Board of Aldermen — 9/26/17 Page 8
and if the whole way we’ve been doing things for 20 some years needs to be changed or re-evaluated that we
do that in the coming year.
Alderman Moriarty
| don’t expect you to know the numbers off the top of your head, but nevertheless, I’ll read this clearly.
5-135-A: It is the policy of the Board of Aldermen to maintain an undesignated general fund balance
as of each June 30 equal to a minimum of 10% of the municipality's fiscal year appropriations, plus
the statewide enhanced education amount, the local school net tax commitment, and the county
appropriation. That's English; that’s not French. It’s not German, it’s not accountees, it’s not
legalees. It’s English. There are four things that are easy to read in there. Tne numbers should exist
somewhere. Hopefully they exist somewhere, and hopefully somebody is willing to provide them at
some reasonable time.
President McCarthy
The first two of those that you read, Alderman Moriarty, refer to the totality of the school budget that’s
in the general fund budget. It’s what is provided by us to the school district and what the state
provides, which in total are the appropriations for the school department.
Alderman Deane
That’s correct. It was mentioned earlier about the issue we had with the health insurance back a
number of years. I’m of the understanding that our health insurance, just our working rates alone,
was underfunded by nearly $4 million previously that we had to make up the difference on. Is that
correct?
Mayor Donchess
You will recall that this year we increased the health budget. That was one the problems we had with
the budget. We increased the appropriation to health insurance by $3.6 million. That would for Fiscal
"18, the current year. We found that the working rates that had been estimated for Fiscal 17, and to
some degree Fiscal 16, were not adequate to meet the obligations. As you know, we have a reserve
account. In Fiscal ’17 and ’16, because the amount of health insurance that we had to pay out was
underestimated, we did draw down on the reserve. We now have $10 million in the reserve. We
didn’t want to draw down on that any further if we could avoid it. That’s why this year’s health
insurance appropriation went up $3.6 million so we would not hopefully touch the reserve any further.
Alderman Deane
Prior to you coming into office, how often and how much were those reserves drawn down on every
fiscal year?
Mayor Donchess
Not that much. | think at one point the reserve was $16 million, now it is $10 million. The
underestimate for 17 was significant. That’s why we had to increase the budget in Fiscal 18 by $3.6
million. Remember these are all estimates. We're self-insured so this is not like an insurance
company that insures the employees so you know exactly what your bill is. These are estimates that
are arrived at with the personnel and the consultant that the city has. They estimate going forward
what are our bills going to be for the coming year. Those estimates can be wrong because they are
