08-27-18 Council Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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REGULAR MEETING August 27, 2018 Council Members. South Bend has been fortunate to gather more and more visitors and a reputation that we hope will continue to allow us to gain resources from partners who are interested in our story. Of course there is a highly visible example of that underway right now with the presence of Habitat for Humanity with Mishawaka and South Bend participating in the Carter Work Project. I know a number of people in this building have been a part of that. That has drawn hundreds of volunteers from across the community. Mayor Buttigieg continued, At various points over the course of the last few months, we've mentioned in passing one (1) or another example of philanthropic support coming to the City. So much so that I realize there was some measure of confusion about what exactly each project is, which projects they are related to, who it was coming from and what we were doing with it. We wanted to take this opportunity to just briefly walk the Council through about a half dozen examples of this philanthropic support. I will confess that there is somebody else in the Administration with more expertise than I have on every one (1) of these individual projects but I've been very pleased to be involved with them. I want to give you just a quick overview of some of the support coming to our community from outside sources. Some of these do, in some way, come before the Council. For example, in a couple cases you will see the municipal match as something that is part of the budget request to get the full extent of the opportunity. Mayor Buttigieg went on, The first (1St) I would like to highlight is the Community Wins Grant. That comes by way of the US Conference of Mayors. I had the pleasure of collecting one (1) of those big cardboard checks at the US Conference of Mayors National Meeting in Boston. It was not a grant directly to the City government, it was actually a grant that was directed to the NNN with our support for the application. The goal here is to help create a training certification support network for minority and women-owned businesses trying to do business in the community including bidding on and competing for City work. We are now in the process of deploying that $50,000 grant to begin getting that curriculum together to help build up the capacity of those small businesses. We want to invite them to participate in that program. As this develops you will see more information through the NNN about how that is taking shape and how the businesses will be recruited. Again the goal is over time giving them the capacity to compete for City business. Mayor Buttigieg continued, The Cities of Service is a program that is connected to Bloomberg Philanthropies which is one (1) of the organizations that is gaining national notoriety in terms of resources it has to help cities. I'm pleased South Bend has been of interest to many different parts of the Bloomberg Organization. This particular part is a program called Love Your Block and they have committed a $25,000 grant as well as the funding for two (2) AmeriCorps Vista Volunteers for the purpose of helping with small-scale home repairs. This is something that has long been a concern in the community especially in low income neighborhoods. That is one (1) reason why Rebuilding Together, formally known as Christmas in April, is a priority for our Administration. So we are pleased to have some extra dollars and resources from the outside to put toward this work. This does entail the opportunity for a City match that would help us,we think,add resources to this program. If approved, that would bring the total commitment here to $75,000. We have been working with Lincolnway Area Neighborhood Association as well as LaSalle Park,Kennedy Park and the Far Northwest Side to build on this because we think this dovetails very nicely with the work that those organizations have already been doing. We envision bringing on the Vista Volunteers to help work and determine the areas and residents of greatest need. For further information on both this and the Community Wins Program, Alkeyna Aldridge in the Department of Community Investment has the lead and that will continue to develop. Mayor Buttigieg went on, This one (1) (referencing a slide in the presentation) is bigger in scale but perhaps not visibility. I'm not sure how much awareness there is about this but we mentioned it and I want to be sure the Council is fully aware that through Serve Indiana, South Bend has attracted a sizable six (6) figure sub-grant that will allow us, given the City's commitment if approved in the budget,to add as many as ten(10) full-time AmeriCorps volunteers. This has a lot to do with weatherization. We know low-income residents often face an outsized proportion of their income going to utility bills. Weatherization work is seemingly small things like thermostats or insulation. It can make a big difference on their bills. Of course it also helps benefit our sustainability goals as a community in terms of our overall carbon footprint. We will office this program out of the O'Brien Center and we look forward to bringing on a Program Director and 2