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HomeMy WebLinkAbout08-04-20Minutes of the Pulaski Town Council Meeting held at 7:00 p.m., August 4, 2020 in the Council Chambers of the Town Municipal Building at 42 First Street, N.W. In attendance were: Mayor: Shannon Collins, presiding Councilmen Present G. Tyler Clontz; Brooks R. Dawson, Greg East; Lane R. Penn; James A. Radcliffe; Michael Reis Administration: Darlene L. Burcham, Town Manager Legal Counsel Spencer A. Rygas Staff: Rebecca Leeper, Finance Director David Quesenberry, Clerk of Council Jordan Whitt, Social Media Manager Others Present Collette Hash 1. Call to Order Mayor Collins called the meeting to order at 7:00 p.m. 2. Pledge of Allegiance The Pledge of Allegiance was led by Councilman Clontz. 3. Invocation The invocation was given by Councilman East. Rev. Gary Hash 4. Roll Call of Council After the Invocation, the roll was called. Present were Mayor Collins, Mr. Clontz, Mr. Dawson, Mr. East, Mr. Penn, Mr. Radcliffe and Mr. Reis. Since all members of Council members were in attendance, a quorum was present to conduct business. 5. Modify Agenda if Necessary Mayor Collins then requested a motion to modify the agenda to add the following items; (1) under "New Business" Item 13a. Resolution 2020-22 Community Wellness Commitment and (2) under Closed Session one additional item under Va. Code 2.2-3711 (a) 3 discussion concerning acquisition or disposition of publicly held real estate. Mr. Penn moved for the approval of the modifications of the agenda. His motion was seconded by Mr. Dawson and approved on the following roll call vote: Lane R. Penn -Aye James A. Radcliffe -Aye Brooks R. Dawson -Aye G. Tyler Clontz -Aye Gregory C. East -Aye Michael P. Reis -Aye 6. Recognition of Guests and Visitors Mayor Collins welcomed the visitors and thanked them for attending the meeting. Page 1 of 7/August 4, 2020 7. Presentations There were no presentations scheduled on the agenda. Mrs. Burcham suggested in the future it would prove helpful to persons giving presentations to give them a specific time period in which to make their presentations. It might be somewhat longer if Council members wished to ask questions. - It would be up to Council to pick the length of time, but she remarked in her experience fifteen minutes was normal with the most being twenty minutes. By letting presenters know in advance they could prepare their remarks accordingly. If Council assented, the Clerk was to let future presenters know of Council's time preference and to leave a hard copy of their remarks. Council agreed to Mrs. Burcham's proposal. 8. Public Hearings No public hearings were scheduled for Council's consideration. 9. Public Comment Period No comments were received from the public. 10. Consent Agenda a. Consideration of July 7, 2020 Minutes Mayor Collins asked for a motion regarding consideration of the July 7, 2020 Council meeting minutes. Mr. Dawson moved to approve the July 7, 2020 Council meeting minutes. The motion was seconded by Mr. Clontz and approved on the following roll call vote: Lane R. Penn -Aye James A. Radcliffe -Aye Brooks R. Dawson -Aye G. Tyler Clontz -Aye Gregory C. East -Aye Michael P. Reis -Aye Council next considered an emergency grant agreement. 11. Old Business a. Emergency Generator Grant Agreement, Resolution 2020-21 The Clerk reported that the grant was for emergency generators for the water system. According to the Town Engineer, the Town's match for the grant was approximately $4,950. The generators would be able to keep providing water service to 75% or 80% to the customers in an outage. The matter had been previously discussed by Council earlier in the year. Mr. East felt the Town was very fortunate to receive the grant since it was a considerable amount of money not having to be spent by the Town. Mrs. Burcham related that she understood that the item had been presented previously, but that it had taken a couple of years to come to fruition. She noted that this particular grant would be set up, as discussed', at the previous meeting, separate from the General Fund. The source for the match ($4,950) would be identified before any money was spent from the grant. Expenditures would be recorded to that grant to prevent grant money from being spent on some other purpose to prevent a shortage or having to revisit the grant later. This grant would be the first of many that would be administered in this manner. Page 2 of 7/August 4, 2020 Mr. Reis asked about the 910 days listed for completion. He asked if that was the number of total days or just a maximum. Mrs. Burcham responded it was a maximum. A lot of grants she explained, especially the VDOT grants, were notorious for giving four years even though it may take two years. Sometimes, it was planned due to the manner in which Federal agencies track projects. Mr. East then moved to adopt Resolution 2020-21 as written. The motion was seconded by Mr. Clontz and approved on the following roll call vote: Lane R. Penn -Aye James A. Radcliffe -Aye Brooks R. Dawson -Aye G. Tyler Clontz -Aye Gregory C. East -Aye Michael P. Reis -Aye 12. No Entry This line was inadvertently omitted from the agenda. 