Committee hears 22 supplemental requests Monday

The city’s finance committee was called for a meeting on Monday in order to discuss supplemental requests involving the city of St. Marys.

Twenty-two supplemental requests were brought to the attention of the committee by Director of Public Service and Safety Greg Foxhoven. While many of the requests were disconnected and focused on other issues, some had a common theme among them. One topic that came up was the requests for funding involving required schooling for employees for a Class A CDL certification course, with the total amount of requests relating to it being equal to $23,000.

“On Feb. 7, the federal government passed a law that said that CDL holders had to go through a federally approved program,” stated Foxhoven. While it is encouraged, Foxhoven doesn’t believe it works well with the city. “Personally I think the legislators missed a mark on this. This is basically for semi-truck drivers, we don’t have any semis in the city’s fleet.”

It is an expense that the city wasn’t expecting to pay, but the city does plan on sending all applicable workers there to get the Class A certification while they can and will make adjustments as the situation develops. The money was separated into five different requests so it could be taken out of various different funds where applicable.

The second issue that was significant was

the singular request of $173,600, which is related to two different expenses. About $98,000 of that money is being put into the CDBG Armstrong Park project, while the remaining $75,000 is to match the Target of Opportunity grant for the St. Marys Theater project.

“The bids for that basically doubled across the project,” said Manager of Industrial and Community Development Mike Burkholder about the park project. The bids seemed to double across the board, so they decided to take excess funds from another account rather than take from the General Fund.

“Going through the process for the Target of Opportunity grant for the theater, we were told that the application would receive more points if the city had some share in it,” Foxhoven explained for the latter request.

The next subject was the transferring of money from the General Fund to the Debt Service Fund to the tune of $3,585,000. While there is no increase or decrease in these funds, the transfer is notable due to the amount being handled.

“What happened was, and this is typically how we do things, is that we pay our debts from the General Fund,” said Foxhoven. “But one of our phone conversations with Allison Binkley — our bond council — she said it would really be better if you did that from your Debt Service Funds.”

The money is already in the original fund and all that’s needed is council approval to finalize putting it into the latter fund.

The last significant request that was sent in related primarily to the $150,000 request to remove biosolids in digesters and interchange tanks as part of an ongoing project involving sewage plant sludge dewatering. This was the biggest singular request that was read that wasn’t divided up into smaller requests or being put into separate projects.

“This, again, is a reference to the upcoming mandates that we’re dealing with the EPA,” said Foxhoven about the project. It’s part of a complex process that needs to be done in order to decommission one and another can be modified. “We need to have these emptied out soon so we can start this process.”

The final group of significant requests involved the unexpected costs of various things that popped up during the year, with the total amount resulting from these requests equaling to $28,195.96. The expenses consisted mostly of unexpected costs that rose up out of the past year, payment for certain equipment and many other expenses.

The finance committee adjourned their meeting shortly after hearing all supplementary requests and going over them in detail.

The requests will be heard once again at the next city council meeting on May 23. The total amount for all 22 requests was $374,795.96.