Budget Hearing Minutes
Public Facilities & Audit & Control Committees
Monday, October 6, 2008, 9:10am, Room 331
PF Members Present: Beightol, Nazzaro, Park
Absent: Babbage, Kleparek
AC Members Present: Nazzaro, Stutzman, Gould, DeJoe
Absent: Cornell
Others: Deas, Jankowski George, Crow, Smead, Spanos, Gustafson, Edwards, Kelly
Chairman Beightol called the meeting to order @ 9:12am.
Mr. Deas: Welcome to the first meeting of the 2009 Legislative budget review session. Before we begin I just have a few announcements I would like to make and then we'll begin with Department of Public Facilities. There is a change in the schedule. We want to take the A fund accounts first in the Department of Public Facilities and you'll notice that the landfill is the first one to start out but we're going to move that to about 10:30 timeframe. We'll go through the other ones first and take the landfill the last part of the A fund account and then we'll have a 10 minute break…10:50-11 and then the D fund accounts and then the DM fund accounts. That's how we will proceed. You have a schedule in front of you. Also, there are 3 other documents, reports that you have. One is the breakout of the inventory, accounting inventory report and you'll notice that the Sheriff has been left blank just for security purposes. The Sheriff is going through and marking out the ones that he needed to keep secure. That's why you see that. I'll hand out an updated reported once he's able to look at it and take out the pin numbers of the cars that need to be secure. The second report you'll find the county cell phones by department as well as the cost for January through July. Third you'll have an attendee list of all the departments. Department heads (inaudible) addressing each of the respective departments. This is more for the new legislators who are not familiar with all the employees in each department. Other than that, one last item for the Audit & Control since they will be here for the whole day lunch will be provided and if you could have your menus in and forward that back to me I can get that to Kristen so we can get those ordered by lunch time. Anybody have any questions before we begin? At this time, I'll turn it over to Kitty.
Ms. Crow: I just have a couple overview comments too because we did have a couple changes in the local share spreadsheet. You probably already looked through it but I wanted to walk you through it. We broke things out by fund this year which is a little different than we've done in the past. This is particularly relevant with DPF because they do have accounts in our A general fund, D roads and bridge fund, and DM which is the road machinery fund. So the first section in your tentative budget book the fund summary is the first page and so it also makes it a little easier we think anyway. It's easier to see where we account for the transfers because we do have to have some accounting type transfers between the funds. So that summary is the first page and then DPF is program #25 in your local share spreadsheet. You'll find that starting on page 2 in the A fund and then there is a whole separate page that shows the D and DM fund accounts. I just wanted to point that out.
Mr. Deas: If I could make one more comment those that are addressing the head committee if you could speak real loud. We have a tiny microphone over here so sometimes it doesn’t pick up the voice. So if you could speak loud that'd be great. Thank you.
Ms. Crow: And then I just wanted to talk to the general format of the presentations we'll go through. In Audit & Control you'll see these for all the departments. We started with this format last year and it seemed to be very helpful and we're kind of letting the department head give the big picture overview of their department, their programs and highlight any particular areas of their budget that they would want to summarize. Of course, after the presentation any questions or level of detail you want to go into it's up to you but this will give you the big picture overview and all the presentations I intended to have them available on the website prior to today but I will definitely have them up later today so you will be able to refer back to them after the meeting today. So George I'll just scroll through if you want to talk to the slides.
Mr. Spanos: Thank you Kitty. I just want to talk about in general since everybody is making general comments about the DPF. Although it is has 7 divisions and one of them is an enterprise fund we all work together to get the work completed and we cannot see one division separated from another. With the engineers the have reduced our people from 14 and we reduced it to 7.6 and 1 of the engineering positions is shared 40% with the health department and we provide all the engineering in-house for roads, bridges, and we assist the local municipalities with engineering issues. One thing that threw out our budget for DPF we have to remember that it is tied to capital projects and capital projects are tied with the state budget. So we have to understand that the assumptions for our budget in DPF and in engineering as well it is contingent that the state will provide the same funding that was provided this year. The engineering division has pretty much all the monies through local share and the only increase we will see in the engineering division is personnel and everything else has remained pretty much the same and there are times if you go into the detail you will see that it is charged to capital projects. The federally funded projects those are the projects that are funded under the T21 safety projects and also we are working very closely with IDA for any capital projects that they have and based on the time allowed we do as much work as possible in house. Do you have any questions? We'll substitute landfill with engineering and then we'll continue the way you have it.
Mr. Edwards: That was engineering but then we'll go to go to Buildings and Grounds.
Mr. Deas: There is a separate binder in the detail for Buildings and Grounds. It's in the same section #25. The A accounts will all be in the section 25 in the big binder but they're all broken out individually.
Mr. Spanos: The division of Buildings and Grounds works
closely with the transportation and other divisions to accomplish their
goals. I have to say that the budget is
mainly based on assume that the rental properties will pay their rent and also
we have to look at the increases in the rent that we pay especially for the
North County Office Buildings because they had a rental adjustment. Also, one more thing that I would like to say
before I let Warren walk you through that we will be negotiating a new lease
with the USDA for the half portion of the Ag Center and I don’t know how that
will go.
Mr. Kelly: Our funding is mostly 3% from the rent and the
remainder of it, 97% is for money that we receive for occupancy fees for all
our Mayville buildings,
Mr. Edwards: If I may, just to give you an idea of some of
the places that we're paying rent for the Ag Center as George just pointed out
that is over on
Mr. Spanos: It is very important to keep in mind when we talk about occupancy that although some departments may find rent cheaper in other places it is important that we maintain our lease or own space occupied before we allow departments to go out and seek other space.
Ms. Crow: (inaudible) the facilities that we own if we have vacant space and somebody is trying to get space somewhere else we still have the cost to maintain our space. So if it's vacant it's not helping out the County as a whole.
Mr. Edwards: One of Warren's biggest challenges is
calculating occupancy because each one of the departments myself included get a
bill for our cost for per square foot plus per telephone line and computer
access and every other cost that you would except to be charged out we each get
our represented share per square foot or per line and so Kitty is right. When we have a situation where we've got less
than a fully occupied building that we own that means those expenses get passed
off percentage wise to all the rest of the operation and it is significant
because we do have daily delivery of mail.
We do have
Mr. Kelly: As you'll see from our local share our expenses have gone up 3.1%. Our revenue 2% and a lot of our expenses this year were uncontrollable sometimes because of fuel costs and the utilities went up. But we're trying to stay within the budget. Positions for this year are remaining the same at 26. There shouldn’t be any increase anticipated after that. Under summary of office spaces Kitty has helped us this year separate all the buildings so we have individual costs for each building throughout the county. That's an effort that she developed that's working and (inaudible) having costs itemized and broken down so we can tell what each building is costing us for occupancy space.
Ms. Crow: I know it's hard to see here but when you look it
up later we broke out separately so you can see the rate per square foot of the
spaces that we lease verses the owned property because in the (inaudible) this
cost includes rent whereas this one doesn’t.
