I'd ask Alders to please return to their seats.

We have a couple in the hallway.

Everyone can move over to their seats.

We can get going.

I know I just uh housekeeping here, Alder Pete is excused tonight.

Is it louder?

Or do we if the the folks doing the microphones can turn it up?

I think it's a little I can do my best to talk loud, but I also don't want to blow out the eardrums of people at home.

I was told that was like a speaker that that's what's that sound better?

Perfect.

Awesome.

Now we're really we're moving now.

Uh so with the the hour of six fifteen uh upon us, I'd call to order the Monday, May 11th, 2026 committee of the whole meeting.

Uh could we do a roll call, please?

Alder Fraser.

Alder Frazier.

All righty.

Here.

She is here, she was in the hall, but we'll mark her present when she comes in.

Thank you so much.

We have uh everyone here except for uh Alder Pete, who like I said was excused.

Uh we have one item tonight on our agenda.

That's item uh actually first we've got a we have the approval of the minutes.

So approval of the minutes for the March 9th, 2026 meeting.

I would entertain a motion.

We have a motion from Alder Mack, second from Alder Pabone.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed.

Motion carries.

So now we have one item.

It's 036326.

Uh communication sponsored by Mayor Mason to give a presentation on redevelopment strategy and upcoming TID plans.

I'll just introduce this by saying I know there's a cue for other items for the committee of the whole.

One in particular, uh, we need the county.

A request has been sent for them to participate.

We have not heard back yet.

This item in particular, though, is very time sensitive, which you'll hear tonight.

But we will be scheduling another one to clear out that backlog that we had at the end there.

Um so with that, we'll start out um by going to Mayor Mason to start the presentation.

I know we have a couple staff members tonight to talk on this.

If anyone has any questions, we'll be looking for it.

The folks who are on um Zoom, we're gonna be looking to make sure, just know that some of the monitors up here aren't showing the hands, so we have somebody else watching the hands, but we will we will get to you though.

So, with that, Mayor Mason.

All right, good afternoon, and I guess good evening, everyone.

So, before you next week, the uh the full council will be asked to consider action taken by the planning commission uh in regards to the city's TID plans, which is probably one of our most important and powerful economic development tools that we have.

But given that we have several new members that are uh on the council, just wanted to give an overview of the development strategy that we have, why we do the things that we do, the tools that we use, and how the TID plan fits into that.

Uh I want to offer specific thanks to um Jeff Hints and the development department that put the bulk of this presentation together, but wanted to really go through some of the things.

Uh so what you'll hear is a uh discussion on sort of big picture what are some of our development strategies are and why we're doing the things that we do and and some of the things that have come to them, and then I'll turn it over to uh Jeff Hints and Kathleen Fisher to talk about the specifics of the amended TID plan that will come before you in a week.

When we go through all that, uh please take notes and whatnot when we get to the end.

I hope it leads to a larger conversation of uh specific uh questions on policies and some of the things that were there.

And while we may not be able to answer a specific question about a specific property or a specific development per se, it does allow us to give a larger conversation about the strategies and things that we try to use to improve the lives of our residents.

So, first is just to start with why.

Why do we do development or redevelopment in the city of Racine?

Uh, some of these might seem plainly obvious, but it bears mentioning part of it is just for the quality of life.

Uh, when we redevelop or develop parts of the city, it's intended to improve the quality of life for our residents.

Uh, the other is funding for public services, and uh Director Fisher will get into it in a bit.

But under Wisconsin law, uh our ability to fund public services uh is severely restricted by state law.

But the one way we're able to continue to invest in public services and the services we provide is by showing a growth in what is called net new construction, which is a fancy way of saying how much stuff did you build the year before.

Uh, your budget is really limited to growth in that space in terms of property taxes.

The other reason we want to do this is we want to have safe and healthy neighborhoods.

So redevelopment becomes a critically important opportunity to improve the safety and healthy of our neighborhoods, both in the built environment of specific properties and the homes that we do, the businesses that occur, and the resources we provide.

We want to improve home ownership, both the quality and quantity of homeowners that are available uh here in the city of Racine.

We do lag both the county and excuse me, statewide average for the percentage of residents who are homeowners, and so for a number of reasons.

We want to improve the number of people who are homeowners.

Uh, it really plays into generational wealth and some of the economic justice we've heard about.

So in the past, you may have seen Racine listed as one of the uh least hospitable counties or regions uh for African Americans.

One of the six criteria used in that designation was generational wealth and home ownership.

And so if we intend to improve our ranking on lists like that, and I think that we should, and that we do, one of the things that we will have to continue to work on is homeownership if we're serious about having generational wealth move from one generation to the next.

The other is workforce development.

These redevelopment opportunities do create an opportunity for local residents to become uh engaged in the workforce, particularly around the construction trades.

But generally speaking, as a value statement, we do redevelopment so that the city and its residents can thrive and grow.

So, in terms of the things that we try to do here, uh with the direct business interaction, and you'll hear about this at a future meeting.

We work with the Racine County Economic Development Corporation or RCEDC.

Uh, despite its name, it is not part of county government, it is its own separate nonprofits that contracts with the city and the county and multiple municipalities throughout the county to do economic development, and we work with them on many projects throughout the year.

You'll see a presentation from them in a meeting in the upcoming month or so on the work that they do.

Uh it goes directly to the catalytic redevelopment projects that we want to do, the neighborhood revitalization that we intend to do.

Uh, we want to um improve uh brownfield redevelopment, brownfield is sort of a fancy word for previously uh polluted sites, maybe for industrial use or otherwise, uh homeownership, and then uh net new construction, which I mentioned before, uh, and then the work of retaining and growing new businesses.

So those are sort of the strategies that we use.

I I won't ask you to look at the fine print of this, but these are the tools that we use and the different strategies that we use to try to do this work.

So our development department, along with some of the other departments, works very hard on a number of these tools to try to improve the economic development opportunities that exist here in the city.

So some of the tools in the toolbox we will talk about tonight are these catalytic projects, the home ownership incentives, net new construction and the need for additional housing, the home repair grants, the neighborhood enforcement division, the lead pipe replacement project we have going on, explaining where the market or expanding where the market works here in the city, brownfield remediation, clean sweep, HUD funds, facade grants, racine works, and tax increment financing districts, which we'll hear about the most at the end of this meeting.

This is meant to be a large list of what we do.

There are other tools we use, including historic homes and building tax credits, the American Rescue Plan dollars provided once in a generation dollars in the last few years, which we are using to do a lot of the Lincoln King work that we're doing now.

Uh and we've used new market tax credits as tools.

But these are the main tools that we use on an ongoing basis to improve our neighborhoods and invest in our community.

Want to start just with some of the catalytic redevelopment projects.

Almost all of these are in TID projects.

We've got gold metal lofts and infill housing that Habitat for Humanity is doing is just a few examples of the catalytic redevelopment projects that are occurring within the city.

A lot of slides, but I promise most of them are pictures.

This is a very recent photo of the Lincoln King neighborhood redevelopment on the right.

You can see the new community center health clinic being built.

On the left, you can see the some of the 32 townhouses that will be owner occupied that are being built around the community center.

This is another view of the same site.

You can see in the distance behind the community center, there's some of the townhouses that are going up.

This is a big redevelopment in this neighborhood, all told with the housing and the center itself.

It'll be over uh 80 million dollars of investment into this neighborhood.

Gold Medal Lofts, uh, which I don't remember uh I know Alderland used to work there.

I don't know if it's actually in her district or not, uh, but this was once a factory that made uh gold medal chairs a long time ago.

Uh it has been turned and redeveloped into housing.

Uh we've got the Ajax apartments, which is at 1316 16th Street near 16th and Racine Street there.

Um you've got Bell City Square that is underway at the 2200 block of Northwestern.

Uh you've got the breakwater apartments that opened uh the just late the year before last at 233 breakwater on Lake Avenue there.

Uh you've got Pritchure Park Mall and apartments.

You can see Walgreens in the foreground there, and in the background, you can just make up the apartment buildings over 200 units that are going in there that'll be completed this year and begin to be rented out later this year.

I believe those are in Alder Harman's district.

Uh you got Hotel Verdant, which is at 500 Main Street.

Uh, some of you may know they're putting in the apartment and have purchased the building next to the hotel to put in a spa.

That work is underway on Monument Square there.

Uh so it's just a few of the things that that we're working on.

Those are big uh stereotypical or traditional redevelopments that you would hear about on a neighborhood basis that does multifamily uh usually uh rentals.

But then we're also very interested in some of the homeownership initiatives.

Again, we talked about those 32 um owner-occupied dwellings plus three that habitat for humanity are building there.

We've already rehabilitated uh 10 dwellings of existing owners in that neighborhood as well.

And then we also encourage employees to uh become homeowners here in the city.

Uh 45 have located to the city or become first-time homeowners with that incentive program, uh, all doing our part to add to the amount of homeowners that are here.

There is a need for additional housing.

So there's a Racine County housing study in 2024 that says that there's a demand for 855 housing units annually.

Um that's a 4,725 or 4,275 through 2029.

The city portion of that that the study found is that we could absorb 300 housing units annually, and I am very proud of the work that we've done on net new construction and bringing in new apartments.

Uh, but we are we are not yet at a pace of 300 housing units annually.

We've come close, we've done several years with 200 and some.

In fact, the the stuff being built in Alder Harman's district will be 230.

But there is a need for for additional housing here in the city.

And just to put it in context, there is substantial uh development and investment happening just outside the city, particularly in Mount Pleasant, which means people are potentially going to move to the area to work here.

And if we want them to live here and for the city to enjoy in some of that success that's happening in the region, we have to have what's called the missing middle housing in particular, but housing options nonetheless.

People sometimes come here and say, Well, I was interested in being in the city, but I just couldn't find available housing.

So we aim to address that by putting ourselves on a pace to do those housing units on an appropriate pace.

And then we use uh HUD funds mostly to do uh home sales to owner occupants.

So these are some of the examples around the community where we've used HUD funds mostly through home funds to build new homes and sell them to owner occupants at a substantial discount of what it costs to build them to qualify.

People have to be up to 80% of area median income.

So we've really used that opportunity to do rehabilitations and new house builds all together.

So it's been a very successful project.

