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®CITY OF SOUTH BEND I OFFICE OF THE CLERK why we do the work we do. The five (5) impact drivers are preached all day long and we try to illustrate that in our Annual Report. Those areas are social equity, ecology, public safety, neighborhood economic impact and health and wellness. I would love to come back in the next four (4) to six (6) weeks to share with you our new five (5) year strategic plan. That will be formatted and ready to go. As the Annual Report provides a look back, that plan will provide a look forward. He continued, Right now, there are a couple things we are working on. There is a lot of flooding mitigation. Finally we are to the point where parks can be evaluated. People's homes were obviously the first thing,then the water started to recede then streets were evaluated, and now it's parks. There are still some areas we can't even get in to. There are twelve (12) park areas that remain closed. If you see a closure, it is closed for a reason as we did not forget to remove it. Even if there is no more water,there are two (2)primary safety risks that exist. One (1) is that there are large sink holes and fissures. The other thing is that the benches and playground equipment that got inundated with some of that water may not be clean. There was combined sewer overflow during the flooding and so those things have yet to be sanitized. We will be following the proper processes to get those open. The two main projects set to open this year is the Dog Park at Rum Village and the Charles Black Recreation Center. Both are on time and on budget. Committee Chair McBride opened the floor to questions from Council and Committee members. Committeemember John Mazurkiewicz asked, Is there any idea as to when the closed off sections will be cleaned? Mr. Perri replied, If it is just a matter of cleaning, we are on it right away. Water is literally just not out of all the areas right now. The trail system, however, is going to be a while. We need to get some engineers in there to survey the erosion that is happening. The damage isn't even all done yet as many think that just the water has to be gone. Committeemember Oliver Davis asked, What is your planning process, now, after getting these record floods? Mr. Perri replied, I will answer that in two (2) ways. One (1), the parks also filter out all that flooding water and actually stopped it from getting to a lot more homes than it did.We are thankful to our forefathers of the City that planned the parks where they did. Secondly,we are taking a look at all the plans. We want to beg the question of whether designing to the one hundred (100) year standard is good enough. It is probably not. We are fortunate that we haven't worked on some of these plans yet. But, that is what some of these parks are there for is to absorb the damage so that homes and businesses don't. We have to take that with a grain of salt. Nothing we can do can accommodate this level of flooding. Councilmember Jo M. Broden asked, What are your plans for clean-up? Mr. Perri replied, That has been tough too because we can't even access some of those trails yet. The areas we can get into, we are trying to do it with a Bobcat. We scoop and truck it out. We do have a River Clean-Up Day and I will circulate that date to Council. We will be in the river and around the river. The river lights actually survived the flood which is great. EXCELLENCE I ACCOUNTABILITY I INNOVATION I INCLUSION I EMPOWERMENT 455 County-City Building 1227 W.Jefferson Bvld I South Bend,Indiana 466011 p 574.235.9221 If574.235.91731TfD574.235.5567lwww.southbendin.gov