09-24-18 Council Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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REGULAR MEETING September 24, 2018 for the most part the citizens think that your priorities need to stop being things like this and it needs to be the basics. If you're going to take a bond out, it needs to be something that everyone benefits from in their neighborhood. They are tired of seeing what could be their neighborhood, road or sewer funds. Someone said I'm tired of the shit in my basement, I don't give a whatever about the Zoo. Someone else said I don't give a GD about this, I want my roads fixed. I think you aren't understanding the frustration of the citizens of where your priorities are and where you are putting our money. So those were the comments I got, thank you for your time. Jesse Davis, P.O. Box 10205, South Bend, IN, stated, As our elected official and as a totally different body of the government than the Mayor's Office and the Administration, the Mayor's Administration are the ones who dream up these wonderful things. We elect you people to make sure our needs are taken care of, not wants, but needs. We think you should concentrate a little more on that. There were only three (3) Council Members up there, maybe four (4), who were even here when this became a public-private partnership. I sat through many Council Meetings where the Zoological Society wanted to, basically, take over the Zoo. It wasn't just a question of whether employees would be affected but where the tax payer's dollars would be invested and the Zoo would be saved. Mr. Perri came up here a while ago and said we were paying$1 million,now we are at $900,000 and now we will be at $800,000. We still aren't getting a return on our investment because if you're going to hand over a bond for $4.2 million, if you divide that over twenty (20) years, we are still paying out $266,000 a year. That is with no interest as it is just on principle. If we are only saving $200,000, we are still in the hole. When the Zoological Society took over they wanted to protect the employees but you also need to protect us. We don't want to keep sinking money into this. We were told it would be a grand Zoo once the Zoological Soicety took over. The burden was going to be off the tax payer for the most part but we aren't seeing that. The numbers do lie. Bottom line is if you pass this, the return on our investment is worthwhile. I took my grandson there lasts and I was not impressed. You said deferred maintenance. To me, deferred means it should have been done but it hasn't been done. Why hasn't it been done? Why did we put it off? It is increasing the cost and it is increasing the burden on the tax payers. That doesn't make sense. That is not fiscal responsibility for you guys to sit here and keep voting this stuff through. This being the time heretofore set for the Rebuttal on the above bill, the presenter was given an opportunity to rebut. Mr. Perri stated, I will be brief. I understand these things can be complex, a little difficult to navigate at times. There is no standard playbook for these types of things. This public-private partnership is one(1)that has proven to be fruitful and this financing package you are being asked to approve tonight is part of a very long agreement that we think will provide a significant return on investment. It leverages that public-private partnership,their time and resource,it decreases the burden on the tax payer and position's the Zoo to improve and expand its impact well into the future. I appreciate your support. Councilmember Tim Scott stated, I want to thank Marcy Dean for sending out the email to all the Council Members thanking them and giving them information. We need to do our homework on this and reach out to the parties we need to for questions. I do want to say that I do have respect for all my Council Members and their concerns and their due diligence. We have to look at it at different levels. I do it differently than other people and I didn't mean any disrespect earlier. There are time when we have to do our homework and I appreciate everyone being open and available for those questions and comments. Councilmember Oliver Davis stated, I liked what Mr. Anella did. So, I dearly love the Zoo. But to make this bearable, in terms of what this bond is dealing with, especially in light of the fact that on August 10th, 2018 it was announced that we had already pledged $3.7 million. Since we had already pledged that it was already out there,tonight showed we were not out-foxed by asking all these questions so we can do our due diligence to show that we have done all of our work. Whether that is through meetings or everything else, we have to show that because people think we are a rubber stamp.I really wish the ground breaking would have been done after all of this stuff tonight because it would have been better because it looked like everything was done ahead of time. So while it is good for us to ask these questions, the public needs to hear these answers themselves. I know a lot of things but if you don't know them and the people watching on Facebook or reading our records, they need to know that we ask questions. That is why I said to show that we are not 27