Galion Council approves 2013 budget, allows Police and Fire one new employee each

By Matt Echelberry

Inquirer Reporter

Galion City Council’s Dec. 11 meet­ing lasted just over two-and-a-half hours because of the unusual amount of pub­lic input regard­ing some of the leg­is­la­tion. In par­tic­u­lar, lengthy dis­cus­sions ensued for Ord. 2012–95 and Ord. 2012–96.

The first item of leg­is­la­tion adopted the 2013 Recov­ery Plan, which City Man­ager Gene Toy noted was dis­cussed in detail dur­ing Council’s work ses­sion on Dec. 5.

Finan­cial Super­vi­sor Belinda Miller, from the State Auditor’s office, said the only change to the plan was the addi­tion of the FEMA grant that the Fire Depart­ment was recently awarded for the pur­chase of new pro­tec­tive equipment.

Rachel Mendell

Coun­cil mem­ber Roberta Wade asked about the debt ser­vice to Amer­i­can Munic­i­pal Power that was included in the appro­pri­a­tions of the plan.

Miller responded that the line item was inac­cu­rately labeled because the debt was not ACTUAL debt, but rather the city’s oblig­a­tion for con­struc­tion of energy cam­pus projects (such as AMPGS and Prairie State). Included sep­a­rately was the actual pur­chase of power costs.

Refer­ring to the debt ser­vice for Novem­ber, Coun­cil mem­ber Wal­ter Keib asked what a line item labeled “Unit 2 — pro­rated” was.

Toy explained that Prairie State, one of Galion’s sources of power, was divided into two units while the plant was con­structed. When the sec­ond unit went online in early Novem­ber, the city was charged only for the por­tion of the month that Unit 2 was oper­a­tional and pro­vid­ing power to the city, which was the same billing for­mat used when Unit 1 went online in June.

Coun­cil Pres­i­dent Gail Baldinger asked if the debt ser­vice was for whole project or just one of the units. Toy said the line items in the Recov­ery Plan reflected the total project.

“As far as being out of fis­cal emer­gency, is that in sight?” asked Coun­cil mem­ber Cathy George.

Miller explained that, while it is pos­si­ble that Galion could be removed from that sta­tus, there are sev­eral com­po­nents that will be looked at in the early part of 2013. Then, an eval­u­a­tion in the lat­ter half of that year will deter­mine if it is rea­son­able to ter­mi­nate the fis­cal emer­gency sit­u­a­tion of the city. She added that the process for removal from fis­cal emer­gency takes sev­eral months to complete.

After the dis­cus­sion, Coun­cil passed the leg­is­la­tion for the Recov­ery Plan.

Ord. 2012–96 adopted the 2013 Bud­get. George moved to approve the ordi­nance with a sec­ond by Coun­cil mem­ber Paul Flannery.

Miller said there were two options for Coun­cil to choose from: Option 1 was the basic bud­get pro­posal and Option 2 was the same bud­get, plus an addi­tional employee appro­pri­ated for the Police Depart­ment and another for the Fire Depart­ment. (An option would need to be selected before the leg­is­la­tion could be passed.) Accord­ing to Miller, it would cost the city $953,000 for the two addi­tional employ­ees over the course of five years, if Coun­cil decided on Option 2.

Wade motioned to approve Option 1, sec­onded by Flan­nery. Wade said, “It’s impor­tant at this point in time to do some­thing for the cit­i­zens that have been strug­gling to pay the high util­ity bills…and now’s the time for us to con­sider get­ting more labor hours by using part-time people.”

Cur­rently, there are 16 employ­ees at each depart­ment. Employee salaries and ben­e­fits are main­tained through two levy funds passed sev­eral years ago, 103 and 104. Bal­ances in those accounts do not carry over year to year, they go back into the Gen­eral Fund, and if those funds are exhausted, some money from the Gen­eral Fund is used to pay any­thing not covered.

Dur­ing the Dec. 5 work ses­sion, Fire Chief Phil Jack­son esti­mated he pays out $70,000 per year in over­time hours.

Galion Police Chief Brian Sater­field also must pay over­time to cover a lack of man­power in the police force. He com­mented dur­ing the Coun­cil meet­ing that when the police and fire levy passed, the depart­ment heads promised the com­mu­nity they would try to get staffing lev­els up, but the finan­cial sta­tus of the city led to out­go­ing posi­tions not being filled.