Uh, some of it's by uh gold metal lofts, some of it's uh off of Memorial Drive, some of it's scattered throughout the city.

The other thing that we uh aim to do is our repair and enhancement program, otherwise known as the homeowner or TID repair grants.

Uh this is a substantial program that is now, I believe, going into its fourth year.

Uh but as of this year, we've done grants to over 11 million dollars in up to 10,000 grants uh since pursuit beginning the project in 2020.

Uh, this has resulted in a total investment of 17 million in neighborhood TID areas uh to be able to do that.

So it's been a substantial investment and an improvement.

This one's a little bit tough to see, but just in terms of where they are, you can see where those neighborhood TIDs are in those areas.

Those dots represent uh a homeowner who has done a repair on their home.

So you can see uh literally over a thousand households have successfully benefited from the five neighborhood TIDs that we have in place.

So that was um those grants are sort of the carrot uh neighborhood enforcement uh division of the development department uh is what you would call the enforcement arm of that.

We passed what's called the rents ordinance at one time.

At one time, neighborhood enforcement uh responded to complaints, and that was sort of how it was driven.

When we passed the rents ordinance, we set a specific area within the city that we wanted to have regularly inspected given the amount of blight uh that exists in some of those neighborhoods.

Again, ensuring that landlords in particular were providing safe and healthy places for their tenants.

Uh it allows interior and exterior property inspection and enforcement.

Uh, there is a property maintenance code that's been recently uh added to our toolbox, a vacant building property registration, a nuisance property declaration, and a rental registry.

Uh so this is a pretty robust program for what we have.

We would like to do more, uh, and you may hear me say this several times throughout the night.

The state legislature has preempted, which is a fancy way of saying it's prohibited local units of government from doing any more than this.

So there, while there are some additional things that we would like to do uh around uh rental enforcement and making sure that people have safe and healthy places to live, we are stymied by the limitations that have been set upon us by the legislature in Madison.

Our hope is that some of those things may change in the year ahead.

This is just a breakdown of some of the work that the neighborhood enforcement division does just in the first quarter so far.

You can see uh they don't just do building inspection, they do tall grass, they do solid solid waste.

If you mean solid waste, I don't mean what DPW does on garbage day.

I mean the illegal dumping that you hear about in alleyways and other places.

It's actually a substantial problem.

You can see uh for snow removal for rental registration, uh, interior inspection, parking violations.

The list goes on and on, but you can see sort of a breakdown of what we asked neighborhood enforcement division to do, a substantially uh important part of the work that we do to keep a safe and healthy neighborhood in place.

Again, we still respond to complaints, but the NED division is now in a place where uh it works through neighborhoods on a regular basis that are part of the neighborhood enhancement uh district that was passed into ordinance.

Um, and then this just sort of breaks down uh some of the space that's there.

Again, you can see solid waste continues to be one of the major concerns that we have.

We really wish people would do a better job of not doing a legal dumping and throw away their stuff appropriately.

Um this is a map, just sort of a scatter map of of zoning and property violations just in this first quarter that's occurred.

So you can see there's a lot of work that is undertaken here.

Um, and you as you get to the east and more central part of the city, those are part of the neighborhood enforcement divisions that we do regularly.

Some of the outlaying ones are almost certainly complaint driven, but we do cover the entire city when we get a complaint to do so.

Here's a map of the solid waste violations.

Again, I wish I could tell you it's in in one place, but it is a recurring challenge that we have to overcome.

Another thing that's coming up this year again that lends to the point of safe and healthy uh neighborhoods and homes is in the next five years.

We will replace 10,000 lead pipes in our water system.

So there's over 10,000 uh homes that have lead pipes, uh, mostly from houses built before World War II.

Um, we are mandated to have that removed in the next 10 years by federal law.

However, funding is only available for the next five.

So we are very aggressively pursuing those dollars.

Uh, you will see in that neighborhood.

Um, Alder Mack, I think some of your district and uh I believe um one other district is gonna be uh impacted by that, but just north of the river is where they'll begin.

Uh but you can certainly check out the water utilities webpage to see the scheduled likelihood.

But if you see those sort of red dots on the page there, uh those are the houses that have been identified as having lead pipes.

We've received a 40 million dollar grant to do the first two years of the project.

There are three additional funding sources that will come up.

We attend on applying all three times to be successful for future grant applications.

We have to show that we can successfully spend the money we've been allocated.

So we have a very aggressive plan set out for this uh this summer where we will begin to do that work.

Um expanding where the market works.

So a lot of times you will see uh we have we've done a lot of work around Lincoln King, for example, uh, where sometimes there are neighborhoods where the neighborhood TIDs are, means that there's values that are increasing just enough where the increment that's produced there allows us to recycle that money in the neighborhood grants.

We have other parts of the city where a TID just wouldn't function, that the values of the property in the area just are not increasing in value.

Uh, in fact, one of the TIDs that will look to close was one that was losing money for quite some time.

So you have to look at using the tools that work, which is why we will pick a big project like gold metal lofts or like the Lincoln King redevelopment with the housing in the community center, uh, where it takes a big investment, and we certainly rely on partnerships with the federal government, the American Rescue Plan Act and New Market Tax Credits, for example, were critical in making those those projects work.

So we're uh excited to use those where we can.

Uh but part of what we want to do is continue to stabilize the neighborhoods where there is increment uh working, but where it's not, um taking on um big projects like gold metal lofts or Ajax uh or Lincoln King to really make a big difference in a particular neighborhood.

This is a map, a scatter map of clean brownfield sites.

And so almost anywhere in the city, given our industrial legacy.

This is a community that once had more uh uh patents per capita than any other community in the country.

Uh we have a long and proud industrial legacy.

However, sometimes when those businesses close, they leave a bit of a mess behind.

And so before we can rebuild on it after the clean water and clean air acts have passed in the 1970s, cities like ours are called on to clean those sites.

This is just a uh a scatters map of clean brown field sites that we've had to work on.

There's additional uh sites to do, uh, but it is a uh I guess a thing to emphasize one of the things that we have that's different than maybe our suburban neighborhoods that might put uh a new subdivision into farm fields.

Uh, before we can begin to do that, we have to look at the soil that's there, what the state of it is before we can reuse it.

So it creates an additional um opportunity and challenge, I would say, when we go to redevelop sites because it's uh it's a thing that maybe other communities don't don't have to contend to that that we do.

Uh but we have some great examples of some brown field redevelopments.

This is the the breakwater, for example.

Um here's uh the Ajax site.

Uh here's um Bell City Square, otherwise known as the former Horlick properties, or maybe uh the former RUSD in Haven headquarters more recently.

Uh but these are all brown field redevelopments that have occurred that all required cleanup before we could do uh the housing projects that we've done there.

So a critical component of it, uh, but one of the reasons why we have some of the challenges that exist in the community.

A clean sweep initiative was started uh in 2025 as a pilot program uh with two areas.

We did 16th and home and then 14th Street in Howe.

Uh, the idea there is to bring city resources together to do property improvements, but also to fill potholes, repairs, sidewalks, and do some of the work ahead.

Uh we have another one that's coming up in the uh in in this week, actually, by the new Red Apple, formerly the Walden or Franklin School site at 10th and Center.

Uh, and so we'll have staff out there.

Forestry will be out there, DPW will be out there, other city departments will be out there cleaning up the site, fixing up uh the community and really doing the work there.

We'll do three of those uh this year.

So we're looking forward to that one.

We're doing that one.

Uh we're doing uh one on prospect and then another one on Racine Street in the year ahead.

This sort of just indicates where they are.

You can see where the two are that we did in 2025, and then a map of uh the other two areas that we've identified to do clean sweep areas.

So the other are probably our most consistent and ongoing, although I would argue we could always use substantially more federal funding for some of these projects, uh, is CDBG funding or otherwise known as community development block grants.

Uh we can use that for a number of different things.

We use it for everything from uh funding community center hours to home repairs.

Uh, but then there's another category of HUD funding called home funds, which we can use to build new dwellings or completely renovate existing homes.

Um, and since 2017, uh it's we've had 5.6 million dollars in terms of what's been invested, which I know sounds like a big number, but in housing and real estate, that money can go pretty quickly.

Uh a rehabilitation of a home can cost 300, a new home can cost 400 or 450 if it's on an existing brown field or a demolition has to occur.

So uh I would love it if HUD did substantially more than they used to uh a generation ago they did, and it just seems like every year that dollar amount gets smaller and smaller.

Occasionally it'll go up, but as a general trend, it's been decreasing.

Uh so look for us to do more advocacy there to encourage more funding.

We are also known what's called an entitlement community, which means given the amount of poverty that exists here, we get an allocation directly from the federal government to the city.

That's based on a formulary.

Um this is a map.

If you look uh where those dots are, that is where HUD funded projects have occurred in the city of Racine.

So you can see just about every district has had some.

Not surprisingly, uh, districts that have a higher level of poverty have seen more, but you can see it's been spread pretty evenly throughout the community.

Um, someone asked earlier today.

Um, are HUD funds geographically restricted?

They are not, they are income restricted, however.

So anybody in the community could apply if they fiscally qualify.

It's not geographically restricted.

Uh the facade grant program.

So this is a program that works with local businesses, in particular corridors, and lets them do a facelift on the facade of their program.

Uh we've done a number of these uh in the last eight years.

These are some before and after pictures of what we've been able to do with some of these older buildings, really helps preserve the building and give it a nice new facelift.

Um just had some real luck with before and after pictures here.

And then this is a map that just sort of shows where the facade grants have occurred since 2016.

So you can see they've been spread out throughout the community.

Um, I will say downtown has taken most advantage of the facade grant compared to other areas, but uptown and other areas have taken advantage of it as well.

Racine Works program continues to be something that's uh that's very important.

You might wonder what is this doing in a development department.

But what it means is any project that we have uh that's over a certain dollar mark means uh means that we require as a responsible bidder that 20% of the hours should go to uh Racine Works uh certified workers, which means that they live in the city of Racine.

And so for programs like Lincoln King and other big projects that we've done, not only does it mean we're improving the neighborhood, but we're giving people opportunities to get into careers, particularly in the construction trades, which we know are good middle class paying jobs.

