How will the city decide how to spend $5M on land banking? The Economic Development Committee (EDC) discussed initial ideas at their meeting last Wednesday.
Mark Clear provided a
handout for members, Clear explains, council approved a land banking program, which he wishes they had a different name for. During the budget they directed staff to come up with guidelines for the program. Matt Mikolajewski, Mark Olinger, Mark Clear and Mario Mendoza (not Tim Cooley? He wasn’t mentioned.) met and started coming up with ideas. They thought it would be useful to bring to EDC and solicit feedback. They will look at it again and bring it back next month. Mikolajewski took notes, tried to come up with criteria to evaluate a proposals, set goals and criteria to choose a parcel or not. Clear says $5M seems like a lot of money until you start buying property. He notes the level of importance of criteria, tier one most important, those are must have in terms of a project. Tier 2 are nice to have and 3 are less important criteria, not that any of them are unimportant. Here’s the criteria.
Joe Boucher asks about 3rd bullet under 1, does that include job creation?
Clear says they talked about it, but that isn’t really a goal of the land banking project, it’s a broader goal of committee and city but not something to be accomplished with this program.
Doug Nelson asks what the next steps are, what happens after given input.
Clear says they are getting feedback tonight, they will make revisions and come back for approval.
Ed Clarke says the purpose should be stated, why are we doing this? He says the have purposes and implementation issues involved in the same bullet points. Below market price is not the purpose, its implementation. Cites the acquisition language and says that is a purpose. The goal of this project is to keep large parcels, so he thinks there might be different things going on.
Clear says they can put the budget language in here.
Mikolajewski apologies for forgetting the copies, they will incorporate it into the document.
Clear says he hears what they are saying, but these are the criteria used to judge if the parcel is right, they should ask all the questions to get to a score to figure out how project meets overall goals of the program. He points to the acquisition will prevent a large property from being broken up, is it true or not true or somewhere in between, if look at relatively small parcel wouldn’t meet the criteria.
Vicky Selkowe asks how they are weighted and how the tiers are more important. She askes how they were decided which tiers to put this into, she says tiers 2 & 3 have some more important things and why not just have one list. She points out that leveraging funds in tier three might be key to having a project.
Clear says this is a first pass that people in the room felt were important. He says that within the groups they are not intended to be in any order.
Clarke asks how the criteria will be used. Are they yes/no criteria or gradient.
Clear says they looked at parcels and judged which criteria they met, they will give a score of 1,2,3 and come up with matrix, didn’t take to far, wanted input first.
Nelson asks how this would be implemented, when go into effect and what else needs to happen?
Clear says it’s in the budget, they are inventing the process of how to buy a parcel and then presuming they get to the point that it passes a staff review, then to this committee, Board of Estimates and then the council to spend the money. Clear says Board of Estimates and council required to move forward and seems reasonable to come to EDC for a recommendation.
Selkowe asks how the process is driven? Will it be staff or council members find a parcel or developers come to staff and say they meet the criteria, who is going to direct that?
Clear says any of the above, staff has particular parcels in mind they are interested in, may or may not meet criteria, may not be able to negotiate anyting with the owners and there may be things that owners or alders have that are on their radar. No strong idea how.
Peng Her asks about redevelopment and development, city do it?
Clear says not. Says parcel would be sold for future development, idea is to return to tax roles, but not necessarily ruling that out.
Her asks who decides the criteria on the sale of that property, sell at above market or make a certain percent of profit?
Clear says good question they didn’t address. Maybe need to go through the same process to come up with criteria for sale.
Julia Stone was noticing that with the tier system they could have something that meets all of 2 and 3 and then put on hold to find something that meets tier one. maybe they should have a weighting scale, but if something meets several of the others might be a better process for the city.
Clear says they toyed with that. Do they have some must have? Or 1 or 2 of three? If they don’t meet some criteria will they even come for discussion or just weighting system of 20 – 40 points then considered, for example?
They discuss some language of one of the bullet points.
Clarke says there may be projects not mentioned in a plan but allowed, if permitted and fit within guidelines then good to go?
Clear says it relates back to language in the budget. Special area or development plan approved, they wanted that captured here, not a hard requirement, but important.
Nelson says tiers and weighting had lots of discussion, suggest put that language in here, important but not required. Already have to go to Board of Estimates or council, it will be debated when BOE and council looks at it. Instead of slicing and dicing finely, why not say important characteristics.
Clear doesn’t want to be overwhelmed by proposals that don’t meet the goals or chase things inappropriate, that is why they wanted more details then the language in the budget.
Nelson says maybe they should just eliminate the tiers. Maybe they should just have 9 important characteristics.
Clear says that is the input they are looking for.
Nelson says this creates the net they are looking for, so don’t get swamped by too many project but they don’t want to rule things out.
Clear agrees.
Sandi Torklidson, says that how soon the sale of property will happen might be good to have that as a criteria, if the potential to be developed is so far down the road, they might tie up the money,
Clear asks if they captured that with the catalytic impact – 3rd bullet in 1st tier.
Several members make suggestions about the timing and how to incorporate that concept.
Nelson says most important is the subdivision, that is what they talked about in the past, to have more strategic development. Tough to put a time frame, but reasonable captures that they don’t want them to hold it forever. He asks if the fund will replenish, if sell it then what happens with the money?
Clear says not intention of program, pay back to general fund to pay back borrowing costs and get property taxes, not special segregated fund, not a revolving fund.
Her asks about federal dollars that we might know about?
Clear says leveraging language is in there.
Her says we have TIF and Brownfield mondy, but what about federal money. Can we leverage federal funds?
Mikolajewski is nodding like answer is yes, he says they can use CDBG funds, revolving loan funds, says Madison Development Corporation originally funded by CDBG dollars, that is the immediate federal source of funds he thinks of.
Chair says this is a great idea. Good to build support. Asks Clear to re-articulate and come back.
Clear says they were still drafting the document this afternoon, tells committee members and public to send comments to Mikolajewski, esp on sales criteria. May look completely different but having criteria for sale is important too.
That was the end of the discussion, no purple comments, but, if staff think they can just use CDBG funds for this project, what happens to the goals and the plans required to be submitted to HUD that prioritize where the CDBG money goes? Are they planning on just ignoring those plans and priorities?
