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HomeMy WebLinkAboutMINUTES-2009-02-02-2009�gllr n CITY COUNCIL February 2, 2009 ROLL CALL — PRESENT: Alderman Wynne Alderman Bernstein Alderman Holmes Alderman Moran Alderman Tisdahl Alderman Rainey Alderman Hansen Alderman Wollin A Quorum was present. Alderman Jean -Baptiste PRESIDING: Mayor Lorraine H. Morton A SPECIAL MEETING of the City Council was called to order by Mayor Morton on Monday, February 2, 2009, at 7:25 p.m. in the Council Chamber for the purpose of conducting a Public Hearing on the FY 2009-10 Proposed Budget. Mayor Morton then explained to the audience the order in which the meeting would flow. PUBLIC COMMENTS: Deb Danson, 1107 Grant St., board president of Childcare Network of Evanston, presented a scenario of a family in Evanston. The monies that are received from the City goes directly to the families, with no charge from the organization. Other grant funds come from the 2"d, 5" and 8th wards, which supply many of the awards to assist families. She also thanked the City on behalf of the youngest Evanston residents. Martha Amston, Executive Director of Childcare Network, spoke on the services provided by the Mental Health Care of the organization. It includes all ranges of age, economic and social status. She also thanked the City for all the financial support given over the years. She too gave an illustration of a family supported by various organizations in the City of Evanston and especially from the funds that the Mental Health Care Board supplies to the families in Evanston. James Schermerhorn, 2737 Central St., Schermerhorn Co. & Management, spoke on the concerns of the tax and water bills he received just recently and the concerns of the tenants in his buildings. He requested not to have a real estate tax increase, but to look at other ways to fix the budget. Junad Rizki, 2761 Ridge Ave., spoke on the budget and the problems that will occur in the future, especially in 2011. He doesn't see any tangible improvements in the budget that will actually assist the City. The Council should exercise the leadersh_p abilities they have in doing the proper service to the City of Evanston. He then extended an invitation to Alderman Jean -Baptiste to his home for lengthy discussions on the budget or other issues. Gerald Gordon, 1228 Lake St., spoke on the Budget Workshop and the presentations. He congratulated Interim City Manager Russell and Mr. Lyons for the first budget he has seen in many years where there is no tax increase, and strongly encouraged the Council to approve the Budget as amended by the January 24t" worksheet. fir) February 2, 2009 Mayor Morton stated her delight hearing from a citizen who complimented the Council for the work of the Interim City Manager and staff. Michael Sutton, 3225 Central St., spoke on the budget stated he was dissatisfied with the board, and believes the Council has to make some decisions even though it may hurt. He felt the Council was not . doing their due diligence, but just going along with the status quo, and he sees no serious cuts from the budget. Somebody has to make the decision, that's why we vote you in. We can vote you out or don't vote for you at all. Charles Sheridan, 2331 Church St., called himself the local advocate for local hiring in Evanston seeking new sources of revenue without raising taxes. He wanted Mather LifeWays to pay the $1 million they pledged when they received their permit a year ago. He was also upset with them for not honoring their pledge to him to hire Evanston residents. He gave proposals to bring new revenue to the City a year ago and represented the ideas to Mr. Lyons and one new one tonight to make Evanston a destination city. Christopher Hart, 3038 Isabella St., candidate for the 6ffi Ward Alderman's seat, thanked the Council and City staff for the many hours spent preparing the budget. He felt the Council could not impose additional burdens on the citizens. We can't keep digging deeper into what we no longer have. He suggested that labor groups need to share in our sacrifices. We need to look at ways to redefine our economic reality and make the hard decisions necessary to benefit the citizens. We must protect the things we cherish the most. Kevin O'Connor, 1227'/z Isabella St., candidate for the 7"' Ward Alderman's seat, referenced the last Budget Workshop concerning the comment by Mayor Morton for citizen's who are running for office to identify themselves so the Council could "assess their comments." He stated his comments as a candidate are the same as a citizen and suggested that all aldermen running or not running, but are supporting candidates that are running to be assessed by the public as he is assessed by the Council. He also asked ' that aldermen do not respond during Citizen Comment. He believed the budget should be shrunk. Sharon Eckersall, 2519 Ashland Ave., rerunning for the office of Township Assessor, spoke about her terms in office and the issues that she has endured along with law suits, negative media, personal attacks and lack of support from some of the aldermen. ` Mark Sloane, 2512 Hartzell St., candidate for 6"' Ward Alderman, thanked the Council for the no tax increase item in the Budget. His concerns are with the revenue side of the Budget and offered some suggestions: (1) Enact a hiring freeze (allowing the Interim City Manager alone the authority to replace or not), (2) No raise increases for 24 months, (3) Dental Clinic — ask for help from dentists in the area to donate