13. New Business a. Community Wellness Commitment, Resolution 2020-22 Action on this resolution was postponed until after the Closed Session, for copies to be provided to the Council. 14. Manager's Report Mayor Collins then asked Mrs. Burcham for the Manager's Report. Mrs. Burcham began her report with several announcements as follows: • Calfee Park won the award for best of the ballfields for rookies for 2020. • A quarterly meeting schedule will be established with the New River Conservancy, with the topic of the first meeting being a timeline to look at the many projects outlined in the previous meeting to remain on top of them as they relate to the capital budget or contributions and grant opportunities. A member of Council was requested to participate in the quarterly meetings. • After reviewing the status of the school system and the vacant schools in Town, Mrs. Burcham approached the County and offered the use of some of the brownfield money to do an assessment of the Claremont School, which had been proposed for housing development. Town consultants had been authorized to do the study which should meet the housing application deadline of October 1St • Notification had been received for three grants awarded for the James Hardie sewer project. Funding was awarded by the Appalachian Regional Commission ($500,000); the Department of Housing and Community Development ($700,000); and, the Economic Development Administration ($1.25 million). Just under $200,000 was needed for the project. Staff was working with individuals investigating getting a grant/loan package from the Department of Environmental Quality to make up the difference. The only funds to be spent at this point would be for preliminary engineering. The construction phase would not begin until the Town's local match became available. Emphasis would be on the Town having the money in hand before construction began. • The General Chemical Site was the focus of a long-term plan to become a park, but funds were not available for its development. Funds were available for remediation for the General Chemical Office building with the work to be put out for bid in the next Page 3 of 7/August 4, 2020 several months. Mrs. Burcham also wanted to check if any remediation had been done to the building, noting its redevelopment potential. Commenting upon the appearance of a structure on East Main, Mrs. Burcham had a draft graffiti ordinance prepared which was distributed to the Council. She added that the goal was to have it on the August 18th agenda. The property owner had been contacted concerning the impending ordinance. She requested Council's review of the draft ordinance for any comments, while the Town Attorney checked code citations. A number of ordinances from other communities had been reviewed to come up with what she felt was the appropriate language needed. In a larger area of discussion, Mrs. Burcham told Council she would bring a revised budget for the current fiscal year before Council on August 18th. Revisions had been made to both General Fund revenues and expenditures. One revision required was for the reinstatement of building inspection personnel as well as the hiring of a temporary building official. Items were found that had not been budgeted for sufficiently, while significant reductions were made in other items. Earlier in the budget process, Council set aside $438,000 which was to be kept aside in reserve which consisted of specific items. On the basis of the last meeting, Mrs. Burcham said she took funds from that category to fund the planner position that would be directed towards economic development activities. Changes she added had to be made while balancing the budget. While there had been a number of items totaling $438,195, the "set aside" funds were now down to $281,000. Items eliminated included an administrative vehicle ($35,000); replacement P.D. vehicle; and recodification of the Town Code. She emphasized there were still funds available to be looked at in the future for two Public Works pieces of equipment and vacant positions. With regard to vacant positions, only the planner position had been added back to the budget. Mrs. Burcham said that training and travel monies had been removed from the budget and noted with the current situation, most training was being done on-line. If there was essential training needed by either the Police or Fire Department that would require the permission of the Town Manager to fund those activities. There were also reductions in general employee activities. Total reductions on both the revenue and expenditures totaled approximately $144,000 which was a budget that could be lived with. Mrs. Burcham noted that the Departments had been involved and said that in the short time she had been here, everyone had been most cooperative and helpful in dealing with this issue. With