Last week, Civic Affairs Committee Co-Chairman and City Council President Bill Bishop discussed some note worthy issues to be taken up by the City Council now that the budget has been completed:

1. Pension reform. This is in the hands of the administration at this

point as they are the negotiating body for the city. Not much to do except encourage the administration to proactively address this issue.

2. The last piece of reorganization of the city's economic development

system is ready to be teed up. The first two, separating JEDC into the Downtown Investment Authority and the Office of Economic Development for everywhere else has been done. The DIA board members have been nominated, passed through the Rules Committee and were scheduled for a final vote on Tuesday, October 9. The last piece is revising and updating the development approval process and updating the public policy qualifying criteria for the various incentive packages that are available. These criteria have not been reviewed for many years and are now universally viewed as obsolete. Also our development approval process takes far too long relative to that required in many of our competitor cities. I will be requesting that the committees that are reviewing this bill conduct joint special meetings to deal with this with the idea that we complete our work by the end of this calendar year.

3. Streamlining the certificate of use process is still on the to-do

list. This is necessary to make it easier for people to start businesses or for existing businesses to expand. It will take a cooperative effort between the city's planning department and the Tax Collector's office. It is goal of mine to get this done before my term as president is finished.