MINUTES COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE 7:30pm Mayor Prejna called the meeting to order at 7:30 pm. COUNCIL IN ATTENDANCE: Aldermen Mike Cannon; Jerry Hill; Joe Gallo; Robert Banger, Jr., John D Astice, Tim Veenbaas COUNCIL ABSENT: Alderman Laura Majikes STAFF IN ATTENDANCE: City Manager Barry Krumstok, Deputy City Clerk Ginny Cotugno, Assistant to the City Manager Lori Ciezak, Finance Director Melissa Gallagher, Fire Chief Scott Franzgrote, Deputy Fire Chief Terry Valentino, Fire Lieutenant Benjamin Dwyer, Police Chief John Nowacki, Police Sergeant John Manfredi, Public Works Director Fred Vogt, and City Attorney Jim Macholl 1) EOC Training for Officials Mr. Krumstok: We re going to actually rearrange. The first item is going to be EOC Training for Officials. This is the annual training that we have to do and I would introduce usually Chief Franzgrote, but obviously he s already passed the baton to Lt. Ben Dwyer who will actually do a presentation like he s done in the past and also introduce one special guest that we actually have here from Northwest Central who actually helps us with a lot of our EOC/Emergency Training in making sure that we conform with Federal and State rules and making sure our tabletops are completed so we at least annually maintain our certifications. With that I give you Lt. Dwyer. Fire Lieutenant Benjamin Dwyer: Good evening. This is Mick Fleming from Northwest Central Joint Emergency Management System. They are our dispatch center and the communities that Northwest Central dispatches for have him on staff to actually do all the emergency operations planning, what else do you do Mick? Mr. Fleming: So of the communities that Northwest Central serves, they kind of created this joint Emergency Management position. Typically some of the things that we work on, developing the Emergency Operations Plans, so how our communities would respond not to a normal, I say normal with air quotes, not a normal emergency but to an extraordinary disaster, catastrophic event. We work on that through planning, training, and exercising so with that topic we re going to talk a little bit about training today for some of our senior officials. Lt. Dwyer: And Mick is the face you want to see walk in the door if you have something big going as far as operations, reimbursements, anything like that, FEMA forms, etc. It s one of those take time to make time things where if you re not doing it right from the very beginning the amount of time you re going to be spending catching up is going to get to you. So, let s get started here. Our objectives for this training, you re going to know what NIMS is by the end of this, overview of the NIMS Incident Command System, overview of the City s framework for
Page 2 emergency management, and also just a really brief overview for the roles and responsibilities. So when you think of emergency management I want you to think of a structured common sense approach to the management of risk. So there s good risk, there s bad risk. Good risk, we re expecting this threat, it happened, we had a plan for it. Bad risk, we didn t staff a rig and now we caught a fire and now we re kind of in trouble. So, it s just looking at what happened, where you re at, and where you re going and making common sense approaches. Looking at common themes, suggesting interoperability s, having defined roles and responsibilities, having uniform definitions so everybody understands what we re talking about. So if I say a strike team, you know exactly what a strike team is. What Rolling Meadows calls a strike team is what Palatine calls a strike team, it s what Washington DC calls a strike team. So whether it s a local car accident or federal response to heat, everybody is using the same terminology. Does that make sense to everybody? Very good, so it s highly structured, but flexible. Highly structured and flexible to manage incidents. So it developed from 1970 s FIRESCOPE that they use on the west coast for forest fires. They re so large it could be multiple states or just a couple acres going. Legal basis, so you have Homeland Security presidential directives. That s very indepth. If you re interested in looking this up I d be happy to send you the link. This is just saying the federal government accepted this as our common operating procedures and we follow the National Response Framework and use NIMS as a template. Emphasizes partnerships and resilience, local, state, and federal for all those so having memorandums of understanding and collaborative agreements with local and state officials, federal officials, so let s look at the Murrah building that went up in Oklahoma City. Every three lettered federal branch was there, in addition to Oklahoma City Fire, Police, etc. So those kinds of incidents are what s going to draw that kind of level of engagement. We also engage with individuals within the City, private sector, and NGO s, so Red Cross. If individuals want to volunteer like a CERT, our old ESDA Corps, same kind of thing. Information flows up and down the ladder of the framework. Same with the NIMS wire charts. You re going to see those a little bit. Basically it defines who needs what and how badly they need to get it and who gets it. So it s one of those critical resource allocation things. NIMS is a system that emphasizes preparedness, communication, information management, critical resource management like I said before, command and control management, ICS, ongoing management and maintenance. 35 years ago if you said that we had to have active shooter training how many people would have believed it. So we have to adapt to the ongoing threats so we re always improving and evolving with the environment. Now schools commonly have lock down drills. So Rolling Meadows adopted NIMS in 2004. Everybody s using it. Our City commonly utilizes NIMS for fire and rescue incidents all the way from a single vehicle accident to a major incident whether its hazmat or fire, severe weather or disaster incidents. So if we have snow command, PW sets up snow commands, the same kind of ICS. It s the same framework. We re just adjusting it to fit that specific role. Hazmat incidents, large scale crime scenes that PD might be using, terrorists incidents since we re close to O Hare and other critical infrastructure in the area, and major planned events, block parties, what else, the Farmers and Food Trucks for weather events, Wine Down by the Creek, all those things. So it differs from day to day operations. We re talking about a car wreck so how do we work a car wreck is going to be different than how we work a bombing, etc. Unique titles, everybody has a specific job within that title and again everybody knows who they need to report to. Positions may change depending on what we re being faced. One person might actually take up two spots in the EOC if we have to activate it. The most qualified person is going to be designated
