll. And, as we train departments to actually input their
own payroll documentation, we're trying to work out a method that they can easily
distribute amongst four or five programs each individual, each week.
City Clerk Holcomb stated that she thinks the departments that are doing it; like
planning does it, but they're support staff don't do it, and she doesn't know about
building, but in her office that would be a complete nightmare for her and she is not
saying that she can't do it, but if she ever got to spend a half-hour or an hour on one
project, that would be great day for her.
Alderperson Spielholz stated that by definition your office is very, very different from
anything else because your project is the whole thing.
Alderperson Vaughan stated that your project is people who walk in.
City Controller Cafferillo stated that is not necessarily the case when you look at public
works, when you look at the building department or you look at the planning
department, or when you look at the youth bureau, it is reasonable to break time,
distribute their time and to record it and keep track of it by program. It's a, it's reachable
as long as it is done in a reasonable manner.
City Clerk Holcomb stated that it would have to be a daily thing for us, and we would
have to decide exactly what sort of break ups you want.
Alderperson Blumenthal stated well that depends on whether, if you did licenses that
would break down as marriage, dog,
City Clerk Holcomb stated that we could go back at the end of the day and count out
how many licenses we did and we know how long it takes to do it and that type of thing,
we could do that, her concern is that she doesn't want it to get too nit picky so that we're
counting every phone call, we're doing that sort of stuff, so that we're taking more time
tracking this
Alderperson Hershey stated that this smacks as sort of a cya school of accountability
which is you can justify what you're doing by starting backwards and he is wondering as
he sits here and listens to this, what percentage of your time is spent calculating what
percentage of your time you spend on things? 5%, 3%
City Controller Cafferillo stated that if you want to know, what a program actually costs,
that's the only way you're going to find out, by an individual projecting in advance how
long it's going to take to perform something that has a variable length of time associated
with it, doesn't tell you a thing. It tells you whether that person has a good imagination
or not. He would like to have somebody tell us how long it's going to take to negotiate a
contract. We don't know when we walk in the door, or settle a grievance, or it varies.
Alderperson Hershey stated that is his point.
City Controller Cafferillo stated that's why you keep track of it and you relate it to your
estimate.
Alderperson Hershey stated that's his point, there are certain built in obligations and
costs that are not going to be, a significant percentage, public works has to do certain
things whether it's shovel the snow or fix the pipe when it breaks or whether the city
attorney and HR has to negotiate contracts, so we're only talking at the margin, with a
certain amount of effort that can be put into one direction or another and he is
wondering if people spend all their time saying, Mariette came in with her statistics and
he teased her because it adds up to 100% it was to a point that he thinks you can get a
little silly about this.
City Controller Cafferillo stated that it's a basic structure, if you set up a program
structure, the only way that the program structure is going to be meaningful is if you
monitor what the actual costs are. Take for example, the reconstruction of Mitchell
Street, or the reconstruction of third street. If you want to know how much it costs, how
much equipment was utilized, how many staff hours were involved, you have to keep
track of it, you can't just project and then look back and say well I think we did about
what we projected, what would that tell you. It doesn't. We should know exactly how
many days were involved, how many days equipment operators worked on it, or how
many days laborers worked on it, how many days the individuals applying the surface
worked on it. These are reasonable things that you keep track of. This tells you what
you are telling us you want to know; otherwise all you're going to get is estimates that
actually come out to coincide with the original projections. Now, if that tells you what
you want to know, let us know.
Start new side
Alderperson Blumenthal was speaking - at the end of the day, she could write down in
general categories what she did on different projects.
Alderperson Hershey stated that he just thinks that it tends to be a little self-serving and
he is suggesting that what Pat was saying before about priorities is much more to the
point that doing Third Street instead of Fifth Street is a question of priority. We know
essentially what the budget is for that agency and we have to make a decision with
them as to what their priorities are.
City Controller Cafferillo explained that what we're trying to do is approve or determine
whether or not they should be doing it at all, whether we should be contracting it out. If
they're doing the street and the actual cost because it's taking our staff three times the
length of time that it would take a contractor if our actual costs exceed what it would
cost for a contractor to do it then maybe we shouldn't be doing it or we should look at
the methodology that we're using to perform that task. The same thing in the police
department, we should know how many hours in general are used in traffic
enforcement. That's something that you're concerned about. There are other
categories that should be broken down, neighborhood policing for example. Other
types of services, crime prevention, special events, so that you can look back and say
.1 this is a problem, he means that we're attributing much more of our resources to these
programs than we should. We should look at the programs maybe alter or adjust them
and or adjust or curtail them. That's the only way you're really going to know. In the
youth bureau we look at how many people are served in a given program. How long it
takes, how many staff hours are involved, how many program dollars are involved, and
then how many individuals did we reach and what did we do. If you're going to really
evaluate effectiveness, it's the only way you're going to do it. The programs have to be
taken to the next step.
