View Agenda Item

5.4.

Charter Commission

Meeting Date:: 03/26/2012
Submitted For:: Kurt Ulrich
By:: Jo Thieling, Administrative Services

Title:

Review Requirements for Ramsey Newsletter

Background:

The City of Ramsey's Charter, Chapter 12, Section 12.13 titled A Newsletter, states the following: A newsletter shall be published by the city at regular intervals at least six times each year. The postal role for the city shall be used for the distribution.

There is a cost to publishing and distributing the newsletter. It has been talked about that possibly the newsletter could be distributed quarterly, thereby reducing the budget, however, reducing the distribution of the newsletter to less than six times per year would require a Charter amendment. There has also been discussion that possibly the Newsletter could be delivered via the City's website. This, too, would require a Charter amendment.

Staff has compiled an approximate cost to layout, publish, and distribute the Ramsey Resident using the costs beginning with the May/June 2011 issue and ending with the March/April 2012 issue. The cost for printing was $23,927.45; the cost for mailing was 7,611.96. The cost without staff time was $31,539.41. The City contracts with Wheels of Thunder to gather advertisers for the Newsletter and the revenue from the ads are split 50 percent between the City and Wheels of Thunder. The City's share of revenue for these issues was $14,208.00 - which brings the cost of the Newsletter down to $17,331.41. The revenue side to the Newsletter could be larger if the advertising was gathered in-house, however, it's difficult to figure out the amount of staff time that would take. Therefore, actual revenue may not be realized.

Staff time from start to finish of the Newsletter is approximately 268 hours per year. This does not include staff writing articles - this is for the staff member who gathers the articles, lays them out, gets the Newsletter to the printer, takes care of postage forms, etc. It does also include two more staff people proofing the Newsletter. The staff time cost for layout, etc. would be about $6,098, which includes benefit costs. The cost for staff time proofing six issues is approximately $680, which also includes benefits. The total cost is basically $24,109.

Observations:

Staff has been working on the 2013 budget which includes looking at options to cut in the budget. Some time ago, staff contacted a number of neighboring cities to determine how many issues of their newsletters they publish per year. The Cities of Anoka, Elk River and Maple Grove all publish four issues, while the City of Champlin publishes five issues. If the City of Ramsey published fewer issues such as four for example, the cost would be approximately $11,554.27 - a savings of $5,777.14 on printing and postage. The cost savings in staff time would be approximately $2,258. The total savings realized by publishing two less issues of the Ramsey Resident would be $8,035.

If an electronic Newsletter were published, the cost would be basically staff time. This would alleviate the $17,331 cost, however, there may be some increase in staff hours. The argument may be made that not everyone has the ability to review the Newsletter electronically.

Recommendation:

Staff is requesting the Charter Commission to review this information and be prepared to discuss it at the meeting. If the Commission is inclined to suggest changes, there is a procedure that must be followed to amend the Charter. A memo from City Attorney Goodrich outlining the process for Charter amendments is attached to this case. Mr. Goodrich noted in his memo that, historically, the amendment process most often used by the City is the adoption of an ordinance.

Funding Source:

N/A

Council Action:

Based upon discussion.

Attachments

Memo fm ATtorney re Charter Amendment Process

Form Review

Inbox	Reviewed By	Date
Kurt Ulrich	Kurt Ulrich	03/20/2012 10:08 AM

Form Started By:: Jo Thieling
Started On:: 03/13/2012 06:32 PM
Final Approval Date:: 03/20/2012