Page 3 Incident Command and the incident is handled at the most appropriate scale and level. So this is the wire chart that we re talking about when we say ICS, so Incident Command System is ICS. So you have Incident Command who is ultimately responsible for everybody s decisions. Off to the right you have a PIO, Public Information Officer, Liaison Officer, Safety Officer, all three of those officers are intimately involved in the management of the scene and information sharing. Down at the bottom you have the general staff, OPS, planning, logs, and finance. Nothing gets moved or paid for unless those people are doing their jobs. Operations, those are the boots on the ground going and doing the digging, etc. The Plans, the logs, and the finance are really the people that are getting, supplying operations. If you don t have those three off to the right, nothing is happening, but everybody wants to pay tribute to the guys who are out there digging. This is on a grander scale, so basically this one is just a bigger ICS organizational chart, so this would be like a deployment to Katrina, so you specifically have other branches, air operations, groups, strike teams, task force, etc. So this is just showing you how it can scale up or scale down. So car accident, bomb, same kind of thing. So here in Rolling Meadows we have an Emergency Planning Team. We have representatives, we have Mick from Northwest Central Dispatch, representatives from Fire, Police, PW, IT, Community Development, Finance, and Admin. We re very lucky to have the people we have on this committee and we ve made significant progress in the last few years. It s actually become, it s an excellent collaboration. So our accomplishments as of recent, we re renewing our Emergency Operations Plan. With the way Cook County is right now we don t really get accredited anymore, so we re just making sure everything is up to snuff because you have to renew that every two years. So we re actually in the process of that right now. We re revitalizing our Emergency Operations Center that we can open in case of a disaster or continue to have somewhat of a fusion center so it blends, it s a place for all the Department Heads and key players to blend their SOP s and Rules & Regs and refer to State law. So you re creating critical resource allocation plan. You can leverage any kind of information that you have and technologies that you have to meet the needs of the situation. Does that make sense to everybody? So it s just information sharing on a grander scale. So Senior Staff rules and responsibilities, this specifically pertains to Department Heads providing policy relating to priorities and objectives that support our EOP. They oversee the resource coordination, support on scene command and emergency operation center so they d actually be working inside the EOC and management authority of the incident is delegated to the designated on scene incident commander. Basically whoever showed up there first and is most appropriately trained will be the IC for that incident. I know I m being a little repetitive but these are big points to hit. So Incident Management Roles, Incident Command manages the scene at the incident. They re more operations. Communicates with the EOC regarding the incident and requests resources as needed. Senior staff supports by providing policy, mission readiness for manning equipment, etc., strategic direction, authority, and resources so obtain and distribute. So if I need 5,000 pieces of plywood because we had downforce wind, I tell them get me plywood now, as soon as you can. They take care of it so it goes back to the EOC, the purchase is made, and it comes back out to us in the field. This specifically pertains to you. Primary function is to assist in the management of information from the Ward. So basically you re going to be information funnels. You re going to funnel information to us, we re going to funnel information back to you. It s going to work on multiple levels. You re going to get information through Everbridge Software which is our reverse 911, from mailers, from Ward information, it could be anything. It depends on the situation, how big it is. Is it a boil order? Is
Page 4 it because half the town got leveled from a tornado? So, again what scale are we talking? Review and understand emergency operation plans as needed. When you need to know we ll let you know. We can t show the playbook to everybody. Some things we do want to keep a little bit close to our chest. Develop policy and provide capital support, responders and operations, vehicle replacement committee, training, etc. That s primarily where it s at. Also with adopting NIMS as your common practice. Understand NIMS in case you have to work with it and the Mayor ultimately holds the authority to declare a local disaster. It goes to you sir, so you have a certain threshold that you have to meet for damage and then the County has to meet a threshold, and the State has to meet a threshold, and the Feds have to declare a disaster. There s a lot of red tape, but that s the system that we have to work within. This is the recommended training. Rolling Meadows is well built to be more resilient when faced with threats. We re maintaining a forward leaning posture in these threats. Do you have anything? Mr. Fleming: I ll step in and talk a little bit about some of the training. Ben touched on this as he was going through, but obviously there are various levels of ICS implementation and the amount of knowledge that you need to know regarding the Incident Command System and the National Incident Management System. And so one of the things that we ve really been working on is trying to get everybody up to a certain level based on where we have them in our EOC structure and where we have them in our Incident Command structure. So some of the bigger training, especially for elected officials, are these ones up here. G402, it s the ICS overview for executives and senior officials. It s an in class course, 24 hour, or not 24 hours, it s an 8 hour course so it s an all-day course. IS700, ICS100 are both courses that you can take online at FEMA s website, so FEMA IS. If you google that you ll be able to pull up their website and search for their courses. IS700 