The South Bend City Council met for their regular bi-monthly meeting on the night of Monday, February 22 and called the meeting to order after the pledge of allegiance was said.
The first item that the council dealt with was a "Pacific Sunset Preliminary Plat", which is a grouping of plots of land over near the Russel House in South Bend that is to be sold to and developed into apartments. The company will build a new apartment as the last one sold, building the apartments on trial basis to first see if they sell before they begin construction on the next. The council voted on and approved the Pacific Sunset Preliminary Plat and moved to the next item, which was a Fourth Quarter Report Summary.
The council moved to the next item, the 4th Quarter Report Summary, where Mayor Struck summarized the 4th Quarter Report.
For the Current Expense Fund, the City of South Bend started out with $117,237, and ended the year with $142,571, "For the last six or seven years they've run 1 or 2 hundred thousand dollars in the hole for the end of the year, so this is a win," said Struck.
The Streets Fund started with $26,827 and ended up with $52,773, which cannot all be credited to the fund because an external Arterial Streets fund was rolled into the Streets fund to be consolidated. The Docks Fund started with $19,523 and ended up with $32,368. The Water Fund started with $1,454,036 and ended with $1,347,724. "The reason for the decrease, if you remember in January last year we had a big flood and rainstorm. So we wound up spending $3,000 to repair damaged roads. We also spent money on altitude valves for $7,500. We ended up having to borrow water from Raymond for $87,000. We'll be doing that again this year. Hopefully this will be the final year that we will have to do that," said Struck.
The Sewer fund started the year with $64,956, but the City of South Bend had to borrow $125,000 right at the beginning of the year. Despite the setback the Sewer Fund ended up with $5,408. The Garbage Fund started with $37,889 and ended with $46,975. The Water Trust Fund started with $19,000 and ended with $23,769, and finally the Robert Bush Park Fund started with $6,972 and ended with $7,023. "The total for all funds at the beginning of the year, $1,816,532. At the End: $1,906,100, increase of $89,568. So I think it was a good year," said Mayor Struck.
The council moved on to the next item on the agenda, the First Street School Traffic Revision. "There was an incident at the school where a child was nearly hit," said Struck. Struck then began reading an anonymous letter addressed to the council:
"I'm writing you as a concerned parent of students attending the SB School District, I'm very concerned about the safety of First Street during school drop off and pick up hours. I understand that this is a city road and just happens to offer access to the school. Everyday I see a potential hazard on this road. The traffic patterns don't make sense for a bustling school district. I am hoping that you can take some time to take suggestions from the citizens and school district on what the city can do to help protect our children by making the flow of traffic flow more smoothly. I want to commend the city on a great police presence in the area and a history of supporting the school. Thank you for your time."
Struck was clear that no action was to be taken, and that the council would only discuss any revisions, or their options for finding better revisions at the current meeting. Struck then referenced a model that was drawn on the white board in the council room. Police Chief Eastham came up with the idea to make the street that runs in front of the South Bend School a one-way. "This would alleviate kids having to run across the road with oncoming traffic," said Struck, and the street would run from Jefferson Street towards Monroe Street according to the drawing. Eastham chimed in, "People do drive too fast, but the problem is the congestion caused form the two way traffic and letting people stop where they want and go and you have people backing out in a two way scenario, and that causes congestion." The council sites that the one-way change would alleviate the amount of congestion experienced when dropping your children off at school.
The next item on the agenda was council comment, where Councilor Bob Hall reported that in previous meetings he had talked about locks on collection boxes at the docks, that had been cut. He then presented his new locks that were supposed to be slightly more "heavy duty" than the last set of locks.
The meeting was adjourned, and the next South Bend City Council meeting will be held at 5:30pm on Monday, March 14.