This meeting started.

This is a meeting for the budget hearing for uh neighborhood and business development.

Today I have with me is Counselor Hudson, Councillor Moore, Counselor Nave, Counselor Cogwell, Councillor Penny, President Pennyagua, Councilor Williams, and Council Month as well.

And I think Councillor Majoke will be joining us.

And we welcome our MBD team and Owen Kearney.

Yes.

Where's your question title Owen?

A deputy commissioner for planning and sustainability.

Okay.

All right.

Um, so we uh welcome you guys and we'll dive right in.

Counselors, thank you.

Uh Michael Collins, Commissioner for Department for Neighborhood and Business Development, uh, along with uh Michelle Spansky, our Deputy Commissioner of Neighborhood Development, and uh, as you introduced Owen Kearney, uh Deputy Commissioner of Planning and Sustainability.

Um so we're actually going to cover two budgets today.

Uh so we've got the uh when when you look at the Department of Neighborhood and Business Development, uh there are three budgets that cover that department, and that is uh the one that is uh what's often referred to as MBD proper.

So that's the economic development and community development.

There's the uh one for planning and sustainability, and and we'll cover both of those today, and then next week we'll cover the one for code enforcement.

So uh to start with, we're gonna go just for run a show.

Uh we're gonna cover uh uh a top level overview, uh we'll get into business development, Michelle will follow up with uh the neighborhood development, and then Owen will uh round us out as we transition to the planning sustainability.

So that's uh budget.

So that's that's how we're gonna walk through these things.

Uh so uh I I want to start with a a huge thank you to the budget team uh that has really supported us through the process of getting to today.

Uh and so uh to everybody on that team sitting right behind me.

Thank you.

Uh uh our our own finance team, I know uh uh Jackie Duong uh uh is here.

I see Victor Foe from our finance team.

Um and then we've got representatives from uh the different divisions uh as well that I may call on uh if you guys end up with some questions that uh they can get into the specifics of so from a high level.

Um I'm gonna start with so you've got four handouts.

One is uh a top level org chart that looks like this.

Um we we can start with that.

Uh and then the uh what we'll get into after that is going to be uh just to follow it up.

I'm going back to my teaching days and saying let's look at uh uh make sure you guys are are clear on what you're looking at.

To follow it up, we're gonna uh look at the uh business development budget, which I have filed among many other papers here, and I will pull that out shortly.

So uh so high level, we've got four main divisions uh that we that we just went over.

Um there are about 30 a little less than 35 people in the um the three divisions that we're covering today.

Um so between those two budgets, we're we're looking at uh a little over 1.3 million, just to tick over 1.3 million for uh the neighborhood and business development budget, and uh just to tick under 390,000 for planning and sustainability.

Uh from an economic impact standpoint, um that money supports uh the fact that we are able to put into the city and out to our partners uh uh 61 million dollars uh worth of economic and neighborhood development that we do across uh a tremendous number of uh grants and uh lending from our said uh from SEDCO, our business development uh team.

So uh what that tends to look like is uh really really vary.

We see we've got 16 different funding sources.

Uh we've got uh 32 different uh grants, uh not including the lending that we do that really what all of this work does is make sure that as we understand from our community, and that's the collective we, right?

It's it's uh the administration and and the common council, and we you know we appreciate the the uh very regular communication that we have with uh with you regarding our constituent uh concerns, whether they are business development um or uh uh or housing development related.

Uh but it puts us in a position where we are able to take uh less than two million dollars and uh do more than 30 times that amount of work within the community.

So it's it's a it's an incredibly efficient team, especially because of the fact that this work goes across uh the the different divisions.

So these divisions support the the two divisions that we're talking about uh right now support five different authorities, four of which are active, uh but we do reporting on five.

So you've got Syracuse Housing Strategies Corporation, uh the Syracuse Urban Renewal Agency, uh the Industrial Development Authority, SIDA, our economic development corporation, SEDCO, and then uh the the dormant uh Syracuse Local Development Corporation.

So we staff uh again four of those five uh and use those to make sure that we are uh supporting the work that we need to do when it comes to housing development, uh when it comes to economic development across the city.

From uh um uh SIDA, for example, has seven different projects uh that are either under construction, six of them are under construction, one one of them's just finished in the class financial closing right now, uh that has 289 million dollars worth of uh development to it that's bringing in 700 and uh j just under 800 housing units.

Uh and again, because of our work with uh the zoning team a couple of years ago, and our zoning code uh requires that we've got affordable housing in any large project.

That all means that there's uh there's affordable housing uh components to all of those projects.

So uh it's it's meeting the need, it's encouraging the growth, and it's doing it in a way that is highly efficient for us.

Uh when you look at what we're doing with SEDCO, uh the fact that we've got one point uh 1.7, 1.8 million dollars worth of lending that's happened, and we are the business lender of last chance basically.

So uh what we are um what we encourage our applicants to do is first look to make sure that they can uh achieve their their borrowing needs through a traditional financial institution.

The more they're able to do that, the more they are able to then grow that relationship with that institution, and they're better positioned to faster expand their own business because of those lending relationships.

When they can't do that, we have more creative underwriting that we're able to do.

So our uh our staff has on uh does their uh own underwriting.

Ben Slate, who heads up that team, uh is uh comes to us from the uh banking world as a commercial underwriter, but we're able so we're able to take a look and understand really why a traditional lender might not support this project and why it is reasonably safe for SEDCO to do it, and it is a benefit to the community to be able to do it.

So a lot of a lot of the loans that we put out there are out there because those business owners should have access to them.

Our community is better off because of those projects, uh for one reason or another, um the more conservative traditional lending institutions just won't take a chance on them.

So when you look at that type of work, it's it's a huge impact.

And then we've got work such as uh uh our work with the community uh the CNI grant.