South Bend Common Council Open Budget Questions

Council Members Present: Regina Willams-Preston, Jo Broden, Dr. Dave Varner, John Voorde, Oliver Davis, Tim Scott, Karen L. White - Chairperson

NOTE: NEXT PUBLIC BUDGET HEARING is on OCTOBER 4th at 5 pm, County-City Building 4th Floor
Budgets reviewed will be the Council's Budget, City Clerk, IT and 311

DIDN'T ATTEND BUT STILL HAVE A QUESTION? You can submit them to any Council Member or the City Clerk. Answers will be posted.
Not sure what is in the Budget? There is a link to all the Budget documents on the City of South Bend Home Page.

These are YOUR TAX $. Give your input on where you want them spent or not spent.

Note: These Questions/Answers are paraphrased / condensed and NOT exact quotes. These are notes, not quotes.

QUESTION: Why is there an auto allowance AND milage paid to Park Dept employees? 
ANSWER:  Aaron Perri says he will have to look at the numbers for the 7 employees in question.

QUESTION: Why is there an auto allowance and milage paid to Mayor's Office employees? Why isn't the milage kept track of?
ANSWER:  Controller says she will have to look at the numbers.

QUESTION:  How are the street lights financed and replaced?
ANSWER: From Eric Horvath - The light funding comes out of various projects. They work on two Districts a year with a 3 year rotation and replace 30-40 in each District per year. This is funded out of the 404 COIT Fund.
The City has 10 kinds of fixtures and some of them are becoming hard to find for the historic districts. 80% of the lights are owned and operated by AEP and 20% are City. To save money and energy, the City lights are changed over to LED.
There is a 211 Driver who is available on call all night to put up signs around accidents and outages. If Citizens see an outage, please call 311. If you have the number from the pole number tag, that is helpful.
For Citizens yards, there is a "Light Up South Bend" program that charges them $250 for the pole and the installation. It costs the City $800 for the labor and materials and this is funded with $200K annually.
NOTE: TIF can be used for lights and is often part of Development projects.

QUESTION: Why are there now "Smooth Streets"? What is the City doing to address the many crumbling streets?
NOTE: There are 2,200 "Lane Miles" in the City and the City only paves about 20 of them a year, which means it will take 72 years to get around to paving them all. Hopefully the release of tax dollars from the gas tax will mean more will be paved.
ANSWER: From Eric Horvath - There is an app that updates the City paving schedule and the information is online. They use $550K of material "milling off the top 2" and putting it down. They are crack sealing and paving just portions of streets since they can't afford to pave the whole street.
They are using a Community Crossings Grant to pave part of Ironwood. 
NOTE: TIF $ could be spent on roads, curbs and sidewalks but the City is spending TIF on developer projects. You are welcome to comment to your Council Members on what you want TIF $ spent on. Unfortunately, although you can attend Redevelopment Meetings, no public comments are allowed.

QUESTION: Why is the Park Department spending $600K on a Recreational Vehicle and how will it be financed?
ANSWER: From Aaron Perri - It will be used to go to various neighborhoods to educate people on health issues like eating healthy. The health part of it would be done by the County Health Department. It will be a 5 year Lease/Purchase so the City will own it at the end of 5 years.

QUESTION: How many Animal Control Officers are out in the neighborhoods every day?
ANSWER: From Jenn Gobel, SBACC Director, There are 4 Animal Control Officers. Mon-Fri there are 2 Officers on Duty every day. 1 is on call in the off hours. On Tues-Wed-Thurs there are 2 additional officers on from 8:30 - 5:30 pm.

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