The agenda for the April 6th Common Council meeting is available on the City's website. Here are a few items that may be of interest.

Item #6 is the discussion and possible action regarding interest in the proposal from the village to office police services to the City. This item is something that has been recently discussed. The item refers only to the letter from the Village administrator which asks if we are at all interested in the Village putting together a proposal. No proposal has been been put together as of yet.

Item 8 on the agenda is an update on tourism activity. In a nutshell, it appears that tourism is down about 20% from what was budgeted.

Item 9 is an update on the Merger Committee meeting. There has been some discussion on this site already. This agendas item is just to update everyone on what the Committee has done so far. The consultant who made the presentation at the March 18th meeting offered 4 possible options on how the Communities could be merged without having the tax rate of the tax payers of the City go up. The one idea that appears to have been noticed by the people I talked to was the use of the Village's Utility fund to offset the rate increase in the City. I mentioned before that I think the Committee and the consultant made a mistake there. The goal appeared to be to make sure the City tax rate did not go up. It should have been to ensure the City's tax rate went down as well as the Village's. If the tax payers in the City do not see an direct and immediate positive impact of a merged community, there is no way it will pass a referendum. Even if it can be shown that the long term benefit would be positive, there must be an immediate and tangible benefit for the tax payers of the City.

Item number 10 on the agenda is discussion and action on some budget amendments. The first is to pay for the financial analysis related to the merger and the purchase of some new filing equipment for the clerk's office totaling about $16K. These items were approved in 2008 and must be paid for in 2009. The second budget amendment is for the settlement for the former Police Chief. That settlement included $170,879.90 in a one-time lump sum payment. It also included health insurance premiums until age 62 or medicare eligibility. According generally accepting accounting practices, we must include that cost as a liability in 2009. The estimated impact on the 2009 budget is $105,100, $10,500 was included in the budget already. The budget amendment is for $265,479.90 to cover the lump sum payment and the cost of insurance.