05/18/05 Budget Study - Laserfiche WebLink

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Budget Study Session May 18, 2005 question that we did not debate was how to fund the teaching facility and the teaching facility had a couple of ways of funding it. It was stated how you could fund that teaching facility that would generate the money to pay for the master plan. Everybody said, more or less, that the one thing they didn't want was the teaching facility. Without the teaching facility there was no way to fund the master plan. Mr. Ollendorff said that as Mr. Wagner pointed out, it is a moot point, because you rejected the plan, which he is not arguing about. He is arguing that you cannot say it is because he did not have a funding plan attached, because he did. Mr. Wagner stated that there was a lot of misinformation that we rejected the master plan. It was never introduced to the Council and that is misinformation. He heard this from a Commissioner that the Council turned down the master plan - but it never came to Council. It didn't because the previous issue on the same agenda was, do you want this driving range without any discussion about how it was going to be funded which is a fundamental question. When you're not allowed to discuss the fundamental core issue, of course Council will turn it down. The master plan was never presented to the Council for a vote. Ms. Brungardt said that she would like to see the community move more effectively towards larger goals like that than we did. She felt that was an unfortunate way to try to achieve a common goal. Being new, she will be happy to take any bit of fault for not having the kind of experience necessary to understand certain aspects of this issue, but she doesn't feel that her inexperience kept her from asking pertinent questions that were valuable to the outcome. It was interesting because issues like this are the kind of issues that can sometimes cause discord in the community that was not necessary. She believes that she was uncomfortable because she didn't feel that the supposed funding streams were not particularly fiscally responsible decisions. She felt that this should have been a much more public and open discussion with community, especially golfing community, so that the plan and its funding, would have been better understood. She is curious if the Commissioners request that this issue be brought up again, will there be any seed money in this budget, which she doubts, for this plan. If this is brought up again would we a point where we could start or would it have to be started from square one. Mr. Ollendorff said that Ms. Brungardt is right that there is no extra money in this budget to start a Ruth Park master plan. That does not mean that the staff is not going to continue to work on plans for the future of Ruth Park. We are going to continue to work on that because we think it is an important activity. Obviously we are not going to come back with the same kind of plan. We are going to continue to work on that, as we always have, with a five year capital improvement plan and you will see that Ruth Park is in that. We are going to continue to analyze it. The Park Commission adopted the schedule for the Ruth Park master plan study and appointed a subcommittee to work on it back in April or May. Ms. Brungardt said that the commissioners themselves weren't fully cognizant of the funding streams. She reported that they did not even realize there were funding stream questions. She felt that they may have been given the impression that this was not an issue for them, that all they had to do was dream big. Page 4