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Niles mayor ‘confident’ new financial proposal will work

NILES — The mayor outlined funding Thursday for a five-year strategy to address the city’s capital needs as part of his amended fiscal recovery plan.

Members of council at the roundtable expressed tentative approval of the changes, but also expressed concern over funding for the administration’s proposals. Among them was adding a labor pool of about five new employees that could work where needed in the city and whose pay would be distributed between the departments they worked in from day to day.

City Auditor Giovanne Merlo said there is funding to back up the mayor’s proposals based on current revenue projections, but Mayor Tom Scarnecchia said the funds will come because of cuts elsewhere. He did not elaborate on where the cuts would be, but did say he also would look to save money through employee attrition.

The plan Scarnecchia spoke about will not cost anyone their job, Safety Service Director Jim DePasquale said. Scarnecchia did not confirm or deny the point.

Council must approve the amended plan at a special meeting before it can be presented to the city’s fiscal commission for approval on Dec. 21.

Thursday’s meeting came a day after Council President Robert Marino said if the plan wasn’t up to par he would recommend the fiscal commission — of which he is a member — use a rule at its disposal that allows the commission to slash all city department budgets by 15 percent across the board.

Amendments to the city’s fiscal plan must target more than a positive five-year forecast for all budgets. It also must create long-term plans for big purchases, projects and asset monitoring, the city’s state appointed fiscal commission ordered in November.

Marino said the preliminary plans he saw didn’t address a core part of the commission’s request. However, Scarnecchia said he is confident the ideas he is working on will be enough to satisfy the city’s fiscal supervisors.

Marino said if Scarnecchia addressed those capital outlay issues and long-term planning in his amendments, he could get behind Scarnecchia’s plan, but he still is waiting to see it in totality.

The proposal calls for $120,000 a year to be set aside over the next five years in the water department, which will generate a projected $900,000 more next year with a rate increase, to install the remaining 5,000 water meters sitting in the city’s swimming pool. The work would be sub-contracted out, said DePasquale. If the plan goes through, the department also will put $100,000 aside to fix or replace water hydrants, cash for water tower maintenance, vehicle replacement, special equipment and evaluation of the city’s underground water line infrastructure.

The water department is operating with a deficit more than $500,000, but with the rate increase, the cost of the proposals won’t prevent the water fund from climbing out of the red and into the black next year, Merlo said.

The general fund, one of the city’s struggling funds, would start contributing to an account that will be used to buy fire trucks. The plan calls for a $30,000 deposit in 2017, and more throughout the years to pay for the trucks, which can cost around $400,000 each.

Scarnecchia’s proposal calls for architects to evaluate all of the city’s buildings and develop maintenance plans for them over five years. The city also needs an asset management program — an evaluation of everything the city owns. The city would start the expensive process next year, focusing on the healthy enterprise departments first, thereby giving the general fund and water fund more time to improve, Merlo said. City-wide, asset management assessment could cost as much as $500,000, Merlo said, but breaking it up over the years means the hit won’t be as bad.

The city could be over or under insured because there is not an accurate inventory of the worth of its property, said Councilman Barry Steffey Jr., D-4th Ward.

To address city streets, Scarnecchia’s plan calls for a $100,000 deposit into a road improvement fund. The city would add to it over the years and get into a repaving schedule supplemented with grants and state funding.

The city also needs to start building up the carryover from the general fund from one year to the next, and council wants it to have a cash reserve of at least $100,000.

In order to make the long-term changes to the way the city is doing business to comply with council and state-appointed bodies overseeing fiscal recovery, Scarnecchia said “there will be significant cuts.”

rfox@tribtoday.com

 

If you go …

The 5 p.m. Tuesday public grounds committee meeting will be held in attorney Doug Neuman’s office, 761 N. Cedar Ave., #1.

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