So that's why you'll see in the rate per square footage is $7.77 verses
in
Mr. Spanos: I just want to make one comment about I don’t
know if you're familiar who is located where and so
Mr. Edwards: And the lab that's the computer learning lab across the street.
Mr. Gould: Can we get a hard copy of that? I'm sitting a long ways away from the screen and I can't read it.
Ms. Crow: Yeah and all of these are going to be available on our internet site too but I'll print out a hard copy for you.
Mr. Gould: I'd like a hard copy today while we're discussing this. Thank you.
Mr. Kelly: So in summary, our expenses we're basically foreseeing building costs as far as gas and electric and right now we haven't had anything put into the budget for any unforeseen emergencies or repairs. We're just kind of hoping we can get through there because we have to keep the budget online. Any questions?
Mr. DeJoe:
Mr. Kelly: This year there wont be any increase in personnel costs because about a year and a half ago when we put the Family Courts building into service we put a cleaner up there and we increased that and then I came over from engineering to help out. So we got to 26 and we stayed at 26.
Mr. Edwards: (inaudible) the 3%. You'll see that across the board going forward because we can only project since we have a couple we haven't settled with yet so we have a general projection over of the cost in the course of the whole budget for personnel it's 3%.
Mr. DeJoe: Utility costs you figure (inaudible) gas is skyrocketing.
Mr. Kelly: Yeah. I think last year we had projected 5%. It's variable.
Mr. Spanos: One thing that was very hard to adjust this year is because we have never had the central heating for the Mayville Complex operating the way it should be operating with the construction…now with the additional space and renovations.
Speaker Inaudible
Mr. Edwards: Natural gas this is on the natural gas, the electric.
Mr. Gould: Have you had any outside contractors and who are they and how much do we spend on them?
Mr. Spanos: We do have outside contractors for-
Mr. Gould: Can we get a list of who they are and what they cost?
Mr. Spanos: Sure.
Ms. Crow: (inaudible) maintenance contract.
Mr. Spanos: Maintenance of the elevators for example, the heating and cooling system. I can't think of anybody else but I'm sure we have others.
Mr. Kelly: Those are the 2 major ones.
Mr. Nazzaro: I just want to step back to clarify. You said 5% is what you're putting in for utilities for heating and so forth. It's all utilities, 5%?
Ms. Crow: Yeah. We took the last 12 months actual so that we could get the cost seasonality because certain months are bill is higher than other months. So we took the average of the last 12 months and increased it by 5% and that was less than actually what our utility company gave us as a projection for our costs next year. It's more than what we had in our budget for this year but less than what some of the utility companies projected out for us.
Mr. Nazzaro: What are they projecting?
Ms. Crow: They didn’t give it to us as a percentage base. They gave us a dollar amount. So I don’t have that offhand. We are right in the middle between what we budgeted for '08 and what the projected for '09. For the most part we are right in the middle there.
Mr. Beightol: Any other questions?
Mr. Spanos: (inaudible)
utilities in the north county we have National Grid but in the south county we
have the BPU and here we have Mayville electric.
Mr. Nazzaro: Because I've been hearing more like 7-10%.
Ms. Crow: Yeah. One of the things that George said we have an efficiency built in here that we haven't…we have seen our bills as of late lower than we budgeted but that was expected in the sense in that we have a more efficient system right now. So we felt comfortable going with a little bit lower than what they gave us at their projections.
Mr. Edwards: For the newer legislators that's because we just completely rebuilt our heating and air-conditioning systems. So we've got a campus-wide system here that was engineered to impact significantly on the positive side on our efficiencies. Also, George and his team and Warren have been going through each of our buildings here on the campus analyzing our systems and really swapping out a lot of the older systems, controls and also these window or wall units are being decommissioned because of the capacity to handle it all through the campus heating. So that is layers of improvement we've been going through over the last couple of years.
Mr. Spanos: Most of the courthouse got renovated completely but GOB only got renovated the 2nd floor…the basement and 3rd floor and the 1st floor they still have the old units that we may come back with a capital improvement in the future to upgrade those.
Mr. Deas: Last year, we talked about a survey the energy survey. How is that coming along?
Mr. Spanos: That was a completed. They made certain recommendations that we're still evaluating. The major recommendations that they made they were for the jail that uses a lot of hot water and they recommended that we should investigate possible solar panels (inaudible). Of course the light we change to different florescent lights, more efficient ballast.
Mr. Deas: What was the projection on savings for the county?
Mr. Spanos: I have the report. I'll get you that.
Mr. DeJoe: George, that survey was that done by (inaudible)?
Mr. Spanos: No. It was done by Wendell & Associates. They represented NYSERDA in these kinds of programs and the County funded 50% of the project and NYSERDA funded the other 50%. That's what we have to look into out of all these projects that we want to do will NYSERDA substitute the 50%. If they do we'll go forward because (inaudible).
Mr. Spanos: The real analysis is that one of the stipulations we had George and I going into this is that we had to see a 10 year return on investment because before we really anty up a lot of cash to do the renovations because of course you can always improve across the board but our concern was we wanted to see a 10 year return on investment and that's some of the details being done right now. George is right. One of the significant proposals was solar use at the jail and the County Home as well because of the volumes of hot water they use there. Well the issue is with the technology that is available to us the capacity that we have is that going to be a return on investment of 10 years because of the significant outlay. On the lighting fixtures we are already under a campus wide swap of new technology for old. So as a ballast would go bad with these overhead lights we just swap out the old light with the energy efficient, more energy efficient system. So that is also impacting as we're looking through a little bit more careful analysis because since we've been doing that anyway that impacts on the overall return on investment when you look at can we get it in 10 years if 1/4 of the lights have already been switched out internally by our own courses. So those sorts of things are being analyzed because the knowledge is great of what the capacity is but the capacity for improvement we want to make sure it pays.
Mr. Spanos: One thing that I would like to mention is that we've seen in the municipal utility it is very hard to justify upgrades. In the north county it's National Grid we do not own the building. The municipal utility is basically (inaudible) justified. Any more questions? Airports. I apologize. Dave Sanctuary has put the budget together for the airports and the parks but he is enjoying himself. His son just got married out west and he cannot be here today. But he did all the work.
Mr. Edwards: He did all the work and he's a part time employee too. So it's one of those opportunities we have to get significant expertise but on a part time wage.
Mr. Spanos: When I asked Dave "how can we keep the budget on line?" He said "I'll just go more part time." So I have always joked with him no matter what he goes the percentage goes for the 24 hours. If it's 40% of 24 hours that's what we get from Dave. But I will just continue on the energy discussion we had. Some discussion has taken place because of the utilities that we pay for the lightening of the tunnel and we are currently investigating if it will be feasible to put solar panels to light the tunnel. Preliminary costs for solar panels to light the tunnel is $250,000. We are looking to see if NYSERDA will fund 50% then it would bring our cost to $125,000 and it will make it very attractive because we spend a lot of money on lighting the tunnel. It will be very practical from the point of view because specifications call to light the tunnel the same light that you have outside. So during the day that we need more light it's going to be available through solar panels. So we'll look into that. The other thing that I would like to mention about the airport is that we had a lot of projects completed through the bond that NYS passed a couple years ago. I don’t know if the state would come up with a new bond and most of the projects we have submitted and we just got word this morning that we have been approved for more projects but I don’t think that we can request more funding if there is no new bond for the state. The reason I'm bringing it up is because we have the HVAC unit that they are rooftop units at the airport and they're 12 units and we spend a lot of money on maintaining them because they are about 20 years old. So they are coming up for replacement and one has been decommissioned and we have put it as a capital improvement for next year. Our recommendation would be to go on a 3 increment cycle because of mobilization for the contractors and we will get a better price.
