Committee of the whole, starting with senior planner Suzanne Kelly.

Hello, and thank you very much for um having us.

My name is Suzanne Kelly, senior planner with the Planning Economic Development Division.

And I'm here with my staff, Phyllis Webb.

Um, and we um are very excited to be here, and we are also very excited to um have the privilege to introduce to you to the community development committee members.

The community development committee has some spending this past year working on the consolidated plan, which included an action plan of funding recommendations that is on Excel spreadsheet that was passed out to everybody.

Um the committee members will provide um an oversight of each section, uh just mentioning key elements and are here to provide their insight and um wisdom of why they are recommendations are being made, and this is based on the input.

They have spent many hours attending meetings, reviewing applications, and discussing what's best for the community and meeting the community goals.

And so with my very brief presentation, I would like to introduce um chairperson Steve Wick.

Thank you very much.

Uh so good evening, President Tamonic and Counselors.

Uh my name is Steve Wick, uh, and I uh serve as the chair of the community development committee.

Um I want to thank you all for your time tonight.

Uh before we begin, um I just want to kind of go over uh kind of a few things that we've kind of uh done in this past year.

Uh so first off, um, as Suzanne mentioned, uh HUD requires public participation in this entire process.

That's us in part.

Um and through our work, uh we we do a lot throughout the year.

Um the first thing that I want to quickly note is the consolidated plan.

So this is a five-year plan.

Uh this is our new one.

This is the one that uh we will be discussing tonight, and uh you will have on your agenda uh for tonight's meeting.

Um the last plan went from 2019 through uh 2024.

And the uh new consolidated plan presented tonight covers 2025 through 2029.

Uh the process for developing this new consolidated plan began in March of 2024.

Uh HUD uh requires the five-year consolidated plan to be reviewed annually, uh and that portion uh is part of what is called the uh annual action plan, that annual part.

Uh the funding priorities uh being recommended tonight are for that 2025 action plan.

Uh and HUD requires that these funding priorities also have public input.

So the CD committee met this requirement by SPRIT or my my uh bullet points here, having a public input session regarding community needs on June 25th of 2024.

Uh and these aren't in any sort of uh order um unfortunately.

Uh having city staff interview twelve agencies with an open five question survey asking about community needs and issues that we were then given and reviewed.

Uh we held a meeting with African organizations to discuss our po uh specific needs and learn more about the process together.

So that was basically an open um session where we met with some of the community partners that uh you'll see in the applications tonight and discuss what their needs were uh in real time.

Uh not doing some sort of formal uh paperwork type thing, but having uh an honest discussion about it.

Uh city staff also conducted a community needs survey over three weeks from May 10th through May 31st of this year.

Uh that survey was available online, and city staff tabled and at community events with the survey.

Um Planning and Development Division staff also emailed information about the survey and a printable flyer with a link and QR code to the survey to our community partners, uh, asking them to share the survey on social media.

The city also shared that survey on its Facebook page.

Uh city partners such as the library and career force were asked to display the information about the survey uh near computers so members of the public uh who have access to them could also fill it out there.

In addition, and now I'm rookie talking of city staff here, but they do a lot of work for us on this.

City staff tabled at three different events.

They were at the Lincoln Park Farmers Market Kickoff Party on May 16th.

They uh spent time at Union Gospel Mission on May 29th, and they were also uh at the Freedom Fridays at the Family Freedom Center in the Central Hillside on May 31st.

Um, the community needs assessment received 231 responses, which was pretty good.

Um we also had a 30-day public comment period and public hearing on our funding recommendations uh that you are discussing tonight.

Um that was on November 19th of this past year.

Uh one of the things uh, or a couple pieces of that, uh, that public hearing results in 14 written comments, and uh we had 12 people speak at our uh open session.

And one of the themes that was brought up um continually throughout throughout that was collaboration.

Um the organizations and agencies in our city uh do a lot of good work together, but they also do a lot of good work with the city.

Um of the main questions that was asked during that meeting that uh got us all thinking a little bit, um, and we're hoping we'll get you thinking as well is that uh how can the providers work with the city to bring more funding to bear?

What can the providers do to help the city bring in more funding, and what can the city do to help the providers bring in more funding?

So it's a point point to think about, I guess.

Um the other couple pieces are that members of the committee uh behind me here tonight have put in a lot of uh long hours as volunteers uh to provide input on this application process, uh, to look over information provided by city staff and our community partners, and to review the applications submitted by the local organizations, all of which are on paper in this book.

So we've all read through these applications and uh through that process provided the recommendations you're seeing tonight.

Um those recommendations uh that we're presenting tonight uh came after months of effort, long hours of discussion, and with the full understanding that with limited funding, uh not every need would be met.

Uh so with that, I'm going to jump into the actual uh meat of these pieces with a discussion or I guess a brief overview of the consolidated plan.

So again, this is this large packet here.

It's a five-year plan.

Um it is representing 2025 through 2029, and it's tailored to HUD's requirements.

Um the document is incredibly prescriptive and contains a lot of bureaucratic language.

It's very dry reading.