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