We want to make sure that we're not only building roads and community centers in these neighborhoods for the people to use afterwards, but that if we're gonna invest millions of dollars in these spaces to do it, we should also create uh economic opportunities uh to be able to do that.

Uh and we know that if we care about home ownership, and we do one of the best ways to improve it is to open up opportunities for middle class jobs like the ones provided in Racine Works.

Uh so next is uh tax increment districts and financing, and this is the point at which I'm gonna hand it over to Jeff and Kathleen just to go through the tax increment district and financing and the proposed plan that we have here.

And then when we're done with that, we'll open it up to a conversation again.

I can't speak to a specific item because we didn't schedule it for that in terms of you're looking about a specific property.

But if you want to understand broadly uh what these policies are and why they matter, we wanted to give an overview of the strategies that we use and why they're important before we have you jump in with both feet on TID policy, which can get very technical uh very quickly.

So with that, I will turn it over to Jeff and or Kathleen.

Jeff's on his way up next.

All right.

Thanks, Mayor.

Uh got a rousing two hours for you.

No, I'm kidding, I'll get this done a little faster.

Um I just want to talk a little bit about how tax increment financing works.

This is a chart we use at the JRB.

Effectively, what it's showing is that the purple is the increased value.

So if the districts don't go up in overall value, there's just no money to do anything uh for our program.

As noted on the previous slide, the city uses paygo TIDs.

We don't upfront money to developers under any circumstance through TID any longer.

So funds are provided as they are generated.

So if the people perform as they indicate that they will, there is then increment that can be used for an incentive.

So I just want to go through quickly an overview of all the the TIDs that we have, starting with the commercial ones.

TID 9 is the Johnson building that essentially funded the building that we all know and drive past.

It also paid for some intersection and roadway improvements.

TID 10, this is one of the ones proposed to be closed.

When we get to that part of the presentation, TID 10 demolished a former industrial plant, the Jacobson plant.

Speaking of brownfields, remediated a lot of the contamination and other issues there.

The property is development ready at this time.

TID 11 is in West Racine.

That prepared a site for a dialysis center, Davida, removed some dilapidated buildings and assisted with infrastructure and roadway improvements at that time.

TID 12 is right downtown.

This is the loft building, right on Sixth and Marquette.

It prepared a site for reuse.

The former factory building was converted to a loft living space.

The primary accomplishment was developer incentive to make that happen because there was a gap in the financing at the time.

TID 13 is at state in Maine.

This incentivized a vacant brownfield site to be turned into a mixed use commercial building.

The first floor, many of us know as Jimmy John's.

There was a couple um gym spaces there.

The YMCA was in there at one point, and then above is uh market rate uh condos as well as um affordable housing and some of the middle floors.

Uh TID 14 was created to remediate a former Brownfield site, the Walker Manufacturing Site, where they made car uh mufflers and other car parts frames, I think potentially.

Um, so it ready to former Brownfield site and got it ready for redevelopment.

Uh TID 16 and 19 effectively overlap each other.

We'll talk a little bit more about this later.

Uh TID 16 was created in 2009 for economic development and public infrastructure projects.

Uh that one was underwater for many years, just based on the housing market and then general real estate trends around 2009.

A lot of property values went down.

Um, that one is back to even and not underwater anymore, so we're proposing to close it.

Uh TID 19, we'll talk more in detail about that later and why, but uh TID 19 essentially overlaps the same boundary.

It goes a little bit further west and excludes the eastern end of the SC Johnson campus.

Uh that was created in 2016.

Uh it has funds in it, uh, and that was for economic development and public infrastructure projects.

So a couple of the facade grants you saw were actually funded from TID 19.

Uh TID 17 is downtown.

It's what the Porter's Furniture Store was.

That was created for economic development and public infrastructure projects.

TID 18 is on Water Street where the original case plant was built in Racine.

Um, TID 18 helped to demolish former industrial buildings and it's helped remediate brownfield contamination in the area.

TID 21 uh facilitated the redevelopment of a brownfield site as market rate housing.

That's 233 Lake Avenue, the breakwater apartments.

TID 24 uh was created to provide funding for potential future enhancements to the facility.

This is the festival hall site, um, and also to add development along with uh infrastructure improvements in that area.

So that exists now.

Uh TID 25 is Bell City Square and some other properties to the south.

This incentivized the redevelopment of a former industrial plant with a lot of other kind of interesting uses at the time that have since been relocated uh into mixed-use housing and retail.

TID 26 incentivized the redevelopment of a former retail store that uh long time Racinians would know as Zon's.

Um that was closed before I was alive, so sorry I did not get a chance to go there, but I knew the building though.

Um, so that also helped to provide some incentives for other redevelopment of properties downtown, and that was expanded last year to provide more economic opportunities as noted in the uh green map uh going to water and over to Villa.

Uh TID 29, this is down at Summit Packaging on the south side uh off Memorial Drive.

This is to create um 145 new jobs, do a factory expansion, and uh since that incentive was agreed to, they've met their employment marks um every single year and have done exactly what they said they were going to.

So that was a really positive success story.

Uh TID 30.

Uh, this incentivized the demolition of an obsolete mall.

And after the partial demolition of said mall, uh Woodman's food market was constructed there.

And 265 market rate apartments are currently under construction.

Um, so that's the commercial TIDS.

And then the next group of these TIDs are neighborhood TIDs, which we'll talk about in more detail here uh later on.

TID 22 was created to preserve an enhanced drilling units through a homeowner repair program and to upgrade utilities and infrastructure.

This runs between Melvin and Gould from the lake all the way to Coriolake Park and the Horlick Dam effectively.

Uh runs from Southside on Decoven up to 12th Street west to the Johnson campus, all the way to the lake as the eastern boundary, same premise to run a homeowner repair and rehabilitation program along with infrastructure utilities and upgrade.

Uh occupy the properties from Kinsey north of the cemeteries up to the northern city limits line and then over towards Sacred Heart Church as a general boundary there for the same purpose to run a neighborhood repair and enhancement program as well as to upgrade utilities and infrastructure.

TID 31 is the last of the neighborhood TIDS.

It was created to preserve and enhance dwelling units as well through the homeowner repair and enhancement program.

This runs from Washington Avenue on the north end along with Linderman on the eastern portion of it, uh south to just north of Rubberville from a little bit east or a little bit west of homes all the way west towards uh where the post office and shop co uh occupy.

Uh so in terms of why all that's important, um I could tell you about why financial stuff is important, but we got somebody way better than me to talk about that.

Kathleen can tell you about why all this matters to the budget.

Cool.

I swear it's a different clicker every time.

Hello, everybody, thank you for having me.

So I am into the fiscal portion of this presentation.

So again, why is this important?

So economic development, as the mayor sort of referenced, Jeff may have referenced as well.

Economic development results in what's called net new construction.

For operation purposes, um, the state of Wisconsin has tied our hands slightly relating to wrong way.

That way, okay.

Relating to net new construction and how we can raise tax levy for operations for the city of Racine.

So under state statute currently, we are restricted from raising tax levy unless we have net new construction.

We can only raise taxes by the amount of our percentage of net new construction in a year.

Therefore, economic development is critically important for this community in particular, as costs continue to rise for every community, but ours included, at rates closer to 5% a year, salary, benefits, salt, gravel, all the things.

Um, whereas our ability to raise taxes to pay for those expenses are limited by the state of Wisconsin and these levy limits.

So I've talked about this many times during the budget process, and for those elders that have been around for a bit, you will hear me say structural deficit.

The city of Racine is in what is called a structural deficit, meaning that our revenue sources, which are primarily tax levy and shared revenues, are limited, capped, restricted to a basically flat amount aside from net new construction, but our expenses continue to rise as everybody else's expenses continue to rise by at least CPI, if not a little bit higher in some years.

This leaves us in a structural deficit for operating budget purposes, to the tune of somewhere between four million and six million dollars a year.

That is significant and will become a problem long term as we try to figure out how to bridge that gap between providing essential services and being able to afford um essential services.

So economic development again, so critically important, and the use of TID districts, in particular for our community.

One of the most critical tools that we have to be able to create that net new construction that is so critically important for our community.

Just this is just a visual that I like to show the Alders during budget time.

We will see it again for the 2027 budget upcoming in the fall.

But the pink row at the bottom is the city of Racine's net new construction percentage for 2025.

Our net new construction percentage was about 1.36% for 2025, which was about 73 million dollars in net new construction, which is the most that we have ever had in the city of Racine, and it's actually quite an amazing dollar amount.

But again, that relates to only 1.36% increase allowed on our tax levy when our expenses are going up 5% a year.

That 4% differential is our structural deficit that we face every single year.

So we need to use every tool available to us to build net new construction, single family homes, multifamily housing, cleanup brown fields, demolition where it's necessary to be able to get our sites ready for net new construction.

So since 2018, I actually went back and took a look at all of our net new construction since 2018.

We have had the most net new construction since 2018 in that short period of time.

We had about 223 million dollars of net new construction.

That is the most we've had in my entire tenure.

And that is the most net new construction we have had.

So that is wonderful.

All of the pictures that you saw earlier of Woodman's and 233 Lake Avenue and the Horlick plant, that all led to net new construction.

Those are wonderful projects.

Now, what's important about net new construction, whether it's in a TID or outside of a TID, is that it does positively impact operations.

So the more net new construction in this particular case, since 2018, we've had 223 million dollars of stuff built that provided the city of Racine with about 1.9 million dollars of new tax levy to be able to be used for operations in our general fund.

Police, fire, anything that we would pay for, library community centers out of the general fund.

So again, not only do we get the benefit of new housing, new residents, cleaning up Brownfield sites, net new construction provides what's very important to the finance director, which it helps us with that structural deficit.

It helps us pay for basic services to our residents.

This is just another graphical representation of the levy limits and kind of that differential that I talked to you about.

So again, this um on the bottom is our net new construction line.

So that's our percentage of net new construction each year since 2018.

And again, keeping in mind that these are our best years we've ever had.

Um so you'll see that bottom line, and you'll see that big gap when we get into 23 and 24, where costs started rising just generally by CPI, um, salary benefits, health care, those types of things.

So our expenses cost us about 5% a year in terms of increases, but yet we only have a revenue stream coming in of about 1% a year.

That is what we define as that structural deficit.

