Good evening and welcome to Athens City Council.

Today is Tuesday, October 13th, and it is committee night at council.

We have one committee tonight, and that is finance and personnel.

The

first item on our committee agenda is the reviewing of the tax year 2026 resolution accepting the amounts and rates as determined by the Athens County Budget Commission.

This is an annual resolution that we pass, comes from the Athens County Budget Commission and the Athens County Auditor, and this gives us an estimate of the tax or property tax revenue that will be coming to the city.

You can see in there that it estimates us to be about 1.2 million.

It's a reminder that this is an estimate, so it is not a firm number, it is what their best estimate guess would be for the year.

We do this every year.

It's a three-reading resolution typically.

This, however, came in to from the county on September 29th and is due back to them October 31st.

So when we get to first reading, I will be asking for a suspension or a special sessions

in

the next couple weeks to fit it

in.

Do we have any questions on the resolution?

Member Wood.

Lest anybody think that we are adding new taxes or changing things.

Correct.

Yeah, this is just the standing property taxes as they are already being collected by the county.

Nothing's changed, or nothing's, you know, nothing that has not been voted on has changed.

And it just shows the two different townships that fall within the city limits.

Any additional questions?

Anything from the auditor?

Not anymore.

I'm just saying this is just helpful for us for the budget planning process.

You know, help gives us an idea of what we have coming in property tax-wise for the next

year.

All right.

All right.

We'll move on next to the MOUs.

We have two memo memos memorandums of understanding reviewing tonight.

Uh the first of which is zoom in here.

Um we talked about a few weeks ago in committee, and then they had to work on the language a bit, so I just wanted to put it

in

back into committee just so that we could update, refresh, and make sure that nobody had any questions.

This is regarding health care benefits for two of the unions.

This does not include police or fire.

This is the AFSME unions 24031 and 24032.

Uh

the spousal carve-out is regarding health benefits for these unions, and is the understanding that people curr currently employed would have an option to carve their spouse out and addition in carve their spouse out and would not be paying premiums on remaining plan members, and that anybody hired after January 2027, we would automatically be carving out the spouses who also have uh or who have employer health care provided elsewhere.

Very badly phrased there, but basically anyone hired after January, if their spouse has health care at their employment, they must take that coverage.

Um they can opt to have the rest of the family remain in the city.

If you choose to carve your spouse out, we'll relieve you of paying premiums for your remaining family members based on the 2027 uh premiums.

And this is just a way to kind

of

reduce the impact on the medical fund.

Member

Clockfelder.

Uh, just one point of clarification, and you may have said this exactly right, but if uh someone who is hired after that date has a spouse who could get um health insurance at her or his uh employer, that spouse is required to get it.

But did you say that then they would only be paying for the premiums of the rest of the family or just not for that spouse?

They would not pay for that spouse, but if they want their children, if they have

a family to remain on the city, they could do

that.

Okay, so it's just the spouse that would be on their own employer or their own employer health care.

Thank

you.

Yeah, but that's a good clarification.

Any other questions?

All right.