09-24-18 Council Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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REGULAR MEETING September 24, 2018 AND FIXING A TIME WHEN THE SAME SHALL TAKE EFFECT. Councilmember Karen White, chair of the Personnel and Finance Committee, reported that they met this afternoon and send this bill forward with a favorable recommendation. Jen Hockenhull, City Controller for the City of South Bend with offices located on the 12th floor of the County-City Building, South Bend,IN, served as the presenter for this bill. Ms. Hockenhull stated, Because we present our budget to you as a whole package with Civil City and Enterprise Funds, I do not have an additional presentation for this as it was all presented in the previous presentation. This being the time heretofore set for the Public Hearing on the above bill, proponents and opponents were given an opportunity to be heard. None from the public wished to speak in favor of or opposition to this bill. Councilmember Tim Scott made a motion to send Bill No. 40-18, with a favorable recommendation, back to Committee of the Whole for Council Portion Only discussion and third (3`a) reading on October 8th, 2018. Councilmember John Voorde seconded the motion which carried by a roll call vote of nine (9) ayes. 41-18 PUBLIC HEARING ON AN ORDINANCE OF THE COMMON COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF SOUTH BEND, INDIANA, APPROPRIATING, ADOPTING AND APPROVING THE SOUTH BEND PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION CORPORATION'S 2019 BUDGET AND LEVYING THE TAX AND FIXING THE RATE OF THE TAXATION FOR THE PURPOSE OF RAISING REVENUE TO FUND THE SOUTH BEND PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION CORPORATION, SOUTH BEND, INDIANA, FOR THE FISCAL YEAR ENDING DECEMBER 31, 2019 Councilmember Karen White, chair of the Personnel and Finance Committee, reported that they met this afternoon and send this bill forward with a favorable recommendation. Chris Kubaszak, Controller for TRANSPO with offices located at 1401 South Lafayette Boulevard, South Bend, IN, served as the presenter for this bill. Mr. Kubaszak stated, We are TRANSPO of South Bend. We serve South Bend and Mishawaka. We currently have one hundred and seventeen (117) total employees. We operate forty-nine (49) fixed route vehicles and an additional seventeen(17)para-transit vehicles.During 2018,our accomplishments include starting new ridership programs with Holy Cross College and IU-South Bend. That allows the schools to pay for free rides for the students and the faculty. We also had the record ridership for K through twelve (12) youth ridership. This year we offered it for free so the students K through twelve (12) didn't pay any fee to ride our buses. We had a budget goal of 12,000 rides and we ended it with 27,571 rides for the summer. We also partnered with MACOG to launch the yellow-line corridor route. What that does is it allows thirty (30) minute travel time from Mishawaka transfer facility to downtown Elkhart. In addition, we just purchased new technology to improve our para-transit service. That would improve our scheduling and our on time reliability. We've ordered our first (1St) round of bus shelters and are waiting to see if we can get those installed before the end of the year. Mr. Kubaszak continued, Our 2019 challenges that we expect to have includes having twenty- seven (27) fixed-route vehicles eligible for replacement. Per FTA requirements, we have to keep them a minimum of twelve (12) years before we can consider replacement. Those twenty-seven (27) are fourteen (14) plus years old so that is a priority that we have. If we replace our older vehicles we cut down on maintenance costs with that and we'll be changing those to CNG fuel instead of diesel fuel. There is always uncertainty in the Federal and State funding that we receive. We are also looking at the 2020 circuit breaker which will amount in an estimated $300,000 13