The council, aided by the city manager and city attorney, spent
all day Friday and Saturday morning at the community center talking
over the future and how they can make it brighter for
residents.
The council, aided by the city manager and city attorney, spent all day Friday and Saturday morning at the community center talking over the future and how they can make it brighter for residents.
Along the way, they discussed the budget, committee assignments, the RDA’s future, strategies for business parks and auto dealers, regional issues, inhibitors to new business, a third fire station, city relations with schools, an ethics policy and council roles and responsibilities.
Out of this list came goals and priorities for 2005 that will be returned to the council for final review at an upcoming meeting.
The discussion of roles turned a bit sharp when Councilmen Greg Sellers, Larry Carr and Steve Tate said they wanted Mayor Dennis Kennedy to stop making promises for the entire council without asking first.
The budget hurdle is the need to cut $400,000 from next year’s budget, keeping on track to balance the budget by 2008, using a combination of reserves, cuts and new revenue.
At council direction, City Manager Ed Tewes proposed a plan to restructure several city administrative departments into one, which would save $100,000 but result in lost jobs or new responsibilities for some employees.
After batting the idea around for several hours, most council members, including Kennedy, decided to hold off on the reorganization.
“We decided to defer the $400,000 cuts in expenditures for a year,” Kennedy said Monday. “We’d rather use our reserves to close the gap and look at economic development and other new sources instead.
By deferring the cuts, council eliminates the need for layoffs.
“We don’t want to have that sword hanging over peoples’ heads,” he said.
Kennedy cautioned that council will take another look at city finances and staffing when Tewes presents the 2005-06 budget in May.
Next year’s gap is now expected to be $1.6 million with the $400,000 previously assigned to cuts added.
Council members did look relatively favorably upon finding new sources of revenue. Since a recurring retreat theme was “communicating with the public,” all five, including newly elected Councilman Mark Grzan, advocated surveying the public for their preferences.
Some revenue increases could come from tax increases or property owner fees to support a third fire station. Others could come from raising user fees for fuller cost recovery instead of the public subsidizing the cost of a service, such as plan checks for construction.
The city does not now charge businesses for annual fire inspections, an oversight that, Tewes said, could bring in $200,000. Most other cities do charge.
Besides the citizen survey, council plans to hold at least one Town Hall meeting, an idea espoused by Grzan during his campaign for council in the Nov. 2 election.
“The retreat was productive and we got to know each other better,” Grzan said.
Grzan, as the new kid on the block, brought a fresh bunch of ideas to the retreat including encouraging developers to preserve creeks and streams instead of paving over them.
“We decided to send that back to the Planning Commission,” he said.
His suggestions to become a charter city as Gilroy is – Morgan Hill is a general law city – and the idea to wait on building indoor and outdoor recreation centers until they can pay for themselves instead of draining city money were received with less enthusiasm. They did ask for staff to study charter cities.
The council will ask commissions – Parks and Recreation, Library, Senior and Youth, among others, for periodic workplans.
To lessen the fragmented subcommittee scheduling that plays havoc with the lives of the three members with full time out-of-town jobs and young families, council took up Tewes’ idea of eliminating ad hoc (temporary) committees and combining the multitude of committees each council member serves on into five categories. Each man chose two and is chairman of one. The subcommittees study issues and report back to the full council.
“I think the five committees are a good idea,” Kennedy said. “There will be a lot more predictability.”
Council members will serve on a committee from one to two years, rotating through, giving them longer to understand the issues.
“The new committee structure requires a level of trust, that subcommittee will bring all the information to the council,” Kennedy said.
Grzan was unsure of the new order, just for that reason, but said he was willing to give it a try.
When beginning the discussion on council roles, Sellers, who challenged Kennedy for the mayoral position during the Nov. 2 election, and lost, said he had a list of items where Kennedy “pulled away” from the council and did his own thing. Tate and Carr endorsed Sellers in the election.
On the list was telling a county agency that no more auto dealers would be built east of Highway 101, north of Condit, the site of a neighborhood rebellion against The Ford Store, plus independent negotiations over Indian gaming, Coyote Valley development, the schools and designing the centennial celebration committee.
Kennedy also named Tewes to the school district’s superintendent search committee without council buy in and has not made the nicely appointed mayor’s office available to other council members for meetings as was agreed, causing problems when Kennedy’s colleagues have no place to meet with the public except their tiny office.
At the root of the problem were the differing roles of mayor and council member. Kennedy thought they were different and Sellers, almost the same.
‘The mayor provides direction, leadership and vision,” Kennedy said.
Sellers said that was the role of all five.
Sellers said Monday that if anyone thinks he is just having an election-related problem with the mayor, they should consider why three people (Tate, Carr and Sellers) who had always supported Kennedy in his endeavors suddenly pulled away to go in a new direction.
“We must work together as a council and can’t have one member who goes off and does his own thing,” Sellers said. “This is not to nit pick over issues but to indicate a pattern that needs to be reversed.”
“I was determined not to be negative and divisive during campaign,” Sellers said, “but we must look out for city”
He suggested that council increase their personal meetings with each other, one on one, to reduce the chance of misunderstandings in the future.
Kennedy said it was interesting to watch how Grzan’s approach changed during the course of the retreat.
“Mark became a lot more assertive on second day,” Kennedy said. “He will stick to his guns when he feels strongly about something.”
At the end, the council set their priorities, with one voice.
“Everything centered around the budget,” Grzan said. “Everything we do depends on that.”
“I’m still stuck on the budget,” Tate said. “But wrapped into whole budget is the third fire station. Can we get support (from the public) to expand services?”
Kennedy expanded his list.
“My top priority is dealing with the city’s budget and economic development as the way to address the need for additional revenues,” Kennedy said. “And I do support some additional tax measure.”
Carr said “definitely the budget, especially figuring out how to keep providing services to the public.”
Tewes facilitated the retreat. No one from the public took part in the retreat.
Carol Holzgrafe covers City Hall for The Times. She can be reached by e-mail at [email protected] or phoning (408) 779-4106 Ext. 201.
