Calling to order the community redevelopment agency meeting for August 26 at 2.30, 2026.
Welcome everyone. First, are there any public comments for items not on the agenda?
B, do we have anybody?
Yes, we have one online commenter.
Jerry Rybakke.
Okay.
Sorry, Kim.
Anybody online? No.
Okay. Anybody live?
There's no one else registered. Okay. Thank you. Next
is the consent agenda. Do I have a motion to approve it?
Move to approve. Second. All
in favor? Aye. Passes unanimously. Next, the action items of 26-27 budget. Kyle, it's
All yours.
Afternoon, agency members.
Wonderful to see you all again.
So really, to be frank,
this agenda item today really encapsulates
a lot of our conversation last month.
You know, we were able to integrate a lot of your comments
as well as an action item being taken
by the CRA advisory board.
We'll get into that with a little more detail,
but effectively what you're doing here today
is approving your budget for 2627
to allow that to be integrated into your city commission budget moving forward for the upcoming year.
So I'm going to try to move forward a little expeditiously, given that you've seen a lot of this before,
but effectively just sort of to try to give you a couple of updates and reminders.
With the expansion territory now into West Fairbanks, you're looking at CRA 3 in 2024,
before, which was part of your extension approval. And now we're looking into in 2027, starting
to migrate over into spending dollars in CRA2 and CRA3. Thank you, Vice Mayor Cruzada,
for laughing at my comment about moving westward young man. I appreciate that. That's still
in the next slides here. But that's really the target that we're wanting to make sure
that we emphasize and certainly one that we're communicating with our advisory board
as well. With CRA TIF growth rates, I like this 15-year history because given that your
CRA district with all three areas is predominantly commercial, you're still suspect to some commercial
recession areas. If they do come to pass, you certainly see that in 12 and 13. You've
certainly seen the bounce back on that, but of course, certainly through the last
five years you're seeing a little bit of cooling but still healthy growth in the last previous
years here moving forward.
And that allows us to really do what we do, which is capital projects.
And that is the large 71% in the big blue portion of the pie here.
In terms of sapping out operations, all of these other different pieces, we like to
keep that as efficient as possible.
And what that really does is allows you all
to prioritize the types of capital projects
that you wanna invest in.
And we certainly enjoy the opportunity
to keep that moving forward.
We talked about last month as most departments did
in terms of a 90% exercise
and what that would mean from a CRA perspective.
Really there is just one item here
and that's your capital projects and what that means.
We would have to get a little bit creative in terms of mitigation of putting different
projects elsewhere.
If we were to push forward with something like this, certainly you have the benefit
as a CRA agency to adjust your budget at any given time during the year, which is very
beneficial, especially when we get new projects or new priorities or different things that
we need to address.
And so with your approval under consent agenda for your scheduling over the next year,
we certainly have some idea of when we might be able to see something or anything that we could potentially adjust for moving forward.
This is all in your title sheet. So, again, we continue to see a little bit cooling but healthy growth.
we continue to see highlighted project program spending in your projects and
programs and my favorite piece is always trying to count up the number of
different proposed projects programs and support initiatives for any new
given year which also doesn't actually include the number of items that we have
ongoing year over year so I'm sure if I counted those up we would we would
probably get into the 20s maybe even the 30s on something like that with
all the different things that we're engaged in.
We always want to make sure we're communicating as part of our budget and our ongoing projects.
I think I talked about last month that the items on the left are annual report and our
audit report are the things that we have to do.
And then the items on the right are the things that we get to do.
And so that's videos, that's deck card slides, that's me with our parks director
director out there for, you know, Snow in the Park in December telling people about what
a great job the CRA does, Humble Bragg, but there is no shortage of mediums in which we
try to use those vehicles to drive home the value of CRA.
In terms of your budget, there are some key themes here, again, our manifest destiny
piece. I love that. But really the piece that I want to make sure that I reinforce is something
that we worked on over the past year with our CRA advisory board and making sure that not only
were we thinking about over the next year what we want to do, what do we see almost in the later
years of the CRA? We didn't have an opportunity to have that conversation almost, you know,
18, two years ago, 18 months, two years ago.
And so we wanted to start to lay the groundwork
for something like that and what that would look like.
And ultimately, we came up with this worksheet.
I told you last month,
I don't expect you to read all of this,
but maybe if it just in terms of color coding
and what that means from a dollar amount,
sort of the peach color here,
the light orange articulates some infrastructure projects
which is almost about 50% of the items
that the CRA advisory board actually discussed.
So you've got other pieces in there that talk about housing, which is a very important component, parks and community amenities.
