10-30-13 Common Council Meeting Minutes

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SPECIAL MEETING OCTOBER 30, 2013 to Memorial which we have to do, we have to maintain a world class institution as any of you know economically they have a much poorer payer mix in St. Joe so we, the city has to help them out, to maintain our excellence in medicine and in the infrastructure $725,000 going to curb and sidewalks, another $1.75 to corridors, so that leaves you with $4.1 million dollars for the smart streets out of $343 million dollar budget. I am excited about Bill 45-13; I think that we have to seize the moment. I had a great opportunity in the past month to go around with the major grocery marketer in this area, and I should him around downtown South Bend and I asked him if he would put in some type of grocery store, because what we need here is a grocery store, a pharmacy, everybody knows that. He said that if we can get the people, that he will obviously do it. Okay, so there’s a real plus and this street project creates the density that we need. Also, I had the great opportunity of going around with a restaurant, a major chain restaurant owner, I spent a Sunday, going around downtown South Bend and he also said he would consider putting in a “chain” restaurant in downtown South Bend if we had the density. The only way that you are going to get the density, is with plans like Scott Ford is offering. So, that’s why I am excited about this whole thing and I think that there can be a whole economic renaissance in South Bend and I like to ask the community people, the downtown community people how many of you are in favor of this downtown streets, please stand up. I apologize, I defer to Chairperson White. Can you ask that question? Chairperson White: We are not in the public portion, but the Council can look out in audience and ascertain and acknowledge that. Councilmember Ferlic: Karen has taught me a lot. th Councilmember Schey: First, with all due respect to my honorable colleague from the 4 District I do need to correct the record, the amount appropriated for the curb & sidewalk program is actually $1.1 million and not $725,000. For the record please make that correction. I have a lengthy comment. I received numerous phone calls and I feel that it is my responsibility to share with all here tonight, my thoughts, opinions and feelings on this. So, first I want to thank everyone for participating in the democratic process and I also want to thank those of you in the rd 3 District that have put your trust in me to be a good fiscal steward of your money we are spending your money and I take that very seriously. So thank you for coming tonight and thank you for sharing your thoughts and concerns over the past couple of weeks. With every resident I have explained that as a representative of the tax payers of South Bend I take my responsibility to provide fiscal oversight very seriously. The request that is before Council tonight is to appropriate $11.4 million dollars for this project and I am talking about the smart streets, which I think we probably all knew. As you can all appreciate this is a very significant appropriation and therefore should demand a great amount of detail. For me personally I rely less on the narrative describing the project and more on the numbers describing the cost. The street scape scenes the photographs they have all been lovely, but I what I rely on more heavily is the fact and figures. I will share that I have continued to ask the administration for additional detail in terms of a detailed cost analysis for each phase. And I appreciate a lot of these details have not yet been worked out, but I have not yet received the level of detail as far as cost information that I need to ensure me that we have explored every opportunity for value engineering and economies of scale. To better illustrate this for everyone here tonight I will focus on two phases. I will focus on phase two which is the Jefferson Street project which has a budgeted cost of $1.475 million and a significant portion of that cost is coming from the installation of storm sewers. And Phase Three which would be the Bartlett Street/Leeper Park Roundabout which has a budgeted cost of $4.9 million. So to help explain where I see opportunities for value engineering on just these two phases I will refer back to the combined sewer overflow presentation that our Public Works Director Eric Horvath made to the Utilities Committee on August 26, 2013. It terms of addressing the drainage issues on Jefferson by installing storms sewers I would prefer that we first complete the scheduled work of installing the $24.5 million dollar storage tank at Howard