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HomeMy WebLinkAboutMinutes Council 081671REGULAR MEETING August 16, 1971 CITY OF PALM BEACH GARDENS The Regular Meeting of the City Council of the City of Palm Beach Gardens was called to order by Mayor DeLonga at 8:00 P.M. August 16, 1971. The meeting was held at 10500 N. Military Trail in the Assembly Room, and opened with the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag. ROLL. CALL: Roll was called by the City Clerk and present were: Councilman Orr, Councilman Kiedis, Vice Mayor Wiley and Mayor DeLonga. Councilman James was absent due to business and City Manager, Robert Carlson was on vacation. Attorney Brant was present. MINUTES: The reading of the minutes of the Regular Meeting of August 2, 1971 was waived and approval unanimously on a motion by Councilman Orr, seconded by Councilman Kiedis. PETITIONS AND COMMUNICATIONS: 1. Mayor DeLonga read a communication from John D. MacArthur authorizing the Palm Beach Gardens Youth Athletic Association to use the building at Lake Catherine for their meetings and storing of equipment. 2. Announcement was made of the open house for the Twin City Mall First American Bank, Wednesday, August 18, 1971 and for open house at the Klock Company on September 16, 1971 all day. 3. Chairman of the Palm Beach Gardens Bowmen Association spoke before the Council requesting the sponsorship and the cooperation of the City for a statewide competion to be held in April of 1972. The State Chairman of the Florida Archers Assocation spoke and stated the City has a good chance of getting this tournament and the preference for the location was at the entrance to the City at Garden Boulevard. They will contact Mr. John D. MacArthur. The tournament would probably bring in somewhere around 1000 people. Council was in accord that they work through woody Dukes, Recreation Director. Council voted unanimously to support and back the tournament, on a motion by / \ Minutes of Regular Meeting August 16, 1971 Page 2 Councilman Kiedis, seconded by Councilman Orr. Mayor DeLonga acknowledged receipt of the following letters: 1. From Robert Culpepper, County Commissioner on receipt of Resolution #26 to retain the 1970 Tax Roll. 2. From Jerry Thomas on receipt of Resolution #25 opposing school busing. ORDINANCES - SECOND READING: ORDINANCE #7 Motion made and seconded to read,by title only, Ordinance #7 - amending SWIMMING POOLS: Chapter 27 - Swimming Pools. Read by the City Clerk and adopted unanimously on a motion by Councilman Kiedis and seconded by Vice Mayor Wiley. ORDINANCE #12 Motion made and seconded to read, by title only, Ordinance #12, COUNCIL MEETINGS: establishing a meeting schedule for the Council, read by the City Clerk and motion to adopt by Vice Mayor Wiley and seconded by Councilman L Kiedis. Vote 4 ayes and O nays. RESOLUTION #29 Council discussed changing the meeting day from Monday night to Thursday, ESTASLIHSING DAYS FOR and unanimously voted to set the days at the first and third Thursday MEETINGS: for Regular Meetings and second and fourth for Workshop Meetings, and make the effective day of the Resolution to be September 2, 1971. Resolution #29 was read by the City Clerk and adopted unanimously by the Council on a motion by Councilman Kiedis, seconded by Councilman Orr. The next Regular Meeting will be scheduled for September 2, 1971. ITEMS PRESENTED BY CITY MANAGER AND CITY CLERK: Councilman Kiedis expressed his dissatisfaction at the playing surface of the City's football field. After considerable discussion with Mr. Devine, Public Works Director, Council authorized him to proceed with sodding the football field. Use of the High School football field will be requested until the grass gets a good start. Mickey Neal and Mr. Martino will be contacted. Motion by Councilman Kiedis authorizing the expenditure of funds from contingency for replacement of sod up to Minutes of Regular Meeting August 16, 1971 Page 3 $450.00 contingent upon the Youth Athletic Association accepting the use of the High School field for temporary use. Seconded by Councilman Orr and unanimously approved. Vice Mayor Wiley stated he felt there was a lack of communications as the Council had not been informed of the change of the Court fees. Chief Pecht stated this was a policy of the Judge or the Supreme Court and will present the Council with information regarding fees. Vice Mayor Wiley questioned why the trees which Joe Crocker had donated to the City had not been picked up and transplanted. Mr. Devine stated he had not found time to get to them as yet. Mr. Devine will find out from other Cities what there schedule is on large trash pick ups in order to eliminate employees working long hours on individual pick ups. Vice Mayor Wiley: "I read in the newspaper that the Teenagers had a meeting last Monday night and met downstairs and that they will have a meeting tomorrow night and had a car wash last Saturday. Mrs. James was there. Unfortunately Woody is not here to defend himself but I take particular offense to finding out things in the newspaper that happened in the City particularly something that the Council is interested in such as these two rooms downstairs. It bothers me that somebody didn't bother to tell us during the Council meetings that happened at the same time and we were here longer than they were. It seems like wetre being asked to support various things and yet we are expected to find out what is going on by osmosis or something. It seems to me there is a tremendous communication breakdown here and here again another knock for Woody but I think his title is Director of Parks and Recreation, and I think you Leonard, take an undue criticism here on maintenance of parks in the City. You have the equipment you have the know how perhaps to get in there, but my question here was, we just discussed sod for the baseball program and during the course of the conversation indicated Minutes of Regular Meeting August 16, 1971 Page 4 that over a month ago, where were we a month ago in the planning for this ball field. Why wasn't our Director of Parks or somebody else who is cognizant of the sports program, not you certainly. You don't have to worry about the scheduling, you should be taking care of other things and the Parks Director should come over and say, Leonard, and he should have told you two months ago, this fields got a problem; it doesn't take that much to see it and not that much foresight to plan these things but somebody ought to be doing this and I think that is the function our Parks and Recreation Department has to coordinate more closely. They had the same problem last year and we get this problem it seems like, year after year and unfortunately Woody is not here to defend himself but I really don't think there is any defense. It seems like there is break- down of communications in recommendations to the Council and recommend- ations to other departments in the City. To me it's almost inexcusable. We're having to reartange the Youth Athletic Association schedules and if we had been on the ball three weeks ago to get the grass in there�we would have made the same decision 3 weeks ago and this grass could have been in." Mr. Devine stated he felt there should be a cut off date so that the department could get in and work on the fields in between activities. Mayor DeLonga will confer with the Recreation Director regarding this. Councilman Orr reported that the Beautification and Environmental Committee had met and will meet again September 8, 1971 for election of Chairman and start on their master plan. Director of Public Works was requested to contact the County regarding the repair of the macadam sidewalk on Northlake Boulevard as school children would be using this soon. Mayor DeLonga made these statements in regards to the 1970 -71 Budget '-� Review: it I made a very interesting observation in my review, that from last year to this year the budget has increased approximately $102,000 or $103,000 i Minutes of Regular Meeting August 16, 1971 Page 5 and I'd like to comment that when I went through the budget last night and I tried to determine where this increase of $103,000 came from I found that $100,713 could be attributed to cost of living increases and merit raises or increases in personnel so that was rather an amazing discovery. There was only about a $3,000 increase in the rest of the budget, $100,000 related to personnel expenditures and that was quite surprising. I might add that in this $100^0 that there was monies for about 5 new personnel and 2 in public works department and 3 in police department, of course this would account for a considerable portion of the $100,000. I was quite surprised to see that this was where the major increase did occur. Mr. Carlson had indicated that he had $50,000 in the Capital Outlay to which he will come back to the Council and discuss the various projects that we. may want to undertake. Of our overall proposed Budget of $940,000, . $523,000 of it related again to the personnel expenditure which is about 56% of our Budget and I'd like to know and I'm going to ask our City Manager how this stacks up with the Bodgets of our surrounding Cities. I talked with Mr. Franch of the Florida State Employment Bureau relative to the recommended 6% cost of living increase. I asked what the cost of living throughout the United States is and how much it has risen in the past year and in the average City, the average increase is 4V6. Now when you look at the Southeastern region