and IS100, which is ICS100, are the introductory courses. Everything we talked about here they re going to explain to you and what they say should take anywhere from 4-6 hours. The Active Shooter/Active Threat, obviously we re living in an evolving time. New threats are evolving so the Active Shooter/Active Threat course is another course I believe is available online and there is an in class portion as well. G191, this kind of explains how those people in the field, those responders, the Fire, Police, Public Works, those people who are out there working the incident communicate and coordinate with us in the EOC who are managing the incident. We re not out there telling people pick this up and put that there, but from a much higher level we re setting the priorities of in what order do we want to get things done. Is it more important to get the power back on at the nursing facility or is it more important to get the water back on to the entire community and those are some of the decisions that are going to come from the higher levels and direct the EOC and what they think is important and the EOC is going to communicate back down to the field as to how to execute those priorities from the top. There is a wonderful list of training courses online at FEMA S website and we re always looking for more trainings to bring to the community so in my role especially, we re trying to be a force multiplier. We ve got a number of communities that came together to enhance their emergency management programs and one of the things that we can do is we can bring in more trainings because we have more people to bring to those trainings and its typically pretty difficult to get elected officials to some of those trainings just because of your schedules and its everywhere I ve ever been its always one of those hurdles. I would pose to you, if there s anything that you find interesting or you find a training that you would like to
Page 5 bring here, send that message to Chief Franzgrote, to Ben, and the word will get to me and we ll try and get it here for you. Anything that we can do to help better the community as well. Mr. Krumstok: I just wanted to really quickly touch on something that Ben Dwyer actually mentioned and that s just more for the community. Obviously we activate the EOC for tabletops and some other things, but when you look at the last flooding incident that we actually had, that was the full scale EOC where we actually activated it. Mayor Nelson actually came in. He actually sat in part of the EOC, but then we had boots on the ground, again that we were actually driving around taking pictures, dealing with Public Works, but that was the last time we really activated it in full form and everything else and then through obviously Northwest Central and Mick, we actually increased a lot of the training and you see the active shooter threat. Pretty much most of the employees in the City actually went through most of that this year and part of last year too, but part of that is making sure that for the community we have the best trained people but also how we always look at things is you need to be 24/48 ready so 24 hours, 48 that the City is actually maintaining itself. After that 48 you re going to hopefully get help from other communities and that s what we keep on talking about with all the other pieces that when we talk jargon the manager from Palatine would come into Rolling Meadows and he will know exactly what we re talking about or the Fire Department from another municipality. Another example is obviously when we ve sent employees to other municipalities, even down to New Orleans, its same terminology. Everyone is in the same pieces so when we talk about logistics, everybody knows the pieces and also we ve been very good about some of the finance and administration that when the State of Illinois has allowed us to get some reimbursement, it might be 5 cents to a dollar, but we ve been able to show all that paperwork and have all that documentation. The other thing I wanted to let really residents know and actually the council, when we do tabletops we really try to make them as active as they can, but also making sure that we bring in more new employees so they understand what we re actually doing and talking about things. We re also very fortunate that we do have certain businesses in the community that have actually done tabletops with us and we actually have one community that actually did an active shooter with us so we could actually really do true training in some of those pieces, but again overall I would recommend, and again if you set up an account and then through FEMA and you go through the ICS100 and then 700, it will give you a good feel of some of the terminology, some of the other ideas, but again for a lot of us, and again Lt. Dwyer, Fire chiefs, Police chiefs, a lot of administration, we have a whole terminology, lots of different classes that we have to go through. There are full day classes. There was a 300, 400 which is more technical on that, but again we want you to understand that, again, if something happens there are some responsibilities for you, but at the same point in time when we tell you we re just looking for communication from you to us, that s the biggest point that we have because we re going to be running the incident from all the rights and procedures, so if you re coming into City Hall and we tell you well we re going to put you in the Aldermen s room, but not in the EOC, it s because there is a terminology and there s also some cordoning off that we need to do to make sure who s in the EOC and then how we trickle that information uniformly and universally to everybody. Mr. Fleming: Thank you and I know you ll take a look at some of these courses and you ll see the length of them and you ll say oh this much time. I ve been through enough federally declared disasters and I ve heard it on the front end where I don t have enough time to do this
