10-28-13 Common Council Meeting Minutes

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REGULAR MEETING OCTOBERT 28, 2013 Councilmember Henry Davis Jr.: Sure, thank you, last time we had a presentation like this by the way it was awesome, thank you, was from the Howard Park Neighborhood Association and I just wanted to make sure that I was consistent in asking the questions when we were adopting the plan. Because all neighborhoods deserve a plan and should have a plan, obviously you need some measurements to see what you are doing and hope that you make them all. In the efforts of getting a city to adopt a plan usually that brings up the thought of tax dollars being spent more over there because of the plan or the ability to gain more grants or infrastructure improvements or just more partnership that will equal out to more dollars being spent in that area, so is that plan suggesting that the City do spend city dollars or tax dollars on these plans or is this just a way of saying this is what were are doing to trickle in and that’s it. Is this associated with any type or will be associated with any type of like revenue from the City to support the plan. Rose Skobel: There are no specific projects, with specific city funds allocated that aren’t already projects that are underway. But the plan does lay framework for you to make strategic investments in the Near Northwest Neighborhood, the same as you would in any other neighborhood. They are expressing what their priorities are and how you would make those plans. In other cities that do have quality of life plans in neighborhoods that is used for a criteria for making investment and is considered a positive in making that investment, but in terms of specific requests for funding at this time, there is nothing specific, this is supporting the overall work of the neighborhood and what they are trying to accomplish in partnership with relationship you already have and the resources that you have already committed to the neighborhood. Karen Ainsley: I think that the thing that I would add there is right now, sometimes there is a little bit of a misperception that we receive some funding directly from the city. We do not receive any funding directly from the City in any way, shape or form. Now, we do partner with a lot of agencies so we do take full advantage of crime prevention, we take full advantage of code enforcement and services that departments offer, but we don’t anticipate any line item budget coming from specifically from the city. Councilmember Henry Davis Jr.: In the efforts of clarifying and again I think that there is an understanding that when you present a plan that there after there will be requests for TIF dollars or some sort of grant dollars what have you to be spent in the area because look we have a plan, and we should have priority to those dollars and this is just me being here for the time that I have been for several years so just wanted to make sure that we are clear that this doesn’t bind us to “x” amount of dollars. Rose Skobel: It does not bind you to anything. Councilmember Henry Davis Jr.: I just wanted to clarify that’s it. Councilmember Oliver Davis: Along with that question, the different projects that you are looking at in terms of this plan, do you get any additional “point values” because of the fact that we have formally adopted it. I know that there have been plans that neighbors have brought to us before and because they brought up formal adoption and we have adopted that in their future proceedings because they had a formal plan that was adopted by the City, their projects got rated higher, again, will you get, if you are not getting an additional dollars be getting additional “point values” because what is there outside of the marketability of saying that the city is behind it, what else is there to that when it comes to “point values”, other benefits that come from this vote, because what else would we be endorsing this for. Rose Skobel: The Indiana Housing and Community Development Authority IHCDA does have an allocation of tax credits that they use for funding a variety of projects around the state and that it is a competitive pool of resources. Their qualified allocation plan does lay out the point system for that, and having a project that is within an area that has a plan adopted for it does generate points under their scoring system. So, yes having an adopted plan is advantageous when pursuing state funding for tax credit projects and some other state pools of federal funds. Additionally, what we have seen in other communities is that when there is adoption of the plan or acceptance of the plan by the Council, there is an understanding in the private and philanthropic community that this is a neighborhood where you can make investments that helps leverage investments from those communities that are non-governmental resources. In ways that can be very small to unimaginably large. 28