St. Paul HRA Meeting Summary - November 12, 2025
St. Paul HRA Meeting Summary - November 12, 2025
The St. Paul Housing and Redevelopment Authority (HRA) convened a meeting to address administrative budget amendments for Tax Increment Financing (TIF) districts, approve a loan extension for Ramsey Hill Apartments, and introduce a temporary TIF spending plan amendment. The meeting also featured an announcement regarding the launch of the Emergency Rental Assistance (ERA) program. Commissioner Kim was absent.
Consent Calendar
- Resolution 25-1725: The HRA unanimously approved an administrative amendment to the budget for the Osceola Park TIF District plan. The amendment aligns the HRA budget with actual spending on pledged tax increments, noting that more funds must be allocated to interest payments than originally projected due to lower-than-expected tax increment collections, while the principal remains outstanding per the limited pledge note obligations.
- Resolution 25-1726: The HRA unanimously approved a similar administrative amendment for the Shepard-Davern Senior Rental Housing District (Housing TIF District #3). This amendment increases the interest budget allocation by $160,000 to align with 90% of the collected increments being sent to the note holder.
- Resolution 25-1749: The HRA unanimously approved authorizing the extension of the CDBG loan term and affordability requirements for the Ramsey Hill Apartments project through the end of 2031.
Public Comments & Testimony
- Chair Johnson: Stated the opening remarks of the meeting, facilitating the request for plain language explanations regarding TIF district underperformance to ensure public understanding. (Note: Public comments were not provided by external attendees; the
Meeting Transcript
Housing and development authority to order. Roll call, please. Here. Coleman. Here Johnson. Here. Joast. Here. Kim. Here. Yang. Here. Six present, one absent. That being Commissioner Kim. Discussion item number one. Resolution 25-1725. Resolution approving an administrative amendment to the budget for tax increment financing plan for the Osceola Park Tax Increment Financing District. The housing district and approving an HRA budget amendment. District 9, Ward 2. We have been briefed on them. We've received uh reports, and so I'm gonna hand it over to Director Uh McMahon to see if there's anything to add for the items. Yep. So last year the HRA unanimously approved similar actions for three different TIFF plans, providing technical changes that align expenditures to match the projected use of funds, which then you know helps ensure accuracy in a reporting that we do annually. We have Jenny Wolf here with some additional information and able to answer any questions that any of you may have. Thank you, Director McMahon. Welcome, Miss Wolf. Thank you. Uh good afternoon, Chair Johnson and Commissioners. Um Jenny Wolf with PED. As mentioned by interim director McMahon, these next two items pertain to technical changes to our adopted TIFF plans for housing TIFF districts. And these TIFF districts were created in 2002 and 2003. The budget change is a technical change and does not impact the housing project or the pledged tax increments and solely amends the HRA budget specific to the TIFF district to align with the proposed amended TIFF plan budget. And Ms. Wolf, I received a couple of uh just inquiries from folks I think that are watching. And so I'm gonna I'm gonna ask you to um to simplify that in terms of a couple of things that I think would be really helpful for folks that maybe tuning in to understand this item and just why it's a technical change. Is this is there were the projections lower or higher than what we've received? And also if you could just in simplistic terms for these these next two items share the action that the body is taking in about as simplistic terms as you can get. Oh, Chair Johnson and Commissioners. Um I'll preface this comment with just we have an obligation, um, a pay as you go note that we issued that requires us to send 90% of the tax increments that we receive. The noteholder doesn't care if we call them principal or we call them interest, we have to send those tax increments. Um the fact that the interest has been paid out higher than what was expected is because just of the timing of the tax increments, and the interest has to be paid first before we reduce principal. So yes, the projected increments are lower than what we've collected, but it's not any impact on the ability for the for the note to stay in place. We we we're required to amend our budget so that we can align with our actual spending. Um, if we don't amend our budget, um, then we will overspend interest, and that could be flagged by the state auditor for our TIFF district. Okay, thank you so much for that. I think it's just really helpful for folks to make the distinction whenever we're making a uh a decision regarding TIFF. Um Council President. Thanks, Chair. Thanks, Chair. I I really appreciate you asking for the plain language version because I do think there's a lot of attention on TIFF right now, and I think this is an important example.
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