02-10-14 Common Council Meeting Minutes

Home Browse Search

REGULAR MEETING FEBRUARY 10, 2014 that they are able to collect. General Government again would include mayor, council, admin, and finance, and related departments to them: photo of code safety and portrait of mayor In the past common practice to account for employment municipalities in terms of budgeting additions, trying to move toward visibility on actual position, number represents actual physical people employed by the city as of December 31 st, what you don't see here that is a positive trend this is getting a little closer to the budgeted number there's always a gap as you always have some number of vacancies but it allows us to be more efficient with our budget, one of the reasons why even though budget has been squeezed, and we are seeing an contraction in the number of positions we are able to handle that without a big a contraction in the number of people providing services to residences in the city. As of December 31st we have had 9 positions which is a healthy number to how close we are to having most of our positions filled in the city. Most of those people, only half of the people that work for the city are public safety at 579, biggest category is public works at 297 and full time at 113 and a few more joined the ranks in parks and recreation during the summer time that's the biggest category of seasonal employment. Good News to share, we are once again the highest rated class two cities in the state of Indiana this is the distribution of all the public entities in the state of Indiana, including the state of Indiana itself that issued debt and how they're rated. Most of them or the median at least are at about the 8+ range higher than that would be AA -, higher than that would be AA and that is where South Bend is. We are happy to be in that position it lowers our borrowing cost over the long run. If you look at our tier class two cites you can that we are at the top peak. At a time when you look at Federal government spending as all finances are in terrible shape it bears repeating that South Bends are quite strong thanks to the stewardship by the South Bend county council and our predecessors in previous positions. I want to share some things that got the attention to the credit rating agencies, this is what they look at to decide what ranking to give us role as civic union, diversified local economy, complimented financial operations, and debt is at a manageable level, role of universities and healthcare systems in the city. These are the things that can affect us, I don't think you're surprised those of us who work on public policy every day. The biggest things to be concerned for anybody accessing the credit worthiness of our city is the income level, the fact that we continue to struggle with low income in a lot of portions of the community and the fact that our unemployment rate in the police report is substantially down from what it was a year ago it is still above average for the state and for the US. This is where we stand if you look at every government class: Class I, Class B, and Class III in the state. Indianapolis was ranked above us they actually slipped down to AA so out of 200 local government entities we are tied for eleventh place. Something that we can stand on as we are thinking of benefits having financials and budgeting. This concludes presentation for today, he will have more extensive information on Wednesday. (A copy of the power point presentation is on File in the Office of the City Clerk.) Questions and Comments from Councilman to Mayor Pete: Councilman Davis - There has to be a new way we capture new revenue, new dollars for our city from housing lose liked, sewer water what is the thought process in adding compensation in those areas, to have the ability to capture revenue that are out there for us, interested in how to go about this so we can grow again, I don't see in housing in areas of demolition has taken place, I don't know if there is a new place to introducing new housing to that area but there has to be a two way approach that we are growing again within the city and extend more services so that we can pull more dollars as well? Mayor: We have an evolving perspective on annexation, very little annexation activity in recent years, although there has been a couple voluntary annexation's, while there is nothing underway right now, but we are always are revisiting to make sure that our boundaries make sense. If there were to be any annexations in the future, our administration's approach to that would be guided by two considerations first would be would the residents of that area be better off, and second would be would the cities both be better off. The reason I would differentiate the two is there might be some cases where you have an area of development for residences that would like to be annexed but when we run the numbers we actually find that it would be damaging to a large climate city. It can go either way depending as every area is different, depending on the density, cost of extending services, and some areas we already extend service to that are non -city members, but others we go out and be running capital pumps. We need to be position ourselves so if that were to come up we have the resources to do that by case by case analysis, so that we can make sure that any proposal would come up, even ones established that it would be the right thing to do as a city as a whole.