Page 6 and then on the backend where I wish I would have, I wish I would have, but now it s too late and some of the stuff is hard to pick up on the fly so the time that you can spend and going through the training is time that helps all of us in the end so thank you guys very much. Lt. Dwyer: Thank you very much. Mayor Prejna: Thank you gentlemen. 2) Audit Mayor Prejna: Mr. Krumstok, it is audit time. Mr. Krumstok: Yes. Actually I d like to introduce Ron Amen who is sitting behind me and he s from obviously the accounting firm of Lauterback & Amen. He is going to go through the 2016 Audit which is actually loaded on to your surfaces or computers and again it is a clean audit that we have. Many of you around the room, this is our 2016 Audit. I will let him go through and then obviously from these discussions in July we re actually going to have additional discussions, fund balance, and also some other items. So with that it s time for Ron Amen and Melissa Gallagher, Finance Director, will also participate in this discussion. There is no Power Point with this. Ms. Gallagher: Thank you Mr. Krumstok. I m just going to briefly kick if off here for tonight s discussion by Ron Amen our auditor of Lauterback & Amen. On your laptops, surface pros, you ve got a copy of the audit itself. That will be loaded on to the City s website by June 30 th. We re just wrapping up the final pieces to that. What you have is final though, right on your computers, and tonight we wanted to share with you a couple of pieces in the packet. We have an unaudited fund summary which does show you all the fund balance reserves per the audit in your packet. We also have a fund balance review of the General Fund which shows you about 4 months of operating reserves for Fiscal Year 2016 which is about 34% fund balance within the target for the City and their fund balance policy and then we also have a Fund Balance Policy Review which does show you three of our funds that do have Fund Balance Reserve Polices and all are on target. What we did want to say is that a lot of work goes into this. We also have a Citizen Report that condenses our almost 200 page plus report to about 10 pages. That will also be on the City s website by the end of June as well. So with that I m going to turn that over to Ron Amen. Mr. Amen: Good evening. What I want to try to do and you guys can follow along, I m going to flip through pages and I ll try to make sure you guys can go through it, but I m going to go through the CAFR first and hit a couple of highlights. In the CAFR itself, in the introductory section which is everything in the Roman Numerals, on page 16 which is XVI for the 13 th consecutive year the City of Rolling Meadows has submitted the Annual Audit Report to the Government Finance Officers Association and has earned the Certificate of Achievement. It s a very prestigious award. To obtain the Certificate you have to, it goes through three levels of review. One thing to remind you is they don t comment on your financial health, but what they
Page 7 do comment on is making sure that all the procedures and all the requirements that are applicable have been addressed and adhered to within the report itself so it s a very prestigious award and it s just in the audit world, it s the highest report you can submit to so the City can be very proud to continue to earn that award. Right behind there is our auditor s opinion which is on pages 1, 2, and 3 of the audit report. All units of government by Illinois State Statute are required to have an auditors opening. Our opinion is clean, or unmodified, and my new way to address this is to say this is the only opinion you want. There are other opinions you can get but you don t want those. So to get a clean audited opinion once again means that the financial statements are materially correct based on our auditing procedures. From there I m going to go into a few numbers to try to highlight what we saw during the year from the auditor s perspective so on pages 11 and 12, which you have to get passed the MD&A pages and get to the regular page 11 and 12. Pages 11 and 12 are an Income Statement for the year. Under the modified accrual base of accounting, this is the basis that you budget the way, on a month-to-month basis, that you get your financial information. You can see the most important number and what I want to point out is the far right column under the totals, the third line up from the bottom shows a positive increase to your change in fund balance on page 12 of 1,364,000 so a very positive increase in your governmental funds. There was a positive increase in your General Fund, but accumulative across all the fund structures it was a 1.3 million dollar increase to fund balance, so a very nice increase. From there I m going to do the same exercise on page 16. Page 16 is an Income Statement for your proprietary funds so it includes what we call your business type and your internal service funds. You can see there in the totals column of the Enterprise it had a decrease of fund balance, the third line up from the bottom, so it had a decrease of 74,000 dollars between the Utilities and Refuse Fund and then the Internal Service Fund had a positive increase of 2.2 million dollars, so that s the third line up from the bottom there on page 16. And then the last page I m going to do this for once again is a positive increase in your fund balance is on page 19 and this is for the Police Pension and the Fire Pension Fund. There s lots of gymnastics we ve gone through for the past couple of years because of new GASB s, because of reporting requirements, so to have this on page 19, the third line up from the bottom, shows a change in the fiduciary position which is the Police Pension and the Fire Pension of just over 5 million dollars. So it s a nice healthy increase in those two funds as well. The next thing I d like to do is go over to the Management Letter. The Management Letter I think Melissa said is also on your laptops. In there we have one current comment and four prior comments that I want to address. The current comment is another new GASB, so I m just the messenger. Don t shoot me. GASB 74 and 75 are going to come into play. You will be in December of 2018 when you need to implement this. It s going to go back to how the actuary is going to need to compute other postemployment benefits so you still have a couple more years before this will go into play, but this is just an educational that it is coming at us. We ll continue to work with staff to make sure that you re in line to address that when it becomes applicable in December of 18. The four prior year comments, the first one is related to your Fund Balance Policy. In the past we ve recommended that you have a policy put into place. I know it was staggered across funds. Now this has been fully implemented across all your funds. Now that it is implemented what I always like to address and make sure that you guys understand is that there is a policy there but I m a big believer in it needs to be addressed annually. I think both during the audit season and more appropriately during the budget season is to know what the policy says, makes sure it s in line to what you re intentions at the board level are, make sure that the budget process addresses it
