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I I I Council Meeting Minutes January 23, 1990 Page 5 Special Order of Business, continued It is somewhat ironic, but not surprising, that the accomplishments that we are proud of for 1989 also foreshadow the challenges that we will be facing in 1990. For example, the Police Department. Having passed through the accreditation process, we must now work to keep that accreditation. And as Chief John Kelley has suggested, we need to review the mission of the Police Department. What 'is it's role? How big should it be? What type of officers do we want to have? What kind of programs we want to have? And what is our drug role? We are in a drug program called DARE, in part because nobody else was doing it and we needed to do something and it is a good fi rst step. But other th i ngs need to be done. We need to involve other actors and sort out who is going to do what, In the development area, progress continues to take patience because the scene changes almost daily. We are still facing tough competition from our surrounding communities and counties. The marketplace dictates in many instances what works and what doesn't. Economics are a fact of life and we have to deal with that. I think too that welve been reminded, and have relearned this last year and the past few months, the value of the need to collaborate with the owners of the parcels and businesses that we already have here. Because their expansions are probably the heart of our effort, or shoul d be. We have some target areas comi ng up thi s year, and we need to pl'oceed wi th that effort in terms of meeti ng with the owners. In the downtown area where we are already meeting. And, too, we need to worry about and look to the Northwest Quadrant and meet with those property owners. The area around Old Highway 8 down by Fifth Street needs to be addressed. The MacGillis/Gibbs site needs to be addressed along with the Pratt/JUG proposals. There is no limit to the number of projects that we can be involved in and we are going to have to work hard and stretch to cover them. Another high priority will be the Community Center. We've been working hand in glove and very hard with the Task Force. I think the Task Force is a great example of collaboration that we need with our residents. We have to face two questions very quickly, number one will be if the Armory should be actually included with the Community Center. We started with the question on the assumption that perhaps it should be. But, along the way we identified cost, size, and location issues, and joint-use constraints that would evo 1 ve if we proceeded j 0 i nt 1 y . We need to reso 1 ve those kind of issues very quickly and we have to also identify how we are going to pay for that Community Center in the light of the competition of other programs and other projects. I think along the way, I, too, came to a conclusion that we need a Community Center. Special Order of Business Mayor's State of the City Address