05-30-13 Redevelopment Commission Minutes

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South Bend Redevelopment Commission Regular Meeting — Thursday, May 30, 2013 3. APPROVAL OF CLAIMS (CONT.) Upon a motion by Mr. Downes, seconded by Mr. Inks and unanimously carried, the Commission approved the Claims submitted Thursday, May 9, 2013. 4. COMMUNICATIONS A. Communication from Joseph Tillman of Progressive Urban Industries regarding the sale or grant of real property. To: South Bend Redevelopment Commission From: Joseph Tillman, P. U.I. Re: the sale or grant of real property Greetings, we previously submitted correspondence (4- 23 -13) indicating our discomfort with the commission selling or granting properties without the employment and contracting opportunities out lined in state and federal law. Subsequent to that correspondence the attorney for the commission submitted a memo that denied that the city ever held title to the property. Based on research by our organization, we have concluded that the city did not have actual title to the property. However, we have uncovered some questionable practices concerning how the acquisition and financing of the property was accomplished. The property in question (501 Washington) was not transferred to the historic preservation commission by the city; it was transferred by the St Joseph County Housing Consortium for which the City of South Bend is the lead agency. Since the consortium has funds available to it for the rehabilitation of properties we question why the redevelopment commission was willing to use TIFfunds to finance the rehabilitation of the property. Additionally, although the redevelopment commission did not actually transfer title to this property, there are several other properties that the commission did take part in, these properties are currently part of the triangle redevelopment project. Since the officials of the commission pleaded ignorance when we brought the state regulations to their attention, it is doubtful that these laws were ever considered with transferring these properties. Next there is the issue of transparency; as part of our issue development process we requested from the city a list of all properties that were transferred from the redevelopment commission to a community development corporation. We received a rather long list of properties that the city claimed was done as a courtesy to our organization and that a list of such properties did not exist. This is not true. In 2010 we received a list of properties from the department of Community and Economic Development that shows some properties that were acquired for the benefit of CDC s that were left out of the list that the city submitted to us. These properties are now part of the triangle project. It is these types of actions that forces us to question the sincerity of the city and especially the city attorney.