Village of Mantua
Finance Committee Meeting
March 11, 2010

Call to Order: 6:30 P.M.

Roll Call: Linda Clark, Ben Prescott, Roger Hawkins

Others: Clerk-Treasurer Jenny August, Mayor Donna Hawkins.

Minutes:

• Donna spoke regarding Bob Fathauer doing work on the vehicles. She discussed it with Ed and he suggested we give Tim Wojtas the work since he is familiar with some of the vehicles. Linda noted that Bob Fathauer’s name was spelled incorrectly. It needs amended.

• Ben asked if there is a maintenance schedule for the trucks. Linda Clark said she isn’t sure if general maintenance is being done. Ben said they should pick a day such as every Monday to do a quick check. Service Committee can discuss this.

• Regarding 2010-09, Donna said Dan Banks recalls Dr. Chema saying there would not be a match.

• Donna said there was prior discussion about Jenny doing a spreadsheet for the Park Lodge expenses and wondered if she did one. Jenny said not yet.

• The name “Dina” from LaTourettes office should have been “Dino”. Needs amended.

• Jenny said at the last Finance meeting, Roger asked how much we ended up spending on our 2 year audit. She looked it up and the total was over $23,000. There was discussion about possibly hiring a private auditing company for the next one. It would be a lot cheaper. Roger asked if the cost was so high because we are on Fiscal Watch, or because of the Betsy issues. Jenny said the amount charged to investigating Betsy wasn’t as much as we thought it would be, but a lot was attributed to other Findings, such as “Then and Now” purchase orders. There were more than 60 of them, nearly all from the Service Department. Ben said the Auditor’s took a lot more time looking at things because of the situation with the Village.

Motion to approve the Minutes as amended from the February meeting by Linda Clark, seconded by Roger Hawkins, All ayes on vote.

Financial Reports:

Jenny gave the Financial reports. The Fund status at the end of February was $289,752.52. The Revenues were $180,995.27. Expenses totaled $77,994.53. There were no fund adjustments. Water and Sewer reconciled exactly, as did Income Tax, and the bank reconciliation went through with no adjusting factors. The Cemetery Fund is getting dangerously low. With Memorial Day coming, and our seasonal Cemetery employee returning soon, we will need to address this. We have spent the entire years money for Streets Equipment already. We are getting less and less money. Linda asked about Butch’s Welding payment. Are we still “Bartering” with him for paving? Jenny said no.

Motion to recommend financial reports to Council by Roger Hawkins, seconded by Linda Clark. All ayes on vote.

Legislation:

Ben reviewed the legislation that will be presented at the Council meeting Tuesday.

• 2009-67, 68, 69 should be taken off the table after the Public Hearing. Linda asked who set up the Public Hearing for 6:30? It interferes with Shade Tree. Nobody knew for sure but thought it was discussed at Council.

• 2010-06, 07, and 08 we can suspend the rules after the hearing and pass them on second reading. Donna said regarding 2010-07 she would like to change the fees for a Variance hearing. She would like to add $50 to cover secretarial fees, bringing the charge to $150 for a hearing. Ben said it should be approved at Planning and amend the ordinance in March.

• 2010-03 Resolution that $50,000 from electric company goes into street repairs. This was tabled last month. Ben thinks we should just vote it down. Linda Clark agreed. We may need the money for other things such as the next OWDA payment, or a truck. Ben also thinks the electrical aggregate is a good idea and we need to get the word out to the public. Donna said she got an e-mail from Brenda Fargo stating that a contract had to be signed first before she would give the information. Donna said Brenda attached the contract and it did state that the Village would get $50,000. Donna said we could either send the Water bills out with a notice or we could do an “all send” which is a phone call to all residents letting them know about the public hearing and urging them to attend. Ben said First Energy does grant out money from time to time, and we could check into that. Donna said she could have Christine at the Community Journal put something in to educate the public. She wants to get verbage from Brenda. Ben said to make sure it is easy to understand. Roger thought the Boy Scouts might distribute something.

• 2010-09 Ben said there was an 80/20 match. Donna said someone asked her if the funding was covered by someone else, would the Village be interested. Ben said he wouldn’t be interested. Jenny said maybe we should just suspend the rules and fail it.

