11-26-18 Council Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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REGULAR MEETING November 26, 2018 Drucker Institute's City of Life Long Learning Initiative is being piloted here in South Bend through the St.Joseph County Public Library. The Indiana Library Federation named our Director, Deb Futa, as librarian of the year in 2015. And our library, just this year, received the Indiana Library Federation's award for programming.We've made significant investments in the branches. It is time to make that investment in the downtown branch. As was mentioned earlier, we began providing Wi-Fi to select locations before partnering with the City to help with the City-wide Wi- Fi. As an organizational resident, we sit in a key downtown location but the Library changes. We need to recognize the opportunity to be a center for learning and exploring. Current and future patrons are looking for services and learning opportunities while still being able to find the traditional materials that we find in a public library. It is a gathering place to, together, explore new ideas,history,heritage, education and science.We talk a lot about infrastructure. Look at this addition to the Library as an experiential and intellectual infrastructure. People and organizations can come and plug into it just for the time that they need to plug into it. This is an opportunity to make a statement within the City that life-long learning matters. It aligns with the interests of the City, it enhances a key anchor point for downtown and it positions our Library to meet the needs of the current, next and future generations. This is an incredibly unique opportunity in collaboration with the St. Joseph County Community Foundation and the City of South Bend. Know that this project and this Library has full and unwavering support and commitment from the Library Board and we would like to point out that this project requests no increase in taxes. Thank you very much. Jeff Rea, 101 North Michigan Street, Suite 300, South Bend, IN, stated, I am the President/CEO of the South Bend Regional Chamber of Commerce. Thank you for the opportunity to be here this evening. We look at this in a couple of different ways. One (1) on the talent and attraction side, when Indiana studied communities all across the country and realized we were growing slower than many of the other communities, we were looking for that secret recipe in terms of how to bring talent here and grow our community. Quality of place improvements was really that significant driver that we saw in so many of those communities that was really the impetus of programs like Regional Cities. We saw so many programs aimed at growing quality of place improvements to really attract talent. I can't think of a better project than the one (1) you have before you tonight in terms of the quality of place improvement that will ultimately help bring people here to our community and enhance other investments that are already being made in the downtown. The talent attraction piece is really critical. The second(2nd)piece that I think is really critical is the workforce piece that Deb mentioned. There is nothing more important to the employers that I represent that employ some 60,000 people in this area right now than workforce. The Library plays an important role in helping get those people ready for opportunities here in the local workforce. We applaud that and think that the Community Education Center gives an even further opportunity to enhance their marketability to our employers and we are excited about that. Finally, and James had mentioned it, but the economic impact. First (ls`) in our mind is the initial economic impact of a construction project. When we plug a $38 million project in our economic model,it obviously generates a significant amount of impact to the community.James shared those numbers with you. We also plugged in the operation afterwards so we made the assumption of eight (8) employees being added as part of this project. All said and done, we think this will be a significant improvement that will see up to $80 million of economic impact based on what our model says with those assumptions. Talent attraction, workforce development and economic impact makes this project a win-win for our community and I encourage your support this evening. Marian Fulce, 21579 Holly Grave Court, South Bend, IN, stated, I stand before you representing the African American Community Foundation, of which I am the Chair. I am personally asking for your support of this endeavor to approve the funding for our library. I personally consider the library a hub in our community where all walks of life can gather. It's interesting to see the slide where it showed where the supporters of the library come from. It was all across the City and it is also all across the County, too, because I am a county resident. Personally, I am in the library a couple three (3) times a month for both meetings as well as to check out books. I am online checking out books. So I still use the library. I was introduced to the library as a young child when I moved to South Bend and have continued my use of the Library. I think it is very important for our children to have ample space. We all know that our Library is kind of crowded. You know, you go there any given time not only throughout the week but on the weekend, and it is very hard 9