Mr. Edwards: there are 12 all together and if you picture the airport complex each one of those buildings has 2 or 3 rooftop units and the idea of having to bring a crane in each time you're going to swap out one of the units which are about 25 years old which have really reached the end of their lifecycle the question is do you hire that crane out, have the crane come in for each individual unit or do you go ahead and anticipate that the machinery being machinery at the end of their useful life you do one building at a time for example and do 3 at a shot? But they are costly as you can appreciate. George I don’t know what our estimate was per unit.
Mr. Spanos: $25,000.
Mr. Edwards: So you start thinking about that and that's a real cost. That's what we're looking at right now and part of our request is to do a 3-year cycle.
Mr. Beightol: Does that $25,000 include the cost of the crane every time?
Mr. Edwards: Yes.
Mr. Beightol: How much of that is the crane cost? I mean if you have to replace these 3 or 4 years ahead of time you're losing money too because the new ones are more efficient.
Mr. Edwards: It's a balancing act and how do you pick which ones to do first. I guess this year you start with the one that has died already and that series goes and then you move towards the other one and try to keep nursing those along into the 2nd and 3rd year.
Mr. Spanos: Mainly the funding comes from local and we get some funding from the airlines but we have currently Gulf Stream and we're fortunate that Dave negotiated a lot better terms than we had with Colgan and –
Mr. Edwards: It was a significant work on Dave's part
because we increased the monthly rent from $900 to $1500 per month and we also
increased the landing fees and I don’t know if that's the technical term or not
from $4.50 to $6. So each and every time
a plane lands or takes off appropriately we're getting a little bit more
money. That started October 1st
with
Mr. Stutzman: Do you have the estimate on that airport tunnel just to come back to us with the cost (inaudible) for the tunnel?
Mr. Spanos: $40,000 but we have made some adjustments so I'm not sure. (Inaudible).
Mr. Gould: On page 217 in the long book it says other contractors 4590 and actual expense last year was $31,000 but the amended budget was $142,000 and actual expense is $83,000 and the tentative budget is $12,000. Can somebody talk about that a little bit so I understand why?
Ms. Crow: I'll look that up during the break for you. I'm only guessing that the amended budget would have obviously been by resolution so we'll see what that was for.
Mr. Gould: And I'd also like a list of contractors and what they do and what we spend on them for the airport.
Mr. Edwards: Kitty could you just roll through the slides
here? I think we need to stay with the
format here so we can help you walk through this. You can see the expenses and the revenues and
you can see the increase in revenue primarily from what we talked about and
George is right and I need to highlight these as we go through because each of
the departments, department heads and elected officials did a great job but you
can see that Dave Sanctuary and George brought in this budget at a -1.7% local share
despite the significant increases in costs for personnel, utilities and
otherwise and don’t think George is kidding.
Dave is stepping back even further from 3/4 to 1/2 or something. He continues to structure back his time and
yet we still get all the production out of him.
He's a real asset to everybody in
Chautauqua County but you can see I just want to note that in particular but if
you look at the next slide you'll see this as a typical as we walk through
these over the next few days but in this particular case staffing remains the
same. There are no changes in programs
or services other than the fact we've got a better partner in
Mr. Beightol: Any other questions? Parks.
Mr. Spanos: The same thing goes with Parks. Dave put the budget together and it was really with the mind that we have to keep a balanced budget and as you see 37% is local share. The other 63% comes out of the deforestation account.
Mr. Edwards: For the newer legislators we have a timbering or a harvesting format with Forecon. So all of our parks properties have been perused. We know what is there and with Forecon we have a professional management plan for our parks properties so that projecting out into the future we know how much can appropriately be harvested out of there to general revenue to offset the expenses of the parks and you can see 63% of the revenue to cover the total budget costs for parks is derived from this professional plan to manage our forestry as a renewable energy and renewable asset and then the balance is local share that comes out of the tax dollars. It's 100% option as we can all appreciate but I say that tongue and cheek because that is a significant component of our tourism dollars and I'm always amazed at the numbers of people that take advantage of our Luensman and Erlandson overlooks. We also have 50 miles of hiking trails and 50 miles of waterways that draw people as well and all of that is maintained by our staff of 3. We have 3 people doing all of that. Those are the sorts of things I think we have to focus on. We also have 3 seasonals.
Mr. Spanos: But also the 3 full time employees are not full time at the parks because in the winter months they do assist the airports with the snowplowing. They are assigned to snow days at the airport. That goes back to the comment I made before that the divisions all work together.
Mr. Edwards: Where that really comes in and ties together
which you should be aware of is that we operate, our force I say force at the
Mr. Gould: I'd also like a list of contractors and what they do and also like to point out that some of that is out of bed tax money, the parks finances. $214,000 or something. Correct?
Mr. Spanos: I don’t think it's $214,000. It's 15% so it'd be like $120,000 or something.
Mr. Gould: (inaudible) 2%.
Ms. Crow: It's $123,000 for 2009.
Mr. Edwards: There are 55 miles of waterway trail. Sorry. The other thing you'll see during the break I'll get a copy of it parks has been working with Steps to a Healthier NY and have designed a very impressive bike trail map for those who haven't seen it yet. It really is nice but that's a collaboration between our parks people and the Steps organization. That was a real plus for the county.
Mr. Spanos: Besides Forecon I don’t know of any other contractors.
Mr. Beightol: If there are no other questions on parks we'll move on to CARTS.
Mr. Spanos: CARTS as you will see there is an increase that is mainly on personnel and based on fuel prices. Comparing to last year, this year we have put an estimated price for diesel is $4 a gallon and for gasoline we have based it on $3.50. So if those numbers change our budget will be off.
Mr. Edwards: What was it last year?
Mr. Spanos: Last year it was $2.75 and $2.55 I believe. For this year.
Cross Talk
Mr. Spanos: I'm sorry. I think it was $2.55 and $2.35. Next year, we're talking about $4 and $3.50.
Mr. Beightol: You have to keep in mind that there is no state and federal tax on that gasoline.
Mr. Edwards: This is our price.
Mr. Nazzaro: It's off the state contract.
Mr. Spanos: Yes.
Mr. Nazzaro: Which does not-?
Mr. Beightol: This is that price they're projecting. We do not pay any sales tax. Sales tax is not included in that. We don’t pay that to start with.
Mr. Nazzaro: This is what you're budgeting –
Mr. Edwards: Yes.
Mr. Spanos: Our budget for fuel is estimated $4 for diesel and $3.50 for gasoline.