The TID modifications that are before you tonight, they were very well analyzed by staff as well as our consultants at Ellers.

Ellers was here for both the joint review board meeting as well as um the planning heritage and design meeting.

I believe they will be here as well for the council meeting for a final vote.

But these were very well analyzed and are really intended to give us the best opportunity to achieve that net new construction going forward and to have most positive impact on the community from an operational perspective as well.

I think that is all of my slides.

Do we go back to Jeff?

I think now Jeff is gonna finish us off and talk through some of those modifications that we're really here to talk about.

Thank you.

So, in terms of the changes in the summary, the presentation that I gave to the joint review board and planning heritage design commission was emailed, told the members you have a copy of that.

I'm not gonna go through all those slides.

We do have them in case there's a direct question on them.

Um I do have a quick summary though, but in general, the changes um allow us for um you know completion of more redevelopment projects, um, stabilization of neighborhoods, um, future flexibility through tax increment districts and where they're located, uh, more redevelopment activities to increase the overall assessed value in the city.

And then given the statutory requirements, it allows for the maximum number of homeowners to participate in the repair and enhancement program.

Um so, in terms of the proposed changes, 11 and 13 were allocation amendments.

11 was uh the Westra scene TID that was proposed to share with uh TID 18 at Water Street, TID 13 was proposed to share with TID 26 and 18.

Those are downtown ones.

Um TID 22 does have a boundary reduction as well as plan amendments.

All the plan amendments, um, those of you who are on common council back to just before the budget last year and shortly after.

There's a lot of talk about the infrastructure policy.

Director Williams is here and you know can regurgitate some of that potentially if needed, but um, this essentially memorializes that discussion and those actions uh in those various neighborhood TID plan amendments.

The boundary reduction for 22 is necessary to ensure compliance with what's known as the 12% limit for state statute.

We can only have 12% of all of our total value in TID districts throughout the city, so we do need to shave a little bit off.

It also allows for uh an amendment to do sharing so that folks within a half a mile who are already in the district can continue to participate in the program.

Uh 23, uh there's really no dramatic changes there.

It just adds that language in terms of the infrastructure.

Uh 28 allows for funds from 22 and then a half mile rule to share with 27, which is proposed to close the only way the math maths and adds up to get us under the 12 percent is if one of the neighborhood TIDs closes.

So, to my point on the previous slide, the only way to do that is through closing 27, but with the half mile provisions, um, all the folks as many as possible will be allowed to continue to participate in the neighborhood uh TID owner and or repair and enhancement program.

Uh 31 allows for infrastructure projects within a half a mile to do an exciting project at the former Geezy School site potentially.

Uh 32 and 33 are creations, 32 is uh Lincoln King TID, uh 33 is the TID for the where the YMCA site was at 725 Lake Avenue.

We know there will be a gap there, but that site is redevelopment ready, and we're ready to um very shortly go out for proposals on that, hopefully, to get developers interested in developing that property.

Um then 16, 10, and 27 are closures.

27 I've talked a little bit about 10.

I've you know, if the overall rundown, that was the former Jacobson site.

Um, there are no projects there, all the projects contemplated are completed.

We would close that one.

Uh 16 I teased a little bit in some of my remarks.

Um, there's two TIDs in Uptown, one has no money.

So this one is finally back to even.

We would propose to close that one, and then TID 19 actually covers more property and actually has funds in it to do projects.

So through all those changes, the previous slide I talked about can be realized essentially.

Uh in terms of what that looks like, we can send this around.

I don't expect this map to look like.

But here's what the TID map looks like now.

If you want to know, hey, where are all the TIDs in the city ever seen?

Boom, there they are.

If you want to know what happens after all these changes uh with the rules and things, here's what that would look like.

Um, really the main difference in terms of area that you'd see is the green goes away and it's replaced with a variation of purple that represents where the folks would be eligible to participate in the program still.

And that is effectively um the bulk of the changes.

Um so at that point, I'll turn it over to uh the chair of the meeting and some combination of either Kathleen, the mayor, or I can take any questions that you have.

Thank you so much.

So, with that, um, if you'd like to speak or ask a question, please uh push your button.

We do have one uh in the queue already, uh, Alder Allen.

Nope.

Okay, well then the queue is clear.

Uh anyone has any questions, comments.

Um, this is the time.

I really wanted to put this on the agenda early um so that we had the opportunity to have the council ask all of the questions, go through all of the things that TIDs are complicated, uh, especially for some of our new alders.

Um, so this is an opportunity to really have all of those answered.

Really?

Wow, the presentation was that uh that in depth.

All right, Alder Weitner.

Thank you.

I have a lot of questions.

Uh first and foremost, I wonder if uh we are gonna be able to amend the language that is in the plans that have been presented to us.

So I don't know who that question would be for, but I would like to know if we can amend the language.

Or do we have to wait and do that on the council floor when we meet next Tuesday?

So I can take a stab at it as far as if the question is if we can amend it in this meeting.

This was noticed as uh as a presentation and a discussion, so there's uh the attorney can clarify there, but there's no there's no vote tonight here.

Uh the agenda is just to give a presentation on redevelopment strategy and upcoming TID plans.

It's not noticeed for any action for tonight.

Well, if there's a presentation and discussion, wouldn't that afford for amending what has been presented?

All the TID plans?

Well, the agenda doesn't have anything specific to any TID plans for amendment.

Just a presentation.

Okay.

Well, while you're up there, I have another uh question for the city attorney.

Um back in January of 2026, there was a resolution and a agenda briefing memorandum presented to the CDA that effectively changed the policies that were laid out in the original neighborhood TID programs.

Those changes that were made by the CDA did not come to the council for approval.

So I would like your opinion on if any changes can be made to the original TID plans, neighborhood TID plans by another body other than the common council.

Well, that's an awfully broad question, and I know you called today and I haven't gotten back to you yet.

And I as I recall, this was something we probably talked about several months ago as well.

My recollection is that the um administration of the neighborhood TIDS was granted by the common council to the community development authority, and therefore the community development authority was acting under that grant by the common council.

More specific answer will have to wait till I can go look back into it a little farther.

So just so you're aware, I read over several times today the just one of the neighborhood TIDs.

The language is all the same.

The only thing that changes is the numbers and the boundaries of the TIDs, but the language is all the same.

I could not find anywhere in the plan that the council approved, granting authority to the CDA for any changes in the policy that we had agreed to when we initially agreed to those original plans.

So my concern is in these proposed plans that we received, that we now are specifically granting permission or authority to the CDA to change plans without the council's knowledge or approval.

And an example of that is, and we've talked about it before, um, changing the focus now having focus area in the focus areas having to have you know code violations.

That was never the intent in the original policy, but that policy was changed by the CDA without the council's authority or approval.

So I have real concerns about the elected officials turning over their authority or abdicating their responsibilities to their taxpayers to the CDA regarding the neighborhood TIDS.

So that's really where I'm going with this, and why I wanted to have a conversation with you earlier today.

So and that's why I too asked can we change the language in here to amend it to keep what I believe is the authority of the council over approving changes in the policy that we initially approved.

That's why I wanted to make that tonight, not on the council floor when something is going to the council.

So when we wrap up tonight, there will be some recommendation from the committee of the whole going to the common council.

And I what is that gonna be?

We approve everything that's in the presentation, or are we gonna break it down?

Well, by my reading, I mean I assumed it would be a receive and file because it's a presentation, and there's no request to approve any uh new TID plans or amended TID plans tonight, and I know there are some amended TID plans and some new TID plans that are sort of going through the standing joint review board queue, and we'll be moving along, but they won't be going to common council next week.

This I assume it's just gonna be a receive and file.

Maybe the council or the committee will make some other action, but so when it comes, it's already in the queue that it went to the it went to the joint review board last Monday, May 8th at 2 30 in the afternoon.

It went to the Plan and Heritage Committee at 4 30 that afternoon with really very little discussion, no kind of presentation from Ellers.

Um the uh the plan and heritage committee, they affirm or approve something different from what the council approves.

They approve according to what the statute allows them to approve.

The council is the one that has to approve if we're going to make changes in the policy, which would include turning our authority to approve policy changes, giving that authority to the CDA.

Where are we going to be able to have that discussion?

Well, it's gotta go back to Standing Joint Review Board.

Common council and Tuesday?

Yeah.

Okay.

I thought it was going to stand.

Okay, I'm sorry.

Well, the the TID plan, once approved by the common council, cannot be changed unless it goes back for an amendment before the standing joint review board and back through the process.

Once a did plan is in place, that can't be amended.

The administration of it.

If the common council, if it's city staff or the common council says CDA does it, then the administration of the plan is how who to whomever the common council's granted the administration.

So what the joint review board and the plan and heritage committee approved then is that these amends that are being made to TID 22, 23, 27, 28, and 31, all those changes were approved by those two bodies, and the council has no say in that.

No, the common council has to approve the TID plans.

Where are we going to approve or amend the what's been presented?

At the council meeting next Tuesday night?

When it comes forward, when the actual plans come to the common council for consideration.

Well, if it's on the agenda tonight that we're going to have a presentation and a discussion, then it would only make sense that we as a body can make changes with things in the proposed amendments that we think may not be appropriate for our people that we represent.

So if it's noticed on the agenda, the assumption is that there is going to be some kind of action taken.

Receiving and filing is an action, correct?

That's true.

So where are we at?

This is going to go to council just with what the joint review board approved and what the plan and heritage committee we're going to approve the plan and heritage committee report, and that would be approving the amendments that are before us.

That's typically the way TID plans go.

Is they go through the stand joint review board plan, planning commission, plan heritage design, and then to the common council for approval of the plan.

Okay.

Okay.

I've got other questions.

Thank you, City Attorney.

And I guess to answer that question, I as far as when's come when it's coming back.

I know the the mayor's been following this closely, so he can also answer what exactly is coming back next week and and how this item was put on this agenda.

Sure.

No, it's a good question.

I mean, the normal process is the city attorney laid out is standing joint review board, then sends it to the planning commission, which then sends it directly to the full council, which will meet and debate this topic next week, so that people felt better prepared for it and weren't asked to vote on something that might be complex and have multiple pieces to it.

