09-12-18 Personnel and Finance (#8)

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el CITY OF SOUTH BEND I OFFICE OF THE CLERK pilot. As you may have seen some of the data and reporting on evictions in South Bend, and the turnover that happens in our neighborhoods, we're trying to figure out when there is rightful and wrongful evictions and try to minimize that to the maximum extent possible. He continued, We talked about the organizational structure yesterday, and we think we'd be able to make progress toward the one (1)-stop shop for development land use (if you think of our proposed Planning Commission, the Building Department and Historic Preservation for business development). If you are looking for land use or a development decision, you would now have a one (1)-stop shop. We also talked about moving toward a centralized licensing and registration to make it more user friendly and resident friendly to figure out where they need to go to navigate how to get properly licensed and registered. We're also looking to advance the neighborhood and housing development program,which would be a pilot in the Sherman Harrison area as part of the West Side Main Streets Plan as well as the increased connectivity of neighborhoods to and around downtown. In the resident survey that we saw earlier this year, there's a lot of positive reinforcement for what's been going on downtown, but now we're starting to see how we connect this to the neighborhoods and how do we move out from downtown. We can't say mission accomplished in the downtown by any means,there is still a lot of infill left to do,but we'reettin g g to a point where we're able to shift our focus more toward those neighborhoods. He went on, We are continuing our West Side Main Streets Plan, South East Master Plan, and the City Cemetery Plan, and we're looking to update the Redevelopment Area plans sometime after budget this year or early next year depending on schedules, complete the zoning reform that we discussed mid next year, and figure out how to enable that missing middle housing that we found in the housing market study earlier this year, where there is anything between Single-Family residential to larger apartments. There is a lot in between and we're trying to figure out how to get those back in the new development projects. We're looking to improve resident engagement on City services and direct neighborhood association support. We mentioned an example yesterday with the home repair pilot where we had folks going door to door to let people know that this program existed in their area, and we want you to apply to try to take advantage of the program. We want to increase meaningful information available on City services. There is a host of things going on so it can be hard for Council and residents, and even the Administration to keep track of everything, so we're trying to figure out how we distill things so the information is getting to people in a meaningful way. Part of that is making sure that we continue to hone and refine our online presence. We'll continue to pilot our economic empowerment programs, and there are a number of potential new initiatives. This is really where the Engagement and Economic Empowerment Team is focused, and I think when we started this team as part of the 2018 budget, we thought that this was branded as the people focused, rather than just place focused that is looking at land use and property taxes. This is our people-centered investment, but we didn't anticipate the level of opportunity in the Economic Empowerment space.If we happen to get those grants that we talked about,that's going to be an enormous undertaking for a team of two (2), and so that's why we proposed an Engagement Specialist for the 2019 budget. This team in its initial year has already leveraged the funding that supports their salaries roughly one to one (1:1), and if we were to realize some of these grants it would be closer to nine (9) to one (1). We're always looking for opportunities to leverage our resources and make a bigger impact for the community. We also want to continue honing our workforce development through the Pathways program. We have a pilot with Purdue MVP that is going to be underway shortly. We are also looking to increase financing for small businesses. How do we grow and extend economic opportunities,and continue to promote greater density within the urban corridors surrounding neighborhoods? We've had EXCELLENCE I ACCOUNTABILITY I INNOVATION I INCLUSION I EMPOWERMENT 455 County-City Building 1227 W Jefferson Bvld lSouth Bend,Indiana 466011p 574.235.92211f574.235.91731TTD 574.235.5567 www.southbendin.gov 8