Mr. Nazzaro: What does that equate to say at the pump?
Mr. Spanos: $4.50 I would say.
Mr. Nazzaro: And gas?
Mr. Edwards: It's about 38¢.
Mr. DeJoe: You're talking about the state bid for your fuel. It's not at the regular pump.
Mr. Spanos: Yeah but we have our own.
Mr. DeJoe: You're bid is lower than the state bid?
Mr. Spanos: Well –
Mr. DeJoe: Compared to the pumps you're considerably lower.
Mrs. Gustafson: September was $3.22.
Mr. DeJoe: Because you hear $4 and $3.50 and you go oh my gosh and you realize that we're going with the rate that is lower. Ok. Thank you.
Mrs. Gustafson: CARTS receives federal and state
dollars. Federal is a lump sum amount
that we receive for our operational budget and then the state operating
assistance that we receive is based on 69¢ per mile and 42.5¢ per passenger
trip. So that's based on our revenue
miles and our trips that we actually have each day. We get that on a quarterly basis. User fees would be our fares generated by
either individuals boarding the bus or agencies who are paying the fare for the
rides of their customers. Keep in mind
CARTS also handles the non emergency Medicaid transportation which is a
separate budget within our budget. So
with that piece there it's 34% and our local share is 21% and also keep in mind
that CARTS is required to have a local share.
If we did not have a contribution we'd end up having to pay back money
to the state and feds. Mandated 32% and
that is basically the non-emergency Medicaid transportation that we provide and
coordinate for DSS and that is a mandated program for individuals who are eligible. Filled as of 6/20 that was just because that
was right at a time when somebody was retiring and we were hiring for that
position. Expenses are up mostly based
on our fuel increase and wages. Staffing
wise, we're somewhat adequate. We're
having some issues with hiring part time drivers right now in certain
areas. So that's a little bit difficult
at the moment and we're working on a transportation plan that is dealing with a
lot of the human service agencies in the county. We had to put that together. You passed that in July I believe and we will
be working towards coordinating transportation with other agencies in the
county that also either provide transportation or need transportation. We just had our first meeting on October 2nd
to start to work on the project. One of
the main things is to look at duplicative route service mostly between the
Mr. Spanos: It's mainly to reduce duplication and it is mandated by the federal government for us to get our grants.
Mr. Nazzaro: How is your ridership?
Mrs. Gustafson: We've seen a little bit of an increase. We're estimating about 2% for this year. Can't say exactly why if it's due to fuel prices or not without doing a survey but we've definitely seen an increase.
Mr. Nazzaro: When you say 2% what does that equate to?
Mrs. Gustafson: It would be almost 4000 trips.
Mr. Edwards: You start seeing those numbers and try to put them in comparison. CARTS is a huge operation and one of the challenges we have when looking at staffing is that we're ringing every possible benefit we can out of the existing staff and how many people do we have working in the office?
Mrs. Gustafson: We have about 15 total in both offices including our mechanics. We have 3 mechanics.
Mr. Edwards: So you're trying to run an operation where a 2%
increase is 4000 riders and we're working with and Cheryl is modest this plan
for transportation is all inclusive. You
start thinking about the numbers of vans you see out there for the Resource
Center and the numbers of adult day care transportation and then you start
laying in all the other folks that are out there with the veterans and try to
bring all those pieces together obviously it's a great job and one that needs
to be done and I want to commend Cheryl for really taking the lead there but it
is a major undertaking without any additional staff. What you're doing is asking Cheryl and her
schedulers to take more time out of their…and Cheryl being candid that her
staffing is not adequate and I would have to concur. But asking even more out of them to try and
coordinate a countywide transportation plan it's not just countywide. I work regularly with
Mr. Beightol: One question under 4090 client transportation you've got $50,000 budgeted where 2008 had 0.
Ms. Crow: The actual expense off on the right column is $15,000 for the first half of 2008.
Mrs. Gustafson: Ok. Under client transportation that actually…that's a good point because that mileage reimbursement was changed to client transportation and let me double check that but that shouldn’t be in that above number under other.
Mr. Edwards: So it shouldn’t be in 4010 but be in the 4090.
Mrs. Gustafson: Yes. We didn’t realize that there was an actual client transportation line item and we had put it there. Let me double check that. That is a good catch. We wanted to use the client transportation line and I wonder if she forgot to take that out there.
Mr. Beightol: So that should go to 0?
Mrs. Gustafson: I believe so. Yes. Thank you.
Mr. Park: Cheryl you said you're short of drivers. Most of the drivers are part time and you can only work 20 hours a week.
Mrs. Gustafson: Yes.
Most of them have to work less than 20 hours a week with no benefits and
we have a difficult time. We don’t have
so much of a difficult time in the Jamestown area getting drivers but when
we're looking at the routes that start in Westfield, Ripley, Mayville, Sherman
areas we have a real hard time getting applicants to apply and even
Dunkirk. We're having a difficult time
in the
Mr. Beightol: There are no benefits.
Mrs. Gustafson: There are no benefits for the part timers.
Mr. Park: You have to keep them at 20 hours. Do you bring them in when someone calls in sick?
Mrs. Gustafson: Well yeah. It's a total of 1039 hours a year. We can play with that as far as when they work.
Mr. Park: So 20 hours per week is the average.
Mrs. Gustafson: Yes. Just so you know that is in the Medicaid budget. That's not the CARTS budget. Just so you know. That is for client reimbursement for individuals who have their own vehicle and travel to their doctor's appointments. We'll reimburse them mileage. That is one of the cheapest ways we can do that for them.
Cross Talk
Mr. Nazzaro: It'd be a wash.
Ms. Crow: Because in the revenue side we would get reimbursement for all of it or part of it?
Mrs. Gustafson: We get reimbursed for all of it.
Ms. Crow: So it there would be no impact for the local share when you take that $50,000 out. (Inaudible) revenue calculated based on what the expense is. So when we take $50,000 expense out we're going to take $50,000 revenue out. So there is 0 change to local share.
Mrs. Gustafson: We went through most of this. We talked about state operating assistance and (inaudible) and our federal assistance was increased this year due to it's a wash but our software program that we installed last year for scheduling and dispatching there is an increased dollar amount for support, yearly support for that software program and the state is giving us that extra money. The feds are too to compensate for that. I want to point out especially to new legislators CARTS provided in 2007 over 36,000 trips for the non-emergency Medicaid transportation on the CARTS vehicles and that is a cost of $13.58 per trip and you can see there that if we were to have a private carrier be doing those same trips and CARTS wasn’t here or had to reduce service we'd be paying almost $40 a trip at the cost of $1.4million for those same trips verses the $491,000.
Mr. Edwards: So where that comes in then DSS's budget would go up by $800,000 in costs that they would have to spend beyond what we have booked with CARTS. So if CARTS were a standalone we'd be significantly challenged to justify although it's an essential service but in the thicker scenario we're actually able to save the Department of Social Services the difference between $500,000 and $1.5million. You can see where there are some significant benefits that Cheryl and the efficiencies of her operation and how that helps out across the board.
