10-08-18 Council Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

REGULAR MEETING October 8, 2018 Councilmember Karen White stated, Are there any areas we need to have further discussion on? Councilmember Oliver Davis stated,Yes,thank you Ms. White. I sent out a letter on Friday to Ms. Hockenhull which I will read for the record. It says, `Greetings, Ms. Hockenhull. Please kindly note that as was publicly discussed during the last South Bend Common Council Z&A Committee meeting on September 24th, 2018, there was an earnest concern about moving forward with the approval of a budget that includes terms to get the City of South Bend Zoning Board into 2019 tentatively scheduled to commence during the summer of 2019. Our last South Bend Common Council Committee highlighted some of the many issues which need to be worked out prior to the funding of the City of South Bend Zoning Board taking place including the creation and the review of the City of South Bend's ordinance. As in many other previous City matters, when all of the immediate concerns have been resolved, a request can be made by the City of South Bend Administration to the South Bend Common Council seeking to appropriate funds at a later day. Henceforth, it is being requested to proceed with the City of South Bend's budget without this action being funded with the 2019 City budget. Further meetings will be proposed to have this discussion so that we can properly proceed with the discussion at the City level.' Councilmember Oliver Davis continued, An example of that, you can see this afternoon. Zoning and Annexation issues have come before this Council and they are probably some of the most challenging and heated issues we deal with. There are a lot of things I am for and that I have publicly stated in the August South Bend Tribune that I see the need for this. I just would like to have seen that worked out. To fund something and then come back and do it around doesn't make sense to me. I understood that the Council President has shared his disagreement with this concept but I believe that we need to keep the control right here. Our statutory obligation is to be in control of the budget. For us to put parameters and do that, we've stated those kinds of things before but I don't see too many examples when we have come back to really have those kinds of things. I believe that we have had a pattern of too many major issues that we have dealt with Community Investment that we have found out regarding this at an Area Plan meeting or at a later date that we have to come back to clean up. I believe that we can really take the time to come together and work out the plan. We just had a highlight. If I had not initiated that highlight from our last meeting, it wouldn't have happened. It would have only been in the budget and moved on and then later on. I think we can do better than that. This does not stop us from saying that this idea is not there but it gives us the opportunity, here as a Council,to work out things. We can appropriate funds. I think given the fact that we need to look at the impact of eight(8) of the nine (9) members coming from the Mayor's Office. Of course we still have one (1) from the City Council, we need to look at the impact of the legalities of that. I asked,in the first(1St)budget meeting,Ms. Stephanie Steele,what the legalities were going to be with that. I never got a response back. I even never got a response back, I know it's Friday but they could still send me something back and say we heard your concerns or something but I never got a response back even from the Administration on this question and from that standpoint. So,we are in a situation where, as your Zoning and Annexation Chair,I don't get responses back. I went to an Area Plan meeting and we found out we had farmers out there, didn't get a response back from that. So these are the kinds of things, it's not just a personal Oliver Davis versus the Administration issue, this is something that affects us all and I think that we need to have this major kind of piece carved out and handled. We can have discussions with our Zoning and Annexation Committee. We can do that. It doesn't take us long. Dr. Mueller himself said that ordinance wouldn't take long. And so therefore, I don't understand it wasn't presented prior to this time. It has not been done. We need to have more strength instead of handing everything over to the Administration. I even have concerns with our current President voting for everything else for the Administration, but when it comes to Council, votes against the budget. We have to learn how to respect the Council's response and give teeth to the Council and not just be seen as a rubber stamp for all of those kinds of things. This is one (1) of the key things that we have to look at from that standpoint. I appreciate it and I would ask for your support to delay, and I even make a recommendation and a formal motion to pull that out of this budget at this present time and then come back, after enough discussion and this Council approves it,would then appropriate the funds to proceed given the nature of that. I make that motion. This motion failed due to the lack of a second. 15