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REGULAR MEETING OCTOBER 24, 2016 budget meeting and had every department director come before them to justify what they are doing in every department. She stated she has had plenty of opportunity to pick and prod at all of this stuff which is their responsibility to do. She stated the comments that Councilmember Kelly made regarding efficiencies and savings that some of these positions bring are correct and reason enough for the raises. Many of these increases were looked at in terms of the private sector and let's face it many of these people will never make what they would in the private sector but we have to try to approach that. It is important to fund these positions at a level so that when people do leave we don't experience long vacancies in key positions in our City. As to Councilmember Preston's point, this is a difficult decision and the complexities of our workforce are vast. From the person at the Street Department paving roads all the way to lawyers in the Legal Department and then to the new expanded Parks position is a vast range of qualifications and responsibilities. She stated she feels very confident on her first run through of this process that the Administration has made a good case and have been fiscally responsible in balancing these funds. For those reasons she will be in support of this with the understanding that there is a lot of work to be done. It shouldn't be so difficult to make this understandable to the general public. At all those budget meetings, and the process did begin back in February, there was a tremendous need to make this more understandable to the public. Chairperson Ferlic stated Councilmember Dr. Varner is requesting to make an amendment to the bill so he will comment last. He thanked Councilmember White for the budget process as well as members of the Administration for the countless number of meetings and amount of time put into answering our questions. He stated he will be supporting this, many of these positions are evolving roles and taking on many different responsibilities. While it is public service, we are competing with the private sector and it is necessary to compensate positions necessary to compete. Councilmember Davis stated it was interesting that when it came down to the lower echelons in terms of salary, the Administration wanted to do a three (3) year plan. He stated he advocated that be done in two (2) years. The people who are getting paid at the top, the Administration wants to deal with those positions immediately and that questions values. He asked why in the world would we want to take care of the top so quickly but phase in the bottom in three (3) years. He stated he is not for raises over five percent (5 %). The Police and Teamsters told us that they were able to recruit and retain talent on these smaller raises. The Police and Teamsters voted overwhelmingly for those agreements but somehow when you work in the Administration you need a high salary in order to stay here. We do not live in Fort Wayne which is several times larger than us. These people should go work for the private sector for more money, it is a free country. In regards to position title changes, there is no way that one (1) man can do two (2) positions. Both Phil St. Clair and Dennis Andres gave a lot of service to this City and there is no way one (1) person can do both jobs. We are going to give Mr. Perri a title but in reality a deputy will be doing the other job. You cannot do the Morris and the Park System right. There is no way. You can fix up a beautiful big time salary and say how well he is going to do but that is not fair to our citizens of South Bend. Councilmember Davis stated he fought for the LOIT but it was not for big raises and higher salaries, it was to take care of the City's basic needs. We had a rough time then and now everybody is going to the bank it is just disrespectful. Now we are asking people to raise water rates and parking rates and sewer rates. We don't even have a plan in place for the sewer rates and the biggest crisis coming up in the City of South Bend is the CSO plan. You can have more money having to pay for the water and sewer and it will be more impossible to stay in the City of South Bend than all the other places around here. Anybody who stays here will have to pay more money to live here in the City of South Bend and at the same time we are talking about raising salaries. He asked how in the world we can do that. These are still taxes when we raise rates. Councilmember Davis stated this TIF issue is amazing to him and a lot of wording has to be done on that and how we have to deal with everything. After all the meetings we've had and then to just try to quietly do that is a great concern. There is no way. To top it off, everybody in the City was fussing at the Clerk's salary as a diversion. Most of the people didn't even know about these high salaries, it was only in the past few weeks that most people in this town knew about this. Everybody was fussing about the Clerk, and then all these other salaries were coming in 17