But while we're thinking about things to do, we still have items to accomplish. And so we've done that across the full breadth of the CRA Boundary, CRA 1.
There's some work that we've done on New York Avenue, certainly with the Park Gav Refresh,
and in your bottom left corner is some work for stormwater mitigation over on Canton.
In CRA2, certainly with our MLK Playground project, our Learning Garden, and certainly on parking
over on Harper, which is sequentially what you see in those images there.
And then in CRA3, what you're effectively seeing is not only some breaking over in the
Kalarney area, but we have design underway for three different areas in CRA3 for stormwater
mitigation.
So we're really underway in making sure that we're setting the groundwork pun intended
to make sure we're able to accomplish these moving forward.
And effectively that's really what we're trying to do here in your budget.
is to make sure that we keep having funding to be able to not go just from design, but take that design to construction cost.
Certainly with Park Ave Refresh, I just mentioned the stormwater initiatives that we're looking at, certainly from Canton and West Fairbanks.
We talked about the design work there, 1792 and Fairbanks.
I know there's, I'm sorry, yeah, 1792 Fairbanks, we certainly know there's a much needed turn lane
there as well. And this, and certainly we'll talk about our miscellaneous enhancements item here
very quickly, but certainly this is a nice slide just to make sure that we acknowledge that
certainly CRA wouldn't be at its best without the leadership of our other department heads,
public works, parks, all of our other folks working with us to be able to integrate not
just what we have an idea, but putting that towards implementation.
If you have never seen a hydrodynamic separator before, I can't help but show a gif here,
but that's effectively what we're looking at for Canton Ave. And effectively, I talked
to our stormwater folks and I said, oh, it's just a big centrifuge.
And they said, yes, but effectively, that reduces a lot of the dirt and separates a
lot of the issues, which allows for percolation enhancements in some of our more normal 24-hour
storm issues.
I mentioned before about miscellaneous enhancements.
This is sort of our fast-acting arm that allows us through the CRA advisory board to not have to get an approval from them and also get an approval from you.
But if we're seeing a really quick fix that we can just go ahead and do, this is the fund that allows us to do that.
So in the past, we've certainly looked at bricking.
We've looked at parking areas at Knowles.
We've looked at parking sensors.
We've looked at touch basins on Center Street.
We've looked at trash cans, we've looked at historic markers, we've looked at shielding for
different garbage disposals, things like that, anything that falls within the CRA plan that we
can do and respond to immediately. And we certainly felt like there has been value for
that particular item in your budget probably since about 2018, I think is when we started that.
So it's really shown up to be a very effective tool for us as staff. Also included is part of your agenda packet is an extension agreement for surface parking at Mount Mariah.
This effectively is almost identical to the same agreement you have now. And what it effectively does is it keeps a static rate for parking over the next 10 years.
We certainly know that nights and weekends are predominantly what this area is used for.
It offsets some of that additional parking need in Hannibal Square.
And we certainly know that the merchants are the beneficiaries there and the residents are comfortable with it.
So that agreement is in there in your agenda packet if you have any questions there.
But this has been reviewed by the Mount Moran Church. They're in agreement.
So, effectively, we would execute that amendment beginning next year.
CRA programs were effectively – and forgive me on what we now have is black here – but
forgive me on that, but we're effectively not changing anything in terms of programming.
Housing Rehab Facade, S-Y-E-P, which you'll hear a little bit more about as part of your
Commission meeting today, we're effectively not changing any of these programs.
we're continuing to administer and we still see a healthy taste for all of these.
Our community development program highlights, we continue to work with our partners to execute
effective programming around the CRA district that also includes our parks department through
community center programming and our annual community support in snow in the park.
And all of that is really sort of the backdrop to something that I always like to say and
I'd like to communicate that this is always my favorite slide
because this is effectively why we do what we do.
We're able to engage from a community development standpoint.
We're able to information share with folks
that are unaware of what different things that CRAs do
and what they're supposed to be doing.
We're able to engage in quality of life elements,
safety elements, economic vitality.
And this is honestly the bare bones
of everything that we do and look at.
But, you know, picture is certainly worth a thousand words.
And then in terms of timeline, and this is ultimately where we would probably want just
a little bit of direction from you from your work session last month is, you know, we've
gone through our conversations with you all in June and with the CRA advisory board in
June and then moving forward through budget approval through the work session with
you all in July, and then we met with the CRA Advisory Board, which unanimously approved
your budget, but also considered that maybe there's potential for us to lean out one of
our capital projects in the park every fresh in 2028.