I referred this item as a presentation, something that you would receive and file here tonight to educate people about it, to learn about it, to ask as many questions as you want about it, giving you a full week to ask all your questions before you're asked to vote on it or amend it when the full council takes it up next week.

So this was intended to give you all an opportunity to be educated on these topics to ask questions about it, to receive and file the presentation, and then again give you an opportunity to ask additional questions between now and next week when we take action on the topic.

So it's it's a presentation that's intended to be received and filed.

Uh it was not a referral of the planning commission's activity to the committee of the whole.

Well, thank you for that, Mr.

Mayor.

However, uh last week, you the mayor and the finance director and the assistant director of city development met individually with all the other all the aldermen on a one-on-one basis and went over all these amended changes.

So because we had that information a week ago, it was my belief that we were going to come to this meeting tonight to be able to have a robust discussion and make any changes or amendments to these plans that we thought were appropriate.

And it just said a timeline, though.

This was just the the planning heritage and design meeting was last night, right?

And so the council last week Monday.

Excuse me, I got my my Mondays mixed up.

But one of the the issues here is when the the agendas were set uh and when this was referred.

So under our new rules, it's what was put forward.

So the item that was sent to the committee of the whole that this body referred was this one.

The the chair doesn't have the ability to add items or um not take them up, and so what was sent to uh the committee of the whole was this specific item that was referred by the last council meeting.

Okay, well, thank you.

I have a couple questions.

I think the next ones would probably be for the assistant director of city development or the director of city development, whichever are prepared to answer the questions that I asked earlier today, and that is in regards to the proposed legislation AB 235 and Act 120.

So I don't know who would like to speak to that, either Walt or Jeff.

Yeah, if you want to do it, this one's still on the wherever is better for you.

All right.

Okay.

So let me ask my question.

So TID 31, the proposed amendment would be that we would be taking money out of the pot that is TID 31, and we would be putting it into a development that is a half a mile away over on Byrd Avenue, where it is proposed there will be 32 or 34 individual homes built.

So we are taking money out of the 31 pot and doing the infrastructure improvements in that neighborhood for those 32 homes, which I understand from the uh director of city development, these 32 homes are uh intended for purchase by either unified employees or city of receiving employees, which all would have right of first refusal before any of the other taxpayers would have the opportunity to purchase those homes once they're built.

So that's what I understand.

But my question is uh AB 120 or Act 120, AB 737 is for the NIDs for housing infrastructure.

It's being proposed that another tool meant to promote residential development.

This legislation, this legislation takes underutilized neighborhood improvement districts, like what would be over on Bird Avenue, uh, structure and re-imagines it for subdivision development.

If petitioned, a landowner, likely a developer or a municipality may create a NID to front the cost of public infrastructure payments.

So rather than use TID money that was initially intended to be used within TID 31 for either grants or infrastructure or administration to pay uh city development.

Why don't we take advantage of this proposed legislation and front the money to the developer in another way so that we're not using that TID money?

Sure.

So in terms of the NID, um I did have a chance to review these today.

Director Fisher shared your email about um these two bills.

The one Act 235, I was a lot more familiar with um 737.

I became a little more familiar with this afternoon, is about the NIDs.

Um from reading it, um, I'm a lot more familiar with business improvement district, which is bid.

There's a lot of acronyms, uh, acronyms, but um the NID essentially functions the same way as a bid from what I can understand in this bill, where um in a bid, the people that own property there effectively decide to tax themselves an extra amount to do whatever they want to do.

Um the neighborhood improvement district appears to operate the same way it requires a board, similar to a bid uh for businesses, and it also requires that the municipality um produce an operating plan, much like the council adopts during budget for like the Douglas Avenue bid or downtown or um I'm blanking on the one uptown, um where they effectively they get a segregated account just like um Director Fisher runs in the finance department for the business improvement districts, and they actually pay themselves, so it doesn't necessarily it would generate more revenue, but it actually comes from the people that own property in the district as opposed to as an extra tax on themselves, if that makes sense.

So it doesn't necessarily generate any additional income in terms of the developer would still end up paying under that scenario.

So if the 34 homes weren't developed and they put the property they owned into a NID, they would essentially just be special assessing everybody that bought a house to have money go into this account, so it wouldn't necessarily upfront the developer anything because until they sold property, they would end up just paying that assessment themselves.

Well, wouldn't that be a wise use though?

I mean, the people that are purchasing the property would be paying for their own infrastructure, correct?

Rather than people that live and pay taxes in TID 31 paying for that infrastructure, shouldn't it be either the developer or the people that purchase those homes?

Yeah, whoever it should be is ultimately up to the council, but in terms of what would probably realistically happen in my estimation from a development standpoint is the developer is going to approach the city potentially and say, I've got a gap, I can't I can afford X, my you know, Delta to make this project happen, is Y.

Um the NID would give them only money once there was development or people to pay into it effectively.

So at some point the developer is gonna need an advance of something to be able to build.

Um the NID would maybe help stretch that out, you know, long term, it would directly be you know paid by whoever the lots were sold to if they sold, but my suspicion is that if the NID was in place and the developer hadn't sold any lots yet, they would just have to upfront all the cost of that, and their gap would essentially be the same on the project.

Okay.

So Jeff, isn't that exactly what we have shared revenue funds for that comes from the sewer water agreement?

Don't we have money set aside that could do that rather than to taking advantage of or gerrymandering the the boundaries, so to speak, in TID 31?

We're not actually changing the boundary in TID 31.

The half mile is something that exists, and most of the other TIDs, they weren't when the neighborhood TIDs were originally created, but it is something that if this amendment went through that the half mile provision would be added in the case of TID 31, it's specific to only this project, so it's not a you know free-for-all, but in terms of the other funds you get at, um, I think it's it's known as the intergovernmental fund or the IG fund, and effectively that's a one-time thing where the TID's more renewing.

Director Fisher is probably a lot more versed in you know why it would make sense to use something or not use something if you want to go down that angle.

But the TID is a you know recurring fund, whereas the IG fund is a one-time thing, and once you spend it, that's it.

That's okay.

Uh I'll continue this with Jeff because you brought up an important point, and that is that half mile radius thing, which we have never had with a TID before.

We've shared revenue from one TID to another, but we we haven't, you know, like when we take all that money out of TID 9 and put it into the Veront Hotel.

Um, but we haven't taken neighborhood TID.

And I know nobody likes to hear this, but I was around when the very first neighborhood uh uh grant application was made, and it was made by a young woman that lived on the south side of Gould Street.

She applied for a TID, she went through that whole pot process for six, seven months, was assured no problem, you're gonna get the grant.

And then when it came time to give the grant, she was informed no, you can't have the grant because you live on the wrong side of the street.

So I talked to the finance director.

How can that be?

She's on the boundary line.

And what I was told is that the state statute does allow you to go outside in that half mile radius, but that's a slippery slope that we don't want to go down.

We want to keep those funds within those neighborhood TIDs.

So now we're proposing to take money out of TID 22 and put it into the TID 28 that doesn't exist anymore.

It's just within that half mile radius, and then we're gonna take money out of TID 31 and put it over on Byrd Avenue.

And that's the slippery slope that I'm concerned about, and that's why I brought up earlier about the policy changes that are made by the CDA that the council never was made aware of or approved.

So once we start down these slippery slopes, it was changed where the original neighborhood TIDs allowed any homeowner or occupied home within that TID to apply for a grant.

They could apply for an enhancement grant and what I call the maintenance grant.

So they could get $20,000 a year.

Well, somebody changed that policy, and it wasn't the the council that said, Well, we're not gonna give out the enhancement anymore, they only get one or the other.

We didn't make that change.

That was made by the administration or the CDA, and now the other change that was made is that not everybody, not every home uh owner is uh uh qualified for a loan or a grant.

They have to be within the focus area.

Okay, so now we concentrate on the focus area, which might not be a bad idea, but we never were a part of that conversation.

So the next logical step of the slippery slope that I'm concerned about is that the next thing we're gonna say, well, only people in the focus area that have code violations are eligible for the grants, and then we can go from there.

Well, we'll determine which kind of code violations qualify for grants within those focus areas.

Those are that's a slippery slope that I've concerned about.

And I'm not talking about chump change for the people that are paying the property taxes in those neighborhood TIDs.

The increase in the property tax for our constituents, the people that elected us in those neighborhood TIDs was 15% this year.

I've never seen an increase in the property tax like that.

In a large part, it's because they are inside that neighborhood TID.

And now we're saying we're gonna take part of that 15% addition that we taxed you, and we're gonna spend it someplace else.

And I think that's a very important conversation for this body to understand and have.

So going back though, to AB 480 or Act 235, where it says rather than change the boundaries or or eliminate uh two TIDs in order to stay under the 12%.

What this says is that we're gonna allow to go beyond the 12% at equalized value cap for neighborhoods.

So that's the Act 235 you're referring to.

That's correct.

Yeah, so the Act 235 is mostly geared for like farm field development effectively, um, or you know, was it not brown fields?

It's specifically geared at putting in like infrastructure, there's limits on lot sizes, which you know we would comply with.

But um, the main part is that project costs in an RTID are limited to construction or improvement of infrastructure for you know residential development, which wouldn't necessarily be the bane of existence for any of these neighborhood TIDs.

Um, in terms of some of the the other things though, um, we haven't traditionally spent outside of neighborhood TIDs.

Um, if you read the project plans for the neighborhood, they're very specific into what case we would do it.

It's not a free-for-all for everybody within a half a mile, it's very narrow.

So, in the example of TID 28, it's only for people that were in TID 27 because we're proposing to close that.

It's not everybody, it's only people that participate in the program now.

Same thing with TID 22.

In terms of being taxed differently, that's against state statute.

The assessor is required to tax you based on whatever you have.

We can't jack your property up because you're in a TID or not or whatever.

The assessor looks at what you have, determines what the value is on a fair market, and that's what you're worth.

It's called ad velorum.

This the assessor would explain it a lot better than I would, but there's not the ability to you know fluctuate assessments based on if you're in a TID or not in a TID, it's just what you're worth, that's what it is.

Um, in terms of you know the program.

We think it works well.

We've held off on just making it a free-for-all to keep as much money in the district, and the amendments that are in front of the council are based on getting under the 12% to be compliant with state statute.

