Buttigieg's early tenure had been marred by a scandal involving South Bend Police Department Chief Darryl Boykins illegally recording officers.

However, he thereafter offered help in finding the crisis pregnancy center an alternate location to operate, with this latter action being criticized by some abortion rights organizations as inconsistent with Buttigieg's pro choice positions.

[8][9] Buttigieg was involved in the creation of a nightly laser-light display along downtown South Bend's St. Joseph River trail as public art.

[18][19][20][21] In late September, Buttigieg announced that the program had reached its goal three months before its scheduled end date in November 2015, declaring that more than 1,000 homes had either been demolished or refurbished.

When Buttigieg denied this request, Boykins sued South Bend for racial discrimination,[35] making the argument that such a taping policy had been present under previous white police chiefs.

[39] In April 2019, St. Joseph Superior Court Judge Steven Hostetler ruled that the effort by the Common Council to obtain the tapes had legal merit warranting a trial.

[2][53][56] In 2015, during the controversy over Indiana Senate Bill 101 (titled the "Religious Freedom Restoration Act")—which was widely criticized for allowing discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people—Buttigieg emerged as a leading opponent of the legislation.

Amid his reelection campaign, in a June 2015 piece published in the South Bend Tribune, he came out as gay to express his solidarity with the LGBTQ community.

[66] In 2017, Buttigieg signed onto Climate Mayors' statement in response to President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement.

[70] In April 2019, the South Bend Common Council approved Buttigieg's request to enable his administration to develop a city climate plan.

[73] In a new phase of the Vacant and Abandoned Properties Initiative, South Bend partnered with the Notre Dame Clinical Law Center to provide free legal assistance to qualifying applicants wishing to acquire vacant lots and, with local nonprofits, to repair or construct homes and provide low-income home ownership assistance using South Bend HUD (Housing and Urban Development) funds.

[80] While many aspects of South Bend had improved by 2016, a Princeton University study found that the rate of evictions in the city had worsened, more than doubling since Buttigieg took office.

[79] Buttigieg supported a proposed high-rise development in South Bend's East Bank neighborhood[81][82] that would greatly exceed the existing height ordinances.

[90][92] In November 2017, at the Buttigieg administration's recommendation, the South Bend Common Council approved a property tax abatement for a planned $9 million five-story office building.

[97] In September 2018, Buttigieg voiced concern about a number of issues regarding the Housing Authority of South Bend, calling for reforms to be made.

[98] The following month, he presented its board with a letter outlining several problems, and declaring that the Housing Authority of South Bend had risen to the "top tier of priorities for my administration, and will receive sustained attention from my office for the balance of my time as mayor.

The first of these is the South Bend Green Corps, which makes funds available to lower-income homeowners for such uses as energy-saving measures and basic weatherization, the installation of smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, lead tests, and energy bill review.

[79] However, Buttigieg also, in 2019, sought for the city to be released from an agreement with the EPA brokered under his mayoral predecessor Steve Luecke, in which South Bend had agreed to make hundreds of millions dollars in further improvements to its sewer system by 2031.

This ordinance would, among other things, give the city controller the power to order shared mobility vendors, similar to Lime, to designate locations where devices could be stored when not being used.

[150] In late September 2017, in his budget proposal for the 2020 fiscal year, Buttigieg sought Common Council approval to create the new position of Director of Public Safety, which would have oversight over the city's fire and police chiefs.

[156] In September 2018, South Bend sent roughly 20 members of its fire department's Swift Water Rescue Group to Raleigh, North Carolina, to assist in anticipation of Hurricane Florence.

[157][158] In June 2019, after Eric Logan, an African American man, was shot and killed by a white South Bend police officer, Buttigieg was drawn from his presidential campaign to focus on the emerging public reaction.

[159] Soon after Logan's death, Buttigieg presided over a town hall attended by disaffected activists from the African-American community as well as relatives of the deceased man.

[163][164] In November 2019, Buttigieg secured $180,000 to commission a review of South Bend's police department policies and practices to be conducted by Chicago-based consulting firm 21CP Solutions.

A December 2016 executive order signed by Buttigieg required police, schools and other government services recognize the cards as a valid form of identification.

[176] The Common Council approved a casino deal in April 2016,[176] and the Pokagon Band received federal clearance to put the land into a required trust in November 2016.

"[183] In a press conference he held to explain his veto, he declared, "Issues on the morality or the legality of abortion are dramatically beyond my pay grade as mayor.

[186] In September, it was announced that the zoo renovation had obtained additional funding from the Indiana Economic Development Corporation's Regional Cities Initiative.

[190][191] Mueller was a high-school classmate of Buttigieg's and his mayoral chief of staff, and later executive director of the South Bend Department of Community Investment.

[204] Additionally, Barack Obama was cited as mentioning him as one of the Democratic Party's talents in a November 2016 profile on the outgoing president conducted by The New Yorker.