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HomeMy WebLinkAboutMinutes Crime Control And Prevention District - 10/27/1997 11100 4110 MINUTES FOR THE 41, CRIME CONTROL DISTRICT OCTOBER 27, 1997 - 12 NOON ASSISTANT CITY MANAGER'S CONFERENCE ROOM, CITY HALL HOARD MEMBERS PRESENT: Laurie Cook Marta Huerta Rose Vela Dr. Sandra Lanier-Lerma OTHERS PRESENT: Asst. Chief L. Villagomez Pat Eldridge Mary Ann Robinson, City Manager's Office Jimmy Bray, City Attorney Chairperson Laurie Cook called the meeting to order at 12:15 p.m. She told the Board that the main reason she wanted to call the meeting was so that the Board could discuss what happened with the utilities situation. She said she thinks the Board needs to understand that and know where they stand with the election and what happens after that. The first thing she wanted to do is hear a motion to approve the September 29, 1997, minutes. She said mostly what they did at that meeting was correct prior minutes and there was a discussion about some changes that Mr. Valencia wanted to make that Sam Granato suggested to him. She said that he was going to ask that those be submitted in writing. She stated that they have not been submitted so the Hoard does not have any changes related to prior minutes. She said Mr. Valencia went over the poll that the Police Officers Association had taken and then he talked about some things that the POA was going to do related to their PAC and getting out the vote. Ms. Vela moved the approval of the September 29 meeting, Ms. Huerta seconded, and the motion carried. Ms. Cook said the Board will move onto the discussion of taxation of utilities. She said she will let Mr. Bray explain exactly where the Board is right now with this item. Mr. Bray said the City received a letter from the Comptroller's office and they ruled differently with respect to the Crime Control District and CPP projects, the rationale being that the CPP project fall under a provision of the tax code that governs city sales taxes while the Crime Control District tax falls under a provision of the tax code that deals with the county taxes and the result with respect to the Crime Control District is that the tax cannot be imposed on a residential use of gas and electricity but it could be imposed on telecommunications services if the permanent board of the Crime Control District so determines. This just basically mirrors what the state law is on the sales tax per cities versus counties. City tax can be assessed against residential gas and electric service and has been in Corpus Christi since the late 1970's whenever that was authorized. The telecommunications tax was opened up to cities in about 1989 and the city implemented that at that time but the counties do not have authority to put it on gas and electricity. So the effect of the Crime Control District according to the Comptroller is that it would not be assessed. Ms. Cook said that for the Crime Control District purposes, residential gas and electricity are not taxable, but waste removal services are. Mr. Bray said he does not know why that was ever an issue because there was never under any version of the sales tax any question on solid waste services. 1 �I V Ms. Cook said she guesses because somebody thought it was a utility. 411/ Mr. Bray said you can call various things utilities, such as ambulance service, just about anything. Ms. Cook said she thinks that was the reason it was in the letter because somebody considered it to be a utility, but for the Board's purposes it is not, because residential gas and electricity are not taxable, waste removal services are. She asked Mr. Bray to explain exactly what telecommunications services are, because some people were saying that includes cable TV and that is not considered telecommunications, and that is taxable. Mr. Bray said it is phone service. He said he does not remember any detail whether the sales tax applies to every part of telecommunications or not, they have a fairly elaborate accounting procedure for all the different kinds of services you can get telecommunications wise. He said he thinks it applies to all of it but the Crime District would be choosing to apply it just like the City's telecommunications tax right now. If the Board chose to apply it, it would apply to everything that is currently being taxed by the City's sales tax, what it is right now. The Board would just follow that. Ms. Cook said this is a really confusing issue. The thing she thinks the Board all need to be informed about is that when the Board did the budget what they did was use what the City collects and Ms. Robinson did an estimate of what that would cost. Ms. Robinson said her problem was CP&L. She could figure out what was residential for the City. CP&L does not separate it so she had to take a base overall and the commercial utilities basically is a big portion of CPC,. Because she had to do it that way it came to about $200,000 less per year in revenue, but that is a very top of the line. It covered everybody in CPO, in this district because their revenue is based just on this district so there was no way she could separate residential from commercial. Ms. Cook said if you consider that commercial is more than half of their revenue then the Board may be looking at $120, 000 or $130, 000. Ms. Robinson said that also includes telecommunications. Ms. Cook