09-24-18 Personnel and Finance - Laserfiche WebLink

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CITY OF SOUTH BEND I OFFICE OF THE CLERK Councilmember Teshka stated, I'll preface my questions by first (1St) saying that I am a Zoo fan. We just had my son's birthday there and my wife actually used to be the butterfly keeper. That being said,as Council,we often act as a liaison between our residents and their City's government. A lot of what I'm hearing is that we've got this deferred maintenance piece that totals$3.6 million. In essence,we could fully fund the deferred maintenance piece with what we are asking for in this bond. I don't know and I've talked bare and briefly about this, possibly offline, but why is there a rush to do the entrance when we could fully fund this deferred maintenance piece with what we are talking about in terms of bonding? Ms. Dean replied, That is a great question and I am happy to answer that. The reason we need to do the entrance first (1St) and we need to do it now is to build out any other phases in our Master Plan,which all encompass animal improvements and new exhibits,we need to do the entrance first (1St) for all those reasons that I listed. So we know, right now, our current entrance cannot serve the needs of the almost 240,000 annual guests that we see. That entrance was built for, probably, 150,000 people. We have long lines, the inability to serve guests, members and we have ADA compliance issues. So before we can build out any other pieces of our Master Plan, we have to redo the entry. If we can't properly serve our guests in the manner of which they need to be served at the front, we may as well not do the rest of the Master Plan. We will have an influx in terms of attendance. I can tell you now, we will probably have a ten percent (10%) plus increase in attendance off of the giraffe feeding station. Our entrance can't handle that. Our restrooms can't handle that. The ADA issues can't, our gift shop can't, so if we don't do this space first (1St), we wouldn't be able to take care of what we have to offer. It would be almost a disservice to build animal exhibits first (1St). I have donors who are ready to pay for the giraffe exhibit and I have to tell them we can't yet because I can't bring guests in under the current entrance conditions. Councilmember Teshka followed up, My next question gets to a question we had asked Aaron Perri when he was here before about the City's contribution. My question is, if we are spending down reserves in other parts of our budget,why would we bond this out? Ms. Hockenhull replied, We are spending down reserves in other portions of our budget but the funds in which we would use for this bond are EDIT Funds and that is not a fund we generally want to spend down. We want to continue to use the revenues we get in on an annual basis in that year. This allows us to continue with the other programs included in EDIT. This would allow us to keep the reserves in that Fund very healthy. Councilmember Teshka replied, Thank you, and I think that is an important question to answer because I'm being asked it and my answer at this point is I don't know. I don't like giving that answer. Thank you for the answer and maybe we can dig a little bit into that more offline. Has PZS ever considered a tiered entry fee? Ms. Dean replied, We have not, no. Are you talking about in-County versus out of County? Councilmember Teshka responded, Correct. So, there would be a different rate for City residents and County residents. Ms. Dean replied, We have not publicly considered it since we formed the public-private partnership,but that is not to say it hasn't been brought up internally in our conversations. We are not opposed to it at all, honestly. When we shifted over, we stayed with the same system the City EXCELLENCE I ACCOUNTABILITY I INNOVATION I INCLUSION I EMPOWERMENT 455 County-City Building 227W.Jefferson BvldI South Bend,Indiana 466011p574.235.92211f574.235.91731 TTD574.235.5567lwww.southbendin.gov 12