Page 8 periodically through the budgeting process and then when you get to the audit time obviously we re in June and we re looking backwards to December of 16 and that s a point to say were our intentions met through the policy, so this is now the policy is in place, but I m a big believer to continue to monitor this on an annual basis both budgeting and through the audit time. The second comment was related to funds over budget and this is kind of embarrassing, but it is our Firm policy. You can see in December of 16 we kept the comment in there because there was one fund that was 225.00 over budget. Not a lot of money, but our Firm policy is to say if there s a fund over budget we like to make sure that the board is aware. So 225.00, hopefully it s not 225 million next year, but it was 225.00. We ll move on. The next two comments, comment number three and four, kind of go hand in hand and you ll see the funds that are there, the first comment number three talks about negative fund equity and there are two funds that have negative fund equity. They re both your TIF s, two of the TIF Funds, and you can see that management has written a response, obviously of the TIF intentions and how it s going to unfold and then comment number four talks about the same thing of deficit cash balances and once again it s the two TIFs. So those two comments kind of work hand in hand. So, from there I can take any questions or comments about the Management Letter, about the CAFR, or about our audit process. Mayor Prejna: Thank you. Every year these become more fun than the year before. I just wanted to let you know that. Now on this 225.00, did we get a negative ding because of that? Mr. Amen: What happens is it s in your Management Letter, but it s required to be in your footnotes if you re off. Mayor Prejna: I m sorry, just trying to be humorous there. I want to go back to the Fund Balance because I had the opportunity to meet with other Mayors in other cities and also I ve been talking with staff and I was also around here in 2008 serving on a commission when everything sort of went south and everybody scrambled. We didn t have enough reserves, so I m coming from the point as Springfield seems to be in chaos. They re talking about property tax freezes. They re speaking of the red light district. They re talking about tapping into our Motor Fuel Tax, our Sales Tax, all these other things and when we put this policy in, this Fund Balance Policy in place with the idea that we would review it from year to year, I would just like your thoughts if we re presently at 15-30% moving that to 25-40% next year for our audit. Just your thoughts on that trying to be proactive because we don t know what s going to be happening with the State. Mr. Amen: So the one thing I always do, and I m sure I ve done it here at this meeting as well, but what I always try to do up front is to tell you as your auditor I don t like to answer that question because my job as your auditor is to make sure that all the financial information is materially correct and within the standards that go into the CAFR. So I m going to answer the question with I take off my hat, my auditor s hat, and tell you that the benefit that we get as a Firm is in the municipal world. We audit about 75 communities across the Chicagoland area and throughout the State. So we get to see some of the biggest communities and some of the smallest ones and what I can tell you first of all is I am, obviously was in your Management Letter for several years and I am a big believer that to have a policy is the driving force that is really,
Page 9 critically important and once you have a policy then I think you need to work internally as a board of what the direction is and what the comfort level is because everybody s comfort level when it comes to the finances and reserves can be uniquely different. I am an ultraconservative accountant. I ve been this way my whole life. It s why this profession, and so my idea of reserves should be a little higher than maybe somebody who s willing to take a little more risk. So what I do get to see is 75 communities that have fund balance policies and I m a believer that anywhere between 15 and 20% at the bottom and you can go up as high as 50 or even 60% at the top end and as long as you re within that range I think it s a board directive, working obviously with staff, to make sure that the finances and your Finance Department is going to give you the blessing that your reserves are sufficient for the future and why you do have reserves in government. So I think either the range you have now or the range that you mentioned would be within an acceptable practice in what we see across our client base. Mayor Prejna: Thank you. Does someone else have questions? Mr. Krumstok: I just want to follow up on one quick thing that Mr. Amen mentioned. Actually in the packet for anyone at home we talk about ranges and you know that 15-30, but just where we sit at the end of 2016 is around 34.4% and that puts us slightly over four months in the General Fund, so again some municipalities will be in ranges and that s when we were setting it up with the Lauterbach & Amen we went with ranges with the council. There s certain places that actually do it by months and they do it by months because the State of Illinois is not always proficient in paying us on time so there was a point in time when they would be four months, five months, six months paying some of their LGDF so again if you were going to go to five months where General Fund was sitting in 2016, we would actually have to have a Fund Balance Policy of 41.7%, so just putting that out there. We ve always used ranges and as you know from when Melissa does the financials we do give you a snapshot in months for the General Fund, but we still stay within the range. Mayor Prejna: Thank you. Mr. Veenbaas Alderman Veenbaas: Quick question for Barry. I see that there s just a notation that I got here, there s a registered 501c(3) non-profit for the Community Events Foundation, is that true? Mr. Krumstok: That is correct Alderman Veenbaas: And there is 501c(3) for the Rolling Meadows Crime Stoppers too, correct? Mr. Krumstok: There is now yes. Alderman Veenbaas: So do we add that later on to next year s? Mr. Krumstok: No actually because this is just the financial outlook for the City of Rolling Meadows, so we do not add those two 501c(3) s. They are separate entities so if they were to do their own audit, but that is not a City audit because those are separate entities.
