02-12-18 Council Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

REGULAR MEETING February 12, 2018 Mayor Buttigieg went on,Again,in dollar term,the biggest new thing going on is the My SB Parks & Trails initiative. The bulk of that is going to go into the ground in the next three (3) years. In this coming construction season you will see a lot of that happening. The flagship projects like the Charles Black Center should be completed by the end of the summer and, as you can see (referencing the presentation), there is a concentration on the areas around the river. But really everywhere in the east, south, and certainly west and northwest sides of the City are seeing a number of improvements that are either underway or are coming up. I would like to remind us all that this was really a creative funding stack put together by the Venues, Parks & Arts team that relied on outside funds including a Regional Cities Grant, contribution from the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians, support from Notre Dame, fundraising and the Parks Bond that Council authorized. Mayor Buttigieg continued,I lead with the economic good news. I want to mention that,with help from our Diversity and Inclusion team, we have been able to really zero (0) in on the driver of inequity in our City. In particular, we pay attention to this Liquid Asset Poverty rate (as shown in the presentation). There is a lot of attention on income equality or inequality, but one (1) of the things we've learned is that even where an income gap starts to close, an asset gap or the net worth and savings of a household is where some of the biggest gaps exist. Liquid Asset Poverty is a measure that is defined as, basically, not being able to cover three (3) months of expenses. If you had a sudden shock of job loss or another emergency, would you be able to, with the savings that you have,cover three(3)months of those expenses. We found that two-thirds of African-American households are at that level of Liquid Asset Poverty. Every community faces this at a pretty high level. Well, what are we doing about it? We have established a new senior-level position in the Department of Community Investment for Empowerment and Engagement and that is Alkeyna Aldridge. She is no stranger to this chamber and is off to a great start having convened a gathering with the Chicago Federal Reserve at the NNN where we helped dig into some of their research on the issue and apply it to our area. We are working on initiatives supporting affordable homeownership through our local partners. We are looking at ways to encourage and support entrepreneurship in disadvantaged communities. We are also supporting financial empowerment by engaging financial institutions to be part of the solution. Mayor Buttigieg went on, Shifting now to follow up on a piece of good news that came from the State, we have been advocating for more State funding to go into roads. Last year, we were able to pave about thirty-one (3 1) travel miles or lane miles in the City. It really has been closer to twenty (20) in the past so we are enthused by what we've been able to do. What you are seeing here(referencing the presentation)also reflects the bit of good luck that I'm afraid has just run out which is why we budget on the assumption that we will have a pretty harsh winter. The last couple of years that was not true which meant there was real savings in salt during the winter time as well as pothole patching after winter. It's reasonable to expect that it will not hold this year so we will be evening back out there and that will hit the bottom line. But, we are hoping we will have resources to do more than what we've been able to do in the past with paving.There is an additional $100,000 in paving material for the City crews and another$600,000 for outsourced paving in the 2018. That means forty percent(40%)more or eight(8)more lane miles than our baseline. We've also got some new and compelling resources for condition analysis. There is even a device with an iPhone mounted to the dashboard of the vehicle that can give more objective ratings to the conditions of roads where the cracks are developing. This is contrary to the traditional method of having somebody go out with a clipboard and eyeballing it.We are also looking at a major increase in road drainage funding to cover some issues we've discovered, so that will be up from $50,000 last year to $450,000 this year. Mayor Buttigieg continued,The Light Up South Bend initiative,led by Councilmembers,has now touched just about every quadrant in the City. There was a bit of a slowdown because of AEP's inability to do some of the installations. We understand that has to do with some resources being pulled for hurricane recovery and relief,but we will be partnering with them to be sure that backlog is cleared as much as possible. Our crews are also increasingly replacing City lights with LED lamps. That is a big savings in terms of the power it uses and you can expect to see more of those in the coming year. For TIF expenditures I will give an overview of the overall levels that have been going in. The Riverwest TIF District continues to be our largest for TIF resources, Rivereast saw$10 million and the Southside saw about$4.5 million. I want to emphasize that more than half 5