Council's permission and approval at the next meeting, the Town could move forward with the assurance that adequate funds were available to do the job. There would be no frills but the job would be done. If there were questions Council was invited to contact either Mrs. Leeper or Mrs. Burcham but it was their desire to have the budget amendment on the agenda of the 18th Mr. Reis requested an electronic copy of the budget document distributed earlier to Council. Mrs. Leeper said she would email him a copy. In a related budget matter, Mrs. Burcham noted two items that were costing the Town that needed modification. The first matter was how overtime was calculated. Under the current policy, sick leave was not counted towards time worked for eligibility to receive overtime, but annual leave was. In other communities that she had worked in, Mrs. Burcham noted neither was applied for overtime. The person would receive straight time for the overtime until they Page 4 of 7/August 4, 2020 reached forty actual work hours as opposed to being covered by some kind of leave. Her recommendation was that the policy be changed in the future. The second issue involved compensatory time (comp time) with some past difficulty experienced with Council discussing what that maximum would be. The special problem, Mrs. Burcham noted with "comp time" was that it was earned in one time period and if people were allowed to carry over excessive hours, when they left, the "comp time" was paid out at a different rate than what the employee was earning when the time was actually earned. The other issue was that "comp time" was accrued at time and a half as opposed to straight "comp time". That was done to avoid paying the "cash out" as overtime. Mrs. Burcham believed the limit for "carry over", currently 200 hours, was too high and needed to be reduced to 80 hours for 40 hour per week employees with possibly a different calculation for Police and Fire given the schedules they work. She hoped to move forward with the policies as soon as practicable assuming Council had no major objections. In addition, she felt the Department Heads should follow the guidelines of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) which indicated that "comp time" used in the same period it was earned was straight time. This would require managers to manage their employees. If time was worked over one week, the employee could take the time the next week. There would be situations where that would not be possible and the employee would accrue pay at time and a half. Mr. Dawson asked if it was possible to pay out "comp time" at the time it was spent with the manager responsible for trimming the spent funds somewhere else. The employee would be paid overtime for the previous week, but would work a reduced week the next week. He questioned if an employee worked 42 hours calling the extra two hours "comp time" instead of overtime. Mrs. Burcham said the difference was the pay and the pay out and not much was budgeted for overtime pay. Because of that, and the 200 hour limit, she felt that departments encouraged employees to earn "comp time" and not take time off. The policy stated that the Department Head could manage the "comp time" up to requiring the employee to take time off. That did not appear to be happening so her intent was to make recommendations to encourage if not enforce that people manage within those budgets. Mrs. Burcham felt that to suddenly pay overtime would make it easier to pay an employee, but who would find the money to pay them. Given that there were certain fixed expenses in a budget, unless there was employee turnover, it was very difficult to pay overtime on a regular basis. She added there were several positions accruing considerable amounts of "comp time" whereas if they manage in the pay period it would be only straight time. In the case of a forty hour week and a two week pay period, the person would still work 80 hours but some of that would be time off because they earned four hours the previous week and took four hours off the next week. Mr. East commented that sounded like good management. Mrs. Burcham explained it was putting more responsibility on the managers to manage the time by reducing the "carry over". If someone was capped at 200 hours, she would tell the Department Head those employees needed to be managed in a way such as that number starts coming down. Mr. East said he agreed with that effort and recalled that previous discussions involved the first responders because of the way they worked. He added that there needed to be a full understanding there so they would get a "fair shake". Mr. East said he certainly could support the reduction where it was needed. Mrs. Burcham said she had not considered the Police and Fire "carry forward" yet, but she added that two weeks was more than sufficient for the forty Page 5 of 7/August 4, 2020 hour per week employees and that they could be paid if they could not take it off. She wanted to look at the Police and Fire schedules