Page 10 Alderman Veenbaas: You note it here. Mr. Krumstok: We do note it because when we have to mention that to our auditors, its separate books, separate account, separate everything else that s out there. Alderman Veenbaas: I got it. Thank you. Mayor Prejna: Alderman Hill Alderman Hill: I was fortunate enough to get a sneak preview a little bit with Melissa and the auditors early in the week and I actually did have a question about the reserve and initially I said boy that seems like a high number, 10 million compared to 30 million spent, and after we had a discussion and we put it in terms of months it made so much more sense. That it is only at 33%, it s only 4 months. There is so much on the news including as I was coming over here today about the Illinois Governor s Unity Speech tomorrow or whenever he s doing it that I think things at the financial level of the State of Illinois are going to get worse before they get better and so I certainly would have no issue at all reviewing the Fund Balance range where like 25% which equates to 3 months, and I really do like the idea of doing it in month terms rather than percentage, as a minimum would serve us well until we know just what the heck is going to be going on. Mayor Prejna: Thank you. Anyone else? Mr. Amen: I think one of the important things that when people talk about the reserves and you talk to other mayors and you see other communities is one thing that s really important is if you start to listen and hear other people is to make sure you re comparing apples to apples because what some people use as reserves in their General Fund, they will pull out things that are either maybe what we called assigned or committed and so when you start to look at this you need to make sure that you re using numbers that you understand that are a reserve for a purpose of, is it something that is a future capital project or is it for the idea to compensate for what the State is doing or may not be doing. So to make sure that you re using like comparisons and know what those reserves are for. Mayor Prejna: Thank you. Anybody else? Alderman Cannon Alderman Cannon: Ron, just a quick question. I have a feeling you might not want to answer this because of your previous statement but I ll give it a shot. You re obviously well aware that we paid off a number of our bonds this year, or we will be shortly. Can you comment just in general the ability of us going forward to bond out? Obviously as a council we re looking at some major investments in the near future. Could you kind of give us a broad comment about what you think our ability might be in that area? If that s fair to ask. I don t know. Mr. Amen: I m going to defer. Someone just recently, I was at a Board meeting one day last week and what I try to do first, and then maybe I ll turn it over to Melissa or Barry to have them do it, but what I ll do is try to give you a context of bonding and what philosophically what I ve
Page 11 learned through my career is if we take today s date and you bond something and you issue debt and almost all the time you re going to do for that something that is capital in nature. It s a big ticket item. And so if you bond it today you re going to pay principle and interest into the future and so the people who are using whatever you bond for are the ones that are living here during the time that they pay or use the services of the City of Rolling Meadows. So when you bond stuff you re having people who live here at that current time pay for whatever it is. If you use current reserves for something that s capital in nature the reserves have gone and been built up from the past. And so if you use reserves to do something that s capital in nature you may have somebody who s helped contribute to the reserve that s being done, but then they may leave the City and they re not going to get the benefit of whatever that capital is. So the reason you bond is the idea of when do you want the specific purpose of the project and who do you want to help pay for it. Do you want the people in the future or the people from the past to pay for it? So that s a general philosophical decision, or thinking process, towards bonding. You re more specific question I d probably prefer not to answer. Alderman Cannon: I figured you might not, but I thought I d ask anyhow. I can live with that. You don t have to answer. That s fine. I m fine with it. I m not looking for a specific number, but I think we re in a better position going forward to bond out than we are right now. Mr. Krumstok: It is, and the council has heard from Melissa and I numerous times on this, but you look at the picture that we had some time ago to the picture that s now and you look at how the rating, Moody s and S&P, has increased and stabilized and reaffirmed where we sit at this point in time and a lot of that goes back to the audit showing that we have true cash, we have true reserves, we have true policies that are in place so that s the biggest thing that they do. Yes, we do have a clean audit and if we are getting ready to go to bonding, that s what they re going to be looking for. One thing that actually I was remiss in mentioning in the beginning is one thing when Melissa and Finance, we spend a lot of time on this and the other reason that we spend so much time on the audit is it goes to so many different locations, not just the State of Illinois, but Moody s and S&P and when we get a rating discussion on the phone or a surveillance call, that s what they re looking at. They re looking at our pension numbers. They re looking at our reserve numbers. They re also looking at are you being true to yourself. You re not just doing a one year blip. You got all these one year incidentals and then you just start spending it. They re looking at your true philosophy and your growth. So again it s kind of easy for staff to say okay we have two negative funds. They re both TIFs. One will get positive now that the bonds are going to be paid in December of this year and the other one is just on the tax rolls before. Cook County would just reassess it correctly and then it would run itself on its own course, but it s a non-traditional TIF with 15 years. A lot of good points when we talked to those Moody s and S&P, but that s what you really need to look at so if we re ready to go out for bonding, this new story, and that s what I call an audit, it s a snapshot in time as of December 31, 2016 really makes it beneficial and a great story. Alderman Cannon: Thanks Mayor Prejna: Any other questions? Well then I thank you and we ll see you next year if not sooner.
