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Clark Township Board Meeting Minutes Others Present: Amy Polk (Weekly Wave), Norm Perkins, Keith Kester, Sandy Sherlund Carpenter moved to approve the agenda as presented. Lofdahl supported. All Ayes. Leach absent. Motion Carried. Public Comments - None Special Business - Sewer Dept. Issues Hudson moved to go into Closed Session to speak to our attorney, Jim Murray, regarding his letter of opinion dated April 26, 2007. Nordquist supported. Roll Call Vote: Ayes: Carpenter, Lofdahl, Hudson, Nordquist. Absent: Leach Motion Carried. Back in Open Session Discussion about property on Marquette Island Recess: 4:47 p.m. Back to Order: 4:55 p.m. Les Cheneaux Club Agreement Nordquist said that she believes that if we let them hook up for $500, then we should let everyone hook up for the same price. Hudson said that she's proposing this for two reasons: 1. We have been in negotiations with them for almost two years. 2. Each property owner normally gets an inspection - that's part of the fee - we have only the burden of inspecting one hookup for this whole project. Hudson moved that the Board send this letter out to the members of the Les Cheneaux Club regarding a $500 per property hookup fee. Lofdahl supported. Discussion about giving the members of the Club a $500 break on the hook-up fee. Carpenter and Nordquist both stated that they didn't think it was fair to the rest of the people in the township to charge the members of the Club $500 less to hookup. Nordquist stated that it doesn't cost $500 to do an inspection of the property so it is not a viable reason to charge them less. Roll Call Vote: Ayes: Hudson Nays: Carpenter, Nordquist, Lofdahl Absent: Leach Motion Fails. Hudson moved to go into Closed Session to speak with our Bonding Attorney, Roger Swets, based on his correspondence of 4/30/07. Shaftmaster Lift Station - Possible Conflict w/Marquette Island Lift Station Based on correspondence with Larry Fox and Tom Evashevski - There's a possibility of a conflict if both the pressure line on the island and our pressure line on the mainland are operational at the same time. A lift station is going to be built on Marquette Island. They are building a pressure line and tap into our lift station. In order to overcome the conflict, we may have to get larger pumps. We need new pumps anyway. Jim Landreville spoke with Larry Fox and the manufacturer of the pumps and found out that we can use the same size pumps with larger motors. Carpenter thinks that the Board should get something else in writing from Larry Fox before bringing anything else to the table with Evashevski. Norm Perkins said that if, as a township, we choose to take and replace just the motors at this time, and we need to increase the capacity of the system, we're going to have to replace the pumps too. We might as well do it all at once - buy the whole unit. You don't want to have to go back and replace them all over again. Hudson - The pumps have to be replaced. Discussion on the difference between pumps and pump motors Deficit and Cash Flow - Fund #590 Strategy Carpenter - When you look at the budget and you look at cash on hand , we're going to end the year in a deficit which includes all fund equity. Scenario 1: Using the office log that the Clerk's Office has showing the expenses to date based on the total expected Fiscal Revenues, we end up $26,000 - almost $27,000 - in the negative. That's only including expenses that are included in Cathy's fixed expense estimate which were payroll and electric. It didn't include supplies or any unforeseen expenses. Scenario 2: $35,000 in the negative - only through the end of June - including Even though the fiscal year starts over in July, we still have some cash flow issues. We've been running O&M extremely tight. The legal expenses put us over the edge. The Clerk's office put together a hand-written sheet totaling the legal expenses. We need to find money. The Clerk and Treasurer's office sign the checks and we're getting to the point where something needs to be cut. If we don't have the money in the bank, we can't sign the checks. We can't approve the expenditures. We've already approved some expenditures without figuring out where the cash is going to come from. We had to as far as the litigation and moving forward with the legal fees. So, now we're at a point where we have to find money to cover those expenses. Nordquist - Even if we find that this one $31,000 CD can be used to cover the O&M Expenses, that's still not going to cover everything. Carpenter - The legal fees add up to $53,000. The first thing we need to do is research the bond to see if we can use that amount. The other thing we need to do is find out if we can use it, then is it considered excess money that shouldn't have been there? When you start looking at the history of these accounts, it's very hard to find consistency between the Clerk's Office and the Bank Accounts. Even as far as what bond issues were being paid out of what checking account? Some of the issues we're facing have been there for quite a while, it's just that the litigation put us over the edge. Lofdahl - Do you have cut ideas? I don't want to do this now. We need to have a special meeting and start with B on this agenda. There's information we don't have in front of us right now that we need. We need everyone here. We need some ideas. We know what the problem is now. What are the possible cuts and solutions?
Carpenter - We know Fund 590 and the issues we have there. We've talked about the litigation. We haven't talked about the Special Assessment District. My office manually taped the hand-written Special Assessment cards from 1991 through today to find out how much money has been paid off - that they're no longer making annual payments. That amount was $407,000. That doesn't include the annual payments - just the payoffs. That money is not sitting anywhere drawing 6% interest a year that we would have been getting had the people not paid it off and we have bond obligations on the Special Assessment District and I believe that was financed for around 38 years. We as a Board need to be addressed. These issues haven't been addressed in the past and we need to address it. I want to take the $25,000 that's been paid off to this administration and put it in a separate bank account. We had a meeting with Roger Swets, Anderson Tackman and the Sewer Advisory Board and our Board and talked about getting the Chart of Accounts and Funds straightened around and then we never moved on from there. Absent: Leach Motion Carried. Hudson - Hydrogen Sulfur has caused a lot of corrosion at the Shaftmaster Lift Station along with a lot of odor. We have been using Chloride to manage the problem. The other pump stations that were installed at the same time as the Shaftmaster Lift Station are in a lot better shape.
Lofdahl moved to adjourn. Nordquist supported. Meeting adjourned at 6:00 p.m. |
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