My WebLink
|
Help
|
About
|
Sign Out
Home
Browse
Search
08-26-13 Common Council Meeting Minutes
sbend
>
Public
>
Common Council
>
Minutes
>
Common Council Meeting Minutes
>
2013
>
08-26-13 Common Council Meeting Minutes
Metadata
Thumbnails
Annotations
Entry Properties
Last modified
9/19/2013 1:39:52 PM
Creation date
9/19/2013 1:39:47 PM
Metadata
Fields
Template:
City Council - City Clerk
There are no annotations on this page.
Document management portal powered by Laserfiche WebLink 9 © 1998-2015
Laserfiche.
All rights reserved.
/
19
PDF
Print
Pages to print
Enter page numbers and/or page ranges separated by commas. For example, 1,3,5-12.
After downloading, print the document using a PDF reader (e.g. Adobe Reader).
Show annotations
View images
View plain text
REGULAR MEETING AUGUST 26, 2013 <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />other subjects in them such as the zoo and parks and the AECOM issue. Budget transfers are <br />simply a mid-year correction in the way the numbers appear properly on the page. We are not <br />asking for any more money, all we are trying to do is make sure that the actually expenditures <br />that we have placed in the proper accounts actually have the proper budget dollars show up with <br />them. There are two advantages to this, first of all, in 2013; this allows us to track properly what <br />we actually have in our accounts. When you folks here the question: “Is it in the budget” I get <br />the sense that you are thinking in a macro term: “does South Bend have this in its budget”? If <br />someone asks me as a fiscal officer if it’s in the budget, they are asking me about a 14 digit <br />number and asking me about that specific account and they want to know does that account have <br />money it to pay for the pencil that I need to buy. Those are the adjustments we are trying to <br />cover right now, that’s pretty much it. Yes, some of the numbers are big; some of the <br />adjustments have to be made that are pretty large. I would for one take full responsibility for the <br />capital assets adjustments. I’m the one that did the financial analysis to show that our assets <br />calculations were too low. So we are doing a bunch of adjustments to kick the budget out of <br />capital and put it into the small equipment where it belongs. It doesn’t cost anybody a dime; it’s <br />just a correction to make it look pretty. Now the other advantage, I mentioned in 2013, the <br />advantage in 2014 is we will now have correct numbers to look on as we continue to develop the <br />budget for 2014 and then when we are in 2014 looking back we can correctly see what did we do <br />and how do our budgets compare to that. So again, it’s simply a correction to make everything <br />balance out nicely; it doesn’t cost us a dime. <br /> <br />The following individual spoke in opposition to this bill: <br /> <br />Jesse Davis, P. O. Box 10205 South Bend, Indiana, I would like to say I’m one who is against <br />taking money and throwing it somewhere and hoping that it lands in the right place, so I want to <br />applaud the Councilmember’s who said hey we want more transparency. I use that word <br />frequently and I have to agree that there is very little transparency on the dollars that move from <br />one account to another. When you are talking about taking money from Century Center fund <br />and moving it somewhere else, the Century Center is losing money every year, so someone is <br />going to be looking at Century Center needs a million dollars and they are taking a quarter of <br />million dollars and moving it from here to here. So I think tracking this money is very <br />important, transparency is very important. We don’t see much of that within the city and we <br />don’t get to see all the numbers that you get to see. So we have to depend on what we can dig up <br />on the internet and maybe happen to get from our Councilmember’s or from this new data site. <br />That is a good site to look up. <br /> <br />Councilmember Schey stated that in my old job I worked for IBM and there was this pattern that <br />we saw when companies at the eleventh hour in December when companies had surpluses in <br />their budget, our phones would be ringing off the hook, because departments wanted to spend <br />their money “use it or lose it” was the old saying and I know in my job in sales at IBM I would <br />be working late on New Year’s Eve to make sure that I inked all the deals before the year was <br />over so that all of those dollars that department heads wanted to spend before they lost it to the <br />new year’s budget that we were able to be the beneficiary of that. So now I am on the other side <br />of things and I want to be very responsible and mindful of that type of behavior, I’m not saying <br />that it does or doesn’t happen, from my position on the Council and my position of oversight and <br />good fiscal stewardship, I want to make sure that we are being very responsible with how we <br />budget. Certainly in December if we see another budget transfer bill that comes before us with <br />all of these, I don’t know what department heads might or might not buy in December, trust me <br />in December, I will be looking at that budget transfer bill very closely. But my concern here is <br />that we see substantial amounts of money moving from one account to another account and that <br />could be an indication of departments that might be potentially over budgeting which is <br />something we are going through in preparing the 2014 budget. Then conveniently having these <br />budget surpluses in their accounts mid-year to transfer and move around to cover expenses that <br />were either unforeseen or just maybe something that a particular individual wanted to do and <br />then conveniently found money in an account. My hesitancy in supporting this bill is I do not <br />like how that creates a lack of transparency in our spending patterns. I hope that makes sense <br />and tried to provide some analogies that there in lye’s my concern, not with 34-13 or 35-13 those <br />bills have been very well explained and I will be supporting those bills when they come before <br />us in a couple of minutes. I have some real concerns with 33-13 and you know the budget <br />surpluses and how these funds are moved from one account to another. So that’s my comment. <br />10 <br /> <br /> <br />
The URL can be used to link to this page
Your browser does not support the video tag.