that have a straight time component before they got into the overtime issue. Mr. Radcliffe said he thought there had been discussions that the time had to be down at the end of the year. Mr. East said at the time of the discussion, "comp time" was extremely high and we worked for 18 months (to lower it). Mrs. Burcham noted it was a liability in the audit. Mr. East responded that was the reason Council pushed for the reduction. He added he was agreeable to changes in the "comp time" retained. Mr. Dawson asked with regards to a salaried position, how did it get "comp time". Mrs. Burcham explained that the difference was whether or not the position was exempt or non-exempt. There was no such thing as "comp time" for exempt employees. What normally happened in her experience was if a department head (exempt) worked over two hours and needed to go to the dentist or doctor the next week, a leave form was not required for that time since they had exceeded the forty hours. An non-exempt employee would be required to submit a leave form. The Federal Government had made changes to the exempt category such that a category of "working supervisor", one who supervises and works, were non-exempt and qualified, for "comp time" and overtime. The amount of salary and the duties were more of a determinant 'if a position was exempt or non-exempt. Mr. Dawson asked if there were salaried positions under that threshold, Mrs. Burcham replied there were and that she would put some things in place to have better managed departments and better use of funds. Mr. East asked Mrs. Burcham about revenues. Mrs. Burcham reported that Mrs. Leeper had been looking at trends over the last three, four and five years in addition to what had been budgeted. The revenues were reduced by $144,000. Still outstanding was sorting out the grant issues, which had proven a challenge for the budget. As soon as that issue was resolved, Mrs. Burcham said she then would know what a "carry forward" would be and hoped to have the resolution by August 18tH Mrs. Leeper reported that meals tax was doing well. Mrs. Burcham reported the lodging tax was lower as compared to a year ago. Adjustments in revenue had been made with what was known now and might have to be done again later. Mr. East asked for clarification that revenues had been reduced again by $144,000. Mrs. Burcham replied yes and expenditures were also reduced by that amount. Council then moved on to the Closed Session. 15. Closed Session Mayor Collins asked for a motion to go into Closed Session to consider the following matters: two items under Va. Code 2.2-3711 (a) (1) personnel matters concerning performance of the Interim Town Manager and appointments to boards and commissions; two items under Va. Code 2.2-3711 (a) (3) discussion or consideration of acquisition or disposition of real 'property; two items under Va. Code 2.2-3711 (a) (8) consultation with legal counsel regarding a zoning violation and a boundary adjustment; and, one item concerning the COVID-19 Pandemic. Mr. East moved to enter the Closed Session. The motion was seconded by Mr. Clontz and approved on the following roll call vote: Page 6 of 7/August 4, 2020 Lane R. Penn -Aye James A. Radcliffe -Aye Brooks R. Dawson -Aye G. Tyler Clontz -Aye Gregory C. East -Aye Michael P. Reis -Aye Council entered Closed Session at 7:38 p.m. and returned from Closed Session at 9:20 p.m. Mayor Collins asked for a certification motion that Council discussed only those matters for which they went into Closed Session: two items under Va. Code 2.2-3711 (a) (1) personnel matters concerning performance of the Interim Town Manager and appointments to boards and commissions; two items under Va. Code 2.2-3711 (a) (3) discussion or consideration of acquisition or disposition of real property; two items under Va. Code 2.2-3711 (a) (8) consultation with legal counsel regarding a zoning violation and a boundary adjustment; and, one item concerning the COVID-19 Pandemic. Mr. East moved to certify the closed session. The motion was seconded by Mr. Dawson and approved on the following roll call vote: Lane R. Penn -Aye James A. Radcliffe -Aye Brooks R. Dawson -Aye G. Tyler Clontz -Aye Gregory C. East -Aye Michael P. Reis -Aye Mayor Collins then asked Council to consider Item 13a. Resolution 2020-22 concerning the Community Wellness Commitment. Mr. Dawson moved to approve Resolution 2020-22 Resolution in Support of the New River Valley Public Health Task Force's Community Wellness Commitment. The motion was seconded by Mr. Penn and approved on the following roll call vote: Lane R. Penn -Aye James A. Radcliffe -Aye Brooks R. Dawson -Aye G. Tyler Clontz -Aye Gregory C. East -Aye Michael P. Reis -Aye There being no further business, Mayor Collins called for a motion to adjourn. The motion was so moved by Mr. Penn seconded by Mr. Clontz and approved by the unanimous voice vote of Council at 9:25 p.m. ATTEST: Z-ua- ze��t� David N. Quesenberry Clerk of Council 1 Approved: W. Shannon Collins Mayor Page 7 of 7/August 4, 2020