said which would be the option of the permanent board and that would be one of their first issues. She said the good news is that all of this is an estimate as far as the budget and they will still go with the revenue and expenditure that they have in the budget and then once there are collections they will have a better idea where they stand after the first year. If there are any modifications to be made they will be in the third, fourth or fifth year. Ms. Vela asked about the tax in regards to the waste removal services. She asked if they were taxable no matter what. Ms. Cook told her that amount is so little. She said she thinks what was said is that for the entire half cent it was $14,000 a year and theirs would be a fourth of that. She said the Board's part of the tax on waste removal services is very minimal about $3, 500. Ms. Huerta said so what Ms. Cook is saying is whatever modifications will have to be made by the permanent board. Ms. Cook said actually the way the law is appropriations can only be made according to the budget so the permanent board has a budget, it has been adopted, 2 V the expenditures will be made according to that budget. If it looks like the revenue projection is too low then they will have to modify the budget, but basically the budget that the temporary board has in place can still be used even if the revenue projection is inaccurate, because it is just a projection. It is only the expenditures that are affected from this standpoint. You cannot appropriate anything that has not been budgeted. Ms. Robinson said plus they will have to go back to the Council for approval of their budget every year. Ms. Cook said that is correct. The first year budget has been approved and they can only expend money according to the budget. They had a reserve so the only way that there will be a problem is if the shortfall in revenue is in excess of what a certain amount was in the first year. You cannot spend what you do not have. Basically as long as you have enough money to cover the expenditures that are in the budget the revenue shortfall will not that much of a difference in the first year and the second year the Board has to go to the Council to get approval anyway. Dr. Lerma said so it appears the impact is going to be minimal so all that hullabaloo about taxing utilities does not apply to this one. Ms. Robinson said the ending fund balance for all five years interest earning were never attached to it and there will be interest earnings. Ms. Cook said they have to go back into that fund too. Ms. Huerta said so she guesses at the worst or maybe at the best we would be able to cover everything and just have used up reserves. Ms. Robinson said they will still have a reserve at the end of the five years. Ms. Cook stated that is if all their revenue projections are correct other than that, meaning that the growth that was projected is still there so all of that is an estimate. Generally speaking they are still okay. She said she thought it was really important that the board have a good understanding of this since it has been in the news and it is always the first question asked and the fact is with them the only thing that is an issue right now is telecommunications and the permanent board will make that decision. Dr. Lerma asked whether the information is going to be disseminated to correct the perception. Ms. Cook said the newspaper had a copy of the Comptroller's letter and when she talked with her she made is very clear that utilities are not taxed in the Crime District. What they chose to report was that garbage disposal fees were taxable and she called her to talk to her about it. They have put out a press release that indicates that the Crime District is not taxable on these items and that it would be up to the permanent board on the telecommunications and that the other items are taxable for the CPP. That information has been given to the press. Dr. Lerma said in the community that perception still exists for some reason, but it does appear that the impact, as she said earlier, is going to be minimal. Ms. Cook told the Board she wants to make something clear that she never told Rosemary that she thought the Council should tell the permanent board not to approve taxing telecommunications. Rosemary asked Ms. Cook what she thought the temporary board would and she said it did not matter because the temporary board will not vote but the permanent board will. She said she told her that is 3 certainly something the Council can take into account. She did want to make that 4111, clear to the Board and she tried to make it clear to the Council. She would never tell the Council Members how to appoint a person and she would not expect them to tell the temporary or permanent board how to vote, that would be inappropriate. The permanent board will decide that and hopefully by then Mary Ann Robinson will have information as to how much money. Ms. Robinson said she had a little trouble getting the information. That was just based on Southwestern, she did not have the long distance services or the mobile telephone. She just based it on the average of theirs and with theirs it was about $50,000, but whatever she could get from them to tell her from the franchise tax, but she could not get much from the other stuff which would be very minimal. She said the way they