That's the best we can do to make sure that the people who participate in the program right now still get a chance to, but at the same time also get the city under the 12% so we can do TIDS in other areas and help spread some of that enjoyment to the tax increment districts as best we can given the the limitations imposed on us by the state.

So just to follow up on that, this legislation specifically says it creates a new TIFF structure for workforce housing, which would be the neighborhood that it's proposed to be created over on Byrd Avenue.

It's a new workforce housing that Act 235 allows municipalities to create a TID outside of the 12% of the equalized value cap.

So rather than gerrymander out of 31 over to Bird Avenue, why don't we just wait for this legislation to pass before you start with the the TIFF and create a TIFF over there on Byrd Avenue?

We think that the project is time sensitive enough that it needs to move sooner rather than later.

Um would this be a potential option?

It would, it's not effective until October, you know, of 2026.

The developer that's been in contacts with us preliminarily is interested in getting sooner, getting started a lot sooner than that needs some guarantee that you know this project can actually happen.

So there's no guarantee that you know we'd be able to get this done in October.

Maybe we would, maybe we wouldn't.

We're proposing it now to get that project moving so that we know that it can actually happen.

Um, just in terms of administration on our end of things by using the half mile, that's one less TID that we actually have to create.

Yeah, there is the exception that it doesn't count against our um equalized value, which would allow us to create it potentially, but in our under things, it's another TID to administer.

We think that using the half mile provision for that specific project would help be a benefit to everyone in the city as opposed to as well as the people in TID 31.

So that's kind of our rationale for doing it that way.

Okay.

So the creation of TID 33.

I imagine that that's 725 Lake Avenue.

I imagine that's the proposal I keep hearing about a hotel convention center.

So we already have not at that address, no.

So do we have a developer in mind for something at 725 Lake Avenue?

Not to date.

We are preparing an RFP that would solicit developers that would come to some combination of the CDA and common council for how that property would be disposed of.

So we're working through what that RFP would look like.

The purchasing department would put that out there.

But at this time, there's nobody that's in the works or submitted anything on that.

But we know that the property is closed, it has no brown field issues.

You saw the brownfield map, that property's got a clean bill of health, it's ready to go.

We want to market it.

We spent an awful lot of money tearing down the YMCA.

We need to get some tax revenue back on that property, but there is no developer in mind at the moment, but we suspect that just based on the cost of construction.

Um, whenever a developer does, you know, submit interest or just calls us coldly and says, hey, I want to do X, Y, or Z there, just based on the you know some of the things the mayor went into about just development conditions in the city, there's likely to be a gap, and they're going to say, hey, can you backfill it with you know something?

Here's what my gap is, and this would be the best tool we have to help be able to do that.

Ultimately, that's a council consideration as to whether or not it happens, but without this tool in place, there's added delay, and that will slow down the developer's time frame.

And the city administrator wants to okay.

Uh common council uh President Jorgensen.

I want to thank uh Deputy Director Hince for his discussion of the lakefront TID, but just remind the or the group here of uh come council president Jorgensen's direction at the beginning of the meeting that rather than a discussion of individual projects and properties that we're here to discuss an overview of first economic development policy and then specifically the changes to the TIDS, not to individual um projects or or properties.

Well, TID 33 is not changing an existing TID, it is creating a new TID.

And I think for this body to consider creating approving creating a brand new TID, we ought to know if there is some kind of development in place.

We have done this time and again.

Jacobson's walkers, machinery row.

We keep creating new porters.

Uh TID 24, the hotel convention thing.

We keep creating new TIDs, but there's no developer that that is interested in doing anything.

So it takes two weeks to create a TID.

All this discussion started on May 4th, it's going to be approved by the council in some form on on May 19th.

That's two weeks for important work.

Uh, and the mayor said it himself, you know, the most important thing we do is economic development, and we have less than two weeks to consider major changes to existing TIDs, eliminating two current TIDs, and then creating two new TIDs.

So it is important to have this discussion.

And it is important for the council to know if there is a developer in place that has some consideration of doing something at 725 Lake Avenue before this body approves creating that TID.

It might have been approved by the joint review board, it might have been uh approved by the the uh planning and heritage committee, but it's this body's final decision that will create it.

So we need as much information as we can get because we continue to take more and more property off the tax the gener to pay into the general fund, we have to have more information than just here's a good idea we have, let's create another TID.

So that was the reason for that.

I do have other questions.

So in these maybe for Kathleen, because this goes back to the documents that she prepares for the joint review board every year, which now is on the city developments site regarding the tax incremental district information, and that is in regards to the debt that we currently have regarding all of our existing TIDs.

So I think it's important for the council to understand what kind of debt we're carrying and what some of these categories mean.

So one of the things that I'm looking at, Kathleen, is what you had prepared last July regarding the current TIDS, and we have several big buck items that are pay-go outstanding, and I don't know how we're gonna how we're gonna pay for those.

So maybe you could explain the 12 million 386,724 that goes to the breakwater, the 23 million that goes to Bell City, the 34,300 that is a pay-go for Regency Mall.

Sure.

Thank you for the question.

So we'll start with Regency Mall since that's what you ended with.

So when the common council adopted the project plan and adopted the incentive agreement for Regency Mall for the developer for Regency Mall, um that is what's called a pay-go, which means that as the tax increment comes in, so as they build the woodman's, for example, tax increment comes in from that new construction of that woodman's based on the value of that woodman's, let's say 40 million dollars, 50 million dollars, whatever that may be, that tax increment comes in, and then that tax increment is shared with the developer as part of our incentive agreement.

That covers the gap in that project that Jeff sort of referred to in his other presentation on the other questions.

So that is coming directly from tax increment.

We have several projects like that.

So Regency Mall, Horlick is like that, um, the hotel is like that.

That is a common tool in TID.

If you ask any other community in the state of Wisconsin, Muskego, Franklin, name them, Oak Creek has tons of them.

Kenosha, tons of them.

Standard practice to use a pay-go TID.

So how do we pay for that pay-go TID?

So it's pay as you go, so they have to have that money up front.

So where does this money come from?

No, they don't have the money up front.

So the money comes from the increased value of the property within the district.

But remember when last year when we bonded $17.5 million for the health clinic because the grants that we were anticipating, we didn't know if they were coming in or when they would come in, so we bonded for that.

And you said we should bond for that because we had to have that money set aside to pay gold.

That's why we bonded.

No, I did not say that because first of all, the new King Center community center and clinic has nothing to do with a paygo TID.

Just to be crystal clear, it has nothing to do with a paygo TID.

Okay.

The vast majority of that project is covered by grant funds, both state and federal.

The clinic piece of that project is 100% funded with grant funds.

The 17 million dollars of borrowing for that project has nothing to do with any of the discussion tonight, and is for the community center piece of that project, and has since been reduced to about 15 million because we have gotten different grants to pay that down.

Has nothing to do with a pay-go.

But it's still a pay-go, and that's what I'm trying to get.

It is not a pay.

It's got you are you are confusing definitions.

It has nothing to do with a paygo.

We have no incentive agreement with a developer on that project.

We have a company that is a construction company that is building the project on our behalf.

It is not a pay-go.

Okay, so then what are these pay goals?

We're these are specific developer incentive agreements that we have with individual developers on these projects, private projects that are not publicly funded, and this is the gap in their private financing that we said we would help them with over the life of the TID district.

Okay.

Okay, then we also have the debt service outstanding on several of the TIDs.

Yeah.

And how is that paid?

So that is also paid from the increment from those TIFF districts as it comes in or from the developer, depending on the agreement.

Okay, and then the same thing for the amount that's uh owed to the IG fund?

Correct.

So the IG fund the city uses as a revolving loan fund, often to TID districts.

In the beginning life of TID districts, it's common to have expenses before the increment comes in.

RIG fund, which is a limited term fund, is used on a revolving basis, meaning we loan into a TID and then we pay ourselves back from that TID district with interest.

So those uh amounts that are due to IG are the different amounts in the different districts, depending on the um the proceeds within that district.

So for example, the Water Street development.

There's a debt service of 6.2 million plus the amount that's owed to the IG of 8.4 million.

So that's about 15 million dollars.

Correct.

And there's no development there, there's no increment there.

Correct.

How do these get paid back?

Correct.

How do these get paid back?

So right now we are sharing with number 18 to try to pay those back, but that is one of our unsuccessful TID districts at this point in time.

Okay.

Okay.

All righty.

I don't know.

Anybody else have questions?

Because I've got a ton.

There are others in the queue if you wanted to you're good for now?

I I have other questions, but I just I'd like to let other people ask some questions.

Sure.

All right.

Uh Alderman uh DeMark.

So I I just want to know particularly what's the difference between a TID and a NID.

Because I'm kind of looking at it right now, I just wanted a better understanding.

That one's easy, and I know that the mayor is also um I I can try to so a tax increment district sets aside future increment um of the value of properties within a district and sets that aside and allows you to recycle it into the district for an approved plan.

Uh business improvement districts and neighborhood improvement districts are a bit different in that people in a defined region come together and decide to create um uh a district, and in the case of neighborhood improvement districts decide to tax themselves additional uh property taxes.

So instead of capturing future value, it instead is a group of people in an area deciding to tax themselves additional property taxes to go back into the district.

So that's that's the big difference between the two.

And Jeff or Kathleen wanna correct that or add or modify the statement there.

But those are the the biggest differences instead of capturing uh new value and recycling into the district, you're actually assessing additional taxes to that neighborhood or business improvement district.

Does that make sense?

Yeah.

Yeah, I wouldn't add a ton, it's really just the funding structure.

The TID does have an expiration, whereas the NID or a business improvement district in theory would go on forever until it was terminated at the discretion of those that are within the boundaries of it.

But the TID is limited by state statute, a knit or a bid can go on forever, like the downtown bid, the Douglas bid, those have been around for coming up on 20 years.

I think uptown's about 15 years old or so, and they could in theory go on forever until statute change.

But by state law, the TID does have a sunset, and then it's it goes away and all the increment goes to the taxing jurisdictions.

So under a TID taxes doesn't go up, but under a NID, the property will be reassessed and possibly might go up.

So their tax might go up.

Is that correct?

Yeah.

A little bit.

So there's there's a wrinkle on it.

So effectively, you're gonna be taxed at regardless of if you're in a knit, a bid, a TID, whatever, you're gonna be taxed at whatever you're worth.