Mrs. Gustafson: We talked about the transportation grant. Any questions?
Mr. Gould: I'm on page 229 Coach
Mrs. Gustafson: We recently we are a pass through for SUNY
transportation and we were for Coach
Mr. Gould: Yes you are. We're budgeted $130,000.
Cross Talk
Mrs. Gustafson: It shouldn’t be there.
Ms. Crow: Again, is there a revenue with that?
Mrs. Gustafson: Yes. There would be revenue that should not be there either because they have changed it.
Mr. Deas: Would that also be a wash?
Mrs. Gustafson: I don’t know how that got carried over.
Cross Talk
Mr. Gould: I couldn’t hear.
Ms. Crow: I'm sorry. I was just talking about how that would have happened but we use a projection calculation when we initialize the budget system and so that took in this case the budget amount and carried it forward. Unless we zeroed it out for areas where we didn’t want to budget that amount…so that's how the error happened. So that would be a cost reduction because we didn’t budget the corresponding revenue for that line. So that would be a net savings on local share.
Mr. Gould: 2009 it would be all 0.
Ms. Crow: Yes.
Mr. Nazzaro: What was it for previously?
Mrs. Gustafson: The state operating assistance that I spoke
of that CARTS receives the per passenger per mile SUNY and it was Coach
Mr. Deas: I just want to clarify then that it would be $130,000 savings. Ok.
Mr. Nazzaro: That concerns me as we go through the budget being new now. With something like that you say the program automatically not only in here but in other parts of this budget…I mean-
Ms. Crow: We used the same the process last year.
Mr. Gould: It is very unusual.
Ms. Crow: I would be very surprised if we had this issue throughout because everyone really had to go back everywhere to and like I said this didn’t stand out because we've had this expense ongoing. This is the first year that there was a change that this program was not being budgeted but certainly we'll keep our eyes open.
Mrs. Gustafson: And when I printed out the budget I didn’t even print out that account because I knew that it wasn’t there and I didn’t realize that it would just project.
Mr. Park: I think early on you said that 21% local share in order to get any state money is that the minimum or what is it?
Mrs. Gustafson: Over the past probably 10 years it's averaged anywhere between 20-28%.
Mr. Park: What is the lowest where you can still get all the benefits?
Mrs. Gustafson: We're probably about where we should be before them requiring us-
Mr. Park: So if we went down to 15% or 18% then they would say "you're not paying enough."
Mrs. Gustafson: Right. We are able to in our annual report if we did get to a point and hopefully we try to keep getting it lower but we can also use indirect costs which are added into our annual report and they will count those too. So I always still try to get it below this 21%.
Mr. Beightol: Can you raise your user fees?
Mrs. Gustafson: We are raising them for our agencies. The state several years ago basically told all systems that agencies should be paying the fully allocated cost of the trip and not getting the same fares as the individuals boarding the bus. So we have gradually been working over the past several years to increase those rates and there is a $41,000 increase in there for agency fares for this next year.
Mr. Beightol: But an individual using your bus is no different than me. My expense is gasoline to drive my car (inaudible) user should pay a little more.
Mrs. Gustafson: And we increased our fares in 2007. We saw ridership decrease due to that. We have a lot…a majority of our passengers are elderly, low income and it's a hardship on them too. I'm not saying that we shouldn’t do it. I'm just saying just to kind of let you know what type of ridership we have –
Mr. Edwards: It's going to balance to try and make those
fares match usage because it's a very unusual thing but there is a real tipping
point because a gal I know that was a regular CARTS passenger she'd get her
hair done and then separately she'd go to the grocery store or other runs and
had to be careful and it's a delicate balance what Cheryl and her team try to
do to get the per ride pay up there high enough but not to make…you don’t want
your customers to get too efficient and start merging their trips or just not
do them at all and just basically put off or do away without the trips. So it's a real delicate balance there but
obviously moving towards a good question
Mr. Beightol: I would think with the price of gasoline it would encourage a few more of the low income to use these services instead of if they have a car of their own.
Mrs. Gustafson: And I think we've seen probably some of that. It's difficult to determine how much it is.
Mr. Park: You wanted to get into an advertising program on your bus stops and on the buses. How is that working out?
Mrs. Gustafson: We had to stop doing it actually on the outsides of our buses. It just cluttered our buses too much because we have smaller buses. When you're talking about a large transit bus it doesn’t show up so much. We kind of lost the advertising of CARTS on the bus with the other advertising and it really did not look that well and on some of our buses that are not fiberglass we were putting holes in the bus and we have enough of a rust issue with some of the vehicles we bought have state contract that it was creating more of a problem.
Mr. Edwards: And that is a major frustration because we're required to buy off state contract so a dealer gets the contract so a dealer gets the contract and the particular type of bus and you've seen the condition of them out there and it's horrifying but you're invested. You're in under that state contract…that lowest responsible bidder with the decreased emphasis on responsible I think but anyway it really is a challenge that Cheryl and her team have had to really fight with basically with a black eye. You've got a relatively new piece of equipment that looks like it ought to be at Goodman Services being crushed. If you just look on the exterior…not granted we maintain these and they're safe and appropriate but the cosmetics are as important as a lot of other things. So it's been a major challenge and one that I think received significant complaints at the state level because obviously we're not alone because that was the state bid.
Mrs. Gustafson: Exactly and also to add to that we had a significant seems to be a slow down with getting things from the state in a timely manner. We sent in for this next round of buses that we're supposed to be getting 9 of them we sent everything signed and sealed and delivered to the state in May and we haven't seen a signed contract with them back and we can't order until we get that contract. We continually call and ask when.
Mr. Edwards: That's one of the techniques the state has employed to attempt to balance their budget. They have the obligation. We've lived up to our end and across the state counties have experienced where there has just been a failure to deliver on their part because they bank the money. They're holding on to the money and dispersing the funds as required (inaudible) appropriate trying to hold on to their money as long as they can. So we've been treading water in this area and a variety of other areas because of it.
Mr. Spanos: It has a negative effect because our value of our buses goes down and also we have to spend more time and effort maintaining the buses that we have.
Mr. Stutzman: You're Medicaid calls are prearranged. They're scheduled. Is there a way to work in scheduling for regular ridership? You're at 4000 riders a year you said?
Mr. Edwards: a 2% increase would be 4000.
Mrs. Gustafson: That would be the increase.
Mr. Stutzman: How many riders?
Mrs. Gustafson: About 180,000 we did last year.
Mr. Stutzman: I'm wondering how many of your buses are on (inaudible) exclusively to that (inaudible). I've seen CARTS buses a lot of times empty.
Mrs. Gustafson: What you're seeing is a couple of different
things. We have 3 types of service. We have the fixed route service. There are obviously peak times and non peak
times. We have rural route service and
again the same kind of thing. You're going out to
Mr. Edwards: That's also why you'll see that CARTS bus
parked at the
Mrs. Gustafson: Sometimes things don’t line up exactly as you have them scheduled.
Mr. Spanos: And we looked into buying vans but that is not allowed.
