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Serving Northern St. Louis County, Minnesota

Progress made on clean-up of city budget

Marshall Helmberger
Posted 11/11/20

TOWER- Clerk-Treasurer Victoria Ranua updated the city council here, on Monday, on her steps to bring the city’s budgeting process up to the standards recommended by most public financial …

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Progress made on clean-up of city budget

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TOWER- Clerk-Treasurer Victoria Ranua updated the city council here, on Monday, on her steps to bring the city’s budgeting process up to the standards recommended by most public financial officers. Ranua recently joined the Government Finance Officers Association, which develops best management practices for public-sector financial management, and she has been studying their guidance in an effort to improve the budgeting process and financial oversight in Tower.
“The budget isn’t just numbers,” Ranua told the council. “It’s also about the narrative, the structure, internal controls, and your reserve policy,” she said. “These are the things that the city has been lacking.”
Ranua acknowledged that much of the GFOA guidance is geared toward big cities; she said she’s looking for recommendations that are relevant to small cities as well.
As part of that initiative, Ranua told the council that she and the new ambulance director have opted to convert the city’s ambulance service to an enterprise fund. “It means you’re operating in a more business-like structure,” she said. That means costs are factored in a different way than was done in the past, including the calculation of business costs, like depreciation, that were not accounted for by the department before. She noted that the department has at least five different wage categories, which didn’t fit well with the state auditor’s guidance for standard government accounting but would fit within an enterprise account.
Ranua said she hopes to have final numbers to present to the council by Friday on changes to utility billing that could bring the city’s pay structure in line with the city’s ordinance, which requires that customer billings cover the city’s cost of utility operations. The city did boost its utility rates for next year, but Ranua plans to show the council a comparison between the city’s ordinance language and its actual rates during a special meeting set for Friday, Nov. 13.
In other business, the council approved a contract with Nancy Larson, operating as Community Coaching, Inc., for project planning and grant management, up to 100 hours, at a rate of $75 an hour. Larson took over grant writing and management on an emergency basis for the city last year after the termination of the former clerk-treasurer and has been serving as a grant writer since then. Larson was present at the council’s last meeting to talk about the proposal, but wasn’t able to attend Monday night’s meeting. Ranua noted that the contract includes grant management services and suggested tabling the matter until their Nov. 13 special meeting. But both Mayor Kringstad and outgoing council member Mary Shedd said they were comfortable with the contract as written. The two combined to advance a motion to approve the contract, and the rest of the council concurred.
The council also discussed paying to replace a recording device for the security camera system at the train depot, but the request dredged up a long-unresolved issue over who actually owns the depot and surrounding property. County records show that the property is owned by Wisconsin Central, Ltd., a fact that Ranua recently discovered, but Kringstad said it is pretty clear that the railroad had transferred title to the city almost 20 years ago. It appears, however, that the city never recorded the title change with the county and Ranua said she’s been unable to locate the original title transfer documents, which are required to record the change in ownership. If the documents can’t be found, the city will need to ask Wisconsin Central to redraft the legal documents so it can be recorded.
Kringstad said the issue will be researched, but he said he was confident that the city actually owns the property.
After more discussion, the council approved a motion by Shedd to obtain two quotes for the recording unit and select the best buy among the two.

Ambulance billing
The council also heard from Ambulance Director Dena Suihkonen and eventually approved her proposal to switch ambulance billing companies as a means of generating more revenue for the service. “We’ve been using the same ambulance billing service for as long as I can remember,” she told the council. She reached out to a different vendor, TransMedic, on the recommendation of Virginia Fire Chief Allen Lewis. Tower’s current service, ExpertT, charges $20 per billed run, while the new company, known as TransMedic, charges $15 per run. The new service does charge a two-percent commission on net receipts from the prior month, but Suihkonen said that gives the company incentive to maximize revenues to the ambulance service. She said the Tower ambulance service qualifies as “super rural,” which means it should be receiving a higher rate for reimbursement from Medicare and Medicaid than is the case presently. She said TransMedic has indicated it is willing to work with Tower ambulance staff to better document the services ambulance personnel provide, to ensure maximum reimbursement.

Other action
In other action, the council:
• Approved resolutions in support of grant applications to both the Department of Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation and the Community Development Block Grant program for funds to help provide matching money for the Pine St. reconstruction project. The city has received commitments for up to $472,000, but the project still has a roughly $250,000 funding gap.
• Accepted the resignation of Eric Norberg from the Gundersen Trust board and tabled appointment of John Burgess to fill an existing vacancy on the board until Nov. 13 so a resolution can be prepared.
• Approved a resolution appointing Joe Morin and Randy Johnson as interim members of the city’s Board of Adjustment. The board hasn’t met in years, which is why the city hasn’t worried about the board’s membership in recent years. But Shedd, who also serves as the city’s zoning administrator, said she expects Dave Rose will be filing for a variance for his planned RV park.
• Tabled a discussion on the clerk/treasurer’s compensation until Nov. 13.
• Tabled discussion of department reports until Nov. 13.