09-28-15 Common Council Meeting Minutes

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REGULAR MEETING September 28, 2015 that commitment, I have that commitment, they have that commitment, and now we can move together as a team. Now we can eat at your place. Thank you. Committee of Whole Chairperson White- We would like thank everyone councilmembers, public, presenters, petitioner for your input, and for addressing questions that pertain to this very important project in our community. I do know that Martin’s are good partners; I had the opportunity to work with them when IU housing first was opening up. We are able to work with three entities: The State, Mishawka, South Bend and IUSB to bring about change. In terms at looking at what would be best not only for Martin’s but also for the students we served. I am very confident as we move forward that we will be able to do the same for this wonderful site. I would like to thank Martin’s for your commitment and your investment in our city. I look forward to the grand opening. Councilmember Oliver Davis made a motion send Bill 34-15 to the full council with a favorable recommendation and set the third reading for October 12. Councilmember Dr. Ferlic seconded the motion which carried by a voice vote of six (6) ayes and one (1) nay Councilmember Henry Davis Jr. 44-15 SECOND READING OF THE BILL FOR TRANSPO BUDGET Councilmember White Chairperson, Personnel and Finance Committee, reported that they met this afternoon on this bill and due to a lack of quorum there is no recommendation. David Cangany General Manager of Transpo (Presenter) - I’m going to go over our 2016 annual budget. This is probably the fourth year that we’ve come before the Common Council based on a change in Indiana Code that requires us to come before one of our governing authorities as opposed to our board of directors as we are a municipal corporation receiving tax dollars to operate our system. The 2016 budget at a glance is just shy of 11 million dollars. The 2016 budget is balanced, that is always great news to start out the year on a level playing field. The most important thing is that we are maintaining the service level from 2015 and our passengers will see no decrease in service. When you look at our expenses, almost ninety percent (90%) of our expenses are (inaudible) through contracts especially on the wage side. With our bargaining unit workforce about seventy-two (72%) of that is tied up in wages and benefits. That is through a three (3) year agreement we have the Amalgamated Transit Union Local #996. We do have a little bit of an increase planned for our operating expenses this coming year but again we are making it happen. The labor expenses are going up slightly. We just finally reached an agreement with our bargaining unit workforce on an expired contact we had. We are excited to have that resolution so we can then plan for the coming years; the next three (3) years are locked in the contract with our union. Dental and health insurance are the same kind of thing we keep talking about year after year we come before you, we’re working with our workforce to look at options. This contract that we just went through with our employees we negotiated and we’ll hopefully see some leveling off on our health insurance. Unfortunately, with the healthcare reform we’ve seen quite a bit of increase over the last few years in regards to health insurance. Fuel, this is one area where we are going to see a decrease for the 2016 calendar year to the tune of almost for $400, 000 by converting our fleet from tradition diesel to compressed natural gas. To date Transpo has taken delivery of sixteen (16) brand new buses. They are out in service and it’s great to be paying one (1) dollar per gallon versus the almost three (3) dollars a gallon we had been paying in the past for fuel. When you look at our revenue, we are very limited in where we can kind of pull money in from. We have a lot of different areas but we’re limited in how we can leverage those areas. One of the areas that we’ve been increasing revenue in and really something that we do not want to do but is something we have to do in order to keep our service running is by taking Federal Operating Assistance, so essentially dollars we’d be using to make capital improvements such as buy new vehicles, buses, and things like that, we’ve been converting those over to operate the system on. 15