are taxed on telecommunications is the location. The telephone itself is the origin of the communications so if people are calling you they get the tax, it is taxed on their end. If you are calling them, the tax is on our end. And she called up to clarify that one for sure. Ms. Cook told Ms. Robinson that the Comptroller's office should be able to tell her how they are collecting for telecommunications for the City. Ms. Robinson said they do not issue out that information. Ms. Cook said surely they tell the City. How does the City know they are getting the right amount. Ms. Robinson said they would not even tell her electricity. Mr. Bray said it is left up to the Comptroller to do the auditing on that. It is kind of a "Catch 22". It is hard for the cities to get that information. The business information is pretty well protected because of lobbying by the businesses. Ms. Robinson said they have a GIS system where she can go and ask how much taxes were paid in this location which gets her away from identifying this is CP&L. But she cannot give the location because it is in Tulsa, Oklahoma. So there is only one company up there paying taxes to the state for this area which is CPC.. Ms. Cook said that the Board is not going to know how much the telecommunications part is. She was thinking of the RTA because they did not have telecommunications included in theirs until '93 and their board turned it down about four times before they finally included it in '93. You could see the revenue before and after and that might give them an idea of what the affect was going to be. It will probably be at least $50,000. Dr. Lerma asked whether telecommunications is just telephone. Mr. Bray said it is not cable. It probably includes data lines and stuff like that, but it is not cable. Ms. Cook said it is calling services. Those are all taxable. Ms. Robinson said there is internet and all kinds of things attached to this, besides the cellular phones and the other means of communication. Dr. Lerma said she would think so because if you just said telephones that is such a narrow definition. Mr. Bray said the statute just says telecommunications services which is pretty broad. ihrf 4 V Ms. Cook said they will leave that up to the permanent board. That is a decision that will have to be made pretty quickly because it has to go to the Comptroller's office so that they can make their determination as to collection. Ms. Cook said there were some questions brought up earlier about whether city employees can be appointed to the permanent board. The POA and ABC campaign asked for an opinion and John Bell talked to Mr. Bray about it and then John Bell wrote up an opinion that it does indicate that city employees can sit on the permanent board. She said Mr. Bray has some other research that he is going to do and she will let him speak to that. Hut basically this opinion addressed in certain parts of the state statute indicated that according to what they had researched police officers could sit on the permanent board. That would not just be Isaac that would be any officer. Mr. Bray said he has not personally attempted to research that. What is has to do with is the incapability doctrine in Texas. There is a long group of AG opinions that deal with all that in a lot of different situations. Some of the opinions are a bit inconsistent and it is hard to find a thread sometimes. But the thrust, at least for these purposes, is whether the position of police officer so subject to influence within the department that they could not properly perform the objective duties of somebody sitting on the Crime District Board in making decisions about the dispersement of monies. He thinks John's opinion leaves it that it is real facts specific and he does not think he attempted to fully address all the factual situations that the Board might have. Facts can develop that they are not aware of now. There has also been some question about the union president and whether they could do it if they were not actually working as a police officer. They are on the city payroll but they are not actually working as a police officer during the time they are union president and whether that would make a difference and factually it might. But he has not attempted to go through and reconcile all the opinions himself at this point. 411, He said he is just not sure whether you can address it factually until you have it in front of you. In general John said he thought probably a police officer could sit on the board. Ms. Cook said if that comes up then Mr. Bray will have to look into it. That is not anything that is before them right now. Ms. Cook told the Board that they have to meet to canvass the votes after the election so she scheduled a meeting for Monday, November 10. She said they have to do it between two and six days after the election. The Council is also going to do it Monday so the Board will have their meeting a noon in the ACM's conference room if available. Mr. Bray said if the District is approved by the voters, the canvassing of the votes will be the final act of the temporary board so if anybody has any amendments to the minutes that should be on the agenda before they canvass the votes. As soon as they canvass the votes that will bring the temporary board to an end. With no further business, the meeting adjourned at 12:45 p.m. 411/ 5