And so certainly we can talk about that, but from a staff perspective, I would argue
a couple items full, number one, again, you always have the opportunity to change
your CRA budget at any time at any given public meeting and two we are in constant communication
with our project management team, our construction team, our general contractors as far as this
project goes and there's certainly some leaning out going into 27 already and so we have
sort of that inspiration as we look into the following year from 27 to 28 to be thinking
you know, what we need to round out that project moving forward in the 27-28 fiscal year.
So I did want to make sure that I included the motion from the CRA Advisory Board for
you all for contemplation and consideration.
So effectively what that means again is what I just suggested in that this is what
you have here, that's your existing CRA profile.
Forma and budget. Because we had to change the formatting, so you know something happened
between one and two. You just see a slight adjustment because they suggested we move that over into
property acquisition, knowing full well that we are sort of continuing with that theme and
methodology of moving westward into CRA 2 and 3, which is something that the CRA advisory
advisory board was certainly thoughtful on and want to make sure that we continue that
moving forward. So all of that said, I tried to really breeze through this quickly knowing
that you've seen all of it already. Happy to address any questions or any thoughtful
responses that you all may have.
Thank you. I have just a few questions. Is the left-turn lane you're talking about
on dining in Fairbanks, not 1792 in Fairbanks?
No. So this is actually for 1792 in Fairbanks, a left turn which would be eastbound and southbound.
I know I have Charles in the room that can help speak to this with a little more detail
or maybe Randy can as well.
That's correct. Currently there's one left turn lane.
This will make there be two left turn lanes coming back eastbound, which is a huge bottleneck
causing a longer life cycle.
Okay. So you're looking to put a second lane and not just one.
Okay, thank you.
The other thing is, are we anywhere with developers
for the new CRA portion towards Fairbanks?
Do we have any serious people?
Conversations are ongoing.
Certainly, we've had some folks give us call already
about your catalyst development program,
which you all appear to be in favor of
at the work session there.
And we're continuing to work through
to our CRA advisory board in EDAB to build on that.
So we're putting additional money
into stormwater at that end.
Correct.
And that just kind of makes a property more valuable
because we've got more infrastructure there
for someone coming in.
So that means the people who are selling it
keep popping their price to make it very difficult
for developers to come in and buy that property.
It's kind of like a vicious circle.
Well, we certainly have to make sure
we're doing all of that at the same time
to thread the needle in that one.
It's tough.
You bring up a great point.
And that's why we're having trouble getting the balance.
And another point I have is I do not would not want to allocate $1.7 million from Park
Avenue Refresh at this time for 2028.
Let's see where we are in a year or two, especially for acquisition that I don't know what we're
trying to acquire right now.
So I'm not sure why we would do that now.
Move it up a year.
Is there something in particular that they have in mind?
I think the advisory board was just making sure that we started to move money, like I said, towards CRA2, CRA3.
If it's your intention as a board that we don't need to do that now, I think staff would agree with that.
Right.
And that we can always adjust moving forward with the opportunity arises.
Because we really need to get our cabinet finished with the refresh, especially with the flooding and stuff.
Okay.
Thank you.
I will start with Mr. George.
Any questions?
Thanks, Kyle.
Well, just a couple of quick questions.
First of all, I'll reiterate what you already reiterated
about 14 times is that the mechanism we have of being
able to adjust the budget during the year is huge and through
the many years that I've been part of the agency,
that's come in very handily.
So I'm glad you pointed that out.
I'm curious on the projects that we've had in the past,
and I don't have anything I'm pointing to except maybe New York made me think about it where we've
allocated the money years ago. What are there any and if there are what bigger projects or
some of those things are still floating around out there that haven't been completed that are
funded but not necessarily where do we have anything like that? I don't think there is
and if there is one in our bigger sort of capital sheet, I would defer to two things.
Number one is what I have, we'll get rid of all the circles there, is when we talk about
anticipation preparedness and prioritization, which when we talk about larger scale projects,
they take multiple years to accomplish. So part of what we try to do from a staff standpoint
is allocate dollars over multiple years with what we have available. So typically
like for example with the playground at MLK you know we sort of spent the
first year looking at design but still at the same time we were backing that up
with capital dollars knowing that we were going to engage with that at some
point. And year two we engaged more with capital dollars and included that as
part of your as part of your budget for the next year knowing full well
that we'd spend those moving forward. And now in sort of year three, we're finding that we're
actually really starting to spend that money now. So I don't know that there is a particular
capital project that comes to mind where we just think that there's money laying out there,
because if there was, we probably would have reallocated it at this point.