time and services as well as the other service organizations, (4) Community Development Department — should shift the employees to another department during this time, (5) Health Insurance — getting out of whack with other entities, (6) Retirement % of salaries need to get better grip, (7) Utilities — talk to utility companies to get better rates, and (8) Recruitment fees — remove headhunters and look for employees by other means. He finally thanked the Council for listening to him. Mayor Morton asked Mr. Sloane to explain to her what he meant about the Health Insurance. Mr. Sloane stated health insurance is taken as a % over employee salaries. The City's % is higher than the business community. There are a lot of costs that brings the number higher. The Mayor then asked if anyone else wanted the opportunity to speak before moving on to the next section of the meeting. There being none she advised the Council about the General Discussion where they could now speak. Alderman Rainey complimented Mr. Sloane for having some great ideas and mentioned we do receive free electricity use and asked Mr. Cook to expound on the issue. 2 �g6 February 2, 2009 Interim City Manager Russell said that Dave Cook could come up to answer additional questions, but we do not pay electricity for this building, purpose is for ,government business. Regarding hiring new individuals, the department notifies the City Manager that it is a position that we can not do without and is necessary we go through a long list of qualifications before the position is filled, and we are leaving as many vacancies as possible to get the savings. Dave Cook explained that the City of Evanston doesn't charge fees for certain buildings to operate we get our electricity from ComEd free. Alderman Rainey wanted to know where the free electricity exits. Mr. Cook stated the Fire Stations, Police Stations, portions of the Civic Center (pay for the heat but not the air-conditioning), the recreation centers electricity is paid for by the City. Alderman Rainey asked if we pay for street lighting and the answer was yes along with water -pumping at the plant. Alderman Rainey we charge people to use our streetlights, oh we don't have a tax on the streetlights. Alderman Tisdahl spoke about the Center for Independent Futures and she proposed to have the $9,800 removed from the Mental Health Board's budget, she would have to object to this even if we had a reserve of funds. The schools are mandated to do for the CIF what they are to do for them, which is to teach independent living skills to special High School Seniors. She moved to remove the $9,800 allocations from the Mental Health Board, seconded by Alderman Rainey. Alderman Bernstein suggested that the Interim City Manager continue talks with the school districts and include this item as an addition to the list of items already in the proposal. Ms. Russell stated the Township was going to pay this item initially and do we still take it off. Alderman Tisdahl stated it is still our tax money and she did not know the Township was going to pay but it is not a Township expense. Ms. Russell directed the Council's attention to the Friday packet of the list of agencies the City had paid in the past and the highlighted ones were the ones the Township was going to pay. Mayor Morton stated we would have to assemble as the Trustees to discuss the issue, and asked Alderman Tisdahl to withdraw her motion and she did. Alderman Rainey asked if there could be a presentation of the Township committing money to pay the Mental Health Budget. Ms. Russell stated the Mr. Lyons was ready to go ahead with an update of the items discussed at the last Budget Meeting and the concerns you had. She called on Mr. Lyons to make his presentation. Alderman Wollin asked if we remove the monies from the Mental Health's Budget will it be forever removed and the answer from the Interim City Manager was yes. Alderman Wollin stated she would not like to see the funds reduced in perpetuity because of this one change. Alderman Wynne stated her understanding of the Center for Independent Futures was it also provides support to young adults, so what is the age group and to what extent the school districts are mandated to give the support. Alderman Tisdahl answered it was age specific to age 21, and this program is designed for high school seniors. Alderman Wynne then stated she supported this issue after hearing the explanation from Alderman Tisdahl. Alderman Holmes stated she would like to have those funds reallocated and not taken out. Alderman Moran believed that the need is there for the CIF's and the program is asking for the assistance, so he felt we should respond favorably and not cut these funds. Alderman Bernstein suggested if there is a better source to fund it then let it happen. