Financial Planning and Supervision meets, approves Recovery Plan

By Matt Echelberry

Inquirer Reporter

The Finan­cial Plan­ning and Super­vi­sion Com­mis­sion met on Dec. 19 to for­mally approve the updated Finan­cial Recov­ery Plan.

Finan­cial Super­vi­sor Belinda Miller gave a brief report of the plan. Rev­enue for prop­erty taxes and income taxes mostly stayed the same, and mod­est increases were pro­jected in appropriations—but there was lit­tle fluc­tu­a­tion over­all. Also, con­trac­tual ser­vices are pro­jected to have increases of 3–10 per­cent over the next five years.

Miller said there are still good carry-overs in the water, elec­tric and sewer funds, but cau­tioned the city to watch those bal­ances and review rates annu­ally to deter­mine if rate increases are needed. She said there needs to be enough of an infla­tion­ary increase so the rev­enue remains more than expen­di­tures in those funds.

With the Elec­tric Fund, Miller noted that pur­chase of power costs are built into the fore­cast. She said there has been “a lot of mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion” in recent months regard­ing those costs. How­ever, Galion assumes no risk in terms of its sources for power, includ­ing Prairie State. Con­struc­tion of the plant is fin­ished, along with all other power sup­pli­ers, and the power port­fo­lio for the city is bal­anced with some renew­able sources of energy included.

One addi­tional employee for the Police and Fire depart­ments was built into the plan. Dur­ing some City Coun­cil meet­ings, there has been dis­cus­sion of uti­liz­ing part-time employ­ees for those depart­ments as an alter­na­tive. Miller stated that there are both advan­tages and dis­ad­van­tages to con­sider in regards to part-time per­son­nel, such as pen­sions and train­ing costs.

Debt repay­ments to the Freese Fund are set to be con­cluded in 2015; the city will then be able to use money in that account for what it was intended for, namely the upkeep of the parks.

The Com­mis­sion then approved a motion to approve the Finan­cial Recov­ery Plan.

Lastly, Miller announced there was a brief­ing at the State Auditor’s office the day before, regard­ing Galion’s fis­cal emer­gency sta­tus. She said there are some issues that still need to be addressed, mainly the estab­lish­ment writ­ten poli­cies related to finances. Since the city went into fis­cal emer­gency in 2004, day-to-day busi­ness had been the high­est pri­or­ity. Now that the major issues have been resolved, the focus can move to pol­icy setting.

She pre­dicts Galion could be removed from the sta­tus late in 2013, two years ear­lier than orig­i­nally esti­mated. How­ever, the tran­si­tion to a statu­tory gov­ern­ment may also affect the process due to the change in lead­er­ship and asso­ci­ated costs.

Miller then com­mented that the City of Galion employ­ees have done a “tremen­dous job” in get­ting the city out of debt. Galion had the largest deficit of any munic­i­pal­ity in Ohio his­tory, but is not the city to be in fis­cal emer­gency for the longest length of time.

The Finan­cial Plan­ning and Super­vi­sion Committee’s next meet­ing was set for Jan. 23 at 3 p.m., at the Munic­i­pal Building.

Posted by Matt Echelberry on Dec 24 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.