08-29-16 Personnel and Finance - Laserfiche WebLink

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Mr. Pawlowski resumed the general presentation. In consultation with the Mayor's Office and working with Aaron Kobb, we have tried to figure out the budgetary limitations and capacity of helping ease the burden of the general fund. This budget has $1.2 million dollars in debt service coverage that heretofore has been borne by the general fund. The debt service comes primarily from public use facilities such as police stations or fire stations. To relieve some of the burden on the General Fund, we looked at the TIF statute and believe it is a perfectly legal and legitimate use of TIF dollars to service these funds. That is a big step in terms of a policy decision and demonstrates where if TIF can help ease the general fund we will try to do that. Community Investment also found approximately $200,000 in savings in this budget which came primarily from their own administrative budget. We cut things that weren't absolutely necessary to the functioning of the department. TIF currently pays for an attorney because they staff the Redevelopment Commission and as part of the statute that's how it is supposed to work. We have also looked at those employees with oversight and operational responsibilities for redevelopment projects, a portion of those salaries could be funded via TIF. For example, the Director of Community Investment position spends certainly seventy -five percent (75 %) on a day -to -day basis working on redevelopment projects or activities. In addition to that Aaron Kobb, the Director of Economic Resources, manages all the redevelopment funds. We thought it was okay in that scenario to account for some of our salaries through TIF. Fifty percent (50 %) of each of our individual position's salary comes from TIF now. Committee Chair White asked if they could get a list of what the numbers look like when we shift those salaries onto TIF and also the debt service. Mr. Pawlowski responded yes, we could get that fairly quickly. It is $1.2 million that was previously in debt service on the general fund and now it is no longer on that ledger. In terms of retaining and growing businesses, we have seen substantial momentum. Anyone who drives downtown will see the construction of not just Smart Streets but a number of confidence building projects. Similarly to debt service, we looked at acceptable uses according to the statute for TIF and infrastructure and other related products we thought would qualify. In terms of Public Works and Parks, we looked throughout the TIFs and asked what could we do to lift the burden off the general fund. As of right now, in the River West TIF we are looking at approximately $1.5 million going to the Parks Department and $2 million for Public Works. There are probably obvious needs that are much more immediate than others that TIF can do in terms of infrastructure but it does have its limitations. Anything that is not new will not work in utilizing TIF dollars. What you can do is demolish old things, acquire new property to build things or build new things. That is a rough guideline in what type of projects we are looking at. Mr. Pawlowski stated he is working closely with both Mr. Perri (Parks Director) and Mr. Horvath (Public Works Director) to figure out what makes the most sense in terms of the immediacy of the need that they have and the budgetary framework of TIF acceptable uses. In River East TIF it is $1.5 million for Parks and we imagine most of that will be to complement that Regional Cities initiative award that we were given for the planning and execution of the Howard Park and Blue Ways efforts. In the south, we are looking at roughly $2 million for Public Works and probably $2 million for Parks. What those numbers represent is the ability of those departments to relieve the burden on their General Fund obligations via TIF dollars for 12