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked isn't the Interim City Manager proposing the Township take over this expenditure. He also asked Alderman Tisdahl if she still wanted to remove it. Alderman Tisdahl stated she only withdrew her motion to discuss it as a Township issue, and that we pay with our school taxes and should not have to pay twice with our City taxes. Alderman Jean - Baptiste asked if there was a problem with letting the Interim City Manager negotiate with the Township, the answer was no. Alderman Bernstein wanted to know if this was about the abatement issue down the road, where we are asking the Township to pay. Ms. Russell stated the Township took the agency list and agreed to pick up 1100,000 of the $885,000. Alderman Bernstein stated there was talk to take away those funds from the Township and add to our funds we would be able to supply the request from our funds. Interim City Manager stated the Township had volunteered to take over these agencies, which would 1�2 February 2, 2009 reduce our expenditures by $300,000. There being no more discussion the Mayor called on the City Manager to precede with Mr. Lyons' presentation. Mr. Lyons stated he will put up a summary of what they accomplished since the last budget presentation chronologically and will accept questions as he goes along, as he deals with this one page. First, at the top of the list the City started with a proposed budget of $1.8 million dollar deficit with a 4.9% tax increase, so when you take that out we're at $1,824,000 approximately and the revised budget deficit is just over $3.6 million. In the January 10"' meeting we came up with three main areas to reduce the deficit down to zero assuming we still had property tax increase, so that was a Wage Adjustment of 2%, a transfer from Debt Service Fund reserves of $500,000, and the utilization of land sale proceeds. The City is looking at land that will close in the coming year and has identified one such parcel and one such dollar amount. What that did was get us almost back down to zero amount with a property tax amount, so assuming we don't have a property tax increase the staff discussed a variety of options that arrived from the last two Budget workshops. Another reduction of wages was taken at 0.5%, the transfer from the Economic Development Fund of $300,000, and reduced debt service Interest costs of $200,000 to fund our capital to issue our debt in the fall, instead of the spring. If we pay 4% on $10 million that would be $400,000 and borrowing six months later we have saved $200,000, so that is a real savings to the City expenses for capital. Looking at Shared Funding from Evanston Township, which we discussed previously, and this came about in two phases that came up in another meeting, we had initially found $200,000, however when staff met with Township staff, it identified $300,000 so we were very happy with the staff at the Township level in taking over these shared opportunities that are in both of our areas and they are going to step up and take care of $300,000 worth of funding for these projects. Shared Funding of School Liaison & Crossing Guards and the total cost for this program is just short of $700,000 for the two programs, so we are working with both districts trying to look at how we can share the funding. Reduce Travel and Training budget had an initial $10,000 but after listening to the Council an additional $30,000 was removed making a total of $40,000 decrease over all. Parks and Recreation Revenues were not included in the FY 08 -09 budget but was requested to be included in this budget by Parks and Recreation of $40,000 increase, and take into consideration their annual revenues are over $4 million, there is a variety of revenues in Parks & Recreation. The increase in the Athletic Tax was a total of a 2% change. Alderman Tisdahl stated the University has made an offer of a $100,000 contribution to the salt dome, is this their way of paying in lieu of? Interim City Manager Russell answered yes. They agreed to pay their fair share amount and staff is still working to obtain the final dollar amount that is forthcoming. Alderman Tisdahl stated she wanted them to pay in some sort of way as long as they paid. Ms. Russell stated they are having continual conversations each year the kind of contributions they can make. Alderman Wollin agreed that was her understanding as well as long as the University could contribute to mutual areas of concern for both the City and the University. Alderman Rainey wasn't clear on whether this was an increase of the tax or gleaned from the estimated revenue of the current tax. Mr. Lyons answered it was an increase in the tax rate. The reduced transfer to the Insurance Fund is due to great work in the Legal Department at a savings of $75,000 to the General Fund alone. Alderman Rainey asked if the $75,000 was related to the FM Global Fund, and the answer was yes they were only looking at the General Fund savings as reported by Mr. Lyons, we have property in Water/Sewer & Parking but there is more property in the General Fund. Mayor Morton announced we cannot have any passing out election materials here in City Hall. Alderman Bernstein stated we do not have a law preventing it. He asked and was told we do not have a law prohibiting it from the Legal Department. The Mayor then said let's clear this up now and turned to the City Manager who asked Elke Purze, the Interim First Assistant Corporation Counsel, to address the issue. Ms. Purze then informed the Mayor and Council currently we do not have a law on the books it is only during elections, so we can revisit it later to get something on the books. Mayor responded she had not heard that before but will talk to the Legal Counsel later. U, M February 2, 2009 Mr. Lyons then continued to the last two line items of the further position reductions is $140,000 and the Deferrals, when we have vacancies and decide to keep them open for a certain amount of time we should not budget them for the dollars in that year and only budget those salaries when we do replace the positions. These two unfilled vacancies will constitute an $80,000 savings. The bottom line is the $3,635,000 is the total expense cuts and revenue