HomeMy WebLinkAboutCombined Supplemental Questions & Emailed Comments from Sustarsic-Moore-GoldbergQuestions for April 12, 2021 City Council Meeting Sustarsic
Check # 19034 Board of State and Community C $ 3,300.00
Return unexpended Funds STC Program
What is this for? The State sent us a check for the operation of the Jail which
was sent in error. We had cashed the check so we issued a refund check to them.
Check # 19061 DxTerity Diagnostics Inc $65,050.00
COVID 19 Testing Services/Kits
Can we be reimbursed for these costs? Yes, we believe so. These costs will be
submitted to FEMA for reimbursement.
Check # 19104 Orange County Water District $ 146.10
Ship -From Nota Fiscal Return
What is this for? Additional charge for the semi-annual replenishment
assessment for OCWD.
Check # 19108 OCTA $46,244.74
Westminster/17th Corr TS Sync/ West
What is this for? Related to project ST1708 (Traffic Signal Synchronization),
OCTA is paying in advance and requesting reimbursement from the participating cities.
Check # 19221 Digital Map Products, LP $18,000.00
GovClarity 2-13-21 to 2-12-2022
What is this for? This is the annual subscription for the City's GIS software.
Check # 19247 Los Al Builders LLC $ 3,000.00
Overpayment — Permit 2021-396
What is this for? This is a refund for an overpayment from a construction
company that pulled a permit.
Check # 19283 Step Saver CA LLC $ 4,730.25
Installation of 3 new brine tanks/ Service Lampson Well
What is this for? Upgrading the chlorine generation system at Lampson Well.
Gloria Harper
From: Gloria Harper
Sent: Monday, April 12, 20214:00 PM
To: Gloria Harper
Subject: FW: Question for 4/12/2021 meeting
Gloria Harper, City Clerk
City of Seal Beach
211 Eighth Street
Seal Beach CA 90740
(562) 431-2527 Ext. 1305
4
"Mo -ow".,
CFPWSE C1VKrFV
Civility Principles:
1. Treat everyone courteously;
2. Listen to others respectfully;
3. Exercise self-control;
4. Give open-minded consideration to all viewpoints;
5. Focus on the issues and avoid personalizing debate; and,
6. Embrace respectful disagreement and dissent as democratic rights, inherent components of an inclusive public process, and tools for
forging sound decisions.
For Information about Seal Beach, please see our city website: www.sealbeachca.gov
NOTICE: This communication may contain privileged or other confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient of this
communication, or an employee or agent responsible for delivering this communication to the intended recipient, please advise the
sender by reply email and immediately delete the message and any attachments without copying or disclosing the contents. Thank you.
From: Thomas Moore
Sent: Monday, April 12, 20217:20 AM
To: Jill Ingram
Subject: Question for 4/12/2021 meeting
Good morning,
For Item D:
I would like to hear the staff respond to the concern about Moorlach's UNP calculation and why it is 19%
worse than 2019.
What factors are involved, how important is this and should we start tracking this number going forward with
a strategy to address this?
Staff Response:
Mr. Moorlach's work related to the financial health of California cities focuses on Unrestricted Net
Position (UNP) as a single indicator of the financial health of a city. However, what it fails to point out
is that not all cities are created equal. Kelly Telford, our Finance Director, had the opportunity to
speak with Mr. Moorlach about his work while she was at a previous city. In that conversation, they
discussed the different factors that cities may not have control over but ultimately impact their
financial health. These include but are not limited to:
• Cities that are built out and don't have the ability to develop land (like Seal Beach) tend to be
worse off.
Cities that are newer don't need to replace buildings and infrastructure yet so they tend to be
better off.
Cities that have police or fire in-house (like Seal Beach) vs. contracting out tend to be worse
off.
Cities that have a higher median income and higher home prices tend to be better off.
To show some of these issues, we've shown some comparative information for Laguna Beach since
they are ranked #1 and are a comparable in population to Seal Beach. Two key items that may
indicate why they appear to be doing so well are:
1. Laguna Beach has nearly $302 million in capital assets, of which $90 million doesn't
depreciate. In comparison, Seal Beach has $87 million with only $20 million in non -
depreciable assets. This is important because UNP is equal to a city's assets minus their
liabilities. More assets increase your UNP, however capital assets (land, buildings, vehicles
and equipment and infrastructure) usually aren't sold off to pay for a city's liabilities.
2. Laguna Beach's average home value is $2.5 million compared to Seal Beach's at $1
million. This results in a property tax revenue total of $40 million for Laguna Beach and $12.4
million for Seal Beach. This is important because the population served is similar to Seal
Beach but the revenue is significantly larger. Seal Beach does not have the ability to change
the property tax mix and raise the average home value. There are small opportunities to do
this through smaller developments but with most of the City built out, there isn't an opportunity
to do it quickly.
