The committee finally finished its report! Only a year late!
The report is done and now it goes off to the Board of Estimates and hopefully it doesn’t get stuck waiting for the Mayor to put it on the agenda. Some of the major changes that you can look for include changes to the goals and objectives:
GOALS AND OBJECTIVES
– The three major goals and objectives (not in priority order) were support the downtown, support neighborhood revitalization and support economic development.
– Now there are two Support Economic Development and Support Neighborhood Revitalization including Downtown.
– There will be less emphasis on the Downtown.
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
– The objectives used to just be improve public infrastructure, support development of industrial sites and provide financial assistance to new and existing businesses.
– Now the objectives are to create jobs in “high-need” areas which are areas where there are deteriorating or obsolete building stock, stagnation or decline in property values, commercial or industrial vacancies or concentration of unemployment; job creation through new business development and job creation through attraction, retention, expansion of existing businesses.
– Focus of financial assistance will be to businesses in manufacturing, medical/biotech, agriculture/biotech, IT/software technology/communications, financial/insurance or businesses and industry that are in our economic development plans or goals of the city.
NEIGHBORHOOD REVITALIZATION
– The objectives for neighborhood revitalization used to be to about improving infrasturcture, removing deteriorated buildings, creation of mixed-use infill, full range of basic neighborhood goods and services, provide transportation and other amenities, increase supply of high quality, home ownership opportunities, increases or decrease densities. These items were all moved to other areas of the document.
– Ojectives now include supporting neighborhood revitalization in high need areas defined as areas with deteriorating or obsolete building stock, stagnation or decline of property values, high density or overcrowding, existance of conditions which endanger life or property by fire or other causes, factors that are bad for health or juvenile delinquency or public health, safety or welfare and areas where buildings have been demolished for a variety of reasons. Other objectives are adaptive re-use of obsolete building and urban in-fill.
In summary, economic development will be focusing on high need areas and job creation in key categories. Neighborhood development will not be primarily focused on downtown, it will also focus on high need areas and adaptive re-use and urban infill.
OTHER/MISCELLANEOUS
– We lowered the income ranges that would qualify for affordable housing.
– We made “luxury housing or 100% market rate housing” an ineligible use of TIF funds.
– Jobs that are created should be “career ladder” jobs that pay a living wage or substantially in excess of a living wage.
– If the developer says they are going to create jobs, we have a job creation guaranteed section. (This seems to be the most controversial piece of our changes.)
– Housing close to jobs and linked by public transportation is part of economic development.
– We can spend our TIF funds up to 15 or 22 years depending on the type of the TIF, but we are limiting the expenditures to the first 12 years, so we have more time to recoup the increment.
– The “equity kicker” has a new formula for if the developer makes more money than they said they would. When there is extra money 1/3 goes to the TIF district, 1/3 to affordable housing trust fund and 1/3 the developer gets to keep.
– Annual review of TIF goals.
I think those are the major changes . . . but we’ve had so many drafts and re-writes, I could have missed something.
The real question is, we did this plan in a vacuum. I believe the only people to testify was the paid lobbyist from Smart Growth Madison and a volunteer from Progressive Dane. I thought it would be good for the group to have a public hearing on its final product, but I was shot down. I felt it would be good for the group that worked on it to hear from folks and make changes if we missed something, especially since we spent so much time on it and have an area of expertise.
The process from here is very unclear – its in the Board of Estimates hands. I don’t know if they will ask the Council to refer it to affected committees (Housing, Economic Development) or if they will just send it to council, or sit on it like they did last time.
Stay tuned . . . but don’t hold your breath.
