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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2007 02-06 Pre Meridian City Pre-Council Meetina February 6. 2007 The Meridian City Pre-Council meeting was called to order at 6:00 P.M. on Tuesday, February 6, 2007 by President Councilman Joe Borton. Members Present: Mayor Tammy de Weerd, Keith Bird, Charlie Rountree and Joe Borton. Staff Present: Bill Nary, Ted Baird, Bob Stowe, Stacy Kilchenmann, Colin Moss, Doug Strong and Will Berg. Item 1. Roll-call Attendance: Roll call. o David Zaremba X Charlie Rountree X X Joe Borton X Keith Bird Mayor Tammy de Weerd Item 2. Adoption of the Agenda: Bird: Mr. President. Borton: Mr. Bird. Bird: I move we adopt the agenda as published. Rountree: Second. Borton: It has been moved and seconded to adopt the agenda as published. All those in favor say aye. THREE AYES. ONE ABSENT. MOTION CARRIED. Item 3. Executive Session per Idaho State Code 67-2345(1}(c) - (to conduct deliberations concerning labor negotiations or to acquire an interest in real property, which is not owned by a public agency) and (f) - (to consider and advise its legal representatives in pending litigation): Bird: Mr. President. Borton: Mr. Bird. Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting February 6, 2007 Page 2 of 8 Bird: I move we go into Executive Session as per Idaho State Code 67- 2345( 1 )( c) and (1 )(f). Rountree: Second. Borton: It has been moved and seconded to go into Executive Session. Mr. Berg if you will call roll. Roll Call Vote: Rountree, aye; Bird, aye; Borton, aye and Zaremba is absent. THREE AYES. ONE ABSENT. MOTION CARRIED. EXECUTIVE SESSION: Rountree: I move to come out of Executive Session. Bird: Second. Borton: It has been moved and seconded to come out of Executive Session. All those in favor say aye. THREE AYES. ONE ABSENT. MOTION CARRIED. Item 4. 2006 FY Audit Report: Borton: Stacy I don't know if you are going to introduce Kevin or Kevin if you are ready to go. Kevin Smith with (inaudible). Everyone has a copy of the audit and a chance to review it. I appreciate you coming by to present it. K. Smith: Thank you, I appreciate the opportunity to be involved with the city once again this year. My name is Kevin Smith with the audit from (inaudible) Bailey and just a few highlights on the financial statements that I would like to go over. First of all a little bit about the scope of the engagement as the audited - the financial statement is a full audit and the objective of the audit is to provide reasonable assurance that the financial statements are fairly presented in our material respects and also to consider the city's internal control over financial reporting to determine the audit procedures that we will perform. I am happy to report again this year as in other years that we have issued an unqualified or a clean opinion on the financial statements and also issued an opinion in the back of the financial statements on the compliance with laws and regulations as they relate to internal controls. Some observation and comments related to the Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting February 6, 2007 Page 3 of 8 financial statements this year. Once again the management discussion and analysis in the front of the report is written by management and that is authored by them, Stacy and those that she works with. We read that to make sure that it is consistent with the financial statement as a whole. The one for the City of Meridian is one of the best written ones that I have had the opportunity to read. So, Stacy does a great job with that. Provides explanation to the financial statements and also provides some charts and graphs and things with expenditures and you can kind of see where the monies going this year and give a little bit of a plan for what is coming up in the future, some of the projects. A couple of highlights in the financial statements report that expenditures were less than the budgeted amounts this year, even after the amended budget by about $5.5 million. So, that is some very prudent spending and (inaudible) management on your part. The general fund balance has a balance of about $22.7 million and of course, $2.2 million of that is set aside for the payment of the Police Station. About $16.5 million of that $22 million is unreserved and to be used for general expenditures of the city. Retained earnings in the enterprise fund equal about $179 million currently and the net income that the enterprise funds was about $21 million this year, which about half of that about $10 million is the result of donated water lines and connection assessment fees. As you also note in the footnotes of the financial statement there are several projects ongoing in the water and sewer fund, which I think we projected for the last few years as you continue to build that retained earns as net reserve to be used on sewer projects and water projects and now we are seeing some of those happening in some fairly large dollar amounts. One thing that I wanted to point out this year that is a little bit new for this coming year, there are some new auditing standards and we have talked to the Mayor about this and also with Mr. Borton, some of the new auditing standards have come out this year. There have been 11 new standards that have come out and two of them are effective for this coming year, which have a direct impact on the city's audit. Some of those relate directly to the auditors and some to management and one of them relates to the auditors, to us, as we are required to do more