2006-10-09 Regular Meeting and Workshop Meeting of La Porte City Council

Browse Search

City Council Regular and Workshop Meeting —October 9, 2006 Page 12 absorbing all of this. It is not happening at other places and is going to be a serious impact on us. On the defense, I think with us being a self insured pool, allowing a deferral without having some kind of umbrella or cushion to catch up at 65 that we have the potential on our comp loss coverage to get out of hand with catastrophic results. This self insured pool could get in worse damage than it is now. Again, I agree with the deferral and I have serious reservations about it if your options are before 65 where medicare would provide us a cushion. I plan on voting for it but have serious reservations. We better do a lot of soul searching before we come back here next year on how we are going to handle this problem. It is not going to stop here tonight. With no other discussions, I will take a vote. Ayes: Mosteit, Moser, Engelken, Rigby, Clausen, Ebow, Griffiths and Mayor. Nays: None Abstain: None Interim City Manager John Joerns advised Council we are looking to answer the questions that were raised regarding the retiree class. We are taking direction for a future budget amendment or do we stand to pass on the retiree freezes. Councilmember Griffiths noted he thought it is way too expensive and too much of a burden on the citizens to take on the $170,000.00 and look to increase that amount in following years. He was of the opinion, we should not look at freezes. Mayor Porter noted that the extra pool of funds is something that has always been pulled from the General Fund. That should have been in the City's contribution always. It provides a better grasp of what we are doing with the funds. He noted we want to take care of the employees but somewhere down the road it is going to get out of hand. Citizens will start to question what we are doing. Mayor Ported asked the Interim City Manager if he had clear direction. Councilmember Mike Clausen noted he was not in favor of the extra $170,000.00, He noted he wants to take care of employees but we have the rest of the citizens to take care of as well. Councilmembers Ebow, Mosteit and Engelken agreed with not funding the $170,000.00. Councilmember Moser made the following comments: He noted he has been on Council for over two years and has looked at the budgets. He has been part of the budget process. He noted what comes to his mind real quick is, like Councilmember Rigby indicated, before we subsidize three other enterprise funds. We also just got through installing $262,000.00 in entry markers with only one bidder. He noted it is hard for him to understand just where the budget impact is at. When he sees the kind of stuff going on. He has been called out tonight on this. He wasn't going to say anything, but decided to until he sees constraints and controls with other departments. He noted it was hard for him to punish employees or ask them to fund these markers that are coming into the City. He has issues with that and that is just the way it is.