03-29-16 Community Relations - Laserfiche WebLink

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Councilmember Randy Kelly mentioned he would like to see this Committee work more closely with Code Enforcement and take some proactive approaches towards issues we are seeing in the communities. If the Councilmembers know of issues beforehand from these neighborhood leaders they can possibly work with Code to address them before it becomes a real problem. Bridging the gap between Code Enforcement and the neighborhoods would help the City as a whole be more connected and responsive to issues. Council President Tim Scott mentioned the student art work now in the Mayor's Office, Council Offices, and Clerk's Office. There will be more student art work added to the Informal Meeting Room as well and it will rotate every three months. That was a great way to get the community engaged, especially the students in the area. Council President Scott stated he would like to see some type of initiative come out of Community Relations, Community Investment and Health and Public Safety trying to do home repair for people who need it which would help prevent houses sliding into the vacant and abandoned and then all the work of 1000 homes in 1000 days would be lessened. There are a lot of residents and volunteer organizations who have expertise and are wanting to help these people but there is no real avenue for them to take advantage and get out into the community. Those three (3) committees could brainstorm how to get those people with expertise who want to give back to the City to the people who need the help. Also doing some type of event where the residential neighborhood associations get to gather at say the Century Center and just meet and share ideas about what works and what doesn't work. Committee member Laquita Hughes agreed with Councilmember White that it is important to build connections in the communities and bring people together to talk and hear different perspectives from every side of town which would help unify the city. Also, helping the relationship between the police and the youth in South Bend. We are not going beyond the bare bones of interactions and having both sides come together would be beneficial to the city. Councilmember Jo M. Broden spoke about the definitions of the Committee and trying to figure out the definitions of all the committees. They should be looked at and reevaluated to see if they are still relevant and useful. Just in this report that Chairperson Williams- Preston spoke about a lot of those issues could easily have been in other Committees. She proposed having a discussion to look at the Committees that are not some of the very obvious committees like PARCS or Health and Public Safety so that we are using our resources most efficiently and getting the most out of the time we put into being councilmembers. The current committee structure is very unwieldy and there is just too much overlap for an efficient organization. Council Attorney Cekanski - Farrand stated the Councils that expanded the committee list felt strongly that each Councilmember is the chairperson of a Committee. There was also a need to kind of remove some of the workload from Personnel & Finance and Health & Public Safety. Any proposed changes to the committees should be heavily vetted because a change would be overruling a previous Council. As long as it is done properly there is nothing against streamlining for efficiencies. Chairperson Williams- Preston stated it is definitely something for every person to think about. She stated interest in significantly increasing the sidewalks initiative. Even though that may be