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REGULAR MEETING OCTOBER 24, 2016 No one from the public spoke in opposition to the bill. Each Councilmember congratulated the team for their accomplishments. Councilmember Oliver Davis made a motion to adopt Bill 16 -84 by acclamation. Councilmember Gavin Ferlic seconded the motion which carried by a voice vote of nine (9) ayes. REPORTS OF CITY OFFICES Representing the City Administration will be Mayor Pete Buttigieg. He stated he will try to have a brief overture of the budget as the Council has so much work to do this evening. First there is a piece of very good news that came out today, South Bend is one (1) of a handful of cities selected by Bloomberg Philanthropies to participate in the What Works Cities initiative. That will lead to resources being committed by Bloomberg Philanthropies to assist us in performance management as well as the use of a group called the Behavioral Insights Team which has provided a tremendous amount of value to cities by helping optimize things like utilities and other City processes based on data and evidence driven decision making. Our Chief Innovation Officer is convening with former Mayor Bloomberg and other cities that have been selected in this initiative. He stated he looks forward to updating the Council more on this as the resources are brought to South Bend. Also, there has been a lot of interest in the issue of homelessness and in particular the emergence of the encampment in the downtown area. We want to reiterate that what we are looking at here is a stop -gap solution for the winter while we continue to have a dialogue over the medium and long -term solutions with our community partners. He gave his thanks for the community partners that have snapped into action in order for us to get ahead of the winter. This also may be a good opportunity to address what may have been a confused issue in regards to the City's direction around the future Fire Station Number Nine (9). To be clear, the Chief at the Mayor's request has been leading a process to thoroughly identify any possible alternatives to the site at Potawatomi Park that has been discussed. Everything remains on the table, but the reason for this effort is to make sure that if at all possible we can find an alternative site we do so and in the event that we are compelled for safety and function reasons to rely on that park site we have done so only after truly exhausting every alternative. That is what is going on in the Department, we will of course continue to update the Council as any developments happen. Mayor Buttigieg thanked the Council and Council leadership in particular the Personnel and Finance Committee for their great work and the Administration and Finance team as well. The process has included eight (8) public meetings since the meeting where we first presented the budget. One (1) of those meetings was geared towards public input but all of which were open to the public and we value that process to make sure there is a good flow of feedback in both directions. Also since the last time he had spoken to the Council about the budget, we have the very good news of having two (2) contracts ratified by the Police and Teamsters unions. Since his Administration has been in office, this is the first time we have had four (4) year contracts which is great news as it provides certainty to the City and certainty to our workers. He thanked everyone who has been a part in those negotiations. Mayor Buttigieg highlighted the key changes in the budget since the budget was first presented to the Council in August, in particular making sure we are boosting the minimum wage which does represent up to a twenty -three percent (23 %) increase for the lowest paid workers in the City. We believe for reasons already talked about that it is the right thing to do. Mayor Buttigieg spoke about steps taken by the Administration to get ahead of the oncoming fiscal curb in 2020. We have included in this budget the addition of six (6) new firefighters to find out whether our estimate is correct that this will in fact lead to savings through reduced overtime. We have reduced burden on general and income tax funds by making sure that the Enterprise funds are paying their fair share. We have a reduction in overall IT expenses which can be a little bit masked by the way the budget has been presented since we are doing allocations in a new way but to be clear there will be $300,000 less in overall IT expenses through efficiencies and a reduction in the need for outside professional services. There is also 3