Good evening. I call to order this June
23rd, 2026 meeting of the Community
Development Agency. I'm Mindy Romp, the
mayor of Blair, and I'm pleased you have
joined us this evening. This is a public
meeting and you are part of the process.
I encourage you to participate, ask
questions, and share your thoughts, and
I want you to feel comfortable, and I
will do everything that I can to make
sure that your voice is heard. We do
have several rules to help us proceed
with the meeting, and I ask that you
please keep them in mind. Please turn
off your cell phones. If you need to
take a call, step outside the chamber.
When you wish to speak, simply raise
your hand, call you forward to the
podium. Brenda Wheeler, our city clerk,
must record who you are, so please state
your name, spell your last name, and
state your address. We are asking that
everyone practices mutual respect and
hospitality towards one another this
evening. I appreciate that we have an
active
and that you are very passionate about
voicing your opinion. However, we are
going to ask that decorum is maintained
tonight. Please no speaking or murmuring
when someone is at the podium. We are
asking that you refrain from clapping as
it is disruptive to the flow of the
meeting.
We want you to be respectful to everyone
and their time. If you are in support of
a speaker, simply raise your hand and
that will be sufficient.
Keep your remarks brief, about 3 minutes
so that others have the opportunity to
speak and we are asking that you keep it
to 3 minutes tonight and you only come
to the podium one time.
Please direct your remarks to either
myself, city council, or to city staff.
A copy of the open meetings act has been
posted by both exits and we are going to
begin with the approval of the minutes
from the 28 20 Excuse me, the April
20th, 2026 meeting.
>> So moved. Second.
>> We have a motion and a second to approve
the minutes from the April 28th meeting.
Please register your vote.
» All council members present voting aye.
>> Motion is approved. Item number three.
Consideration and potential
recommendation for approval to the city
council via resolution 2026-002
of a tax increment financing
redevelopment plan entitled
redevelopment plan for SJAV tenant
redevelopment project. Mr. Green.
>> Thank you, Mayor. Good evening, Mayor,
council members and the audience. Phil
Green, city administrator for the city
of Blair.
Um I Before Michael Sands, who's the
city's tip attorney, gets up and kind of
explains a little bit about this revised plan, I wanted to just kind
of lay out for all of you and for those
who are listening a little bit of the
ground rules more and a little bit of
kind of a reminder of what's going on right now.
You you are not sitting as the city
council right now. You're sitting as the
CDA, the community development Agency.
And that specific statutory role is
going to be different than your role
will be during the council meeting that
will be coming up later on tonight. Um
these redevelopment plans um by state
statute go to the planning commission
and the planning commission's role is to
evaluate the plan and to determine
solely whether it's in conformance with
the comprehensive plan, which is
ultimately kind of their Bible that they
judge everything on is that
comprehensive
uh and whether whether this kind of
development and the use of TIF for these
kind of activities would be in
conformance with that comprehensive
plan. That's the recommendation the
planning commission makes.
For you as the CDA, you're going to be
much more involved in the technical
aspects of how TIF works, the financing
of it, uh and whether especially it
meets uh the ultimate criteria of that
cost-benefit analysis. Um when it comes
to whether it's a good development or
not, good for the community, that's the
role for the council.
Uh and ultimately that's what the
council is going to decide. What you're
looking at right now is a little bit
more narrow and focused. And so I just
want to remind the audience of that as
well.
There will be uh the official
opportunity later during the council
meeting for the public hearing and
that's really the prime opportunity for
the citizens to get up and comment on a TIF proposal and this redevelopment
plan. Uh if they have questions,
comments about some of the technical
aspects of the plan, that would be
appropriate for the CD this CDA meeting
uh as well. But but ultimately, if
they're just don't think it's good for
the community, that really is more of a
council decision, not a CDA decision. So
again, I'd encourage you to pay close
attention uh as Michael goes over this
with the plan, especially from staff's
perspective.
The biggest change in this one is the is
the details in the phasing aspect of
things. Uh and that it specifically and
clearly says that when it comes to phase
two, which in this revised plan is the
commercial lots, and then phase three,
which would be potentially additional
multi-family housing units, that that
both of those two phases are absolutely
contingent upon a council in the future
deciding that that's what you want to
do. But if you were to approve this plan
tonight, ultimately it would go back if
the council ultimately would approve it
tonight,
then a redevelopment contract would be
written up that would deal just with
phase one. And that's the only TIF that
would be involved would be the TIF
dollar amounts for phase one, not for
phase two, not for phase three. Those
would have to be decided by a future
council sometime if they decided to go
forward with that. And it could be this
concept that the developers are putting
forward, it could be a different concept
based on what the council wants to see
at that point in time. So that's kind of
a significant change in this plan that
it tears that phase two, phase three
apart, and really just is ultimately
going to prevent present phase one to
you. And then again, the cost-benefit
analysis is critical, and that is in
exhibit E, I think it is. And ultimately
kind of lays out for you some of the
benefits from a financial standpoint,
the costs, and then makes the
determination that this would be a
positive thing from a cost-benefit
analysis only.
