Photo by Joanne Beck
Whether it’s $4,000 or $55,000 and larger, City Council members have financial decisions to make either with this year’s budget or those in the future on items big and small, ranging from fireworks at Dwyer Stadium to the city’s technology plan and beyond.
The group has been delving into the numbers line by line the last two weeks, getting department updates about equipment, vehicle, personnel, building, property, and infrastructure needs, future projects, and those in progress, asking questions, and getting the full picture of reality for the city of Batavia.
“It probably sounds overwhelming, everything we’re telling you, but it’s our job to be completely honest with council on what we’re facing here as employees," Human Resource Director Rebecca McGee said during a conversation Thursday evening about information technology. "And one of the biggest things we face, one of the biggest hindrances we have, is information technology and doing our jobs, and trying to make things work the right way.”
Apparently, things haven’t been working very well with the city’s contract for monthly maintenance with AIS. Assistant City Manager Erik Fix, who was admittedly sort of pegged as the surrogate IT guy in the absence of someone being on-site full-time, he said, reviewed the plan, which provides a person to visit on-site once a month and perform installations.
As for handling those day-to-day technical issues, much of that has fallen to Fix and other city staff. Police Chief Shawn Heubusch and his department staff have had to consistently address issues themselves, he said.
“I just pulled up our spreadsheet, we have over 30 computers at our office alone,” Heubusch said. “That is immensely time-consuming when we have to deal with any of the problems. The investment that we have with AIS, although great, it is not enough. I have an officer, a detective actually, on staff who fixes our computers when they’re broken or installs a new program because something broke. That’s a waste of his time and his energy.”
He also mentioned the surveillance cameras, which are great when fully operational, but when they break down, it takes city public works staff to retrieve them from a pole and then someone to make a repair so that they can resume their function on city streets, he said.
AIS serves a function; it’s just not enough, Fix said.
“They manage and maintain all of our servers, they manage and maintain all of our equipment,” he said. “It’s that troubleshooting piece, that hands-on piece that Shawn’s talking about. It’s just a constant, constant battle to keep that up and running and avoiding probably doubling or tripling our fees and ask them to have somebody here. We’re managing bare bones.”
Another glitch in the city’s older-fashioned system is the need to do some timesheets manually, McGee said.
“Do you know we all still do our timesheets by paper?” McGee said as the room went silent. “When we’re thinking about IT, it’s the time-savings of taking 36 timesheets and entering them. When we’re trying to weigh out the costs, it’s the time savings and the cost savings.”
Fix suggested a 10 percent increase for both the AIS piece and software cost, for a total of $71,500. In this next year’s budget, AIS alone would be $55,000, which prompted Councilman David Twichell to suggest considering dropping the maintenance service and hiring an IT person. If full-time, however, there would be expenses of benefits and retirement costs to be considered.
The city has pulled back on community celebrations spending, reserving $4,000 from last year potentially for a request from Batavia Muckdogs owner Robbie Nichols for fireworks, which is where it went after GO Art! Announced that there wasn’t enough staff and volunteers to pull off the former Picnic in the Park event at Centennial Park on July 4.
"Last year Council allocated funds to do a fireworks celebration at Dwyer with those funds. I did not add that in there. But I did get a request as we were walking into this meeting from Robbie Nichols. So if you'd like that, I have a written request for that," she said. "We did, however, get a letter from the Holland Land Office Museum asking for support. So I did add that into the budget, but it's certainly something Council can review."
There’s $2,500 slated for both GO Art! And Holland Land Office Museum.
Councilman Bob Bialkowski supported a contribution to the West Main Street museum, he said.
"They are remodeling and painting, they’re closed for a month, they’re setting up new displays, they're going to be entering into an expansion project from the west side of the building, a major expansion … and doing some major work on the building too,” he said. “This small amount of support from the city really means a lot to him, and I think so many city people use it, you know, the schools, I think it’s a great educational tool.”
City staff participates in the Memorial Day parade, Christmas in the City and Veterans Day, with corresponding investments, for a total of $13,500 for community celebrations.
The city also has $12,500 for a hot water tank and $20,000 for seating repairs earmarked from reserves for Dwyer Stadium. There’s a need to improve a section of seats that have been beaten up by the weather, Tabelski said. Those seats haven’t been able to be used, and that equaled a loss of ticket sales, she said.
Other Dwyer expenses are $6,000 for salaries and another $3,000 for maintenance, for a total of $43,500.
The ice rink is to get $20,500, with $16,500 for a contractual expense and $4,000 for public works salary.
In other recreational-related expenses, Human Resource Director Rebecca McGee let council members know about a new health perk for employees.
“We are excited to announce that we're able to increase our gym reimbursement program so that anybody can turn in a receipt up to $100 towards their membership for a gym,” she said. “We're pretty excited about that. Again, this continues to just keep going towards the health and well-being of all of our employees, and how seriously the city is taking that.”
Bialkowski asked how many employees take advantage of the reimbursement.
“We have $1,500 budgeted for it, so 15 employees,” Deputy Director of Finance Lisa Neary said.
There is also $2,500 for employee recognition, which includes fees for participation in the annual GLOW Cup 5K in Batavia.
“We’re moving towards the wellness and continuing to keep that in the forefront and focus for all of our employees. As we can see, they're pretty excited to have it, we'll take advantage of that one to help to make sure that we're all staying healthy. And then employee recognition, we had a great turnout over the last couple of years for their GLOW race, which is celebrated in Centennial Park that first week in August. So that's the increase towards that. We've had a lot of members take advantage of that over the last couple of years,” McGee said. “We’re pretty excited to be able to again continue to offer that as a wellness benefit for all of our employees, and making sure that we're all staying healthy, and being able to have some bonding time with our fellow employees and recognizing the importance of that, to have that line increase there as well.”
Other assorted budgeted expenses from general governmental services include:
- $45,000 for City Centre properties (fees and taxes) parcel #s 2, 11 and 16;
- $25,000 for the city’s mall fees;
- $11,000 for recycling and garbage pickup;
- $10,000 for city facility maintenance;
- $22,000 for court operations and maintenance;
- $15,000 for mowing, boarding and picking up garbage for code inspection-related properties.
- The expense of $310,000 for the portion of roof over Main St. 56 Theater was negotiated, but from here on out, future sales of city properties will be considered “as is,” Tabelski said.
The big-ticket items for major departments will be included in future articles. Council has more budget sessions scheduled for the week of Jan. 29.