documentation in the work papers and receive more documentation of the explanations that management provides to us. The rest of it is more related to management and some of their obligation and some of the reason for the new standards is still kind of some of the downfall, the Enron situation where the standards are trying to get more separation between management of an entity or a city in this case and the auditors themselves. So, what they are asking is that we are required to provide or to present to you a management letter and the language has changed and they have given - before it was more of an auditor judgment where those fell and now they have given us some more description of where they should fall. If we are required to make adjustments to the financial statements or to the trial balance when we come to audit we would be required to present City Council and management with a management letter saying that is a significant deficiency or a material weakness depending on the magnitude of those adjustments. It also goes on to talk about the preparation of a financial statement so the document that you have is now - should be prepared by management or by Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting February 6, 2007 Page 4 of 8 accounting staff rather than the auditors; where before we always prepared that entire document and so they have asked the audit team to just review that document rather than prepare it. It still is a decision to be made by management or the Council on who is to prepare that. If auditors prepare that then we would be required to present a material weakness again, in a separate document. It would not be attached to the (inaudible). It would just be a separate document. I think from discussions with Stacy and the Mayor and Mr. Borton, I think that decisions have been made that management would like to prepare that document and have that separation from the audit team, which is a good suggestion. I think a management has the ability to do that in the future. Once again, I would like to thank the staff. Stacy and her group do a great job in preparing the documentation for us and are very responsive to our requests and in a very timely manner. Any questions of me related to the financial statements or the documents that we provided tonight. Borton: Thank you, Kevin. Council any questions? Bird: I have none; just another great audit and I know our staff makes it nice for you guys, but you guys also, the people that you send our here Kevin are very, very good too. I appreciate the work you guys do. K. Smith: Thank you. Borton: Okay, thank you Kevin. Stacy anything you want to add? A little more responsibility coming your way. Rountree: Mr. President just a comment on my part to Stacy and staff as well as the directors for another good year and another good job. Borton: Council, if there are no questions we can entertain a motion to accept the 2006 audit. Rountree: So moved. Bird: Second. Borton: It has been moved and seconded to accept the 2006 fiscal year audit report. Roll call? Roll Call Vote: Rountree, aye; Bird, aye; Borton, aye; Zaremba is absent. THREE AYES. ONE ABSENT. MOTION CARRIED. Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting February 6, 2007 Page 5 of 8 Borton: And for the record, we indicate that Mayor De Weerd is absent. She had to leave before we began the presentation. Thank you, Kevin. Item 5. Movie Night at the Park Event by Doug Strong: Strong: Thank you Mr. President, Members of the Council - Borton: We have your budget amendment in front of us. Strong: -- you have a budget amendment in front of you that is a new program that we are putting together right now for the coming summer months that is kind of an exciting opportunity to bring community residents to the park and I have asked Colin to be here tonight to describe the program to you since it is really his program that we are putting together and he can provide the details to you. So, I will turn it over to Colin. Moss: Thank you Mr. President, Members of the Council if you look up on the screen to your right, you will see what kind of what we are going to be getting at this summer. The screen that is in the budget amendment there, will be this 1 ,000 viewer capacity screen. It is 25 feet by 14 feet and basically what we are going to do is these are inflatable screens and so they are very portable and what we will do is we will just set up this screen in Settler's Park and invite the public to come and view a family friendly movie for free, once a week probably between June and August, every summer. We have already secured Cable One as our title sponsor for the program. They are going to be supplying us with the funds to purchase the screen. We have also secured another major sponsor with Integrity Audio Visual, who is a company that is based here in Meridian. They are going to be providing us with the audio visual equipment and labor needed for this program basically at cost. The audio visual equipment needed for the entire summer and based on a 12 show schedule throughout the summer would be about $19,000 to just rent the audio visual equipment needed. They are going to be providing it to us for about $6,000 for the entire summer. The amendment that you have in front of you is basically to approve the spending of the dollars needed to make this program go. As it says in here, the movie screen is going to be paid for by Cable One. The rest of the dollars, currently will be out of the city general fund, but I am going to continue looking for more funding options to cover the rest of those costs. The need to get this through right now is that the movie screen that we are looking at purchasing is on sale and we will save about $1,000 by purchasing it right now as opposed to waiting until we have the rest of the funding and then asking for the money. So, are there any questions? Borton: Thank you, Colin. I do have one question. The screen - you might have mentioned this is going to be purchased and then it is going to be owned, controlled by the city? Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting February 6, 2007 Page 6 of 8 Moss: Right. Cable One actually has a check ready for us right now. We are just waiting for approval. It is made out to the City of Meridian and we will purchase the screen ourselves, so the city will own the screen. Borton: The expenses that you have listed, I assume that there will be movies every week - if you were to run them once a month or- Moss: Correct. All the costs on here are based on a 12 show schedule between about the first weekend in June to the last weekend in August and so there is not set schedule right now, but it would be once a week probably on a Friday or a Saturday evening. Nary: Mr. President. Borton: Mr. Nary. Nary: Just for further information, Mr. President, Members of the Council. Mr. Baird had worked with Colin on this agreement, this sponsorship agreement and my recollection from our discussion was essentially what Cable One is doing is sort of prepaying their sponsorship costs for this program. They have no right to reclaim any costs back if the program doesn't continue to be on this summer. This is just part of their contribution to be a part and be a named sponsor of the program. But, I think the intent was for them to pay it up front and then be able to purchase this now, but the city would retain the ownership of this equipment. If I got that wrong, Colin, you can correct me, but that is what I understood. Moss: That is correct. Cable One for the money that they are providing us with, we have agreed to allow them to be the title sponsor of the program for the next - for the first five years of the program and so when you see it advertised, I mean, if this goes through and we are able to run the program, you will see it advertised as Cable One Movie Night in Meridian when we do all of the promotional stuff. That is correct. Even if this program does not go beyond the first year, we will retain the money, even though - there is more of a chance that it is going to continue on because it is almost certain to become a popular event in the community. Borton: Council any other questions? I know as you go forward there will be other expenses - set up, maintenance, supervision, concessions and perhaps other income sources as well? Moss: Right. We are looking at that - we will have a concession stand there. There already is a concessions building at Settler's Park and so we are looking at running a concession stand and so that certainly will be a source of income. As far as setup and take down, we are looking to get volunteers to help us out with that. There are several sources in the community of volunteers that would be willing to help out with this and really the setup for one of these inflatable Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting February 6, 2007 Page 7 of 8 screens, it would only take a couple of people, honestly, to set up one of these. It doesn't take very long at all. So, setting it up and then just having monitors there, I guess, the entire time is all we would really need and so the staff costs is pretty minimal. Borton: I take it you are seeking a decision tonight on it? Moss: That is correct. We would like to move forward as quickly as possible because like I said because the movie screen that we are looking to purchase is on sale for $1 ,000 cheaper than what we would normally get it at. Borton: Council what is your desire? Rountree: Mr. President I am looking at the budge amendment request and I don't see any indication for wages and that sort of thing and I have heard of setup time. I don't know if there is going to be some insurance required for gathering. So, I think there are some costs that haven't necessarily been identified and I don't see any place on this budget amendment for anticipated revenue. That being said, I think it is an opportunity to get the community together on a routine basis and not only as advertising for Cable One, but maybe advertising for things that are happening in Meridian as well, to and including the youth programs, the drug programs, the activities that are going to occur in the community in the upcoming week. So, I am favorable towards the request. Borton: Is that a motion? Rountree: I will move that we accept the Parks and Recreation request and budget amendment. Borton: I will second. It has been moved and seconded to approve the budget amendment request for the Parks Department. Mr. Berg, will you please call ro II? Roll Call Vote: Rountree, aye; Borton, aye; Bird, nay; and Zaremba is absent. TWO AYES. ONE NAY. ONE ABSENT. MOTION CARRIED. Borton: Thank you that brings us to the end of the Pre-Council meeting. We will start the regular meeting in about three minutes. Motion to adjourn? Rountree: Move to adjourn. Bird: Second. Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting February 6, 2007 Page 8 of 8 Borton: It has been moved and seconded to adjourn. All those in favor say aye. THREE AYES. ONE ABSENT. MOTION CARRIED. MEETING AJDOURNED AT 6:45 P.M. (TAPE ON FILE OF THESE PROCEEDINGS) . I r , t ~ ~ ~ .J /13 /07 DATE APPROVED