By Kelli Stopczynski (kstopczynski@wsbt.com) WSBT-TV WSBT-TV

6:31 p.m. EST, February 4, 2013

SOUTH BEND – There's a good chance you budget the way you spend your money each week or month.  

Some goes toward groceries and gas, while some makes the house payment or covers daycare costs, but you don't have a lot of control over how and where your tax dollars are spent.  

Our Fact Finder team checked on how much it's costing you to have a police substation in downtown South Bend.  

Is it a substation splurge or is it making downtown safer? 

"We've always been an easy mark," said City-Wide Liquors Beer Manager Daniel Radkey.  

City-Wide has seen its share of crime in the 12 years at its Jefferson Street location.  Thieves would bust out the windows and try to steal alcohol in the middle of the night. 

"For a while there, it almost seemed like one a year," Radkey said.

But lately, he's noticing a trend in the opposite direction.

"I think it's really kind of curtailed a lot of that theft and crime," he added.

Just around the corner, Chicory Cafe owner Philip Schreiber says he plans to start staying open later. 

"I think five years ago, downtown was a dying area," he said. "I think with the new things DTSB is doing and the different things South Bend is doing is really helping the downtown grow."

Schreiber and his wife bought the New Orleans-themed cafe last fall partly because of that change.