2006 0914 Special City Commission Meeting

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Summary Minutes: Special City Commission Meeting September 14,2006 First Budget Hearing Sunny Isles Beach, Florida utilize existing staff in the Finance Department, that would be the first step, we are not sure if that would be the most effective. He said ifthat does not work or get us what we want, at that point we would come back with a recommendation for probably another reorganization including at that point a Procurement Officer. He said part of that process would be reevaluating and revamping some of the policies and procedures to achieve a centralized purchasing policy. Commissioner Thaler said that he should also have someone follow up to make sure the items get here relatively on time. Mayor Edelcup noted that the biggest change in Human Resources Budget is the incorporation of the Insurance where before it was in Administration. City Manager Szerlag said that they have consolidated all insurance under HR. City Manager Szerlag said he wanted to consolidate it to see what the cost would be and then take a look at possible alternatives and there are several: one is to take a look at our deductible for property casualty to see if we should raise the deductible on a per occurrence basis, and purchase what is called an aggregate stop loss so that even if you may have a high deductible you can't pay more then x number of dollars in a given year for a catastrophic loss that may be one example that we might want to do to take a look at reducing our insurance costs. He said when you concentrate in one area, the person responsible for it has a better hands-on experience, has a better sense of the magnitude of that particular item and hopefully becomes more expert in that area which would in turn instill more creativity in seeing how we could possibly reduce further costs. Mayor Edelcup asked on the Sunny Isles Beach Sun Newspaper what is the City's cost ofthat annually, and what line item is that on. Administrative Services Director Alyce Hanson said $750 per newspaper, and there are usually 23 or 24 newspapers every year. Mayor Edelcup noted then that it is roughly $18,000 a year, and Ms. Hanson said the line item would be either in Public Relations, Promotions, or Printing a Newsletter. Commissioner Thaler asked how many newspapers every other week are we supposed to get, and Ms. Hanson said that they print 9,000 newspapers. Commissioner Thaler asked ifthey were all delivered in Sunny Isles Beach, and Ms. Hanson said to her knowledge, yes. Commissioner Thaler said either we need more or they are not getting to the right place because we are getting more and more complaints that buildings and areas are not getting them, so there is something wrong with the distribution system. Mayor Edelcup said we need to look into that, because they are suppose to distribute them to the high-rises and the single-family home neighborhoods, our employee goes around and distributes them to the individual homes. Commissioner Thaler said there is one area that does not get a newspaper at all, Golden Gate was here yesterday and claimed they have not seen a newspaper. Ms. Hanson said the community newspaper does deliver to the Golden Gate Guardhouse and then what they do with it from there she does not know because we can't get in there. She said the City hires a part-time person to deliver the newspaper to all the single-family homes in Atlantic Isle, Golden Shores, and Poinciana, and all the other newspapers are delivered by Community Newspapers to the high-rises, newsstands, and restaurants. Mayor Edelcup said that he would like Ms. Hanson to convey to the publisher of the newspaper concerns of the coverage of our meetings. He said for the past year they have not sent a reporter here but are availing themselves of using tapes of what has taken place and transcribing them for their articles, and he would prefer that the majority of times that if they are going to report on the meetings, as the Miami Herald is here, that it helps to have live reporting because it catches the spirit of the evening sometimes better then just 6