of the Country which would include Atlanta, which would be the major City according to their statistics, include Georgia, South Carolina, Florida etc. the increase was approximately 5% cost of living and I think that in the adoption of our new budget when we have opportunity to talk to Mr. Carlson, that we will probably want to shoot for about 5%. Now I know the President made his speech last night freezing all wages and prices and I am sure the City Personnel are very much interested as to how this is going to affect them. To the best of my t,J knowledge all wages including Municipal wages, I'm going to ask Mr. Brant for an interpretation, would be affected. Our fiscal year starts / r Minutes of Regular Meeting August 16, 1971 Page 6 November 1 and this 90 day period would expire on November 12; if I remember correctly and there is no reason why the Council cannot budget .✓ and I am certainly going to recommend that we budget monies for the cost of living and also for merit raises. However they would have to be held in abeyance until after this 90 day expiration period, so fortunately, at least what we know now the City employees would only be affected for this 12 days in November before whatever the Council happens to adopt would take place." Attorney Brant: "Unle4s further freeze is ordered after November 12 the Council could consider appropriating these funds in the budget. My under- standing is that it would not be retroactive, but at this time it is quite loose." Mayor DeLonga: "I want our City employees assured that the Council does intend to budget for the cost of living increases and also Merit. How much we budget is going to be a matter of discussion and as I indicated I am going to recommend that we shoot for a cost of living of about 5% rather ~"l than the 6% recommended by the City Manager. The other comment that I would like to make pertains to Mr. Carlson's recommendation of an 8% Utility Tax; and the Council, as a body, we haven't met to discuss this thing but from a rather brief calculation I'd like to indicate that I am not in favor at this time of adopting an 8% Utility Tax because if you take into consider- ation, the average homeowner is going to be actually paying more in taxes than he would if he kept the 6.25 millage right now. In somecases he would be paying quite a bit more and it would benefit without a doubt the property owners before it would benefit the residents." Vice Mayor Wiley: "There is one comment that I have reflected to me by the citizens and that is particularly in the Police Department and Public Works Department, which may be where a lot of the rationization is going to have to take place but if you compare the City of Palm Beach Gardens with a U little over 6000 population by the last census with the Town of Lake Park with a little over 7000 in population, their budget is $766,000 proposed r Minutes of Regular Meeting Auguist 16, 1971 Page 7 this year compared to our $940,000. This seems to be proportionately inversed to each other that we are having to provide more services and consequently more budget for less people than they are. I haven't made any study to find out the land area and such or perhaps because they are more developed than we are, but there seems to be an inconsistency. We do have approximately twice the property valuation and think they are at $53,000. and we are at $101,000. There seems to be just on a per person basis of the dollar of the City budget an inequity here. Maybe they are more efficient than we are or we provide services that are unique and different that they don't have, but this is going to be one of the things that I want to get out of the budget as to just what this difference is and perhaps we can do better at less price." Mayor DeLonga: "I would like to think that we provide more services that we have a better City." Vice Mayor Wiley: "Obviously we do but there is still some rationality to be explored here. Seriously now if there is this kind of discrepancy in our census I think we should do something about it because we are affected quite heavily in the distribution of Cigarette Taxes and Gasoline Taxes which are proportioned on a population basis. If our population is in the order of 25% off I think we should do something about 'Iit particularly growing as fast as we have been,to make this the fastest growing community brought to the attention of the people who are distributing the revenues and this will further help us relieve the taxpaper in advalorem taxes. ADJOURNMENT: Motion made and seconded and meeting adjourned at 9:47 P.M. ME / Minutes of Regular Meeting August 16, 1971 Page 8 `- M yor DeLonga�- Vice Mayor Wiley Thelma Compton, Citlf Clerk v Councilman Tames 1 QVI Co c'ilman Orr rT , Co ilman Xi.edis