• 2010-11 Resolution to adjust appropriations. Linda Clark said we should have a copy of the resolution in front of us. Jenny explained that due to low carryovers, our County certificate bounced in Cemetery, and Water Operating. Water fund has an outstanding advance of $8,000 that wasn’t repaid. Part of this resolution is to make the advance a permanent transfer since we won’t have it paid back. Linda said the Water Fund should have to repay the advance, even by making drastic cuts. Ben said we just need to clean it up so the fund doesn’t get shut down. Jenny said the only other thing we can do is reduce the appropriations by $8,000. Linda said we need to force the departments to stay within their budgets. No sacrifices have been made. Jenny said we have until March 25th to repay the advance.

Bills of Resolution:

• Linda Clark asked about line 129- Sewer electricity- why it is so much. It is over $5,000. It is an estimated bill. We have not had an actual bill since December. Jenny said they billed us exactly what we were billed one year ago. Roger said maybe our guys could call in the meter reading. Discussion ensued about replacing the seals in the pump. Ben said he spoke with the man that installed the pumps, and he thought we could replace the mechanical seals for between $10 and $200 each. We are losing $8,000 gallons of water a day. Bens said he told Ed to do it. The guy told Ben he could sell us a brand new pump for $4,500. We could have Mike May put them in. He has a Class 3 license. Roger will get the information for Ed so we can buy them and stop the leak.

• Donna asked about line 75- why is a fuel pump $3600.00? Linda said they replaced other things, too. Ben said he called the Service Manager and it was justifiable.

• Linda thought Donna had said that we would get the gas for $4 per MCF, and the current charge is over $6. Donna said she would look into it.

• Linda Clark said we need to get representatives out to go over our gas and AT&T bills to see if we can find any more savings.

• Donna asked about Line item 137- Why Ed bought 10 new meters. Jenny said he buys about 10 per year. Jenny asked if we decided to stop charging residents for new meters. Jenny thought we should gradually convert the whole Village to those remote meters so people don’t have to read their own meters. Jenny said we should provide those meters. Donna said the ordinance reads that we are going to charge the $5.00 quarterly fee for replacing meters, so we are actually double charging them. Donna will ask Michele how she reads that Ordinance. Ben said it is fair to charge them for installing the new meters. Donna said we might be able to charge for remotes, but not the actual meter.

• Roger asked about the 12 gallons of distilled water. Why do we use it? Linda said it is used for some kind of testing at the plant.

Motion to recommend the Bills of Resolution to Council by Roger, seconded by Linda. All ayes on vote.

Other Discussion:

New Truck:

• Linda asked if we are looking into replacing the 1 ton with another 1 ton. He was having the S-10 towed to Tim Wojtas for repairs. Linda said in the Service meeting, Ed said he would like to replace the 1-ton and try to keep the S-10’s running for awhile.

• Ben said according to the new Personnel Manual, Ed won’t be driving a truck home.

Auditor’s $5,000 assistance:

• We are not interested if it costs us anything.

• The Auditor’s are making too much money off us.

Grants.gov website:

• Linda Schilling will get us registered so we can look around and see what is available.

• Last month there was a 95/5 grant available, and we couldn’t get registered in time. Applications take three to six months. Grants come out on a quarterly basis. We probably missed out for this year, so we are planning for next year.

• Donna said she welcomes all the help she can get, but she will be looking as well. She does not want the Resolution to limit it to one person, or limit it to just grants.gov.

• Roger said this should have gone through the Committee first, and he has not seen a copy. Ben said we are a committee and we are discussing it right now. Roger said we should have a copy of the Resolution in front of us, and Linda and Donna agreed.

Cemetery:

• Roger suggested that maybe the Eagle Scouts could work on the planters at the Cemetery that needed sandblasted. Linda said at Service, Ed suggested that we put the Cemetery Board back in charge of caring for the Cemetery, and selling the plots. Ben said we just got a new mower, and that he is definitely not for that idea.

Boy-Girl Fountain:

• Linda said regarding the “Little Boy-Girl” fountain, Ed said it is not the original, and that the original is being stored, originally by Dave Green. He was not sure where it is now, but he will look into it. The original is worth a lot of money. Linda said we need to track it down, and insure it. Linda is going to ask Kathy Haylett about it, since it was next to Haylett’s Foods in the mini park at one time. Jenny said she heard once that it was in Tom & Ruthie Aldrich’s front yard a long, long time ago. Linda thinks at one point it was replaced with a look alike, but she is not sure when that happened.

Citizens:

• No citizens attended.

Motion to adjourn at 8:10 P.M. by Roger, seconded by Linda. All ayes on vote.

___________________________
Ben Prescott, Chair of Finance

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Jenny August, Clerk-Treasurer