increases with a Revised Budget Deficit of-$2,317 without a tax increase. Finally we looked at the cigarette tax as requested by Council and that .01-cent increase is worth $8,000. This shows if we went from .50 cents to .60 cents, then we would be looking at an $80,000 increase, current revenues are approximately $400,000. Alderman Rainey wanted to know if the prices have been stable. Mr. Lyons answered he would have to go back three or four years but he believed they have been stable for that time frame. Alderman Rainey wanted to be reminded when we passed the local Clean Air Ordinance, where you can't smoke anyplace. Elke Purze stated she believed we amended the ordinance in late 2007. Mr. Lyons asked Mr. Drazner to research and confirm as a follow-up to Alderman Rainey's question. Mr. Lyons continued to say we see an increase of $297,000 so what we are saying for an estimated General Fund budget surplus (if everything comes in at budget, our reserves will increase by $294, 364). The $14 million we talked about in the beginning is where we want to stay for our General Fund Reserve, which is slightly above the 15% reserve and our minimum is 8.3% per policy. The final item is showing we are in a balanced situation right now, but the way we do this year's budget may be different from the way we do next year's budget, and FY 09-10 will be a year when we look at budgets all year long. Alderman Bernstein spoke on the reduced wage judgments we have included in the budget, and asked if we may be guilty of setting wages up before the unions can negotiate, is that true? Human Resources Director Joellen Daley answered yes, because of the negotiations that are going on and the budget set at this level doesn't give her a lot of room going to the table but they understand the direction the Council wants, to go and will do the best they can with the tools they have. Alderman Bernstein wanted to know if we reduced it beyond what we customarily do is it a violation of a labor agreement. Ms. Daley says everything is negotiable, so until they go through that process we can not say that it is. Mayor Morton commented it was one of the things that the union people had stated that we do not surpass their bargaining rights. Alderman Holmes spoke on the memo received from Ms. Daley concerning travel & training cuts especially in diversity and customer training. She wanted them to reconsider cutting them because customer service is a must for the community and the City during these crucial times when tempers are on edge and they should be a priority for the City. Ms. Russell responded that once the budget is passed she will sit with HR and make sure that everything is there to keep the City running smoothly. Council will approve the overall budget and on an individual basis we will include all the items we need. Alderman Rainey agreed with Alderman Holmes to be careful of what we cut, and then asked Mr. Lyons about the $50,000 for the Athletic Tax. Mr. Lyons stated it was left there and if the Council wanted to change the tax after negotiations, then the 2% would come to the Council for approval, it was just there so we could go on with negotiations. Alderman Rainey asked when would an ordinance for the cigarette tax appear? She also wanted to know if he needed a reference or directions from the Council. Mr. Lyons responded he will do it as quickly as possible and try to have it on the 23rd and just the mere fact of the adoption of the budget, you are giving us direction to move forward, it's direction but not authority. Alderman Rainey said she was not ready to adopt the budget. Alderman Hansen had a question about training, specifically two items: the book club and Myers Briggs and wanted to know what that training was. Ms. Daley explained the book club is for employees to read relevant materials pertaining to their job. It's voluntary, the City purchases the books and it is a rotation with different members of staff and includes discussions. Alderman Hansen asked if the training was for all staff. Ms. Daley said they first started with the management staff and now we have opened it up to all staff members with 20 to 30 people who participate and several books have been read so far. Alderman Hansen asked what was the cost for the Program. Ms. Daley stated $15 to $20 per book that we purchase from the Library and then multiply times the number of participants. She budgets about $2,500 and hoping to read a book quarterly. Alderman Hansen then asked the purpose of this kind of training? February 2, 2009 Ms. Daley stated it is a professional leadership tool with topics out in the public world that provides ideas to improve our work ethic. Alderman Hansen asked were the other training programs outlined also available to all staff. Ms. Daley stated it depends on the training, for example the diversity is for all employees, then for supervisory training we are putting together a program to introduce the skills needed. The supervisors will go through first and then the other staff. The same thing is true for the Leadership Program, we started with the supervisors first. It varies depending on the topic but customer service is available for all employees. Alderman Hansen then asked if we are still bringing in outside trainers for the programs or are we using employees to perform some of the training sessions. Ms. Daley stated the diversity training had an outside trainer who trained the participants and now we perform that program from the inside and the book club is treated in the