Mrs. Gustafson: We can't claim the state operating systems if we buy the vans. The other thing you could be seeing too is at certain times a day if the buses are coming from base they're going to be empty going to their first stop or back at the end of the day or to and from their lunch time. So you're going to see empty buses.
Mr. Stutzman: I'm sure it's hard.
Mrs. Gustafson: It happens. I get that question all the time.
Mr. Edwards: It is a red flag and I get that regularly and appropriately so with taxpayers and others who call me and say "what is the deal? All I see are CARTS buses driving around burning up diesel?" But it is an appropriate question.
Mr. Stutzman: Did we do a good look at privatization this year again?
Mr. Edwards: We looked at…I'll tell one of the first things that happened 2 years ago I had a guy whose friend was a partner with Laidlaw. He said "I can guarantee you that you can do away with that whole CARTS operation. Laidlaw will come in and run it." Cheryl knows as I pestered her like crazy practically for the whole first year because they'd ask for the first statistic and the next statistic and so on and right down the list. I don’t think there was a number we didn’t give them. I think we finally said "here is every calculation we've ever had with CARTS. I know this guy. I'm sure he sat right down with the guy and said "here is the whole operation. Can you do it better?" We never heard back from him because what they did was they did all the analysis and realized what makes CARTS work is that difference between the medically necessary and the DSS basically costs and they'd have to be charging $30 a trip to get that done and they just can't do that in the private sector. It's that blend and that's why this comprehensive plan is so important. It's taking this blend a huge step forward and that's saying not just CARTS and not just DSS but then we're going to talk about the Resource Center and the Veteran's and all the rest of them to really kind of start to blend it even more to up the volume. It's something we regularly look at. So far we haven't had any takers.
Mr. Beightol: Any other questions?
Mr. Gould: Just the contractors you have…can I have a list? If I could have a list –
Ms. Crow: (inaudible) contractors that we have like for an ongoing specific regular service or if we have a repair and we're going to send it out? There are an infinite number other contractors. The ones we have a service for that they perform a regular monthly service…
Mr. Gould: Yeah. These people have in-house mechanics and I suppose if something major goes like a transmission then it is sent out and I just want to know how much and where it's going.
Mrs. Gustafson: We also send out our body work.
Mr. Spanos: Or radiators. Our people cannot fix radiators. You want a list of all these contractors? Because we usually have them countywide.
Mr. Gould: Right. For everybody.
Cross Talk
Mr. Spanos: And I've been very involved with the radiators because we wanted to stay local but no local people will do that. There are 2 but they don’t want to contract with us. We have tried our best to keep it local.
Mr. Deas: Landfill is under environment. It's tab 24.
Mr. Spanos: The landfill as we all know is an enterprise fund and it's basically paid out of user fees and Pantelis is going to make the presentation. One thing that you are all familiar with we are working on the landfill gas to energy project and hopefully that will come into fruition in 2009.
Mr. Edwards: We'll walk you through the slides just like we did with the other ones for consistency and really to begin the discussion and then move on to detail and other things as we go forward.
Mr. Panteli: We fully fund the operation as you can see 100% with tipping fees.
Mr. Spanos: It's not really mandated but it is required because it's a place for people to throw their refuse.
Mr. Edwards: We had a debate over this particular slide on how to show it but the reality is we have a need ourselves at the county to dispose of materials and so do all of our businesses throughout the county. So we're listing it as a required obligation although we could enter into a debate here but the reality is that the state-
Mr. Panteli: The state requires us to (inaudible) solid waste management for the entire county and the landfill is in the state plan. We have 39 employees full time, 2 part time. In the summer, we have 4 seasonals. The budget is (inaudible) increase.
Ms. Crow: I just want to point out too because it is an enterprise account here there was some confusion last year when we were using the standard format for the slides that they list the local share but really the enterprise does not have any impact on the local tax levy.
Mr. Edwards: Kitty could you back up a slide there. You'll see down at the bottom the other note on #1 there. Could you walk through that Kitty on the 4 seasonal workers how it was set up there? In '08 we didn’t have those listed.
Ms. Crow: The way we budget for seasonal workers is usually by a lump sum dollar amount. They don’t actually get entered into the position module that counts the number of full time workers. It shows up as though they have 4 in the system but it is really a lump sum dollar amount that we budgeted for.
Mr. Edwards: That was something we tried Kitty and I working on the budget last year was we didn’t have a really good way of presenting department by department their seasonal workers. This is OFA and every other department that we have them in too. So this is an effort to get more specific in showing where these seasonal workers are working throughout the system. There will be some changes as we go forward. We're trying to get a better description on an ongoing basis of where our seasonal workers are.
Ms. Crow: And that comes up and we're talked during the budget status reports because at whatever given time of the year we do have a seasonal worker on staff and they'll show up as an account of 1 for that month and they are full time workers when they are employed over a 3-month period but it'll appear for that 1 month that they're over their budget by 1 but it's really because that's the month that the seasonal worker is there. So it's just the number of employees on your monthly budget status. This is a good example of where we have a little hard time sometimes lining up the way we have to budget something and the way we can process reports throughout the year.
Mr. Beightol: But you've cut that amount of money in half roughly.
Mr. Panteli: No. That was a computer error. When you put in 4 seasonals the computer last year in last year's budget figured them for the entire year instead of-
Mr. Beightol: The computer does not realize seasonals.
Mr. Edwards: That's one of the things we're really trying to fine tune.
Mr. Panteli: That was adjusted this year. The numbers are the same as last year except the computer shows it higher.
Mr. Park: You've got projected 40 full time.
Mr. Panteli: It's 39 and 2.
Ms. Crow: I'll check that. We realized after we submitted the tentative budget in regard to the transaction of the landfill gas project coming up in September if you go from the tentative budget presentation we highlighted the fact that we are including in the general fund $500,000 in revenue from that project. What we missed in terms of accounting wise in the budget was at the landfill to record the actual incoming revenue there. We already budgeted the accounting transaction for the transfer from the EL to A of the $500,000 and recording that as revenue in the general fund but we forgot to include the initial revenue intake at the landfill. So this is what we would propose as an amendment when you are considering amendments to the tentative budget this is just simply an amendment to establish and increase the revenue account at the landfill where the revenue is initially recorded. Again, it doesn’t impact the local share in the general fund because those accounting transfers are already built in to the tentative budget. What would change is if you were to look at the enterprise here it would show that they have an operating surplus then of $41,000 verses a deficit of $458,000.
Mr. Park: When we first discussed the methane project it was supposed to pay back itself. Is that already figured in under the debt service?
Ms. Crow: Yes. That $500,000 would be beyond what we –
Mr. Park: Up to expenses. Ok. All the staffing or whatever it takes to run it is taken out and this is profit.
Mr. Panteli: Everything. Operation, maintenance.
Mr. Park: Are we going to be on schedule to have this in operation to get that money?
Mr. Spanos: That is the $1million question.
