Village of Alsip Committee of the Whole met June 14.
Here are the minutes provided by the committee:
Trustee McLawhorn called the meeting to order at 6:45p. m with the following in attendance: Trustees McLawhorn, Murphy, Nava- Esparza, Perretta, and Clerk Harding. Mayor Ryan arrived later in the meeting ( no time was given for his arrival).
The discussion was led by the Finance Director, Joyce Tucker. She wanted to focus on the most important areas of the budget. The net income increased to $ 594, 000. Health Insurance is fund 405 and used to be mixed into fund 205 or 210 for insurance reserves. The medical claims paid out line item included retirees under 65 years old. That has been moved to the OPEB line so now this will actually show the costs for health care. The OPEB fund now shows the approximation of the property tax levy for the OPEB, the transfer from the Health Insurance Fund, and the retiree contributions/ interest. The insurance reserves is what is leftover. The retiree health insurance expense line is the cost of Benistar. There will be a need to levy a lot of money to pay current retirees. There will be about 1 million put away for the OPEB liabilities in the future. It is a Board decision to use reserves or will it be laid into the General Fund. Decisions must be made to decide what we will be offering new employees for their retirement. The actuarial study goes off what our current employees are today. They can' t assume what will be in the future. They will calculate what the current employees retirement would look like. Once that is laid out by the actuarial we can start to make decisions about what if we change the way we offer heath insurance for retirees or new employees. We do not have that roadmap right now and she is working on it. She will reach out to other municipalities to see what they have done because everyone is facing the same situation. Once there are actual numbers to look at then the decisions and negotiations can begin. The consolidated budget showed for FY22 everyone is positive. There was a surplus in the budget so a decision will need to be made on what to do with that. The reserves and emergency fund have already been addressed. There was discussion on if that should go to OPEB or if a certain percentage should go to OPEB and then some to another area. There will be further discussion about it in the future. There was discussion about real estate specific taxes going to Road& Bridge that were supposed to end in FY22 because of the approval of the additional motor fuel tax. The stipulation was that it would replace the real estate taxes that were going into Road & Bridge so they could be diverted to OPEB. There was discussion about the Health Insurance Fund. In prior discussion there was a deficient because retirees under 65 were included. They have been broken out to the OPEB Fund and now the Health Insurance Fund only shows information for active insurance/ current employee insurance. The OPEB fund will now show the breakdown of those retired under 65 years old, their dental, and their pharmacy expense. There will need to be discussions on how to get funded into 2040 and what adjustments might need to be made concerning new hires. This information has not ever been broken out this way so there is not other numbers to compare to. In order to get it broken down to be able to go forward Ms. Tucker had to go off reports from Blue Cross and Blue Shield showing each individual charge for each individual person. Then she had to figure out if there were a retire over or under 65 or a current employee. There was more discussion about the Funding Policy Ordinance for OPEB. The money that has been put away for that is currently in a reserve fund in OPEB. It will need to be transferred to an irrevocable trust soon. There will need to be 62 million by 2040. Ms. Tucker will double check to make sure that ordinance and the funding are being followed. The Mayor brought up possibly using a percentage of the surplus discussed earlier to establish a grant program for existing businesses. Some other municipalities are doing the same thing. It would be similar to a TIF in the respect that it is a shared cost with the Village and the business. The Village has never in the past offered anything to help with retention of current businesses and he thought it was important to the community. More details and criteria will be discussed at the next budget meeting. There is still money coming in from delinquent red light cameras that will be included in the General Fund. Telecommunication taxes will increase so that line item will be adjusted. If there is a new position to be discussed and there is not a committee meeting it was requested the information for that position be sent out ahead of the packet on Friday so there would ample time to review.
ADJOURNMENT: Motion by Trustee Murphy to adjourn and; seconded by Trustee Juarez. All in favor; none opposed. Motion carried. Meeting adjourned at 7: 23pm.
https://laserfiche.villageofalsip.org:1188/WebLink/ElectronicFile.aspx?docid=272420&dbid=0&repo=Village-of-Alsip
Alerts Sign-up