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<br />To: Honorable Mayor Adams and Council <br />From: Julie Feier, City Manager <br />Date: November 6, 2008 <br />Subject: Weekly Update <br />delinquent refuse collection program <br />The City’s continues successfully. To date, the <br />City has collected $405,000 in additional delinquencies since the program began. The <br />majority of this amount was collected last fiscal year during the amnesty phase, but we <br />continue to collect delinquent amounts on properties where service has been stopped <br />and then reinstated when residents begin to make monthly payments. The City has <br />moved through three of the five sections of the City and there are just over 350 <br />properties with stopped service where no payment or payment plan has been received. <br />Code enforcement staff is checking for inappropriate accumulation of trash on these <br />properties, but so far, no problems have occurred. After the first of the year, the City will <br />resume sending shut-off notices to the last two parts of the City. With the September 1 <br />residential refuse service billings, the City Council authorized increased penalties for <br />non-payment. Previously, the penalty for non-payment was just $1.00, which was too <br />low to encourage timely payment. The first increased level of penalty began on October <br />1, 2008 with a penalty of 10% of the billing. Since this was a higher penalty, the City <br />allowed a grace period of one additional week before adding the penalty. For residents <br />who did not pay the regular six-month billing of $90.30 (cost of regular curb-line rate) by <br />the grace period, a penalty was added of $9.03. Many residents have called to <br />complain of the higher penalties but staff remains consistent with the new penalty <br />schedule. <br />This Saturday, November 8, 2008 the University City School District will hold its fifth <br />Community Engagement Meetingregarding the District’s finances <br />. The meeting <br />will be held at Julia Goldstein Early Childhood Center 737 Kingsland Ave from 9:30 to <br />11:30 am. Director of Finance Scott Hafertepe will present information about basic <br />school finance, the history of how we got where we are and how the District could <br />finance the proposed capital improvement plan and provide for financial stability in the <br />long term. In presenting its financing plan, the District assumed the new configuration <br />of schools would be: 2 new elementaries, 2 renovated elementaries, a renovated middle <br />school and a renovated high school. With this configuration the Administration would <br />propose a no-tax increase bond issue which would raise approximately $53 million and <br />extend payments until 2029. It would supplement the bond issue from the sale <br />proceeds of the McKnight building ($4 million). The proposed bond issue would be on <br />the April 2009 ballot. To address the long term financial stability of the District’s <br />operating budget, there is an expected cost savings of $2 million once the school <br /> <br />