10-22-18 Community Relations - Laserfiche WebLink

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U 5, w ,. PEACE `y, 1865 OFFICE OF THE CITY CLERK KAREEMAH FOWLER, CITY CLERK COMMUNITY RELATIONS OCTOBER 22, 2018 4:25 P.M. Committee Members Present: Regina Williams-Preston, Sharon L. McBride, Jake Teshka, Karen White Committee Members Absent: None Other Council Present: John Voorde, Jo M. Broden, Oliver Davis, Gavin Ferlic, Tim Scott Other Council Absent: None Others Present: Bianca Tirado, Graham Sparks, Bob Palmer Presenters: Regina Williams-Preston Agenda: Committee Update(15 minutes) Committee Chair Regina Williams-Preston called to order the Community Relations Committee meeting at 4:25 p.m. She introduced members of the Committee and proceeded with the meeting. Committee Update (15 minutes) Committee Chair Williams-Preston stated, Today is a quick overview of the meeting we had a couple of weeks ago. Many Council Members were not able to make that date so we thought we would bring it here just to give the information. This really came out of, if you remember during the budget hearings, when Code Enforcement was giving their presentation. They proposed a position to have someone specifically to look at collections and, most specifically, the process of special assessments. They are looking to stream-line that process and I had a lot of concerns about that. Councilmember White, in her wisdom, suggested we have a meeting offline to shake out some of those issues and then bring that back to a Committee meeting,and then the whole Council. That is kind of where we are now and that this process is about. She continued, So we had the meeting on Tuesday October 9th. We had some speakers including Judy Fox, Tracy Skibins, and Tyria Bailey who is a business owner in the second (2w') District. She owns the restaurant The Kick Back. I'm just going to do an overview just to get this information out here. This is part of a process. I think there are going to be some things we are going to look at. We will continue to investigate this over the course of however long. So,we kind of started out with an overview of why we were here and talked about the racial wealth divide report that was given to us. That report is evidence of what we suspected and that is that, most specifically African Americans, but, people of color in South Bend are disproportionately not wealthy in the community. So there is a racial wealth divide and it basically shows that people of color hold significantly less liquid assets. So it was good to have that report for empirical INTEGRITY' SERVICE' ACCESSIBILITY JENNIFER M.COFFMAN BIANCA L.TnuDO JOSEPH R.MOLNAR CHIEF DEPUTY/DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS DEPUTY/DIRECTOR OF POLICY ORDINANCE VIOLATION CLERK EXCELLENCE I ACCOUNTABILITY I INNOVATION I INCLUSION I EMPOWERMENT 455 County-City Building 1227 W.Jefferson Blvd.I South Bend,Indiana 46601 I p 574.235.9221 I f 574.235.9173 I www.southbendin.gov