08-01-18 Personnel and Finance (Budget Overview)

Home Browse Search

®CITY OF SOUTH BEND I OFFICE OF THE CLERK sustain a 1000 year rain fall event without having any problems, but we do know there are things that we can do, and that we are doing right now, to enhance drainage around our neighborhoods and streets. We also plan to propose further funds for housing repair as we go into 2019 as you know how much of a difference that makes around our neighborhoods. He went on, In terms of the organizational chart, there is less change than you are probably used to seeing in recent years but there is one (1) that is significant. That is about planning. We think the City would best be served with a City Plan Commission as opposed to the traditional model with the Area Plan Commission. We are really trying to bring our land-related planning and development-related functions under one (1) roof. You have the Building Department, which is where that's traditionally housed, and the Department of Community Investment, which is where we envision these functions coming from in the future. You will see more details about this. We believe this is well-worth the cost as it allows us to have a measure of strategic control as a City Administration. Another thing you will see is GIS. The County and the City have come to terms on an agreement that we bring GIS Personnel into the City. The intention for this is to be fiscally neutral, the County is to cover the cost of these positions and this is proved to be especially important for things like making sure PSAP is able to operate correctly. GIS stands for Graphical Information Systems and that is where a lot of our information about addresses and properties lives. Having it fragmented across the City and County hasn't made a lot of sense for us. We think the community will be better served bringing it in house but, again, we are asking the County to compensate us for taking that work off of the County. He continued, We are in the final stages of personnel suggestions. There are few things we are trying to stay on top of and that includes project management overall as we take on new efforts. We are happily attracting more outside philanthropic funding to pay for things we care about in the City. We are engaging the community to make sure they are empowered by everything we do. We also want to be sure we are planning zoning processes that serve the City well. Engineering and inspection is another area of interest. When we have these large investments like the $40 million in our parks and public spaces,we realized that sometimes having the engineering work in house is a savings compared to just allowing that line-item in the budget to always go to the outside private sector. Sometimes it makes sense to have professional outside work but this is a cost- efficiency approach. We talked about staff for the Para-medicine Program and GIS already. We have some developments at the Police Department. For example, analyzing social media has actually become a really important part of how the Police Department does their job. We want to make sure we are adequately staffed for that. We are looking at models for doing concrete paving in-house. Again, it is that question of inside or outside and we are always asking that question. We want to make sure we are on top of maintaining and sustaining all of the capital investment we are making in parks as well as supporting the new and existing programs. He went on, So if we try to break this into the categories that Priority Based Budgeting created, we tried to map those (referencing the presentation which is available in the City Clerk's Office) onto what the Council has asked as well. Again, this is more of a preview and the Department Heads will share this in considerably greater detail but, for example, when we hear the Council call for us to fund public safety, traffic patrol, ShotSpotter, the health and lead issues and the growth of Light Up South Bend, you see that among other things like the way the Police Department funds our sworn officers as well as the pursuit of grant funding. Same on the Fire Department side where safety really depends on our ability to adequately fund our Department. We hope to be fusing Federal dollars with Local dollars in programing through AmeriCorps. The EXCELLENCE I ACCOUNTABILITY I INNOVATION I INCLUSION I EMPOWERMENT 455 County-City Building I227W.Jefferson BvldI South Bend,Indiana 466011p574.235.9221 f574.235.9173ITM574.235.55671www.southbendin.gov 7