REGULAR MEETING October 9, 2017
<br /> contracts. There's also green stone-water infrastructure that ties in with our Long Term Control
<br /> Plan, but also can offer benefits to the neighborhoods. And, of course, we continue to support our
<br /> water and waste water work through the fees that go on to the water and sewer bill.
<br /> Mayor Buttigieg continued, Another priority identified in the priority-based budget is to make
<br /> sure that all of our residents are empowered with education, mobility, and technology. So, some
<br /> of the things that you will see reflected in the budget speak to that: a dual high school credit
<br /> program that does career development and a kind of early window on the Fire Department
<br /> recruiting at the same time; a new scholarship fund through the Venues, Parks, and Arts
<br /> program, making sure that there's access for people of all backgrounds. The build out of our
<br /> metronet, which is, I think sometimes,the best-kept secret in South Bend. A lot of cities are
<br /> racing to develop dark fiber infrastructure. We've already got it, but we've got an opportunity to
<br /> connect more City assets—like parking garages, parks buildings, fire stations—in order to save
<br /> the City money in the long-run on internet connection by tapping into this resource that we
<br /> already have. In the spirt of digital inclusion, building on what we've already done with the
<br /> downtown wireless canopy and Charles Black and the MLK Center—looking at neighborhood
<br /> centers where we can add the free WiFi that the City provides. We continue to fund diversity
<br /> efforts for the City workforce, with recruitment training and intern programs for diversity in
<br /> inclusion, as well as an employee recognition program that we think has already allowed us to do
<br /> a better job of making sure that we support our employees. We're excited to make sure that
<br /> we're able to carry that forward. And probably the biggest thing we're doing to be a great
<br /> employer for great employees is delivering paid parental leave for either parent. All full-time
<br /> employees should be covered. We believe that we've allocated enough resources to allow us to
<br /> do this. This is sort of the logical next step, in our perspective,to the ten-ten(10.10), which, at
<br /> the Council's urging, we wound up delivering in two (2) years rather than three (3). Now,we
<br /> want to make sure that we are leading by example, so that when we go around saying to
<br /> employers that South Bend ought to have paid parental leave that, first of all, we've literally put
<br /> our money where our mouth is, and we think it's not only going to make our workforce better
<br /> off,but also our community.
<br /> Mayor Buttigieg continued, We will, as you probably know, be integrating the way that
<br /> purchasing is done in the City's central services operation. We think that this streamlined
<br /> approach for purchasing will probably unlock savings we weren't able to see before, and
<br /> continue to build employee career paths in performance management. There's something of a
<br /> heart transplant going on in the City's IT backbone: the ERP System, which will come to replace
<br /> Naviline. If you talk to any City employees who ever worked with Naviline, you know that we're
<br /> overdue for a modernization of that system. We think it will, again, lead to a lot of benefits and a
<br /> lot of savings, but it's a major undertaking which is being contemplated in this budget. I also just
<br /> want to highlight some of the payoff, because these are all some of the internal measures within
<br /> the Administration. One (1) good example is our claims. So, if you look at this year so far,
<br /> $160,000 in claims have been paid by the City. This could be anything from when you have
<br /> some claim of damage done by the City in routine vehicles making their rounds all the way
<br /> through to maybe a high profile legal settlement. This is down from $331,000 last year and over
<br /> $1,000,000 less than it was just a few years ago. So, good work across the Administration, not
<br /> just by the Legal team, but, I would say,training a better HR, a better practices in
<br /> communication safety and risk across the Administration is yielding savings that have allowed us
<br /> to see the claims on the Liability Fund-226 in the budget—get fewer and fewer, which we're
<br /> very happy to see.
<br /> Mayor Buttigieg continued, I don't want to walk you through anything too technical,but, for the
<br /> record, I wanted to make sure that this is in there. Just stating, again,that there's been a thorough
<br /> process that we appreciate and that there are one-hundred and seven(107) actual funds, but we
<br /> really tried with the Priority-Based Budgeting exercise, to begin talking not line-by-line or fund-
<br /> by-fund but line-of-effort-by-line-of-effort and explain what we're doing and what our activities
<br /> are, so we're in a better position to report how much we spend, for example, on filling the pot
<br /> holes or plowing a block-worth of snow, rather than simply having a line item for personnel
<br /> somewhere, a line item for supplies somewhere else, and then trying to figure it out. So, this
<br /> bring us to this evening, October 9t', 2017, the public hearing on the budget. As of now, the
<br /> budget would be scheduled at the subsequent Council meeting, and, of course, we have until
<br /> 10
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