10-28-13 Common Council Meeting Minutes

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REGULAR MEETING OCTOBERT 28, 2013 of life in the Near Northwest Neighborhood, and is appropriate and in the best interest of South Bend and its citizens. NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE COMMON COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF SOUTH BEND, INDIANA AS FOLLOWS: SECTION I: That the Near Northwest Neighborhood Quality of Life Plan, a true and complete copy of which is attached hereto and incorporated herein shall be and hereby is approved. SECTION II: That any funding or staff support of specific terms or programs within the Near Northwest Neighborhood Quality of Life Plan will require separate review and budget appropriation consistent with South Bend’s overall needs and funding availability. SECTION III: That this Resolution shall be in full force and effect from and after its passage by the Common Council and approval by the Mayor. s/Derek D. Dieter Member of the Common Council Councilmember Gavin Ferlic, Chairperson of the Community Investment Committee, reported that this committee held a Public Hearing on this bill this afternoon and voted to send it to the full Council with a favorable recommendation. th Pam Meyer, Director of Neighborhood Engagement, Community Investment Department, 14 Floor County-City Building, 227 W. Jefferson Blvd., South Bend, Indiana: On behalf of the Department and Partnership with the Near Northwest Neighborhood, our department is pleased to recommend the passage of this Resolution and commend the NNN for doing this quality of life planning process. We are pleased to be a participant in as much as we could be and I am only one of a couple of more presenters. I will turn this over to Karen Ainsley, who is the Executive Director of the Near Northwest to share more details with you. Councilmember Scott: I would like to make a disclaimer I am connected to the Near Northwest Neighborhood Association, Karen Ainsley is my wife. There is no monetary value in this Resolution, therefore, by Counsel I can vote on it. Karen Ainsley, Executive Director, Near Northwest Neighborhood, 1007 Portage Avenue, South Bend, Indiana: We are very excited to be before you tonight. This process that we went through it over a year’s work of work with neighborhood residents. You will hear a little bit more from Rose with IACED as she kind of takes the lead and talks to you. We were very fortunate that the Indiana Association for Community and Economic Development is the one who actually gathered the information that we got from neighbors and put it in to this beautiful file that we have before you. We were really lucky to have neighbors go out and get trained and talked to over 130 different residents, go out and interview them, come up with concerns and things that were on their mind and from that we created a vision as well as we created some action planning strategies that Rose will talk to you more about. So we are just happy to be here to share this with you and ask for your approval and adoption of the plan. Rose Skobel, Director of Capacity Building, Indiana Association of Community Economic Development, 202 E. Market Street, Indianapolis: I am here tonight to talk about the exciting work that the Near Northwest Neighborhood has been engaged in over the past year. This work has been part of a larger body of work known as comprehensive community development in which informal leadership and formal leadership the institutional, governmental and private business stakeholders in the neighborhood come together to find an achievable vision together that they can share and move the neighborhood forward. In this work the human and community development work typically housing development, social services agencies; schools and park & recreation; families; transportation; all of these things come together with a quick little economic development framework of creating jobs and wealth in the community. Everything comes together around a shared community vision and then organizes and decides the process that is used for developing a quality of life plan. This process has been done in roughly a dozen 26