Alderperson Taylor stated that she agrees to what Dominick is saying but she thinks
that what we need to do is figure out exactly what questions we want to have answered
and then begin targeting those departments that we know can formulate something like
this and it makes sense for them to do it. If we're looking at the police department, if
we're looking at the planning department, if we're looking at the building department, to
have every department begin gathering statistics like that she doesn't think would be to
our advantage and she doesn't think that it would be to the city's advantage, but she
thinks that we do need to begin formulating those questions on what are we spending
alot of time on, what can we contract out and then begin to look at the departments that
we can start gathering those statistics for us. She doesn't think doing it city wide would
make a great deal of sense.
City Controller Cafferillo stated that at this point that is the policy that has been
established. Because every department was requested to go through this task. Now, if it
was just to determine what they normally do, or what they expect to do on a consistent
basis, tell us that and then certain departments we won't require that they maintain the
information.
Alderperson Blumenthal stated so every department, every employee is keeping
records now, Dominick, is that what you're saying?
City Controller Cafferillo responded that if they're going to continue or effect this
program system, it's a program accounting method. You project what you feel you're
going to spend in a given area and then you keep track of it, determine whether or not
you're spending that or more or less. That's the method.
Alderperson Blumenthal stated, so every DPW worker, every day or whatever,
whenever, says, reports has some form? They're marking things down now?
City Controller Cafferillo stated that's what we want them to do now.
Alderperson Blumenthal asked if every youth bureau employee is doing that, every
City Controller Cafferillo responded that they've been doing it for quite a while. The
youth bureau has been doing it for quite a while. DPW has been doing it in informal or
u in memorandum form, they've been keeping spreadsheets, so that they could estimate
what it costs to lay curbing or what it costs to pave a bridge, we want to make that more
u effective by making it a part of the system. So, that when they record the payroll it
automatically gets done.
Alderperson Sams stated that GIAC when they do this sometimes doesn't report their
full time because if we pay them for the full time that they reported we couldn't do it.
They're not allowed to go over a certain time, the youth bureau does the same thing.
Alot of their time is free time that they give themselves.
Alderperson Vaughan stated that you just said something that is illegal.
Mayor Cohen stated that you just said something that he can't ignore, no we can't do it,
you as an elected official cannot condone it, people have to get paid for what they're
working and so they either get paid for it or they don't work the hours, but we cannot
have people working these extra hours.
Alderperson Sams stated then she thinks that there would be the ability that you all
would have to understand that would mean that there wouldn't be some programming.
Alderperson Hershey stated that would be fine, then we'd have to make a decision as to
whether that, that's exactly what this is about. What you just said subverts the process.
Alderpersons Sams stated that it might subvert the process but you have to understand
the community that is being served there, that situations arising just don't leave people.
Alderperson Hershey stated that if you want to create some voluntary efforts, that's one
thing. But, if you've got somebody on the city payroll, that person should not be working
on his or her own time to do their work.
Alderperson Sams stated that she thinks that it's been something that's been told to
them that they can only have so many hours that they accumulate and then after that
they can't do anymore.
Alderperson Vaughan stated that as an employer, she can say to her staff, you have to
stop, she is not going to pay overtime, and I will pay you for every hour that you work.
You will have to keep track of your hours and at 40 hours you're finished. And, they will
come to her and say this piece didn't get done, and she'll say so be it. That's, she
expects you as a professional to prioritize what has to be done, but things don't get
done and it's illegal for us and we are creating a huge liability.
Alderperson Sams stated that it's hard to say stop here and it doesn't get done and
that's what she is trying to tell you,. that arises down there more times than not.
Mayor Cohen stated that when we talk about human lives Diann,
Alderperson Sams stated that she thinks that we have to decide here whether we want
to say in the middle of a crisis you know, stop.
Mayor Cohen stated that we have a situation with human lives where we have career
fire fighters who cannot offer their volunteer services because that's the law.
Alderperson Sams stated so in the middle of a rescue they stop?
Alderperson Vaughan stated no, we pay them overtime.
Alderperson Hershey stated that we fund that and if you want the city to make the
decision that certain things are prioritized that's what this conversation is about.
Alderperson Sams stated allright, then that will be the message that she will send back
to them, that you start saying that she doesn't want to hear
Alderperson Vaughan stated that but their manager has to say, allright, we're going to
go over in overtime, and therefore, we don't do this thing. Whatever this thing is. This
thing might be okay, we cut out art classes because we need the overtime for some
crisis services, but that's where setting priorities comes in. You have a budget, you have
to live within your budget.
Alderperson Manos stated that there is clue here that we're missing, a piece that we're
missing, the zero, three and six budget recommendations from each department. She
would think that you ask each department to make out
City Controller Cafferillo stated to provide alternatives that might be used to reach
those.
Alderperson Spielholz stated that she thinks there would be information there coming
from the departments themselves, as to where they would make cuts and a piece that
we haven't included.
Alderperson Vaughan stated that is true and that's a useful piece. Some of the
departments are very candid and give us honest estimates, others will say the
equivalent of well, we won't fight (Brian doesn't do this) but we won't fight fires because
that costs too much. They play games.