If we had to develop a single measurement to evaluate cities and rank them in some order, Mr.
Moorlach is correct that UNP would be one of the best measurements to use. However, this
assumes all cities are nearly the same. This measurement is similar to that of private companies
where equity is a key indicator. Unlike private companies, cities do not have nearly as much control
to shift and pivot operations overnight. Cities can't outsource production to other countries or drop a
product line because it isn't profitable. In a city, many services are expected to be subsidized by the
general fund to keep them affordable to those individuals and businesses that use those
services. There are many other factors besides Unrestricted Net Position that should be looked at
when evaluating a city's financial health, and because of many of the factors listed above, it isn't fair
to rank them based solely on UNP.
With respect to the question about the 19% decrease in UNP in FY 19/20, this was primarily due to
depreciation expense and disposals of capital assets and the increase in pension expense. UNP will
continue to go down as capital assets are depreciating and pension costs are increasing. This is why
UNP is a challenging measure of financial health. Depreciation expense in the government activities
totaled $3.2 million but is non-cash, meaning we didn't sell anything or reduce cash but it decreased
UNP.
As indicated in one of our Strategic Plan objectives regarding Fiscal Sustainability, the City will
continue to study the feasibility of reducing the City's pension liability and other long-term debt
obligations. Please keep in mind, however, that the same dollars that are competing for capital
projects is the same dollars that are also competing to fund unfunded pensions and retiree medical.
Thank you,
Tom
Thomas Moore
City Council Member, District 2
City of Seal Beach - 211 Eighth Street, Seal Beach, CA 90740
(562) 431-2527 x1502
CHCFOSE [MUTY
■
Civility Principles:
1. Treat everyone courteously;
2. Listen to others respectfully;
3. Exercise self-control;
4. Give open-minded consideration to all viewpoints;
5. Focus on the issues and avoid personalizing debate; and,
6. Embrace respectful disagreement and dissent as democratic rights, inherent components of an inclusive public process, and tools for
forging sound decisions.
For Information about Seal Beach, please see our city website: www.sealbeachca.gov
NOTICE: This communication may contain privileged or other confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient of this
communication, or an employee or agent responsible for delivering this communication to the intended recipient, please advise the
sender by reply email and immediately delete the message and any attachments without copying or disclosing the contents. Thank you.
Gloria Harper
From: Robert Goldberg <rgoldberg@live.com>
Sent: Sunday, April 11, 20218:32 PM
To: Thomas Moore; Schelly Sustarsic; Mike Varipapa; Sandra Massa-Lavitt; Joe Kalmick
Cc: Jill Ingram; Gloria Harper; Charles M. Kelly; Jeannette Andruss; Iris Lee; Steve Myrter;
Kelly Telford; Bruce Bennett; Jean Orland; Joyce
Subject: Questions & Comments for Open Session 4/12/21
Attachments: 4.12.21 Questions & Comments.doc
Dear Council and Staff,
Please see the attached questions and comments for this Monday's open session.
Thank you for your consideration and service,
Robert Goldberg
Questions & Comments for 3/08/21 Open Session from Robert Goldberg
Item B: Demand on Treasury (Warrants)
Page 4, Check #19061 to DxTerity Diagnositics Inc for $65,050 for COVID 19 testing services/kits.
Who was the City testing for COVID?
Will this expense be reimbursable?
Item D: Comprehensive Annual Financial Report
Another year, another Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) with thousands of numbers.
Since 2007, 1 have spent countless hours trying to get my arms around these reports, every year
trying to differentiate the important from non -important numbers with only limited success.
Within this context, I was very happy to have recently come across a recommendation (see
https://www.sanclementetimes.com/sen-moorlach-releases-financial-report-card-for-cities/) from
the former Treasurer for Orange County, John Moorlach, to focus on one number as the best
indicator of a City's long term financial soundness-- the Unrestricted Net Position (UNP) for
Governmental Activities. This is a key number because it represents the unrestricted cash,
investments, and other non -capital assets in the General Fund and other "governmental funds"
(i.e., Gas Tax, M2, S131, Debt Service and others listed on page 81, but excluding Water & Sewer)
minus the unfunded liabilities from pensions and retiree medical obligations for the General Fund.
The subtraction of these unfunded liabilities from the UNP has been a GASB requirement since
2017, and resulted in negative UNP's for many California cities. However, a city's UNP can now be
followed overtime to evaluate its long-term financial health in light of these future obligations.