same way. As for the supervisory training it may be a little of both. We have a pretty good talent pool here that staff could train some of the modules, but the challenge becomes the availability of the employee's time. Alderman Hansen's second question was what is the Myers Briggs program? Ms. Daley stated it is an assessment of your ability to communicate and you have to have someone who is certified to train so we brought in an outside person. The beauty of the program is that it helps you to identify your particular communicating skills and helps you to recognize others so that you better communicate with each other as you draw on other employees' skills as well. In other words, it is a personality test. Ms. Daley stated it has been called that. Alderman Hansen then asked for the cost of the program, Ms. Daley stated it was about $6,000 for 80 people. Alderman Bernstein asked if the book club allowed to read on company time, the answer was no. So they take the book home, read and then have discussions here? The answer was yes, we do a lot of the discussions after everyone has read the book and it is facilitated by one of the employees. Alderman Bernstein then asked the Interim City Manager if he understood her saying she would tweak the budget after the Council had approved it, and she responded yes. My recommendation is to pass the budget with all the things we have to do, looking at all of our capital, the level of service we currently have and if we want to continue, looking at management whether we want to outsource or keep things in-house, looking at furloughs all of those things will take a lot of time. If we start after we pass the budget, it will take us until August to have the kind of budget that we need for next year. So if we look at this budget as a tool having a dollar amount both in HR Department as well as the others we will be able to work with it throughout the year. Alderman Bernstein asked if she had taken into consideration every conceivable cut before bringing this budget to us, and Ms. Russell said yes that is true. There will be some additional cuts but they will be relatively minor, we may go through here and find another $10,000 or $20,000 but I don't believe we will find several hundred thousand in this budget between now and the end of the month. Mr. Lyons stated the memo that came out was to make the statement that this would be a continuous process. The budget that is passed will still follow all the prescriptions of the budget and so when we say we are looking for flexibility moving forward, we're still going to follow the budget, our purchasing policy, we still have all the safeguards in place. We have to follow our line item budget as well as our business unit budgets. Alderman Wynne wanted all of the one-time budget revenues to be pointed out. Mr. Lyons stated the transfer from the Debt Service Fund reserves is $500,000 to the General Fund, the sale for land is $450,000 that is a funding not a revenue converting our fixed assets into financial assets, the transfer from the Economic Fund is a one-time revenue, the reduction of the Debt Interest cost depending we can continue counting that could be a long term but we're counting it as a one time depending on what happens to our Capital programs in the future and the amount is $200,000, the increase Athletic Tax could be recurring depending on what we negotiate. Alderman Wynne stated with her calculations that would amount to $1.45 million of one-time revenues in the budget. Alderman Rainey wanted to know the number of hours per week you devote to training, because many times when she calls to talk to someone there is no one there, and she wanted to know out of all 800 employees how many hours are they in training. Ms. Daley stated she didn't know and she would have to talk to the Directors. How many hours a month is book club? The answer was it is quarterly and probably 4 to 8 hours a year per employee. Alderman Rainey believed the book club should be done on lunch or after work, she has never heard of an employee book club on company time. Have you ever heard from an employee they felt some of the training is a waste of time, Ms. Daley responded the training she's been 0 5q February 2, 2009 involved in she has never heard negative responses. Alderman Rainey felt the budget presented was not an acceptable one with so many unknowns and she can't believe Mr. Lyons is expecting the Council to approve. She would like to have things resolved, and that Northwestern knows if they are going to give us the $100,000 or not. Ms. Russell stated that they would have it resolved before you vote on it. Alderman Wollin stated there are certified persons at Oakton Community College who are qualified to give the Myers Briggs training and they are part of the School District. She was sure they would be willing to make arrangements to come and provide some of those services as well as the analysis, and she felt it was an option we should look into. As far as Northwestern is concerned, she felt they are willing to sit down and negotiate and it won't take a lot of time. Alderman Bernstein asked you're not saying you didn't take into consideration every conceivable cut before you brought us this budget, is that right? The answer was yes, and there may be some additional cuts but they are relatively minor, we may go through here and find another $10,000 or $20,000 but not several hundred thousand in this budget between now and the end of this month. Mr. Lyons then expressed the fact