2011-03-28 Study Session - Laserfiche WebLink

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library has always had a great relationship with the City and the City has always been supportive and responsive to the needs of library. Ms. Ricci asked about their defined contribution program and Mr. Stokes said they have a small defined contribution matching program and thought it capped out at $2,000 per employee. Ms. Watson said the library does a match into the deferred compensation plan for full-time employees rather than a defined contribution plan. The second half of the study session was for the budget report from the Administrative Services department which includes Finance, Informational Technology, Human Resources and the Municipal Court, presented by Ms. Watson. She also provided information about the City’s debt payments and the CALOP Commission. First covered were budget line items for Human Resources (HR) Ms. Watson noted that previously there were two full-time positions and now it is run by a HR Manager which explained the difference in costs for personnel services. She explained that there are a couple of extra line items in the HR budget not seen in the others: medical insurance for retirees which is used by a limited number of employees who retired at the age of 62, after thirty years of service. The City will continue to pay a part of their health insurance till they reach the age of 65. She said most police and fire personnel leave before the age of 62. The other line item seen in the HR budget is the Employee Assistance program which is small dollar amount to be distributed to each department. The total is left in the HR budget. Also in the HR budget is the cost for unemployment since departments such as Information Technology no longer have any employees listed. Mr. Crow asked why Medical Insurance went from $7500 to $11,000. Ms. Watson said when the department budgets for vacant positions, it budgets what the City’s cost would be if that employee chose family health insurance coverage, since the City pays more on the family policies. Ms. Watson continued on by highlighting some costs. She said there was a one-time data base upgrade for the financial system, New World, for $15,000. $5,000 of this will be expensed in HR. There has never had this type of charge before and she hopes that they don’t have it in the future at any time. Ms. Watson said one of the largest accounts HR had is Medical Services and that is where all of the pre-employment service testing costs are noted, mostly for police and fire. Ms. Watson said there are a couple of small items, such as the Cafeteria Plan’s Administrative quarterly fees. Ms. Watson went down to job ads and explained that this was where the City placed most of its ads: STLToday and sometimes in the Saint Louis American. She said line item Publications was used for exams for some types of recruitments. The two final items in HR, Ms. Watson discussed were food for the holiday luncheon for $3,200 and service awards presented at this luncheon. Mr. Sharpe asked what was included under Affirmative Action. Ms. Watson said that previously the City had Cadet Programs for police and fire. The last few programs were not successful and the money was removed from the budget. She hesitates to take it out in case the City would decide to incorporate a Cadet program again. Ms. Watson said the City had a minority work program but it was not successful. Ms. Ricci said the question she has is how some of the categories were defined. She used Maintenance contracts as the example and asked if all maintenance contracts were listed in this category? Ms. Watson said that in the past the City chose a vendor to monitor the cafeteria plan and that is the vendor still being used. Ms. Ricci asked if we have contracts with everyone listed under line item number 6050 Maintenance Contracts, and how was this defined. Ms. Watson said it would vary from department to department but it would include something that would be an ongoing maintenance and support type contract for a service. Ms. Ricci said there are also a computer and