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HomeMy WebLinkAboutMinutes MINUTES OF THE LONG RANGE FINANCE COMMITTEE March 6, 2013 ROOM 404 The regular meeting of the Long Range Finance Committee was held on Wednesday, March 6, 2013, in Room 404, at Oshkosh City Hall, 215 Church Avenue. The meeting was called to order by Chair Harold Buchholz, at 5:20 p.m. Members Present: Harold Buchholz, Doug Pearson, Jeffrey Thoms, Jeff Herzig, Deb Allison- Aasby, Jason Hirschberg, and Tom Pech Jr. Members Absent: Bryan Schulz and Matt Lauritch Staff Present: Peggy Steeno-Finance Director and Lori Burns–Administrative Assistant Guests: Allen Davis, Community Development Director, Mark Rohloff, City Manager, Gary Gray, a resident of the City of Oshkosh, and Ethan, a student at UW-Oshkosh I.APPROVAL OF JANUARY 9, 2013 MINUTES Motion to approve minutes was made by Pearson, Second by Pech, Motion passed unanimously. II.CITIZEN INPUT Ethan, a student from UWO majoring in Social Work stated he was in attendance to observe the meeting as a school assignment. III.INFORMATION SHARING / HOUSEKEEPING ITEMS– (~5:20 – 5:25) Staff shared the following items: New email information from the IT department for future use when emailing o among LRFC members. All emails to/from staff are already being archived in the City system, but any emails between members are not. So, in order to prevent members from having their personal email accounts open for inspection due to open record requests, the email address of: LRFC@ci.oshkosh.wi.us, should be added to that correspondence. Announcement of the members that are up for reappointment in June of 2013 – o will need to know if Harold Buchholz, Jeffrey Thoms, and Doug Pearson, are interested in being reappointed. Invitation to the State of the City on March 25, 2013 / RSVP if coming o Distributed the link to the City’s 2013 Budget which is printed in full on the City’s o website. rd Discussed the need to change the April 3 meeting date. Committee agreed to o th change it to April 10. In addition, there was a brief discussion regarding the Prager study. City Manager Rohloff and Community Development Director Davis explained that there are eight members (stakeholders) that are meeting and working on the vision, mission, goals, objectives and metrics. The group hopes to have these items completed in the next couple of months (end of April). The next step will be to work on what the structure of the new organization will be. IV. ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT INITIATIVES (~5:25 – 6:45) Community Development Davis provided a recap of the information that has been discussed to date and distributed a handout, “Tax Increment Finance District, Draft TIF Closure Process / Policy”. Members discussed the three options / topics from the list, and while there was not a direction provided on the overall policy, the Committee did agree to make a recommendation to the Council to approve the extension of TID #8 for one year in order to use the last year’s increment to help with the funding of the Healthy Neighborhoods Initiative as allowed by Wisconsin State Statutes. The Committee then went on to discuss the details of the Regional Revolving Loan Fund that the City is strongly considering buying in to. The question of funding was brought up, and it was recommended (by staff) that the first $500,000 of TIF’s closure funds be used to fund this initiative. There were also suggestions to use the TIF closeout money for other initiatives such as to buy down interest rates with the banks and helping homeowners make improvements. Discussion followed on how all this ties into the Neighborworks organization. The discussion also included the role of Neighborworks, and how they work towards improving neighborhoods. While CDBG funds currently fill some City needs in this area, the future of these funds is very uncertain, and there are often hurdles in being able to use these funds effectively. The Committee then took a vote on making a recommendation to Council on the extension of TID #8, for one year, in order to use the last year’s increment for Affordable Housing (improving the City’s housing stock) Hirschberg made a motion on this, stating that it would be approximately $600,000 for this. Seconded by Pearson. Motion passed unanimously. Steeno will do a memo to present to council and route it to all members for comment before finalizing. In addition, the Committee will discuss, at its April meeting, the overall TIF Closure Policy and work towards a recommendation to Council on this. V.DISCUSS PRIORITIES / TOPICS FOR FUTURE MEETINGS There will be additional discussion on the regional revolving loan fund program and the TIF closure policy, as it relates to the Committee, at the next couple of meetings. VI.ADJOURNMENT Motion by Pech, Second by Pearson to adjourn. Motion passed unanimously. Meeting adjourned at 6:50 p.m.