that they have all of the safe guards in place and they are going to follow their line item budgets as well as our overall program and business budgets. Alderman Wynne wanted Mr. Lyons to point out all of the one time revenues. The one time revenues are: $100,000 transfer from the Debt Fund into the General Fund, $450,000 sale of the Land, transfer from the Economic Development Fund is a one time revenue, the reduce the Debt Service Interest cost $200,000, the Athletic tax would also be one time. According to Alderman Wynne's calculation we are looking at $1.45 million in one time revenues for this budget, she also said this is a unique year and just wanted to be clear we are using one time sales. Alderman Holmes asked if this was not labeled as a book club would we not think it was a new and innovated way to train staff, and she just wanted the Council to be opened to new kinds of ways to reach out to people in a different way. Alderman Hansen agrees that training is necessary and we do need to look at other innovated ways to train the employees. She also have two other concerns: (1) Are there full-time positions within City staff that can be converted to part-time or shared positions, and (2) Line item 293 on the budget for bank service charges. Mr. Lyons stated that they were bank fees for the commercial accounts with Chase and also the credit card fees. Interim City Manager Russell commented on the book club saying that many municipalities around the country use book clubs and they say it is an innovated way to get employees to learn things like leadership it is a very inexpensive way stretch them and there are a lot of municipalities that use them. As far as the flex -time and share -time, we have already begun a program sharing some positions and flex -time and working from home, and there are staff members who volunteered to work on that and you will be seeing something coming soon from that program. Alderman Jean -Baptiste spoke on the loss of key personnel and wondered if we were ,going to be able to continue with the services that the citizens had grown accustomed to. He felt that training is an important tool to sharpen the skills of the employees who are leading the organization. Mayor Morton asked the City Manager how many training programs do we have? The answer was given by Ms. Daley as to be 10 programs. Mayor Morton interrupted Ms. Daley and asked how many programs cost us money? Ms. Daley said there are 10 training programs we pay money for. Mayor then asked for the people who take our training that we pay money for, do they say they will stay as employees and be committed to us, Ms. Daley responded the strategy for training is retention along with a lot of other factors. By going to training programs outside we learn from colleagues in other jurisdictions and networking. Mayor asked for the people who are here how do you decide who will receive training. Ms. Daley stated it depends on the person and employee population on an individual basis to bring people up to speed with changes. Mayor Morton asked if some of the training could be decreased with this budget, Ms. Daley said that the budget has been cut enough and training is very necessary to keep. Alderman Wynne stated the training should be kept to reduce the liability in the City, and that the employees recognize the value of keeping stable and realizing their importance to the organization. We have already cut the budget 50% and we need to move on, since we have beaten this item enough. Mayor February 2, 2009 said we need to look at the history and see if things are better or worse. We need to be careful of how we spend taxpayers' money. Alderman Rainey stated we do not hurt or mistreat our employees, and we have 30 employees who make way more than $100,000 a year, getting good pensions, good benefits, we pay wonderful tuition benefits; they are well treated. Everybody has to pull together and the City should be proud. Alderman Rainey moved to adjourn; seconded by Alderman Moran. At 9:30p.m. Alderman Bernstein moved to convene into Executive Session to discuss matters related to personnel, real estate, and litigation pursuant to 5 Illinois Compiled Statutes 120/2 ( c) (1), (5), (6), and (11) as follows: 2. All meetings of public bodies shall be public meetings except for the following: (1) The appointment, employment, compensation, discipline, performance, or dismissal of specific employees of the public body, or legal counsel for the public body, including hearing testimony on a complaint lodged against an employee of the public body or against legal counsel for the public body to determine its validity. (5) The purchase or lease of real property for the use of the public body, including meetings held for the purpose of discussing whether a particular parcel should be acquired. (6) The setting of a price for sale or lease of property owned by the public body. (11) Litigation, when an action against, affecting or on behalf of the particular public body has been filed and is pending before a court or administrative tribunal, or when the public body finds that an action is probable or imminent, in which case the basis for the finding shall be recorded and entered into the minutes of the closed meeting. Roll Call: Voting aye- Alderman Wynne, Bernstein, Holmes, Moran, Tisdahl, Rainey, Hansen, Wollin, Jean -Baptiste. Voting nay - none. Vote 9-0 carried Respectfully submitted, Rodney Greene City Clerk A CD of the meeting was produced and may be accessed in the City Clerk's Office. 1