But just sort of the nature of the beast is we have to make sure that we're
being very systematic over multiple fiscal years in order to make them happen.
And that's just sort of the way that some of these capital projects come.
Yeah, sure. I understand that. One last question on the housing rehabilitation and the commercial facade.
Who administers that or administers that?
So that's through staff. So that's through myself and our CRA project manager.
Thank you.
Commissioner Ingram. No questions.
Thank you. Commissioner Cressado.
Yes, thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Kyle, for the presentation and, you know, going through this with us again.
And obviously the – I think the caveat is to see what happens in November to see how it pushes the budgets towards the latter part of the CRA timeline.
Just curious, though, in your opinion and what you're seeing in cost of our projects, is inflation really increasing rapidly that maybe some projects that we may have slated for here may have to be kind of thought about and maybe not do because we have certain projects that we want to get done?
That's a great question. I would argue it's certainly not as bad in terms of dollar cost
as it had been in years past, but certainly the timing piece we're still feeling. So,
for example, if we need to do an extra study for stormwater mitigation, that can take
some time to get done. And we're certainly feeling that a bit in the labor market. But
in terms of dollars in reprioritizing in whatever world that we find post-November.
Again, to a representative George's standpoint, you know, that's certainly
why we have the benefit of the CRA and being able to adjust, and we would bring you those
adjustments moving forward. And then I'm not sure if you just, if you have a figure in your
head, but how much of the property within that CRA 3 and 2 are residential as far as like
Something if that homestead goes up to quarter million and half a million
It was taken off of it. So we think the impact I think is roughly in Peter correct me if I'm wrong
I think it's about four to five percent. That's right
Yes
So that that would be the number that we would have to work with okay
Thank you very much
Mr. Lindsay
Right before as always. Thank you. Um
Maybe this is directed more to mr. Night
What was the thing about the DOT approving some something about payment for good?
Yeah.
DOT, I was going to bring this up in the next meeting, but that's right.
Maybe I'll wait.
That's okay.
The DOT has approved the turn lane project at Fairbanks and Denning.
And our match for that will be the land that we acquired, you know,
when we bought those properties as well as that you negotiated as part of
the Holler approvals on both the north and south side of Fairbanks there. So, that project
is scheduled to begin, I'm not sure it begins means yet, but scheduled to begin in fall
of 2027. That may be the design begins then, but it's coming and they've agreed to pay
for it.
And the budget, the budget, oh, Charles says they're doing design now. So, thank
Thank you.
The budget, the revenue estimate, assumes that Amendment 3 does not pass, is that right?
And the – I thought that was a really good Mount Mariahs agreement to extend that 10
years.
That was a good for the city and we're appreciative of that.
How did we end up?
I think it's great.
This will be the first year CRA has no longer carried debt services 2006, someone that doesn't like debt. How did that happen?
I can respond real quick.
20 years worth of bond issue, right?
I mean, not to be tongue-in-cheek, but I can't help myself.
The CRA, we didn't expect. This would have been our last budget if we hadn't gotten an extension.
So previous agency members when planning for the future wouldn't have issued debt because you have to have your debt paid off
or a fund set aside to pay it all off before you expire. So the real reason is probably we thought the CRA would end.
Now, I would argue don't go issuing debt. One, we're not in a great right environment compared to where it used to be
and you still only have 10 years to amortize, so you're not really in great shape.
So we would certainly share your opinion, Commissioner Lindsey, that more debt is not a great thing.
How much debt were we generally carrying in terms of our annual debt service?
Sure. For the longest time, we had about $1.5 million that we were carrying.
The last couple of years, it was a $900,000, then $600,000, then nothing.
And how much did that translate to in terms of month or annual payments?
Where is that?
Oh, that was it.
That was it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's significant.
So, yeah, we've been able to make significant increases to CIP over the last three years as debt services tapered off.
Yeah, just to dovetail on that, I think when I first started giving this report, that blue
portion of the pie there, I think we started with about 50 percent or maybe about 46 percent.
And now we're up to 71, which is just a cash on hand value for projects we can execute
now.
Thank you for doing that.
And then the – I noticed that the – I guess some of the City Commission or someone
approved the course development tax recommendations yesterday or recently. How can we – can
we as a CRA maybe try to apply – is it a vehicle, legal vehicle, to apply for TD
grants assuming like next year if we have something that we want to do that?
It certainly could. We would just need to make sure we had direction on what that
I know we tabled the issue about the parking garage and everything, but I mean I would be,
especially since we're debt free now, I would be in favor of us looking at putting up a parking
garage without a necessarily any kind of agreement with the private entity. Just do it on our
own. I'd be in favor of us looking at bids for that. I think that the city needs that. I think
I think it would solve so many problems, not only parking problems, but congestion problems,
traffic problems.
