​Council Meeting Addresses SMART Contract, Financial Manager

At Monday’s city council meeting in Ferndale, the body considered zoning issues, decided to recommend hiring a financial manager for the city, approved a contractor to provide new floors at the community center, and approved the annual SMART contract to provide transport to seniors and the disabled.

The annual Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation (SMART) bus contract allows Ferndale to offer specialized services for its program for seniors and disabled people. The contract will run til Sept. 30, 2018 and will cost the city $14,951.

The council also approved a new floor for the Kulick Center, where floor tiles have been coming loose. The center, a former elementary school, “required constant modifications and maintenance repairs which have been primarily cosmetic without regard to long-term consequences,” according to the council’s request for action. The city has leased the building housing the Kulick Center from the Ferndale Schools since 2001. The lease agreement requires the city to maintain, care for and repair the building, inside and out, as needed. After a competitive bid process, the city chose Floor4Life to replace the floors at a cost of $10,618.45.

The city also decided to add a financial manager’s position. Since 2013, the city of Ferndale has been without a finance manager. When Ferndale’s finance director retired in 2014, the city hired Plante Moran to audit and stabilize the department, later hiring Sherry Stubblefield as finance director. The council wants the new manager to offer real time updates to the budget, stronger recommendations on funding and to perform analytics and modeling to allow for better decision making, according to the council’s request for action.

The new position will pay between $65,365 and $81,631 “which may impact payroll by $20,000 to $30,000 depending on qualifications,” according to the council. “However, we would discontinue utilizing Plante Moran, allowing for this request to have little to no impact on the finance department budget,” they add.

Photo via City of Ferndale.