City approves requests during finance meeting
The St. Marys Finance Committee met on Monday in order to discuss several supplemental requests, with many of them focused on upcoming projects in the city.
Director of Public Service and Safety Greg Foxhoven introduced 28 requests for the department heads in total, with the total amount of money requested being $539,973.23. All of the requests have been approved by the mayor and auditor, involving many different subjects that correlate with each other.
One notable supplemental request was the transferring of money from the Geiger Sisters, a donation to be used for the St. Marys Community Foundation. To the tune of $122,932, the request is unusual due to it not being a request for money, but a request to transfer funds instead.
“We can spend the interest,” Foxhoven stated. The donation is stated to be an investment in the city, and thus has its own rules on how it can be spent. “Of course, the city’s governed by different rules and our investment policy is very strict. And so, our auditor firm had suggested that we move it.”
The investment will be moved to the Community Foundation due to its other options is has concerning investment, making it a lateral choice.
Another notable request involves six different forms for a singular goal; redesigning and redeveloping the city website. Personnel Director Sue Backs is in charge of this initiative, and it will all go into fixing various issues and updates.
“The total cost for the new website redesign and redevelopment is a little over $30,000,” Foxhoven explained to the committee. Backs was instrumental in getting it down to that cost through negotiation. The company hired to do this specializes on government bodies, so if things go well,
the process should go smoothly.
The cost of the new website and its development has been divided through six different accounts with a cost of $5,018.36 each.
Several other supplemental requests were grouped up to deal with a singular problem, or various related ones. $10,700 was put into covering various expense, unexpected or not, for the rest of the this year, while about $4,323 to deal with various informational technology needs for various departments. A total of $56,300 will also be set aside
for the FEMA buyback program in three different requests. The city should be reimbursed for 87.5 percent of each request.
The last notable set of requests dealt with the maintenance, materials and fuel for turbine seven, the city’s own combustion turbine generator. Totaling at about $110,000 with all three requests, the committee sees it as a priority to keep it going.
“Our generator has ran 18 times this year, we thinks that’s a record for the the heat that we’ve had,” Foxhoven claimed. Running it can be difficult sometimes, especially when making sure the generator doesn’t overheat during certain times of the year. “It’s not likely that we’ll have to run
anymore this year. Although we do run in the winter, but it’s not usually until January or February.”
The rest of the money focused on various little projects spread across over $200,000. A few notable ones were additional funds for the design of a plant pump upgrade at the sewage plant for $130,000, water plant electric bills at $30,000 and the purchase of new transformers at $36,920.67. The rest was spent on workers at the swimming pool and some money put aside a consultant for the Clean Ohio grant.
The request forms were approved and will be talked about at the St. Marys City Council Meeting scheduled for Oct. 25.