The meeting was called to order at 3:35 PM on Thursday, May 14, 2026, with three council members on the dais, Council President Grisell participating remotely, and Councilwoman LaShea Brown Thomas expected. The committee discussed blight, code enforcement, the Bloomberg Innovation Team's work, the Clutch program for unhoused individuals, and the status of the Jackson-Hinds Library System. No formal votes were taken, but several directives and next steps were established.
Okay. Picky Picky Picky. All right. I want to call to order this planning and economic development committee meeting of the city council. C in Jackson for on May the 14th, Thursday, 2026, beginning at 335. Okay. The appreciate everybody's attendance here. We got three councilmen on the dias and and councilman Grizel, President Grisell's on line. And I think LaShea Brown Thomas says somewhere in the in the house. So hopefully she'll be here shortly. The um is an any announcements or comments anybody wants to make beginning the meeting here prior to getting ready up going down the agenda? I just think um first of all, thanks everyone for for being here. Hopefully we can push forward towards a lot of work, especially on our blight control and and other issues. But uh Mr. Chair, I think we need to uh make sure we introduce, see who's here. That's a good point. So I knew in fact I I'd uh coordinated with the um uh mayor's brain trust, Gerald Sibley and Nick Lott to uh try to get the Bloomberg fellows here that I had seen on a on they showed up on a video at the neighborhood association meeting. Um are they here in the house? Can you stand up and and tell us uh introduce yourselves? Uh there's Mr. Lott coming in the door too, and and tell us uh what your bona fides are and and what your aspirations for the city of Jackson are good afternoon. I'm Dr. Francine Sutton, and I'm the civic designer on the City of Jackson's innovation team. Hello, I'm Paris, Dr. Paris Smith. I'm the data analytics manager on the innovation team as well. So two years ago, the city of Jackson was selected as a Bloomberg City, and we're on a grant funded role until 2027. So pretty much our priorities are driven by the mayor's priorities, and one of the key initiatives that we were brought in to assist with in the assist the city of Jackson, what building capacity is that was on housing innovation. And for the past year and a half, we conducted housing research just to understand some of the the challenges that Jackson is facing in terms of blight, vacant housing, and also the housing need across all demographic groups and across all income groups. And at that last week, we shared some of our research finding at the JN's board meeting, and one of the things that we did since we were here in November and December, we hosted ideation sessions with both city staff and residents, and we were able to present some of our four ideas that we learned from those ideation sessions with community. And one of the first ideas that we wanted to present to community at that meeting was to streamline the permitting process. And the second idea is to improve the communication between city staff and residents, and that's with the 311 app. And then the third idea that uh was the most exciting for everyone was to adopt the block. So we wanted to have the opportunity to do some micro-level neighborhood beautification efforts, and then the fourth one, which will be one of the longer um hurdles that we hope to get technical support on, is updating the land use and zoning policies. Okay, do you have a I mean you're going pretty pretty quick? I I mean I imagine some questions are popping up already. Uh, but do you have a this laid out any any kind of way? Uh overview or format or just what your uh goals are. Um, yes, I do, but I didn't prepare that for this meeting since this was the uh planning and economic development meeting, but I do have a uh I team one pager that I can share with council. That'd be great. Thank you. Yes, yeah. Yeah. Um so at the Jan meeting, and you presented this information. What was the what was the discussion then? So some of the discussion we we offered was that the city is on the past city council agenda that we're hoping to go after the love your block grant application, so we can offer micro grants to neighborhood associations if we're awarded this opportunity. So one of the things that we learned from the community is that beautification efforts require funding, and at the micro grant level, that can empower neighborhood associations or nonprofits or even individuals to provide uh to apply for these opportunities to lead community resident-led opportunities for beautification. Okay, so when um tell me about the grant, is there what is what's our chance of getting it? When will we know something about it? Things of that nature.