Unusual and somber

The City Council meeting on 3-23-2020 was unusual and somber. There was no invocation or pledge or citizen comments. The meeting immediately advanced to the agenda by approving minutes. Later the Mayor made no comments nor were there comments from the Council members or from the superintendents. Only four of the superintendents were present; six others had been excused by the Mayor. There was only one other member of the public attending.

The Council approved two ordinances. The first standardized late-payment penalties across utilities. A customer has 17 days to pay before the penalty kicks in and it will be 10% of the first $3 and 3% of the rest of the bill for each utility bill. The penalties will not apply if there is a declaration of emergency as we presently have.

The second ordinance passed was an amendment to the salary ordinance. It allows non-essential personnel to be paid for working at home during emergencies. Employees can either be doing work or they can be on call at home, able to come in within two hours. The ordinance will have to be renewed every ten days. There were a lot of questions and the discussion of this ordinance took more time than any other item.

An electric rate tracker of a $1.15 decrease per 1000 kilowatt hours was approved.

The City had sought quotes from five companies for removing 68 trees in right-of-ways. Almost all are dead ash trees. Only one company responded, with a quote of $58,700. There followed a discussion about finances. The shut down currently in effect will reduce people's incomes so the state and local taxes they pay will be reduced. Some time in the future the City will be getting smaller draws of money from those taxes, and spending will have to be reduced. After a brief discussion, the Council approved having the project coordinator talk to the tree cutting company to see if one half of the trees could be cut now and the other half when it was clear that funds would be available.

It was mentioned that the State is cutting grants. The City had been planning to submit an OCRA grant for downtown revitalization but that is on hold. The Community Crossings grant program may be cut back and the City will not submit this round because of the need to provide matching funds. And plans to purchase an aerial truck for the Fire Department are also on hold. The Fire Department was given permission to join a cooperative called HGAC Buy. The Lafayette fire department is a member and said that it had saved them money on aerial trucks. When the time comes that the purchase of new fire department equipment is possible, this group may help.

Two FMAL (family leave?) requests were approved.

The City is losing money from generating electricity at the power plant. It must sell that power to IMPA, which resells it and the payments made by IMPA to Rensselaer are not enough to make the plant profitable. Rensselaer currently is the only municipality in IMPA that generates power. The City sought advice from their financial advisor Baker-Tilly and, as a result of their report, the Council voted to stop generation as of May 30, 2020. The full implications of that decision were not spelled out.

The meeting adjourned at about 6:40. The next meeting will be done electronically.

We got enough snow on Sunday to cover the grass but fortunately it melted on the streets. By evening on Monday almost all had melted.