City Controller Cafferillo stated that having reviewed some of that documentation
already, you're getting something similar to that. You're getting x number of police
officers would equate to 3%, y police officers would equate to 6%. You make the
decision; or you're not necessarily getting the detailed alternatives that you might have
anticipated.
Alderperson Hershey stated that on the other hand, the Ithaca Night Out, there was a
fire truck on Utica Street and he is sure that those fire fighters were not there
Alderperson Vaughan stated that they're not allowed to be there on their own time.
Alderperson Hershey continued, on their own time. So, he thought to himself that night,
um, that's nice that they're here, it's a good community thing, there must have been at
least 20 people on the block who got to look at the fire truck. On the other hand, when
he then read in the paper that the fire commissioner had talked about having to close a
fire house at a certain percentage, he thought to himself, the first thing he would do is
cut out this group coming to the Utica Street.
Alderperson Vaughan stated that these guys were on ready though. If there had been
an alarm, they'd have been off.
City Controller Cafferillo stated that the fire department is an area where we have asked
them to define ready time. Certainly in his view, ready time is not a program;
maintenance of equipment is a program, fire prevention is a program, training is a
program, but ready time is not a program. So, we've asked them to define how their
time is used so that we can actually see how much of the time is productive and how
much of the time is questionable.
Alderperson Vaughan stated that what we want to say is hey, if these guys are down
there, why aren't they getting trained. Watching Seinfeld is not
City Controller Cafferillo stated that we're trying to encourage more productive time out
of the second shift, the second 14 hour shift and have an actual definition of what
happens, when it happens how long it takes and we're working in that direction. But,
ready time isn't and in the same, the police department patrol time isn't in, he thinks
you'd want to know whether it's traffic control or what it is as opposed to just waiting for
calls to come in, again ready time.
Alderperson Vaughan stated that she will, she doesn't know what, she means what, she
guesses that what she is seeing is that we have things we need to do next year and
these are some of the things that need to be done. And, we'll simply list these as areas
that we'll be studying in the next year and in some cases perhaps there are
recommendations that can, does anyone have any other things that we should add to
this or subtract? Okay, last thing. As she said, she did the proverbial cut and paste, she
sort of portioned out a variety of questions to people to do some research or at least to
give us some suggestions on where we should go with these things. Most people she
thinks don't have an onerous number but Tracy has actually sent her something back
that she is going to be gone and didn't have a chance to talk to Rick Eckstrom, does
anyone have questions about the questions that were raised, she literally took them
straight out of Julie's notes from our meetings.
Alderperson Taylor stated that she is under the Ithaca Police Department, it was really
light so she couldn't tell if that was her name or not? She is assuming that it is and then
there is one above that what does that say.
Alderperson Vaughan stated are there grants available for fire department capital
acquisitions.
Alderperson Taylor stated okay, that is her also.
Alderperson Vaughan stated that is you also, she thinks that there are four questions
that go to you. Okay? Ed, she has just a couple for you. Because you are somewhat
otherwise amused she thinks and she can't find them.
Alderperson Hershey stated three, under the city chamberlain. When is this going to
be?
Alderperson Vaughan responded that she would like to have some preliminary thoughts
when we meet next week. This isn't definitive, but she would like to have maybe a
paragraph on each. Could you come up, you're a writer. Were you here for the police
department comments? About the crime transportation and how we spend so much
money on overtime?
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that she doesn't think he was.
Alderperson Hershey stated that he was not. He's sure he can
Alderperson Vaughan stated okay, if you could talk to Rick or Barney, they would tell
you that there is an issue relating to this. Susan, there were a couple
Alderperson Blumenthal stated that she is fine. That's fine.
Alderperson Vaughan stated okay, because they were really policy questions. Okay.
Alderperson Manos stated that she won't be here next Monday, but she can certainly
speak with Julie and get around and try to come up with some recommendations. Do I
send them to you?
Alderperson Vaughan stated that would be fine, e-mail would be fine or hard copy
whichever makes sense for you.
Alderperson Taylor stated that she doesn't know if she will make it next Monday, she
has to go out of town in the afternoon, hopefully, she'll be back in time, if not, she will e-
mail those to you.
Alderperson Vaughan stated that essentially, this will become part of the
recommendations that we send on.
Alderperson Blumenthal stated send on to what? For the budget process this year or
next year?
Alderperson Vaughan stated that this is essentially to the Mayor. And, it's frankly in
most cases to late for the budget process this year although there might be some
pieces that he might be able to extract, but as much as anything, this is a framework for
how we might look at things next year.
Alderperson Blumenthal stated so if she comes back and say that we, the building
department ought to eliminate inspections for owner occupied, single family and duplex
and they could inspect rental properties every four years, it's more information..
Alderperson Manos stated that it's more information; not really a recommendation.
Alderperson Vaughan stated that she thinks that it's sort of in a gray area. It's somewhat
based on expert opinion, having heard this and her having done the research, she
would say, okay, that's it. Are there any other things that we need to raise tonight?
Okay.