Page 12 Mr. Amen: Thank you. 3) Police K-9 Mr. Krumstok: The next item is actually going to be the K-9 and I just need Sgt. Manfredi to come up and load the Power Point so we re doing a little delay as he loads. Chief Nowacki: Well hopefully you guys are in a good mood after that. Thank you for your time Mayor, Aldermen. What I m here for today is I m here to get your support to implement a Rolling Meadows Police K-9 Unit. This is an outstanding Police Department as you, I m sure you re all aware of that. The men and women of this agency are highly skilled, highly trained, and provide outstanding police service to the community. They risk their life each and every day to protect this community. They do a great job at that. I m very, very proud of them and I would put this Police Department against any other and I m very confident that we would come up on top. However, as Chief of Police I do have a role of always trying to improve our effectiveness, our efficiencies, and one area I really believe we are lacking in is we do not have a K-9 unit here in Rolling Meadows. Many police departments if you look at the next slide here, many police departments in our area have realized the importance of this law enforcement tool. They have this for their officers. They have this to raise the police service to their communities. The next will show you actually Rolling Meadows is like an island surrounded by agencies with active K- 9 units and I really believe we need to go in that direction and we could do that at neutral cost to the City budget. Police K-9 units are so valuable because research has proven that they can improve officer safety first and foremost. They can also improve search efficiencies. They can raise crime clearance rates and they could improve community relations. I know just recently we had our Block Party. We had about 2,000 people go out there. Huge success. It was really nice. We had our law enforcement auto show out there and for I think the last two years we ve had Arlington Heights Police Department come out and do their K-9 demonstration. I get tons of positive feedback from the public on that and it would just be great as a Chief of Police of Rolling Meadows to have a Rolling Meadows K-9 actually perform at these public demonstrations at the Rolling Meadows event. So I mean this is just one aspect if you look up at the many K-9 uses. I ve been in law enforcement for over 30 years and probably for 28 of those years, or 29 of those years, I ve been involved in and had a K-9 at my disposal and they re just a great tool and one of the reasons they re so effective, obviously, is their sense of smell. 97% of what they do is through their nose. They can smell I think it s like a thousand times greater than a human being. The next slide is regarding a lost child that was found (played a video). And I know the Rolling Meadows Police Department, I think we took like 50 missing persons reports last year and they re very effective tracking not only missing persons but also fleeing felons, criminals. I ve been involved in several searches with K-9 s. We ve located people hiding and that s one of the other benefits is they re trained to go into the dangerous situations and that results in the officer not having to engage an armed felon and also I ve seen them bring in a K-9 to a scene where somebody is going to fight with the police. When you bring the K-9 in there, they actually give up and surrender and it actually improves officer safety. I think we go to the next slide and it will show you that point (played a video). It shows you the impact and how effective those dogs are and how they do save and they prevent officer injuries and this is
Page 13 important too because right now I think attacks on police just this year are up 61%. You watch the news you can see on TV that it s such a tough time to be in law enforcement right now. A dog definitely improves officer safety and that s my first and foremost thing is to make sure the officers that work for the City are safe and I ve done everything I can to promote and help their safety and this would be one step in that direction. You can go to the next slide John. The next slide is going to show you some of the K-9 uses, finding articles, drugs and so forth (played a video). I wish my dog could do that. I m always losing my keys. That would be really great to have him at home. That was the last slide. Obviously what I m looking for, I m just looking for your support to proceed. Like I said we can implement a K-9 Program, we can keep it running for the life span of the K-9 without an impact on the City budget. Funds are available through asset seizure which the Police Department has access to and those are funds just for law enforcement purposes so we have plenty of funds to implement the program and to maintain the program so I m just looking to be able to proceed. We definitely need that here and I think it would bring our service level up even higher. Anybody have any questions? Mayor Prejna: Yes Chief. First off I m 100% for it. I was here when we had the last K-9. We do have an officer who has been trained to handle a K-9 correct? Chief Nowacki: We do Mayor Prejna: Do they have to go through retraining? Chief Nowacki: We would have to do a retraining and the big difference between the K-9 we had previously and the K-9 I m proposing, I m looking for a dual purpose K-9 so it s completely different training. That way it would be used to search for people, article searches, because the previous K-9 we had, it was my understanding was just for drugs, to locate drugs. This K-9 would be able to do all that, plus additional officer safety items. And like I said on the drug enforcement its very important and this K-9, if we did get that, would be able to do it, but I m looking for like I said to locate missing people, protect the officers, and the drug enforcement would be something but it would be lower on the priorities. So we would most likely train and to get a K-9, 6 weeks of training that would be about 16,000 dollars if that was your next question. Mayor Prejna: Well actually yeah. My next question is the lead time if you got him today to get him out in the field. So you re saying 6 weeks? Chief Nowacki: Its 6 weeks of training. Obviously we would be doing an interview process for any potential handler. I m not sure when the next classes are. We d have to go pick the dog up, but I m hoping by, I would say 6 months to have it hopefully running. Things take time and that s one of the things with a K-9. You just want to make sure you pick the right handler. You pick the right K-9. So I wouldn t want to rush it. It s sort of a long process, but I think as we move forward I think it would really help out this police department. Mayor Prejna: Thank you. Who else has questions? Yes Alderman Cannon Alderman Cannon: Chief, a couple questions. Is one dog enough?
