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contributor to additional revenue may have to do with commercial business that comes into the <br />City. He inquired if there was anything else they could do on the revenue side to quantify that. <br /> <br />City Administrator Norman replied that the one area is building permits, but they do not have a <br />complete picture of that as of yet. <br /> <br />Councilmember Cook stated that there is nothing more valuable to the City than having good <br />employees and currently the Police Department is in a situation where they have one patrol <br />officer on duty after 3:00 a.m. where the nearest back up might be 15 minutes away. <br /> <br />City Administrator Norman replied that they needed to discuss all the needs of the City, but that <br />is a lengthy discussion and should occur on a different night. <br /> <br />Councihnember Cook stated that if they are introducing an ordinance for franchise fees next <br />week and they need to include a dollar amount in that ordinance then they need to have some of <br />those figures in place. <br /> <br />Councilmember Kurak inquired if it was possible to introduce the franchise fee ordinance with a <br />higher fee and then reduce it. <br /> <br />City Attorney Goodrich replied yes, but advised against adopting the ordinance low and then <br />increasing the fee. <br /> <br />Councilmember Elvig stated that they have to be very careful how they position the budget <br />because they have told the residents of Ramsey that they have lost their LGA, but the net result is <br />that they are adding more expenses than what the LGA loss was. <br /> <br />Councihnember Zimmerman stated that they do not know what the State is going to do in <br />January and if they see that all of the cities have balanced the budget they could be in trouble. He <br />thought that the City should only levy the exact amount they lost in LGA. <br /> <br />Finance Officer Lund noted that the total loss was $477,000. <br /> <br />Councihnember Strommen agreed that they needed to be very careful on how they handled the <br />issue. When franchise fees were first discussed, they told people that if they did not implement <br />the fi:anchise fee people would be laid off and now they are adding employees. <br /> <br />Councilmember Kurak noted that at that time they did not know about the $125,000 they would <br />be receiving from Ramsey Town Center, LLC. <br /> <br />Finance Officer Lund explained that that would by why they would watch the revenues closely <br />and as revenues go above what was projected they could add more employees. <br /> <br />Councilmember Pearson stated that it is not going to look too good if the City asks for more <br />money than what they were short. He agreed that there is a real problem with being short staffed, <br /> <br />City Council Work Session/October 7, 2003 <br /> Page 4 of 14 <br /> <br /> <br />