Our UNP for Governmental Activities for 2020 can be found on the second line from the bottom of
Table 1 on page 7 which shows a figure of negative $11,716,000. This figure is 19% worse than
that for 2019 (negative $9,873,000). This worsening is consistent with the trend since 2017 as
shown in the table below.
Fiscal Year Ending June 2017 2018 2019 2020
Unrestricted Net Position for
($3,661,000)
($4,911,000)
($9,873,000)
($11,716,000)
Governmental Activities
Population (approximate)
25,000
25,000
25,000
25,000
Per Capital Unrestricted Net Position
($146)
($196)
($395)
($469)
f or Governmental Activities
Municipalities can be compared by dividing their UNP's by population to generate a per capita
figure. For several years, State Senator Moorlach published rankings and comparisons of California
counties and O.C. cities. The latter is no longer available on-line, but Mr. Moorlach was kind
enough to send me the following table for fiscal year ending June 2019. It shows Seal Beach to be
ranked 191h out of 34 O.C. cities. Our per capita UNP for Governmental Activities of negative $394
is worse than the average of negative $159 and the median of positive $66.
Per Per Per
Capita Capita Capita
Rank City UNP Rank City UNP Rank City UNP
1
Laguna Beach
$1,707
13
RSM
$393
25
Placentia
($972)
2
Cypress
$1,656
14
Villa Park
$369
26
Orange
($1,130)
3
Irvine
$1,550
15
Mission Viejo
$249
27
Newport Beach
($1,170)
4
Tustin
$1,334
16
Laguna Hills
$145
28
Fountain Valley
($1,186)
5
Dana Point
$756
17
Yorba Linda
$137
29
Fullerton
($1,192)
6
Laguna Niguel
$750
18
San Juan Cap
($5)
30
Huntington Bch
($1,232)
7
Lake Forest
$723
19
Seal Beach
($394)
31
Anaheim
($1,543)
8
Laguna Woods
$607
20
Buena Park
($543)
32
Santa Ana
($1,580)
9
La Palma
$596
21
Garden Grove
($599)
33
Brea
($1,709)
10
Aliso Viejo
$588
22
La Habra
($716)
34
Costa Mesa
($2,085)
11
Stanton
$452
23
Westminster
($888)
Average
($159)
12
San Clemente
$449
24
Los Alamitos
($917)
Median
$66
Item F: On -Call Asphalt Repair Contracts
As with the recent award of on-call contracts for emergency repair of pipes, I applaud staff for their
effort to solicit bids and pricing before the emergencies occur. Regarding the proposed pricing, I did
have two questions.
The fee proposal for Sager Construction shows the same hourly labor rate for Superintendents and
Labors (both $70.00).
Is this correct?
If not, the fee proposal must be corrected with a revised fee proposal provided to the Council before
their consideration and approval Monday night.
Both fee proposals provide for overtime and double time labor rates. However, the contracts (to my
reading) do not define when these premium rates will be charged. Given that the service requested
is for emergency repairs, it would not seem appropriate to trigger these rates for a project that
simply occurs, say, after 5 pm, or on a Saturday, but takes less than 8 hours to complete.
When does overtime and double time apply in both contracts?
Item L: Budget Amendment to Pay for City Utility Accounts
I wish to thank staff for bringing forward the preliminary findings of the ongoing audit and a budget
amendment in time for incorporation into the development of the FY 21-22 budget. Without any
details on how the figures in the proposed budget amendment were derived, I cannot compare
them with the prior estimates that I shared with the Council at the Rate Hearing in February. I look
forward to the release of the full audit report within the next few months.
I do have several questions regarding the proposed budget amendment. The $195,800 proposed to
pay for FY 20-21 utilities is being budgeted entirely from Building Maintenance (001-052, Budget
page 163). However, water and sewer payments are due not only for City buildings, but also parks.
The latter would seem to be appropriately allocated to Park Maintenance (001-049, Budget page
192). 1 would think doing so would be analogous to the allocation of electricity payments to both
Building Maintenance (001-052-41020) and Park Maintenance (001-049-41020).
Why is there no allocation of water or sewer costs to Park Maintenance?
One of the line items in the budget amendment is a revenue transfer into the General Fund of
$2528. This $2528 comes from the $705,407 General Fund transfer -out to cover utility costs prior to
FY 20-21. So it appears that the General Fund is paying itself for something related to utilities. This
transfer is not addressed in the staff report.
Please explain the basis for the $2528 transfer.
I would interpret the staff report text and proposed budget amendment as indicating that the
combined Water Operations and Capital Funds will be receiving a total of $873,442. This represents
the sum of a $190,000 expenditure by Building Maintenance plus transfers -in of $680,762 and
$2680 from General Fund reserves.
Is this interpretation correct?