Page 14 Chief Nowacki: I would definitely, the agency I worked before we did have a couple of dogs and was always asked if we need more. The thing is with something like this you don t want to rush it. You just want to make sure like I said that you have the right officer. You have the right K-9. You take your time. I think if we had more than one dog right now I think just the management part of it would be a little bit difficult and I wouldn t want to rush something. I wouldn t want to see something overlooked because we had multiple dogs that we were trying to train. I would see maybe in the future yes to have more than one. Most agencies do have a couple of dogs. Alderman Cannon: So I guess a question, and without getting into a lot of detail, if you only have one dog and you have three shifts a day, how does he help all of the shifts? Chief Nowacki: Well most likely the officer would work a power shift so he would be around when mainly most of the calls for service are plus obviously the Department s needs would take priority so whoever the K-9 officer would, their schedules would be flexible. When we had a community event or if we had a problem develop at a certain time of day, whether it was break ins or so forth, their schedule would be part of that taking on that position, their schedules would fluctuate plus that way we would get better use of the dog. We would be able to deploy it at times and areas where we need it. Not so much having it on a set schedule working day shift or afternoons. Alderman Cannon: So if we went ahead and got a dog, I m also on the Vehicle Replacement Committee, and I know in the past when we had our last dog there were some issues with the car we provided the officer. Chief Nowacki: That would be a part of the expense and as I said we have plenty of funds available and I said we would buy a dedicated police car just for that K-9 and that s actually where most of the expense is. So the 16,000 dollars for the K-9, the training, is actually minimal. The expense of the true program would be the car and a truly loaded car with a K-9 you have some extra equipment there, would be roughly I think by my estimates about 56,000 dollars so it s very expensive. Alderman Cannon: So does that include the officer s salary who is going to be on duty with the dog? Chief Nowacki: The officer s salary, it would include the officer s salary because we wouldn t add an additional officer and the officer obviously he would have the K-9 assigned to him, but he would still respond to calls when he worked the shift. I don t like to isolate an officer and have him just on the K-9 and that s all he would do. He would still be assigned to a shift whether it was a power shift or we moved him to different hours to address certain problems. He would still if available respond to calls if needed to. I wouldn t increase an extra officer. We would still have the same level of officers we have now.
Page 15 Alderman Cannon: Is there any possibility of us partnering up with like Palatine and use their dogs at the same time? Kind of like what we do with Fire where we actually make a contribution and we work together with them as opposed to just a standalone unit? Chief Nowacki: Well if we had a K-9 we would work with the other agencies. They do joint training. I think it is on Tuesdays. The problem that we ve had, we do school searches every year. We have to call other departments in to use their K-9. For scheduling it causes a lot of difficulty on us because what s good for us might not be good for another agency and we re at their beck and call. If they re busy or something happens in their town, obviously that takes priority so trying to use another department s K-9, I don t see that as feasible. I don t know of any agency that does that. Mostly Palatine has their own, Schaumburg has their own, Arlington Heights has their own and they do work together. If our K-9 wasn t here, we definitely could call another agency and we have, but the problem is when you start using other people s resources you don t always call them when you probably should because you don t want to burn that bridge, or you don t want to use another department s resources too much. I don t know if that answers your question, but.. Alderman Cannon: Well it doesn t because I was looking for more of a partnership not just borrowing their dog. Actually make a financial contribution. I m guessing some of the neighboring departments have more than one dog. Is that a safe assumption? Chief Nowacki: Yes, that is correct. Alderman Cannon: Okay, all I mean is partnering with people. We make a contribution, but we don t have to have our own unit so we d have them available whenever we need them. Chief Nowacki: I guess, I can see logistically to have a lot of issues and I m not aware of any department that does that. Alderman Cannon: Okay, thanks Mayor Prejna: Yes Mr. Krumstok: I just want to make one quick comment. Obviously Chief Nowacki and Sgt. Manfredi, they ve had a lot of discussions about this. Part of it is that I asked them to make sure that it was not going, it was going to be neutral to the budget, but there were a lot more questions and I do appreciate the extra time that they spent on this because it did go back a few times and again I do appreciate them bringing this up to this point and time and actually making sure that at this point of time the numbers that we re talking about are coming out of the seizure assets which is an appropriate use of seizure assets because it s a new vehicle, a new program, new items that would be coming to the Police Department and just reiterating one item, obviously this would be a process. Chief Nowacki and his staff will be going through an interview process. It s not just for the officer. It s also making sure that they get the right dog and the program going. And again I think when we re sitting around the table after the 2018 Block Party I think that people really appreciate the new program that they ve set up.