03-04-19 Personnel and Finance (Tax Caps/Impact)

Home Browse Search

CITY OF SOUTH BEND I OFFICE OF THE CLERK money coming from? What other types of things are we are not going to do in order to do this instead? Councilmember Davis stated,And in that discussion Councilmember Voorde had a few weeks ago regarding programs like Area Plan, there was a movement for shared responsibilities for both the City and the County to come together. If they could come together, it would help us in both of these circumstances. Committee Chair White stated, I want to make sure we can get through the presentation and give the public an opportunity to address not only the Council, but also the Administration. Mr. Parker stated, Health insurance costs, we are doing a lot around that. I have categorized that into three (3) buckets of things we are trying to do to influence health insurance costs. One (1) is structuring plan design. That's everything from who we are working with from a vender perspective to how we incentivize our employees to act in the way we want them to. Receive those wellness screenings and preventative screenings that are known to decrease disease which helps our health insurance costs and also our productivity of employees. We will continue to invest in the Wellness Clinic. And third(3rd),using data analysis and data that we have for health insurance to identify patients that could benefit from more intensive care management, connecting those patients with other options in the community. He continued, Another area in operational expenditures that we are working on is Centralized Services. So with Central Services, all three (3) of these areas are already in place and we will continue to redefine and hone them. There is a lot of opportunity for reduction in operational costs and efficiently gain with continuing to utilize Central Services. Encouraging people to use our Central Services, maintenance, garage, and printing. There is a cost savings if a particular department needs a print job done at our workshop versus another business. Central purchasing is an area that the Administration and Finance Department is working on very heavily this year. We are continuing to refine our centralized purchasing structure and identify unnecessary purchasing and use in the City. We aim to increase the City's buying power and identify areas where different departments are using the same vendor or a similar kind of vender to do a similar kind of service. If we can, we want to combine those and structure those under the same contract to get a better deal. With Innovation and Technology, we are continuing to centralize that to identify areas for software consolidation. There are many departments in the City that are doing similar kinds of things and maybe using different software systems right now.The biggest operational expenditures that we are working on this year is the continuation of culture change. We are really making sure that all department heads, supervisors, directors down to frontline employees,understand that that we are down in the revenue stream and that we are no longer keeping up with our expenditures and that we need to do something different. One(1)of the things that I like to talk about is the two percent(2%) exercise. This is not to say that we are going to require it,but every department head should know if they had to reduce two percent(2%)out of their budget,where it would come from. Which costs are least important to your mission?Which are most important to your mission? And another, if you had two percent (2%) more in your budget, what would you do with it? It's really continuing the culture change. There are other things that would be nice to have so we need to draw the connection between those two (2) and hold department heads accountable for exercising that prioritization. EXCELLENCE ACCOUNTABILITY INNOVATION I INCLUSION EMPOWERMENT 455 County-City Building 227 W.Jefferson Bvld South Bend,Indiana 46601 p 574.235.9221 f 574.235.91731 TTD 574.235.5567 www.southbendin.gov 15