And how do we explore that?
And I may be the only one interested in doing that, but how would we do that?
We certainly would want to pounce on when that opportunity arises, I think, at this
point.
And I see Mayor DeCiccio.
And I try very hard to get us in this current TDT funding.
a co-ease, you know, they approved a garage for them. I don't know if that's that ultimately go through yesterday. I believe it did yes
Yes, and they wouldn't consider when a park. So it's just a matter of
Bringing it before them. But even if they even if we did a solo on our own
I mean, I would be in favor of us doing it ourselves even without any TD
T grant I think that we need to have and I think it would be transformational to the city
that's what I think I think we should so you're saying take out take out a bond
to do it and then the debt would be with the CRA that we're just getting rid of
the debt yeah for 10 years but 10 years isn't a very long time to start we'll
never you know got to start somewhere I mean I think we I think I would be in
favor of skidding bids for just us doing a parking garage without any type
of any arrangement with the private entity, I would be in favor of us doing that.
And then depending on what it is, bonding it through the CRA, is that what you're saying?
We'd have to see what happens in November and other things.
Right, that's what I would definitely say.
We have to wait till the vote in November.
Yeah, but I mean, I'd be in favor of us at least conceptually approving it or
at least talking about approving it now.
I don't see any harm.
I'll let other members sit down.
Mr. George, Mr. Grisada, anybody?
Commissioner Grisada.
I'd love to have a discussion.
I guess my thought process is, you know, residents free,
non-residents pay, so at least you can have an offset,
potentially, of it being just burdened by residents alone.
And then duality of purpose of a building, just in case parking ever goes away, would it be designed to be able to do something else with it?
I'm not sure if it's something that we could factor in so that if City Hall needs to grow, we can grow it right on the same parcel.
Just a thought. I don't, I mean, I'm just spitballing it.
I agree with with your comments completely. I mean, you know, I think we should it should be free to
to residents and and we should also have the flexibility to change the plan
down the line depending on car use and things like that. I think those are I completely agree with you
commissioner or vice
And that's interesting because that's what the library really wanted a garage over there
and they wanted part of that garage to be more space for the library, too, but we never did
the garage over there. But the same theory. Okay, back to Mr. Jordan.
I was just thinking I would rather have this conversation at a work session and then also
after kind of like what we decided the last time, just waiting on that.
So, after November, after the amendment three.
Yeah, I think that I think that's an excellent discussion to have.
I think everybody understands, you know, if we're looking at November and what happens there, but I think that it like Commissioner Lindsay said, I mean, we've got a parking problem that we've, I can't tell you how many boards I've sat on up here and her.
And it does cause a congestion and I think it's a very valid problem to address.
How you do it is more the question, but I think there's too many unknowns right at the moment.
I'm not sure what you would do right now with moving it forward other than getting a consensus that I think we're supportive of.
I think one of the things is to make a determination of how many spaces we want.
You know, that's something we've never done.
Like these, I think some of the incorrect me, Mr. Knight, if I'm wrong, the different proposals,
were there some adjustments and differences?
Yes, sir.
There was, you know, because we encouraged them to maximize parking.
So, some of them came with plans that had more parking spaces than just the minimum to meet our city hall needs and replacement of the lot here.
And I think we had a number on top of that, but some of them just met that minimum and then others tried to go above and beyond that.
So, I think at a workshop, the first thing we would need to know is like how many employees would park there.
how many additional parking spaces we could do to maximize it, the number of floors, you know, generally what it would look like, how fancy we wanted to go or not, you know, just threshold questions before we did anything else.
That's my ideal, at least.
Michelle,
just reminded me, we have a work session scheduled to discuss parking in December, the December work session, so that is already on the schedule.
Any staff updates?
None.
Okay.
And I think we've just had our board comments.
So do we?
We need you to adopt.
I just need approval of the budget.
Okay. I would move to approve the budget, but not with the money going towards CIP or what was it for again in the future?
Land acquisition. Right. Not with that provision, but with the budget as you presented to us.
Just a point of clarification. Depending on what happens with Amendment 3, we can amend the budget, right?
Right.
Yes, sir.
So we can cut certain expenses if we wanted to, or what, okay, thank you.
Reallocate some or whatever.
And you need to public comment.
Open it up.
Any public comment?
We have no one registered.
Thank you.
All in favor?
Aye.
Passes unanimously.
Thank you, everyone.
Meeting adjourned.