02-12-18 Council Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

REGULAR MEETING February 12, 2018 of TIF dollars are going into public infrastructure. So we are talking about things that benefit a neighborhood and a community as a whole like roads or corridor streetscape improvements.About forty percent(40%),or the balance of that,is going into more of the project-specific initiatives that tend to command the headlines. He then showed a map in the presentation that depicted the TIF projects and their respective expenditures. Mayor Buttigieg went on, I always consider this a good time of year to review what our City workforce is doing. As we know, The vast majority of the City's employees are in public safety or public works. Parks and Rec have seasonal influxes. Then you have General Government which includes the Legal Department,the Human Rights as well as Community Investment. The overall trend is certainly not one (1) of increase. If we look back to 2012, we were at 1,133 full-time employees and we are now at 1,115. That is budgeted just with the ordinary turn of employees we are almost always below the budgeted number. There have been a few things that have changed. By the years end we were down some employees from retirements and departures. We were down six(6)but then up nine (9) as we brought on Historic Preservation, one(1) in Admin and Finance, two (2) in Public Safety, a Building Inspector, and one (1) in each Innovation, Public Works and Code Enforcement account for the other three (3). This will leap up if, as we foresee and as planned,the Century Center employees are realigned. It is largely a change on paper. Mayor Buttigieg continued, I want to zero (0) in on the topic of healthcare. For any employer,this topic is one (1) of the biggest and fastest growing sources of costs. Again, we have budgeted very conservatively just based on what we would normally do with the projections for an $18 million total healthcare bill for City employees for 2018. That being said,we now have enough time under our belt with the near-site health clinic for City employees that we can certainly regard it as a success. Health insurance costs overall in the last fifteen (15) years have gone up by fifty-six percent(56%)and yet healthcare costs,even when you factor in the cost of the clinic,were actually down seven percent (7%) in 2017 over 2016. The benchmark we expect just in general in the market is about a twelve percent(12%)year-on-year increase.I'm not saying we will see decreases every year but we are certainly bucking that trend which is great news and we will continue to watch that very closely. The other side of the coin is nationally and that is healthcare costs continue to be on the rise. Mayor Buttigieg went on, The bottom line is that, by law, we are balancing the General Fund or what we call the General Plus Fund. That Fund includes the COIT and EDIT Funds. You will see a pretty high net funding. If you look at the 2017 actual number, a$34 million surplus is depicted but part of that has to do with Bond Funds being brought in. So in coming years, you may see the reverse be the case as we are spending down those Bond balances. But our Cash Reserves is very strong. That is one (1) of the reasons we have such a good Bond Rating. Our reserve requirement is that blue line (referencing the presentation) and you'll see that, at the end of any given year, we are consistently above that. I also want to emphasize we have seen the Local Option Income Tax revenues rising. We had a real gift in 2017 when we saw a twenty percent(20%) leap. That didn't happen this year as we are at a three percent (3%) increase but it is still encouraging. That is one (1) way that economic growth benefits the City's bottom line. It is also worth mentioning that the Local Option Income Tax rate here is one point seven-five percent(1.75%)and in Elkhart it is two percent (2%). We are a quarter percent lower than our neighbors and still benefit from this. For budgeting purposes we assume a two percent(2%) increase. There are some years when that goes down but we think, on average, two percent (2%) is great. We just got reaffirmed on our Double- A (AA) Bond Rating. This is something that really reflects well on the fiscal discipline of the Administration, our predecessors and the Council. Fishers has a Triple-A(AAA)Bond Rating and that's to their credit. There are only four(4)municipalities that we found in our scan that have the Double-A (AA) level that is comparable to ours. What is notable is that the other three (3) are socioeconomically pretty wealthy suburbs of Indianapolis. It is all the more remarkable that a City with our level of income has been able to maintain that. This has allowed us to get a three percent (3%) rate on our most recent Parks Bond and so, over time, this can translate into six (6) figure dollar savings for taxpayers. Mayor Buttigieg continued, I have two (2) charts layered on each other here (referencing the presentation). The blue is the level of assessed value in our community and the red is the trend. If you look at how little the Assessed Value of our community is on paper,what we find is troubling. 6