09-24-18 Council Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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REGULAR MEETING September 24, 2018 Aaron Perri, Executive Director of Venues, Parks & Arts with offices located at 301 South St. Louis Street, South Bend, IN, served as the presenter for this bill. Mr. Perri stated, We are very fortunate, as you are aware, to have the Zoo as part of the City of South Bend. The educational initiatives, the research, the conservation efforts that all happen there are phenomenal. All that aside, the economic impacts and the memories made there match those first (1St) categories, bar none. As you are well aware, we have a partnership with the Potawatomi Zoological Society. It's been a five (5) year partnership and is just about coming to a close. Earlier this summer, the Park Board as well as the Potawatomi Zoological Society (PZS) Board entered into a semblance of negotiations. We passed unanimously at the Board of Park Commissioners meeting in June 2018 a new fifteen (15) year agreement that recognizes the substantial amount of work that PZS has done with the Zoo. I think we can all agree the impact has seldom looked better. As part of that agreement, we went through and requested the Zoo to do a deferred maintenance plan. I think that has been shared with the Council. Those are things needed to keep the Zoo functioning at a very high level. There are also some upgrades that in involved in their thirty (30) year Master Plan that includes a marquee new entrance that will allow the Zoo to expand their educational efforts, become compliant in universal accessibility measures as well as accommodate larger groups. I think you've already heard this at a high level. One (1) final note before we get to the brass tacks, this fifteen(15)year agreement we put together really recognizes the fine work they are doing and the amount of money we are putting into the agreement over the fifteen(15)years actually reduces the taxpayer's burden. When the City was running the Zoo, we were spending about $1.3 million a year on Capital as well as Operations. Throughout the past five (5) years, we've been spending close to $900,000 per year on average. This new agreement will take us down to about $810,000 annually.That does reduce the taxpayer burden.We are able to do that by reducing our Operational subsidy in exchange for some upfront Capital investment. That is what we are talking about tonight. Marcy Dean, Executive Director of the Potawatomi Zoo with offices located at 500 South Greenlawn, South Bend, IN, stated, To echo what Aaron had talked about, these are the improvements (referencing a slide in a presentation which is available in the City Clerk's Office) that are associated with the $4.2 million bond we are talking about toni ht. Without the financing the bond amount is actually $3.7 million, so that is the number I will refer to as I go through our presentation. Of that $3.7 million, $2.2 million is going toward much needed deferred maintenance. That is necessary for us to obtain our Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) accreditation in June 2019. As Aaron mentioned, we did have a deferred maintenance audit conducted August 2017 with outside inspectors. That audit was sent to everyone on Council last week. That lays out around$3.7 million of projects phased by Urgency One (1),Urgency Two (2) and Urgency Three (3) in terms of the necessity for accreditation. The $2.2 million will address Urgency One (1)which is the most urgent phase. Those are needs that need to be completed either before our June 2019 inspection or have a plan associated with it for our 2019 hearing which will be at AZA in September 2019. Ms. Dean continued, So to meet our AZA accreditation, the Zoo will be completing deferred maintenance items such as repaving guest pathways.For those who have come out you would have seen that we have several yellow markings and that is because we are trying to make sure that we don't continue the pattern of guests tripping. A lot of it is from tree roots that have busted up the guest pathways over the years. That is very important. Next is new carnivore containment for the leopard and the lion. That means current carnivore containment standards require assessable mesh, which is the AZA standard. The wire we contain our leopards and lions in rusts. There are some issues that come with that. New roofs on several buildings and new HVAC and electrical systems are in the queue. We know several of our electrical panels are out of date and need to be updated. We are also looking at newer and safer patron fences throughout the Zoo. We are needing new animal containment all throughout the East Barn. We also need new fencing throughout the Zoo Farm. We need repairs to several buildings. We need new decking for the alligator. We also need repairs to the tiger exhibit. All of these are Urgency One (1) big ticket items. One (1) thing not pointed out in the deferred maintenance slide is that we have several underground leaks that happen every year and part of that $2.2 million bond will help those issues as well. Ms. Dean went on, Then $1.5 million of the bond is designated for the final phases of our Zoo entrance. The Zoo entrance is a $3 million capital project and is part of the first (1St) phase of the 18