[/media-credit] Chief Brian Sater­field explains why adding per­son­nel to the Police and Fire Depart­ments would be beneficial.

Baldinger asked if the new per­son­nel would be addi­tional employ­ees or if the depart­ments were fill­ing empty positions.

Sater­field explained that the answer was not that sim­ple. By his count, there were 24 police offi­cers at one time. After years of out­go­ing posi­tions not being filled and the depart­ments mak­ing do with what they had, each of them has dropped to 16 employees.

“I know you guys have been strug­gling to make it work in your depart­ments, but we have peo­ple who have been strug­gling to make it work to live in Galion,” Wade argued, main­tain­ing that the city should look into hir­ing part-time employ­ees for a sav­ings in employee ben­e­fits. That saved money, she said, could be used to ben­e­fit the citizens.

Fire Inspec­tor Ric Biglin com­mented that he is not against hir­ing part-time peo­ple, but the depart­ments want a full staff first, which would elim­i­nate some of the over­time. He also noted that although Galion has a lower pop­u­la­tion than it once had, the call vol­ume for fire and EMS ser­vices has grown to an “out­ra­geous” level, also true with police calls.

Miller noted that part-time employ­ees would not lead to net gains in the city’s bud­get because those employ­ees would still con­tribute to the pen­sion system.

Sev­eral cit­i­zens had some­thing to say on the issue. First was Bob Cerar, who said he felt that approv­ing Option 1 was “a step to get rid of police and fire services.”

“You’re tak­ing two of the most dan­ger­ous jobs in the city and mak­ing them harder…It’s all well and good to talk about vol­un­teers and part-time peo­ple, until it’s YOUR house on fire or you need help from a police offi­cer,” he concluded.

Brad Gib­son, a vol­un­teer fire­fighter, said that police and fire pro­tec­tion are two of the most impor­tant things in the com­mu­nity. He asked Coun­cil to make bud­get cuts in other places.

“What is the rec­om­mended num­ber of fire­men per capita and police per capita?” asked Judy Gibson.

Biglin answered that Fire is def­i­nitely “under the stan­dard” and must use over­time to make up for it. Option 2 would cre­ate two more jobs in Galion, plus full fire and police pro­tec­tion. Sater­field said the same for Police.

Board of Health Vice Pres­i­dent Den­nis Long com­mented that the Board gets a monthly report on drug over­dose deaths and EMS trans­ports related to over­doses. He reported that Novem­ber was the first time in two years where there were zero reports for either.

He went on to say that Craw­ford County is mov­ing down in the state rank­ings for over­dose deaths, which he cred­its as a result of the work of the police squad and the fire/EMS team. “I’ve been to enough funer­als of young peo­ple dying of heroin over­doses. I don’t want to see any­more,” he said.

Keib then pointed out that there are no rate increases for water, elec­tric­ity or sewer in the bud­get pro­posal. “That is giv­ing back to the cit­i­zens,” he said.

Wade argued that sav­ings in the Gen­eral Fund could be used instead to pay for street light­ing and traf­fic lights, for example.

Sater­field said that, by choos­ing Option 2, noth­ing is being taken away from the cit­i­zens. It is the same Bud­get pro­posal, but allo­cates money for the two new posi­tions. Option 1, on the other hand, allo­cated noth­ing for hir­ing part-time personnel.

Rus­sell Henkel, a for­mer fire­fighter, said: “Nobody in their right mind is going to take a part time job at one of the most dan­ger­ous jobs in this town.”

When Wade’s motion even­tu­ally came to a vote, it failed 6–1 with Wade in favor. Keib then motioned to select Option 2, sec­onded by George. The motion passed 6–1 with Wade dissenting.

After Coun­cil selected that option, it then took a vote on accept­ing the 2013 Bud­get as a first read­ing. There was no dis­cus­sion from Coun­cil at that point, but Cit­i­zen Paula Durbin asked about a line item in the employee bud­get, called “Other Pay.” She asked what the $293,600 bud­geted for it was.

Miller indi­cated that what Durbin referred to was in the packet that only City Coun­cil received, which was not pub­lic infor­ma­tion. She then answered that other pay was a com­bi­na­tion of a lot of mis­cel­la­neous items of the com­pen­sa­tion package.

Coun­cil then approved the 2013 budget.

Posted by Matt Echelberry on Dec 13 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.