Mr. Edwards: If it was solely up to us it would already be built and I spent a lot of time meeting with George, Pete Zeller, the owner of Innovative Energy Systems and going over where we are in the process and equally as important where we are in the construction season and Pete has gone out to RFP with his contractors so that we can be the first in the springtime and I was willing to make that investment on Pete's part as far as the time and energy get the RFPs out there because I want to be first with the contractors come May. I didn’t want to be their 2nd or 3rd project of the year for fear that we would get bumped back in the schedule. So it's a calculated analysis with Pete. We'll do some site preparation as we're capable now and through the course of the winter so that it's ready to go wide open for them to come in first construction opportunity in the springtime to begin construction. He has condensed the construction timeframe down to the point where it's a reasonable assumption that we could be up and operating and producing revenue for the last quarter of the year and that's where we built the budget assumption at $500,000. So fully disclosed there are some if, ands in there but that's where we are.
Mr. Beightol: So if that happens in 2010 we won't have $500,000. We'll have $2million.
Mr. Edwards: $2million is the projection. That's right. On an annualized basis it's $2million of revenue. That's annualized projection going forward on today's numbers on what is being paid right now, marketed at the highest bidder out there which is currently the Northeast US because they're under an obligation to buy a significant percentage of their energy as green energy and ours is as green as it possibly can come because we're greener than wind because we're actually taking a negative in the environment and turning it into a positive by cleaning the methane and power the engines with it and producing electricity. So we're actually significantly on the positive side to do that and that's why we're marketing it across National Grid because that's our best revenue source supplying within county users we couldn’t generate the same amount of money, not even close. So that's why we're going this route to build it and market it and get the revenue.
Mr. Nazzaro: Was this originally to be up and running by now?
Mr. Edwards: Yes. If it wasn't for the fact that we've had some significant challenges with the NY Independent System Operators and National Grid the monopoly that controls transmission this would have already been up and operating. Our plan has not changed.
Mr. Nazzaro: Was anything budgeted in 2008 for this?
Mr. Edwards: No. The plan has been solid for 2 years. The projections have been solid. There hasn’t been any change in the revenue projections. The potential though is our methane production continues to increase because Pantelis and his team out there in designing the new cell designed it for methane production. We spent $120,000 I think drilling vertical wells into the closed cells to draw off more methane and all that has been paying off so our actual methane production if you look at it as a business enterprise because that's really what it is has been increasing. So the analysis is that that should continue going forward increased methane production. With that, when it reaches these tipping points you could add another engine to increase the volume of electricity produced thereby increasing our revenue. We're solid where we are with the construction we have right now and it's being designed to be expandable, the building itself. It's being designed so that additional space can be built right on to the facility as our production increases.
Mr. Nazzaro: We have contracts already to sell?
Mr. Edwards: Our contractor, IES has already gone out…oh. To sell. It's a free market system and they are being hired IES they're the professionals to be the marketers of electricity as well. It's comparable across the utilities that they would get a fee for marketing it. But that way we've got a professional out there who is solely focused on marketing electricity and we're not asking one of our own and certainly we could hire our I presume or have one of our own become skilled in it but this way it's a controlled cost. It's a percentage of the sale price.
Mr. Nazzaro: You have costs in there for that in the budget?
Mr. Edwards: Yes. It's all built in there.
Mr. Gould: (inaudible) what the percentage is Pantelis? What percentage of what you're paying the marketer for the electric?
Mr. Edwards: It's a set percentage and Darin would know.
Mr. Panteli: It's less than 1%.
Mr. Beightol: If we run a line to National Grid you're on the free market but you still have to go through National Grid's line to someone because –
Mr. Edwards: That's the challenge and right now we've got working with surveyors on a proposed transmission line and the right-of-ways and that's what we're working on right now is to acquire all of the right-of-ways necessary. We'll be building a line from the landfill to the nearest connection point with National Grid that can handle the intake of electric.
Mr. Panteli: 5.2 (inaudible).
Mr. Edwards: And so we have to contract with and have built the transmission lines to their spec so that it can actually transmit electricity we're generating to the grid and then the interconnect is the one of the significant engineering points where they have to connect our incoming electricity on to National Grid and that's been one of the things that have been a major holdup.
Mr. Spanos: The distribution is National Grid. It's a monopoly but the selling of it it goes on the market whoever puts the highest bid. That's why we now have 2 bills, one for distribution and one for –
Mr. Beightol: When we build this line we're still going to own this line?
Mr. Edwards: No. It becomes part of the National Grid Enterprise. That's the beauty of the monopoly. We will build it (inaudible) to transmit electric that they can charge for us to transmit on to a…it's a good gig if you can get it Leon.
Mr. Beightol: That means they own our line after we build it and we're at their mercy.
Mr. Panteli: The justification is they own it but they also have to maintain it. So once we turn it over to them they're responsible to maintain it and make our –
Cross Talk
Mr. Panteli: And our power which if they don’t they just get a small fine.
Mr. Edwards: We investigated below ground but it wasn't feasible.
Mr. Park: We'll have a substation. Will that also belong to National Grid?
Mr. Edwards: Everything from our plant out will be National Grid.
Mr. Panteli: We sped it up to 34,500 volts to send it out.
Mr. Park: That substation there is ours and we have to maintain it.
Mr. Panteli: Yes. Once we need a bigger we need to get a bigger once we go over its' capacity.
Mr. Beightol:
Mr. Edwards: We investigated that as part of our analysis and we just couldn’t make it pay. Believe me. That was one of the first things we looked it. Can we form a partnership with BPU, with Mayville operation, with Brocton…there's 5 of them but –
Mr. Panteli: The bottom line was that they still have to go through National Grid and it wasn't worth it.
Mr. Edwards: So even if we got into a partnership with the BPU we'd have to negotiate National Grid's trespass or fee.
Mr. Stutzman: (inaudible) came forward and you talked about this $500,000 this isn't a guarantee. You said it's a $1million question. I'll be quite honest. I think it would be great to find another way around it. We just found $130,000. A resolution was drafted in 2006 which stated these funds will go back to the taxpayers directly into the general fund. I drafted it myself. We agreed on it. I would rather see these funds go directly back to the taxpayers and not used to balance the budget. That was the argument we had on the floor of the legislature (inaudible) unanimously supporting it in 2006. I know that's a lot of money but because it's not a guarantee (inaudible). Something could happen next year and now we're $500,000 short and the following year it's $2million and then we'd be $2million guaranteed. So it would be better to balance the budget without it as it comes to us. Let's get it back right outside the general fund and take the $2million (inaudible). I understand it's only a few cents here and there for the taxpayers of the county but it's still money that I believe the intent of the legislature in 2006 when we passed that resolution that it was to go directly to the taxpayers not to balance the budget but to the general fund. Do you recall that, some of the discussion we had on the floor with that? Just a thought. And it's just now because not a guarantee and I'd hate to get into next year and find out we're $500,000 short. We're fortunate to have it. Absolutely. I agree. It's great to have landfill gas especially in light of the economy and gas prices, etc but again the fact that it's not a guarantee…in light of some of the other things that we talked about that aren't guarantees also such as gas prices we've heard a lot of that with CARTS. We're not sure what will happen and if it does or there's a mechanical problem we won't have funds for it. So we're (inaudible) lined up the wrong way such as we don’t have the gas project, we have mechanical problems and we don't have money. Things fall back it's going to fall real hard. So I don’t like the fact that (inaudible). I understand that. I understand that you've worked very hard on the budget believe me. If there is another way to get around it I wish we could find it. We just found $130,000.
