02-11-19 Council Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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REGULAR MEETING February 11, 2019 place a little bit later in the spring at a more convenient time for more people to attend. With that being said, my goal is to give you an overview of the financial and overall position of the City. I want to thank our new City Controller Dan Parker and his team for helping us gather some of this information. I also reserve the right to phone a friend if a question comes along that I don't know the answer to.We will try to address that either right away here or will come back with information. Mayor Pete continued (referencing a presentation which is available in the City Clerk's Office), The overall headline is that numbers are trending in the right direction for our City. There is a caveat on these (referencing a slide of the presentation) numbers as they are sourced from the US Census Bureau. The authoritative numbers they give are every ten (10) years, so, some of these are based on estimates or community surveys that don't have quite the same fidelity as the decennial Census and, may actually be revised retroactively. Still, they tell a consistent story and we are very heartened by that. First (1St) of all, the population growth, even having a positive number is good news for a city that lost a quarter of its population in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. We see that we continue to have the very consistent pace in growth of estimates over the last few years. Newer in the last couple years are these indications of growth in income, too. We remain, candidly, overall what would be considered a low-income city. There are many residents in many neighborhoods that are substantially below the US median income. But, we see it now growing at a rate faster than what we see nationally. I also want to point to this poverty rate (referencing the slide in the presentation), again, preliminary estimated numbers but seeing those reductions, we are talking about a reduction over the last two (2) years from twenty-eight-point-three percent (28.3%) to twenty-five-point-four percent (25.4%). The math is pretty easy for a City of 100,000 people. Basically, any time something changes by a percent,that is 1,000 people. If these numbers hold, that means something around 3,000 people have been lifted out of poverty in the last few years.And asterisk on that,too,just because you're out of the federal definition of poverty doesn't mean you're living comfortably and we're trying to have a more expansive view of people who are asset limited income constrained in our community. Mayor Pete went on, A quick recap of some of the agenda items we will go through, we'll talk through in a glance of what we did in 2018, we'll give a financial overview, that will lead us to 2019 and I will also take a moment to talk about what we are doing to be ready for 2020 and the fiscal curb that comes with that. The main focus in 2018 was to make sure we were making the right kinds of investments for our City to meet goals laid out in the Priority Based Budgeting process. Members of this Council authorized and encouraged initiatives with a particular focus on benefitting neighborhoods including increased investments in our streets and sidewalks, the Light Up South Bend Program that has really benefitted us all by adding to street lights for a sense of safety in neighborhoods. Development projects throughout our City as well as an effort to make sure that we not only saw more growth but that our growth was more inclusive. The My SB Parks and Trails Program is now in full swing and we will talk more about that in a moment and we are also really trying to meet those goals of being an employer of choice including cleaning up our policies enabling our employees to donate their vacation to one another, time off in a way that encourages volunteerism, and upgrading the consistency and professionalism of performance evaluations for City employees. Mayor Pete continued, I want to pause just for a moment to talk about road funding because we greeted, with enthusiasm, the decision a couple of years ago made by the State Legislature in Indianapolis to invest in a gas tax adjustment that gave us more to work with on road funding. Good news is you see a real increase in the amount of road funding made available. Each year, largely because of the conservatism in our budget and also the desire to build up cash balances, we've seen revenue come in ahead of expenses. Last year we were able to pave twenty-nine (29) lane miles of road which is great because the norm had been closer to twenty(20). I know we are getting into that peak pot hole season with that freeze/thaw cycle and I wanted to draw attention to the number of potholes that we've dealt with last year. Of course, something we hear loud and clear from the Council every year, making sure we get as many curbs and sidewalks done as we can. That's the good news. Mayor Pete went on, Here (referencing a slide in the presentation) is the concern. The State has adjusted the formula for how these Motor Vehicle Highway Fund dollars are received. Just as we were jumping for joy as they were increasing, we are seeing in 2019 actually a step down. It has 12