In the TID, the difference is just where the taxes go.

Whereas if it's a NID, that would be an additional tax that you you know, that group of people elect to pay.

So the NID would likely would guaranteed to be a higher tax if there's any type of rate because they're choosing to tax themselves an extra fee that shows up as a special assessment, like on a tax bill that they've selected to do.

So if you do a knit or a bid, a hundred percent guaranteed the taxes will go up because they have to collect from someone doesn't have it now, but it's based on whatever rate they want to set.

Whereas with a TID, you just pay your tax bill based on whatever it is every year, based on how much your property is worth and the differences where it goes to.

So is the increment that we generate that that goes into a separate account when you create the TID, the taxing jurisdictions are effectively frozen at what it's currently paying for the next 25 years, and they continue to get that.

And if the value goes up, obviously the taxes generally go up as well, and uh because you have more, there's a better improvement on the property, whatever.

And based on that increase, the delta based on the chart I had that purple area, that whatever rate that would be for the tax bill goes into the tax increment district account, and then that's how we fund the projects and you know make the magic happen effectively for the incentives or the neighborhood enhancement program.

And versus if we use a NID, would the NID then cause more of a um a property tax uh restraint on uh district 12 and district 13?

It wouldn't necessarily be a district versus another.

The NID would just be something that gets added on a special charge to that property, and whoever owns property within it would just pay that in full.

Um it's not subdivided yet, it's just one big parcel.

So if the developer bought it, they would you know pay whatever they decided they needed to raise, but it wouldn't have anything to do with like one council district versus another.

It's effectively money that only exists because it's increment.

People in whatever district are still gonna pay whatever their tax bill says.

The difference is just where it goes in terms of you know what we do with it, but it wouldn't change the rate that anybody pays or how much they pay or anything like that.

Okay.

Thank you, Aldermark.

Uh any other questions.

The queue is open right now.

Alder Weitner.

Thank you.

And this is probably for Jeff.

Jeff, could you remind the council what went before the joint review board last Monday and what went before the plan commission?

Was it simply the retirement of the two TIFF districts and the creation of two, or was it also the amendments that are being made to the existing neighborhood TIDS?

Hold on, I'm gonna have Samuel and cheese all that.

I know Legistar was down today.

I couldn't get in there and look at those.

All right.

So in terms of what uh sorry about that.

Thank thanks, Sam.

In terms of what went to joint review board, um, by state statute, the closures go, so that's the very far right column.

So 10, 16, and 27.

By state statute, the common council decides if a TID's gonna close, that's the end of the road.

Um so those were at only at the Planning Heritage and Design Commission, so it have a referral to council.

Everything else was at um the joint review board.

So the joint review board saw 11, 13, 22, 23, 28, 31, 32, and 33, that was it.

The PHDC saw everything that's on the chart only because the joint review board doesn't have any standing as to whether or not a TID closes those by state statute are up to the discretion of the council and there's a closure.

So as a vehicle to get them there at the same meeting, the closures were talked about at the PHDC, but the recommended item or the recommendation on that item was that they be referred to common council.

There wasn't a vote or anything like that on them except for to refer them to council.

Okay.

So if TID 27 is going to be closed, how can people that live in TID 27 apply for grants from TID 22?

How's that gonna work?

Sure.

Excellent question.

So based on our timing of this, if this were to pass, I won't assume what's gonna happen next Tuesday, that's ultimately uh this body's choice.

But if this passes as recommended, based on the timing we're doing this, 27 would be in existence for all of this year and also all of next year, it wouldn't actually close until fiscal year 28.

So what would happen is that 22 is sharing revenue to TID 28, which will exist using the half mile rule, uh, which I will hopefully go back to.

Um the pink shaded area.

Um wonder if oh that's too bad.

My clicker disappears on the screen.

But the pink shaded area, I'll use this to you.

These aren't basketball clothes.

I'm sorry, I used to be able to touch the rim when I was in high school.

But anyway, um, these aren't jumping clothes.

But that shaded area is what as much as we can get in terms of the half mile.

Um the green area is all of TID 27.

So it effectively covers almost all of it except for north of Spring Street and then over by like Westway and like the state streets in the northwest corner of that district are a little bit further.

So, what we intend to do is it'll exist again for two years.

Those would be the priority areas for next year to allow those folks, there'll be notifications, things of that nature.

You know, this is gonna be the last year you should apply.

Um there's potential to have clean sweeps there, but um we can talk about that, you know, at greater depth.

But um that's as much as we can cover legally, so we'd give all the people that won't be in the TID any longer the opportunity to apply again in terms of the values in the TIDs, those western edges are somewhat you know better off in terms of property value.

I'm not saying the folks there don't need help by any means, but uh we'd give them one kind of last shot at it, um, make that the focus area and fund as many grants as we can there.

But the original question how it would work is 22 would loan or not not loan, but give, don't, donate is what it is.

It would be a donor, it would give to 28.

Those funds projected at $7 million over the less of the TID would effectively fund all the people that are in 27 using that half mile, so it wouldn't take away grants from 28, it would be using the excess funds from 22 to fund the folks that are currently in 27 as showed it at shaded in that shaded area I attempted to jump and wave to.

That's how it would work though.

Okay.

And what's happening with 28 27?

Wait, 28?

28 is that in the infrastructure language and the ability to be a donor to receive those funds from 22, so they can then have the half mile rule applied in the very narrow circumstances of what you see on the map is where they'd be allowed to be utilized at, which would cover almost all of the existing folks, but you know, like I said, north of Spring Street, um, you know, up there it's further than the half mile, and then as once you get past the cemeteries, it's a little bit further.

Um, but that's effectively what uh 28 is doing.

So there will be less grants available to everybody in TID 22, TID 28, and TID 27.

We wouldn't expect that.

No, the the 7 million over the life of the TID is based on the existing numbers that we see now in terms of what that TID generates.

Director Fisher worked with um us to figure out how much would need to be donated so that the people that are in these areas, aside from the ones that are a little further than the half mile, would see no change.

We'd run the program exactly as it is now.

There wouldn't be any less grants or more funds that wouldn't reduce um folks that are eligible in 28.

It's 28 would almost kind of operate the way that it does now, almost you know, blind to the fact that there's the half mile, it certainly exists, but the intent is that 28 would operate independently as it does now and then receive those um as a donor from TID 22 to be able to help fund what's currently in 27 right now.

So the folks in 28 should see no difference.

We've typically done between 150 or 200 a year, I want to say out of 28.

I'd have to you know double check that number, but whatever we've been doing the past several years out of 28, as long as projections hold wouldn't necessarily change.

Ultimately, since it's pay, you know, pay as you go, we don't send money out the door if it doesn't exist in increment.

But as long as things with the market stay as they kind of have in terms of property values, we should be able to do the same amount.

Um that's really the controlling factor.

If you know everything you know goes down like it did in 2008 or 2009 with the housing market, we'll be having a different conversation.

But if assuming that doesn't happen, we'd expect the same things to continue for the next several years.

Okay.

Uh earlier in the presentation, the mayor's uh portion of the presentation, he talked a little bit about the HUD funds and the CDBG grants.

Um I understand that those are frozen, those are the income-based grants, correct?

Yeah, you do have to income qualify to receive those funds.

But those are frozen for some reason that people cannot apply for those.

And the reason I bring this up is because I had a phone call today from somebody in TID 31 who last year applied for a TID grant because she had building code violations in TID 31.

She applied for a grant and told that she there wasn't enough grants for her to qualify, she should apply again next year.

So she still has those open building code violations this year.

She got a note on her door saying that she's in the focus area.

She should apply, but it didn't tell her when to apply.

So she assumed that she would apply this year the same time that she applied last year, which last year was in June, she expected to apply this year in June.

So when she called me and asked me about the TID grant and the extension on her building code violation, I had to tell her that the window for her to apply for a TID grant to address those building code violations and the extension for her had opened and closed.

So I suggested to her that she apply for a CDBG low income because she just lost her job at Unify, and she just had a 1,200 increase in her property tax in TID 31.

So I suggested to her that she apply for a CDBG grant.

So I called about the CDBG grant in the process, and I'm told that we're not doing them, they're on hold that they're being reimagined.

So what are the CDBG low-income grants slash loans being revisioned to?

And it does have an effect on these TIDs.

Sure.

Yeah, so none of the programs are frozen.

So somebody's saying they're frozen.

I would just say if you have a specific question, we can try to figure it out.

There is timing for when the grants open up for the neighborhood TIDS.

Uh so that may come into play, but again, I don't want to get into the specifics of an individual property or an individual applicant on the broader policy that we have here.

But if you have a constituent who has some concerns, just as we did, I think a little more than a month ago in your district elder widener with somebody who has some concerns, please have them call my office and we'll see what we can do to help them out.

But broadly speaking, that there are no funds that are frozen.

They are income qualifying, like you have to income qualify for them, but they're not geographically restricted or or timing restricted the way some of the cyclical nature of the neighborhood TIDs are.

So that was my point, Mr.

Mayor, is that she missed the window in which she could apply for a TID.

So my next suggestion to her was to apply for a CDBG.

I was told by staff in city development that that's the same.

If you want to ask your constituent to give my office a call, we'll try to help her out as best we can.

Okay.

Anyone there's no one else in the queue.

Well, I wore myself out.

I can only imagine what I did to staff.

Once again, if anyone would like to talk, you can push your push your button.

The queue is empty.

So I will I'm gonna reiterate that there is language in these amended proposals for the neighborhood TIDS that I can't live with.

So for example, in the original plan, it did not say that the CDA would be able to make changes in the policy regarding these neighborhood TIDs.

For example, the focus groups and the and the uh focus area and the um building code violations.

That never came to council, it went to the CDA.

I don't want to give up our authority, I don't want to abdicate our responsibility to our the people we represent.

So I want to amend these amended, like for TID 22, where it says here the CDA may amend or otherwise modify this program without seeking amendment to this plan.

I want this to say the council, not the CDA, would make those changes so that we're at least aware of how we're changing these neighborhood TIDs for the people that we represent.

I I think that's so important.

And the other thing is in in regards to infrastructure.

I understand with these clean sweep programs that we are replacing sidewalks, and that's not something that we typically do for infrastructure.