Mr. Nazzaro: And I think that is part of the process-
Cross Talk
Mr. Nazzaro: I agree. I wasn't here when that resolution was
done but obviously when the
Mr. Stutzman: You've done a tremendous job. I'm just concerned by the "what ifs" and the million dollar questions because the economy is a little rough right now and it'd be a real slap in the face next year if we don’t have this.
Mr. Edwards: Mr. Stutzman you're right and I will delight in the opportunity to sit down at the end of the week to go through it. I think what will be discovered is when we and particularly even when we get into after our 10 minute break here DPF you'll realize to what extent county services have been squeezed to get every penny out of this and the reality is the projected revenue of $500,000 from the methane gas is a direct benefit to the taxpayers because that would be $500,000 more of property tax that would be added in to the tax levy if we didn’t get it. I certainly understand and you've been very consistent in your presentation from the moment we began this conversation but -
Mr. Stutzman: (inaudible) it's not on the books then we should not account for it. Erie County I don’t know if they have methane up there but compared to different counties if you don’t have it then we should budget thinking we don’t have it. I don’t know how we do it. I know it was hard to get where you're at now. I agree. (Inaudible). It could be a lot worse if we can't find it next year and the economy gets worse.
Mr. Spanos: The same could be said with the sales tax.
Mr. Nazzaro: Exactly.
Mr. Spanos: It's the same with any other revenue. We budget in the best anticipation that we can and I don’t know I don’t want to get involved and maybe I shouldn’t be saying but if we had not done it and it was a revenue that we had not anticipated that shows in the books people will say "why did you hide money?"
Mr. Nazzaro: I agree with you. When you come back on Friday and sit down and go through this we're going to have all these different items like is sales tax going to go up 3%; what are we going to do about the gas cap on gas and all those big issues. We're going to have to sit down as a legislative body. You bring up a good point.
Mr. Beightol: Everything has to be a gamble. It's no different than worrying about how much snow or ice we might have this winter.
Mr. Edwards: Other questions for the landfill in general? I don’t know if there are other slides that we didn’t go through. Ok. That was the end of the slides there.
Mr. Spanos: I'll start with some general comments about DPF. Transportation. I believe that Kitty in her presentation has combined all the D accounts…the roads, snow removal, pavement striping and also the administration. I mentioned a little bit at the beginning in my opening remarks but I would like to reinstate that especially the transportation budget it is very tied with the state budget and the Chips funding for 2009 budget will stay at the same level as 2008 and that is very critical in our operation. If the state budget does not provide the funding for Chips at the same level as this year then there will be a shortfall.
Mr. Edwards: And just to highlight that that's our hope that they stay at this year's level that does not account for the 50-60% and sometimes 70% increases we've had in the cost of doing the work. So even if the Chips dollars stay where they are that means just less projects that you can do. Again, that is on the assumption that the Chips dollars stay. Now I've been having conversations kind of throughout the county over the last month or so the Legislature is coming back in November and December they've got an $8billion problem at the state level going into next year. So I can assure you and NYSAC has hired professionals including the past budget director for NYS to analyze where we are and what is to be expected and we're fully anticipating that a significant portion of that reduction is going to be passed off to counties. That is mid-term. That's April…depending on what they do obviously in November and December of this year but that would be going into next year. In April, we'll be learning things like the Chips money. There are risks built into this all along.
Mr. Nazzaro: Again, you're budgeting the same amount.
Mr. Spanos: There is no increase although from last year to this year we saw an increase in Chips. We are budgeting the same amount that we received this year. $3.1million. We received the 22% mainly from state funding which is the Chips. The transportation department mainly is local funded, 70%. It depends who you ask if it's required or mandated or optional. I would like to see how many people would function without snowplowing in the winter or with potholes on the roads in the summer but we have settled down to (inaudible). The current positions there was a slight computer error that it assumed the positions were filled not the positions that were approved for 2008. The positions for the transportation division they were at 97 and if you add the 9 administration positions it would be 106 positions. We would like to amend this to show the level that we were budgeted for this year. It will not make any difference in the budget because the 5 positions or actually most of the positions are funded through capital projects. So the net would be 0.
Ms. Crow: This shows the accounting adjustments that would need to be made and it's not necessarily (inaudible) computer error but there were these 5 positions that the labor is already calculated into the capital project budget but we did not add them back into the position part of the budget. By doing so, it's mainly going to change the position count but there is no impact to local share because again the labor was already factored into the capital project budget. So these are just where the workers are reported in the D fund and then they're expenses are allocated to those various capital projects. I don’t even know technically if we would have to do an amendment because there is no net change to your .1s or .8s. It would just be a change on the position count summary. But this is what it would look like because we only adopt the budget at the account class level which is your .1 & .8 but this would be the accounting if we wanted to detail it out. You can see here that they were included in the '08 budget and they just happen to be vacant at the time that we initialized the budget. So it only carried forward who started the budgeted process with whatever employees were currently in the system employed.
Mr. Beightol: You don’t intend to decrease any employees through retirement or whatever?
Mr. Spanos: No. The 97 employees that we have in transportation division they are needed for our projects and snowplowing in the winter.
Mr. Edwards: One of the things in working with George on this and working with I have a gentleman who is a retired DPF worker and he was complaining that the roadways hadn’t been mowed the way they had previously and so I went back with George and did a little bit of calculation and there was 127 or almost 130 employees just a few short years ago and that number has been carved down recently to the 106 yet we continue to have the same mileage obligations to plow and to make sure we've got staff necessary to do that. when you do that and the fact that we've picked up every bridge in the county in that corresponding same time we're charged with not only engineering but maintaining and building them we've actually assumed great responsibilities and doing it with significantly less folks and it has bottomed out at the point where in order to have enough people to do the shift work in the snowplowing in particular there is no more room to go until you start taking a look at countywide in other words all roads, all bridges, all highway improvements or reductions I guess.
Mr. Spanos: I don’t think that I can sit here and honestly
say we have been funded at the desired level but it is what the level is for
funding and we all understand why we are funded at this level and we will do
the best we can with the money that we have been provided or hopefully will be
provided. You can see by the numbers
that we tried to decrease our expenses and the main things that we've seen
increases is due to the .1s and eventually we will talk about the fuel which is
going to be a major contributor to our increase in the DM especially but it
reflects the transportation the D account because all of our materials that we
use are oil based materials and they have been effected by the price of oil and
although the price for gas and oil has been dropping lately hopefully they will
stay at this level or lower but the blacktop prices when we opened bids last
March they were approximately $50 and after July we were paying $75 a ton for
blacktop and that goes without saying that the steel and the concrete prices
have increased by 30-40%. As we
mentioned before the presentation has been combined with the administration and
there is no changes in the administration part of the budget. The one thing that we did to reduce our
budget to bring it on line as was requested by the