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REGULAR MEETING SEPTEMBER 23, 2013 <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />Mayor Buttigieg asked Councilmember Davis to site which data set that comes from. He stated <br />that’s a little different than the one he has seen. <br />Councilmember Henry Davis stated that it comes from Workforce Development Offices, and as <br />a matter of fact he got it from a gentleman who works there but cannot recall his name, however, <br />he got that sent to him. He stated that he will send it to him. <br />Mayor Buttigieg asked if it was for a metropolitan statistical area within city limits. <br />Councilmember Henry Davis stated that he can send the e-mail. <br />Councilmember Henry Davis stated however, the numbers are suggesting that we are not <br />employing as many people as we possibly can and the problem that he is having right now is <br />because we are not employing people and not pulling in employment opportunities at a high <br />level, little to none actually. What is going on is that when we do assessed values, then taxes, <br />and then when we do enforcement of the vacant and abandoned housing initiatives, etc., no one <br />will have the ability to pay out on any fines and as a result they will miss out on their opportunity <br />for necessary housing. If they lose their housing, what happens is that someone has to pick up <br />that housing or not that house becomes vacant and abandoned and subsequently worst case <br />scenario it is demolished. So we are back at square one again as to how we deduct areas outside <br />TIF Districts. So that has been an issue that we all have been faced with for years now, we have <br />not been able to deduct outside of TIF area and that’s where we see the heaviest of vacant and <br />abandoned a lot of different things that you are working on to rid out city of, but again, it goes <br />back to our employment base. If our employment numbers are suggesting that we are higher <br />than the State average and the national average, clearly we need to have an aggressive and an <br />intentional attempt in order to change the way our employment market looks. We cannot deny <br />that and cannot grow as a city. It doesn’t matter how many streets we change, none of those <br />things matter, we have to develop an identity for this city and we have to make sure that folks are <br />working in this city, so this city can begin to develop. And sure two-way streets make sense <br />because now we can have more restaurants; you can more of those services that people spend <br />their disposable income on. However, if we can’t get folks to come in here and have the ability <br />to pay a mortgage or even rent, we are hurting ourselves in the grand scheme of things, so what I <br />am looking for and asking for is your leadership on how do we attract employers here from a <br />diversified workforce not just high tech. But we need to be able to attract employers for people <br />who may just want to be janitors for the rest of their lives or folks who want to be lawyers for <br />their rest of their lives, it needs to be diversified, trades folks, so that’s my question. <br />Mayor Buttigieg stated that is a great question, because number one remains job creation. <br />Hopefully it will be clear and you may see a little bit more of this in the upcoming budget <br />presentation that the decisions were making throughout the budget, but especially in the budget <br />for economic development and downtown development are prioritized in order to try and create <br />more jobs. There is of course a chicken and an egg quality to this, a community that has more <br />jobs will have less crime, better measurable outcomes and so forth. But we also know that if you <br />want to cultivate jobs and attract investors you have to achieve those things. So, we are trying to <br />get to a virtuous cycle and that’s one of the reasons why, one of the main measures of success <br />that we hold for example ourselves accountable to on the Economic Development front is the <br />number of jobs created. <br />Councilmember Scott stated that one thing that he is working on with some neighborhood groups <br />is street lights. Just going through the neighborhoods, actually assessing where lights are out, <br />you might have seen it on the news, some of the neighborhoods groups doing this. So I will talk <br />to you about that off-line. I think it is low hanging fruit that we can get some street lights either <br />fixed or in place to help some crime issues. <br />7 <br /> <br /> <br />