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CITY OFSOUTH BEND OFFICE OF THE CLERK about it. There's a lot of excitement and a lot of support from Indianapolis. I just covered a lot of information, so I would be happy to take any questions. Mr. Andrew Kostielney, President of Saint Joseph County Board of Commissioners, with offices on the 7th floor of the County-City building stated, I'd like to give a little update from a County stand point as to where we are with the MOU and the funding. One(1)thing with the MOU is that the County is committing to the first (1st) $9 million dollars that gets spent. So, even now the money is getting prorated. So, in the event that the money gets returned, we would expend all of the$9 million dollars of the County's funds before we would spend any of the City of South Bend's money. So, that one(1) extra layer of protection. Since there is uncertainty as to where the station relocation could be, we kind of moved that off and thought it made more since for us to partner together on the initial spend for the double tracking and then come back and revisit where the station might be. Countywide where we are is, the County has passed, both through our Redevelopment Commission and through our County Council,the bonding phase. So that funding should be in hand and to the State by the middle or the end of October, and then the Board of Commissioners passed the MOU at our meeting last Tuesday, so that's waiting to go back to the City of South Bend. One (1) of the questions that we always answered for our Council and other folks is why are we spending local tax dollars on a project where there is no money being spent here in Saint Joseph County? My answer to that is,it's kind of like the US thirty-one(31)roadway from here to Indianapolis. Even though the money is not spent directly here, we certainly get one of the largest benefits. In fact, I feel kind of bad saying this out loud,but LaPorte and Saint Joseph County get such a better return on this investment than Lake and Porter County. They're putting in the same 18 million dollars and they're not getting much investment. They're ridership is not going to be increased because of the work that's being done in LaPorte County whereas the ridership here in Saint Joseph County will. Mr. Noland stated, Jitin asked me to talk about the twenty(20) year commitment. It's a minimum twenty(20) year commitment that we are bringing to the Safety Board that Andy serves on at the end of September. I anticipate that there will be no issues passing it. I mentioned it at our last Board meeting, and they know it's coming. It's merely a commitment that will run service for at least twenty(20) years. In addition to that, once you put Federal dollars into an investment, if you stop service you have to pay that back. So, in addition to the commitment which we'll make, there's also a financial obligation back to the Federal Government. So, it's insurance that we give to Michigan City. When they allowed us to put a second track through the middle of downtown Michigan City, we committed to keeping service there for twenty (20) years, and so then we're doing the same thing for South Bend. That's where that originated. Councilmember Tim Scott stated, Thank you. Today, in the paper, Porter and Lake County had their Economic Development Zone agreement to take advantage of the Federal Funding. Are we missing out on anything on the Federal Funding between us and Lake County? Mr. Noland replied, I believe that it's the Economic Development Zone, their MPO, NRPSY is now able to tap into it. It really has nothing to do with our project. It's a separate economic development zone that NRPSY has. I don't know if MACOG has the same opportunities as well to provide for something like that. EXCELLENCE I ACCOUNTABILITY INNOVATION I INCLUSION I EMPOWERMENT 455 County-City Building 227 W.Jefferson Bvld South Bend,Indiana 46601 p 574.235.9221 f574.235.9173 1 11)574.235.5567 www.southbendin.gov 5