The abutting property owners have to pay for that.

So I want to change the language in here regarding infrastructure and public facilities improvements to include alleys.

Uh so these are changes that we as a body should be considering, and we should not be abdicating that responsibility to the CDA.

So whether we can do that tonight or if we have to do that on the council floor, it's going to be awkward on the council floor because from what the city attorney said and the mayor said that these amendments have been approved by two other jurisdictions, the joint review board and the planning and heritage committee.

So if we want to amend these to be something that we can live with, then we can't do that until next Tuesday, and then it has to go back to both those boards for them to approve what our amendments.

So I there are some lights in the queue.

If if you good, maybe somebody can weigh in.

Thank you.

All right.

So the first uh request is from Vice President Allen.

Thank you, Chair.

I was just listening to Alder Weitner, and I just clarifying in my mind.

It unless I am mistaken, I don't believe you are objecting to the proposal of closing TIDS and opening in another.

It is just that the abdication of our ability to have an overview or oversight of what those conversations is that correct?

Okay, and then the other part was uh regarding the sidewalks and who pays for those repairs.

I'm always thinking that we are asking our community, our city community, uh, to pay more taxes, right?

And then I'm always trying to balance what they are paying or how they are seeing those increases and balancing that with the services that we give them.

So asking them to pay additional taxes and then going back and saying to them, you know, but your taxes don't cover this and your taxes don't cover that.

So I'm I don't object to us being able to repair sidewalks instead of giving that as an additional cost.

I don't know how we look at that with with alleys and things because I always have questions about you know how do we, for instance, um really talk to business property owners uh about maintaining their properties because those things are like hazardous to to vehicles when they drive through those parking spaces, but uh I just think there needs to be should be a balance and there should be an understanding of of what we're doing.

There is a thing where we we have departments and and directors over departments, those that are able to um articulate you know what the plan is when we do our budget season, and we're going over these line items, and then because of time constraints, if we are able to give them a certain amount of autonomy that will allow them to make decisions, uh, and then here's the balance to that, but having the ability for us to have a uh a comprehensive vision of what we are developing in our city.

I think it's a conversation I've asked uh our current DoD to give uh about what it is we're looking at.

It isn't just about you know the housing stock, and I completely understand you know, we get benefits for net new construction is something that we need in the city we're seeing.

But the balance of that was always you know what is the revenue, what other things that we bring into the city that would add to our revenue base.

That is still an outlying question.

It and it's not something where I'm talking about more housing stock or anything like that, because that's a have a plethora of questions that go behind that.

But I'm talking about things that make our city, you know, a hub, a community hub of offerings of uh of services, be it uh whatever type of merchandise, you know, things that make us a year-round destination for our community and for those that would come visit the city of Recene and allow us to partner with our surrounding uh and extended municipalities.

Those are still questions that I haven't had those answered yet.

Um but as far as how our TIDS are working, I I'm really happy to see that they are giving us the returns that we've been looking for.

Uh and open door conversation doesn't ever hurt anything, but I know just off the top of my head, I know where if we close two of these TIDs and we have to open up, it does allow us to continue to develop in our city.

So I don't think I have a I don't have a problem with that, you know, uh, with them being able to say our dollars are are going to be well used over here, you know, and how that would affect and benefit our entire city.

I think there needs to be some give and take there.

So uh I'm I'm willing to have them have a level of a somewhat of an autonomy to make some of those decisions while we have an idea of what the overall vision is supposed to be.

Thank you.

Uh the next one will be Alder Davis.

Uh never mind.

All right.

Um there is no one else in the queue.

If anyone would like to yes, looks like the the finance director, if you can push the button on that as well.

Not that I want to be laborless, I apologize.

I just wanted to remind that Jeff did send the full PowerPoint presentation that went to PHDC as well as the joint review board.

I think last Wednesday he sent that out.

So again, that has a lot of detail in it.

Jeff, myself, the mayor, we are all available for questions over the next week.

We understand that this is a lot, but I did just want to remind that we did send that PowerPoint point presentation as well as the link to joint review board as well as PHTC.

Thank you.

And I will make another call here.

Just really quickly, um, would you be able to send the slideshow from tonight as well?

Thank you.

In addition to that, too, I know I'll I'll be speaking for staff here a little bit, but if there's any questions on this, please reach out, reach out to them.

They're they'll send it out, but they're also ready to answer questions on this.

The goal between tonight and over the next week is really to provide everybody the opportunity to ask all of the questions so that no one is asked to make a decision on the night of council without having all the background.

So everyone is available and at your disposal to answer any and all questions.

Uh older weiden.

Thank you.

I just want to be absolutely clear that when we get the planning and heritage committee report on our council report next Tuesday, that we either will pass all these changes in the TIDS or not pass them, or we can amend them.

And what will happen if the council in their wisdom decides it's in the best interest of their constituents rather than the administration, but their constituents to retain the authority and the ability to uh discuss policy changes in how those neighborhood TIDS policies are handled.

So I want to be sure that that's what we're gonna be doing.

That that are answer from the Yeah, I believe that would be attorney Letney if you're able to give some background on what are the next steps?

Where do we go?

How does this go back to council next week?

I think it's a valid question of what is it a is it a straight yes or no?

Are there availability for amendments?

And if so, what would be the process for that?

And it looks like Jeff uh also has that.

If you guys can push the button on that one.

I think the short version of what you asked is yes, the council does have the ability to take a look at it and do whatever it wishes in terms of what the CDA is going to potentially do um or not do.

Okay, and then would that then have to go back to the joint review board and the plan and heritage?

Depending upon the nature of the change, um, it may have to go back to the PHDC.

The TIDs are actually created by the joint review board.

So there's another meeting after the common council meeting on June 9th is when it's scheduled for at 2 p.m.

The joint review board actually will be the one creating the TID creating the TIDS and also doing all the other actions.

The only thing the joint review board won't see are the closures.

That is your discretion.

And if they close, that's it.

Um, everything else, the plan amendments and the creation of new TIDs does go back to the joint review board on June 9th.

Okay, and that includes any plan changes to the existing neighborhood TIDs, correct?

Yeah, whatever the council adopts will end up with the joint review board.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Is there anything further?

All right, there is another one in the queue.

Uh all Vice President Allen.

Thank you, President.

Okay, so uh I know that we said that we were just focusing in on the the broad conversation here, but we do really need to know.

Um how can I say this?

Uh there are some threats to progress that we are currently making uh in the city that if we don't make these adjustments, we might see that we have to stop those.

Am I right?

I mean, I can't say yes or no.

Well, let's just put that out.

If that is the case, then uh making decisions without you know, to not approve amendments and and take away this autonomy that at least has been present now.

What might put some of those projects in the flux if if I'm correct, if I'm thinking outside of the box here about what we're doing throughout the rest of the city.

Um so it's uh I feel like you know you're walking into the some of our new people into the blind or into the dark without them being able to know exactly what's on, you know, what's at stake here, you know, when we start make if we make this, you know, some choices.

Yes I believe your your questions around the the timing of I don't know at the beginning when I opened this you know the why we put this one move this one up in the queue for the um committee of the whole as far as the the timeline goes and what the the time sensitivity was to it um so I think your question could either be director fisher is raising her hand I know that there is an aspect to that sure thanks so much so there are certain parts of this much larger proposal that one does affect the other for example closing number 27 we must close number 27 and narrow the boundaries of 22 to open new TIDs which would be number 32 which would be your Lincoln King neighborhood TID which is incredibly important and number 33 which is Lake Avenue which is a large catalytic development on Lake Michigan did I say 725 Lake Avenue yes um so those two pieces have to happen one has to happen for the other one to happen so I am uh I have that understanding and I was just making sure that everyone had that understanding sure about why it isn't the necessity to to move the test pieces around correct right in order to be able to go forward with what we are currently in the middle of yes thank you uh Alder Weidner thank you um I was fortunate enough last week to be called by our assistant director of city development Jeff Hince to go over each of the proposed districts and he knows me well enough to know I like the paper I like to cut down the trees and the reason I like the papers so that I can go over and review it and each one that he provided to me each the amendments to the neighborhood TIDs and why we're closing the two TIDs we're closing and why we're opening the two there there really isn't a lot there to read so perhaps we could ask that everybody get provided this in email form so that they can go over it so they'll understand and then you can read what I read you know the things that you know the estimated uh cost for the projects what the project proposed projects are so I I guess I would ask Jeff if he would be able to provide all those documents in email form and send them to the Alderman then if they want to chop down trees like I do and print them off for themselves or they can read them on their iPad whichever they're more comfortable but just reading even the executive summary of the new proposed TIDs and the explanation why we're closing the TIDs is really very helpful to understanding why we're doing what we're doing but to me the most critical part is understanding the language in the changes and the policy for the neighborhood TIDs because that has the biggest direct effect on the people that we are here to represent so if we could get all those Jeff yeah the um the email that was like last Wednesday at nine or 10 or whatever I sent it um that had the slides on it there was also a link in there to the PHDC agenda if you click on that agenda you can you know this works like a council item you can download them if people don't like that do head nod or whatever I can put together an email with a bunch of attachments on there I think it'll be eight based on the amendments because we're closing three and doing stuff to eight I can send out an email with eight attachments on it if people prefer that let me know but if you want to get them that's how you'd get them is click that PHD C link and then whatever plans you wanted are listed on the items and they'll download as well as the staff summary that we'd prepared you know giving the highlight version but as Alder Widener noted there is a Alderman Wider noted there is a executive summary and all the plans that you know have what they do that way as well.

Thank you.

So the takeaway there is if you'd like to go get it on your own that's the path to get it otherwise um he will send you them uh as well and just remind the council uh as there's no one else in the queue if anyone um would you know we're we're looking for a motion to receive and file uh if we feel like this all right there is a there's a motion from Alderland a second from Alder Pabone uh is there any discussion on that topic seeing none all in favor of receiving and filing uh say aye opposed all right the motion carries so that's been received and filed um we've exhausted our agenda uh so we are adjourned

Uh is there any discussion on that topic?

Seeing none, all in favor of receiving and filing, uh say aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

All right, the motion carries.

So that's been received and filed.

Um we've exhausted our agenda.

Uh so we are adjourned.