10-22-18 Council Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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REGULAR MEETING October 22, 2018 want police there. They will be doing training for awareness and will also patrol that area. We literally met last Monday and Sunday night a gentleman was arrested down in that area for selling synthetic marijuana. We want to make sure everyone is safe and it works for everyone as a temporary solution. Councilmember Oliver Davis stated, First(1St) of all, I would like to thank David Vanderveen and Steve Camilleri for what they do in our community through Hope Rescue Mission and the Center for the Homeless. This is not an easy situation. As a social worker, I clearly understand that. Ms. Voll, I will be calling you. I want to reach out to you. Like the concept of what you shared about the City of Detroit. As you may be aware, last year, this Council passed a resolution regarding putting some of the panhandlers to work. We were unanimous in that decision even though our Administration had a different viewpoint on that.Not all the panhandlers will work, I understand that. But, like I shared with the media, if thirty percent (30%) can be put to work, that is thirty percent (30%) off the streets of what we are dealing with. Thirty percent (30%) in baseball analogies gets you to the Hall of Fame. And so, that is what we have to consider. We have to consider options where we can utilize the strengths of our people who are homeless and utilize their innovative skills and do things. So, I really appreciated your comments and I think we need to do that. I challenge and have reached out and plan to continue to reach out to our Administration to bring that plan back next year and also to continue working with our homeless population. We don't need to be having all these discussions in October or September, we need to start in January so we can make these decisions in warm weather and not necessarily feel rushed. Also, I want to state that I challenge,and I think we need to as a Council and City and I will work with our attorney to do it, and send letters out to the City of Mishawaka, our St. Joseph County and other entities. Today we came together to work together to stop violence. But we need to come together as a community to work on homelessness because when I was going through grad school and social work schools it was the County Mental Health Departments that handled these kinds of issues.The County. Just like we have the Health Department that is the County. It was not the Cities. Cities have their play in it but it was the County. Now, the City of South Bend is taking care of all the County's homelessness situations. Everything. The City of Mishawaka says they are moving forward or St. Joe says we don't have it. Yes you do. St. Joe has it. The City of Mishawaka has it. New Carlisle, Osceola, but everybody comes here. And it puts on this body, on this City Council, on our Mayor, all the pressure when it should be, not only be put on us, but the County Council and President Morton and our Commissioners. So,letters need to be written to our Commissioners, monies need to be set aside from our Commissioners, the County Council, and the City of Mishawaka. It is ridiculous. Our townships need to cover this issue. They aren't going to go all the way over to Goshen to get some help. They are coming here and that covers the whole entire City so I thank those in our community who are doing that but we have to put some more challenging pressures, or, at least invite them to the table where our County officials can help us. Not only, again, with violence because if you take care of these kind of situations, it also cuts into your violence situation. It cuts into a lot of the other things we are dealing with because violence comes in a lot of different ways as we can look at. You heard from tenants tonight. They are scared to be in that situation. That is public safety. This is a public safety issue also and not just a health issue. So I think that as we look at working on making our community safe, it has to have the Prosecutor and everything else, all the officials coming together like we did this morning. Our topic is homelessness as it relates to violence. Homelessness relates to economic development and our Chamber of Commerce needs to look into those kinds of things. So I am pleased tonight to support this and I'm also pleased to know there is a place to go in our daytime too because it doesn't just get cold at night,it is cold throughout the whole day. I appreciate your efforts and I plan to support. Councilmember Karen White stated, I would like to say this is an important issue. What we are doing tonight is a temporary response and I am in total agreement that we have to look at a more permanent solution. I do know the Administration had worked on moving forward the concept of the Gateway Center. That resulted in a lot of different discussions and viewpoints. I would like to challenge not only the Administration but the Council to come together and work towards a permanent solution. We need the right individuals at the table. We have to talk to the citizens,the business communities, and we have to really look at, and I'm in total agreement with Councilmember Davis, beyond South Bend. We have to look at the other entities that should be part of this broad-based discussion. We have to start those discussions now. I do know that there 11