Um
Unless you have any questions for me, I
will turn it over to Michael Sands,
again,
attorney for the city regarding TIF
projects.
» Hello again, Michael Sands, 1700 Farnam,
special attorney for the city on TIF
matters.
So as Phil
kind of laid out for you, the main, you
know, the the project as a whole, or at
least the components of it haven't
really changed with respect to um
to what's in the plan. It's really the
structure and the oversight of of how
it's implemented.
So,
if you'll recall um
prior it you know, at least from a
timing and sort of division of taxes
perspective,
it was broken up into kind of three
separate areas uh with the the initial
multi-family, the commercial element,
and then the uh you know, the later on
expansion of the multi-family. So, so
it's still that, but what is different
is
uh
really just the treatment of of how
those three uh three different phases
will be approached. So,
you know,
there's two different kinds of of sort
of phasing with these TIF um projects
and
like I just kind of said, the the one we
had before was really to just maximize
the amount of you know,
the amount of years you could get to
each segment of the pro project, but
really treating the project as a whole.
Uh the TIF amount uh wasn't segmented
out between the three
separate phases as we'll call them now.
Uh so so that's what's what's changed
really is that So, the the first phase
is is um
as Phil outlined,
would be that that initial 110
multi-family units. Uh so, that's five
22-plexes.
Uh the second phase the or the uh is the
commercial element there on the boundary
of the project site. And then sort of
the third phase
uh would be the
you know, that potential uh expansion of
the multi-family.
But I think probably the most
uh um
sort of informative or important part of
the plan
is contained within section H.
So, there's a couple of bullet points
there that talk about
um
Well, it lays out the phases as I just
did, but the bullet points below there
uh provide some stipulations for phase
two and phase three.
So, and I won't read it for verbatim,
but essentially what it says is that,
you know, with respect to phase two,
the city the city's willingness to both
enter into a redevelopment contract and
commit those TIF dollars to issue a TIF
note or bond
uh is expressly contingent upon the
redevelop redeveloper establishing
mutually agreeable parameters and or
land land control rights or restrictions
with respect to the permissible and or
not permissible type of commercial
improvements developed on such lots. And
it goes on to say if that agreement
can't be reached, then the city, you
know, reserves the right to not enter
into a contract and you know, either
something else would have to be
presented or, you know, the land would
perhaps go to a different developer to present something else, but but very
basically,
that's almost its own own project. The reason for including all the three
phases
in one plan
is so if the, you know, if the plan or
if the project doesn't change and you do
come to these agreements, you don't have
to go through two months of public
hearings again uh cuz you have the
baseline document. But for each phase,
they'll have to come back with a a
redevelopment contract for the
commercial one. That would be contingent
upon um
like I just said, having some sort of
land control
uh
or uh land use uh parameters in there.
What those are,
I assume I will be
negotiating on your behalf with the
developer. Um I'm sure there are a lot
of options. Uh, we just need to figure
out
sort of what what what route the city
wants to go with that. And then for the third phase, which is the expansion
of the multi-family,
that contingency is really just how how
did the first phase do? What's the
market demand currently? Cuz we're
talking about
5 6 years down the road.
Maybe more.
Uh, so so what's the landscape look
like? Is there still an appetite for
more multi-family? Do we feel it's
saturated?
That sort of thing. And and so it's
really in the broad discretion of the
council at that point, assuming the
developer still wanted to proceed and
expand to say, "Well,
no, we really don't want more
multi-family." Or this is, you know,
this has been gangbusters and and yeah,
you know,
more is needed. So,
you're not you know, by splitting them
into the three phases and then splitting
up the TIF, so the aggregate TIF amount
before
um,
hasn't changed, but the amount that
you're committing for each phase has
changed. So, for the first phase,
it's uh, $2,077,000.
For the second phase, it's $689
$89,000.
And for the third, it's $1.66
uh, million. So, instead of entering
into redevelopment contract and
committing the aggregate amount of that
whatever that