The Monroe Redevelopment Authority (RDA) met on March 16, 2026, at 5:00 PM in the City Hall Council Chambers. The meeting included approval of the previous meeting's minutes, a financial report, and a detailed discussion on potentially expanding the home improvement grant program to support non-owner occupied blighted properties. No formal votes were taken, but the committee directed staff to research a revolving loan program as an alternative.
Financial Report (Item C.2): Administrator Rindy presented the financial tracking report. Key figures included:
Discussion on Expanding Grant Program to Non-Owner Occupied Blighted Residences (Item C.1):
It is five o'clock and I'll call the RDA meeting to order. Can the clerk call the rule, please? Alder McGuire? Here. Ron Markham. Brooke Bauman. Here. Ron Spielman. Melissa Evan. Here. Corey Kunert. Here. And Dave Whartonweiler. Here. Item B. Does anyone have any correction of the minutes from our last meeting on September 15th, 2025? It's been a while. Six months. Sounds like those are approved as presented. Then we'll move on to business. We'll go to C2 and review the financial report first. This is administrator Rindy. And so there's not a lot of significant change to note from actually the last time we met. So the fund balance now instead of reflecting on 2024, we've has been updated at the end of the year. There is a fund balance of 183,000. This year is the final year of a payment from the city based on the agreement related to the Alice Place project. And it is less this year of the 60,000. So that's been factored in as the a new additional revenue. And then there was one expense of a grant. So that shows as the 23,008 10 for two of the grants that have been paid out thus far. And then I there is one pending grant yet to potentially be paid out of the 8,000. So projected based off of that of the additional revenue and impending expenditures, there would be a rough fund balance of 254,000. Okay. We can move to back up to C1 discussion regarding expanding grant program to support rehabilitation or renovation of non-owner occupied blighted residences. All right. So I did briefly bring up this kind of topic of in consideration for you guys. Then last in September, I believe it was when we met about we have currently the housing kind of improvement program that supports properties that have property maintenance violations and meet the affordable kind of housing threshold and our owner-occupied within RDA1 kind of floated the idea of I have heard through some various avenues as we talk about the housing kind of needs in the community about how based on the economy and cost of things that it's getting harder sometimes for to either like purchase and say flip a house to make it worth their while and or for landlords to potentially invest into their properties as well and wondered if we wanted to kind of expand what the RDA is supporting for that. So I had mentioned if it would go beyond um kind of more for um those those land non-owner occupied residents that are within project area number one. Um you guys weren't fully opposed, so I did take some more time discussing with some other staff and and organizations about how maybe something like this could look if you if we wanted to. So I'm kind of returning with that. Um as we go into the discussion, I'll say I think even staff I think we still share some of those same reservations of kind of supporting kind of more of a a business in pockets versus necessarily the needs of residents. Um so I also won't be offended if you say we don't want to explore this further, but I thought it was at least worth kind of further discussion. So I did include within the agenda packet some parameters that you could consider if we did want to go forward with the program. Um before I go into that too, then one thing I'll just make note of of outside of like the businesses and and supporting say pockets of of landlords or otherwise. One topic that did come up through the discussion with some of the staff is like there has been uh somebody who could have say been eligible for the the housing improvement program, but she's not technically the owner, her parents are the owner of the home. And so sometimes as you look as it's getting harder maybe for people to purchase a home and and they are maybe doing that through family ties and or in the reverse if somebody if a parent is or a child is supporting their parent aging within their home does that also kind of then disqualify them. So that's one area where we thought if there's a way to find a support maybe some of those needs rather than just full kind of landlord or renters is an area that maybe could be helpful or beneficial. Questions or comments before I maybe go into some of the parameters I thought we could discuss if you were still interested in doing so I haven't changed my opinion I would not support um non-owner occupied yep. And I guess yeah if if that's kind of the stance then from everybody I don't maybe need to go further into what parameters could be um so I guess or or where you guys lie. Repeat what he said it's hard to hear if I don't know if it's not if they're not using microphones but I'm having a really hard time hearing at my end.