January 25, 2007 Minutes (Neighborhood Resources Department)
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MEMBERS PRESENT: |
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Jeanette Collier, marci francisco, Curtis Harris, Susan Mangan, Greg Moore, Brenda Nunez, Kirsten Roussel, Mike Randolph, Patti Welty |
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MEMBERS ABSENT: |
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Carol Nalbandian |
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STAFF PRESENT: |
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Lesley Rigney, Margene Swarts |
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PUBLIC PRESENT: |
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Marilyn Roy |
Randolph called the meeting to order at 5:35 pm.
Approval of the January 11, 2007 minutes.
Harris moved to approve the January 11, 2007 minutes. Roussel seconded the motion, which passed unanimously.
Update – TTH/Habitat water/wastewater request
Swarts said she spoke to Chris Stewart, Assistant Director of Utilities, about what the actual cost to the City would be should water/wastewater development charges be waived for Tenants to Homeowners (TTH) and Habitat for Humanity. He said that the fee is for the tap, materials, system development and even with the current development charge the fee does not cover the full cost to do a tap for water/wastewater. The system development charge is a mechanism for new buy-in for what is already in place and is based on a variety of factors including the debt service. If fees are not paid they just are not paid and at the end of the year, any fees or shortages are included in remaining cost that will be paid by all payers (debt service) and then they determine an appropriate rate structure for the upcoming year and the cost is spread out across all rate payers. Swarts noted that since the cost is spread across all rate payers and users, it might be one of the more equitable ways to fund affordable housing.
Randolph said the concern had been who was going to pay if the fee was waived and since it is going to be spread across all other payers, it makes sense. He said he would work with staff to draft the letter.
Moore moved to proceed with a letter of support requesting that the City Commission waive all water/wastewater development charges for TTH and Habitat in the interest of furthering affordable housing in Lawrence. Roussel seconded the motion.
francisco entered the meeting. Swarts repeated the explanation.
The motion passed, francisco abstained.
HOME Deliberations
Randolph asked for the Ballard Community Center budget that was requested at the last meeting. Welty provided it and Randolph read from the request and passed it around.
Welty noted that Ballard’s budget said the bid could increase up to $4500 within a couple of months.
Randolph suggested the group move ahead with HOME funding deliberations.
Roussel moved to fund 17a, CHDO operating at the 5% maximum of $32,284 and 17b, CHDO Set-Aside for $100,000. Welty seconded the motion.
Harris said 17b has a 15% minimum and asked what the exact amount would be.
Roussel said $96,854.
The motion passed unanimously.
Harris moved to fund 19g, NR HOME administration for $46,000. Roussel seconded the motion, which passed unanimously.
Roussel moved to fund 12b, Home of Your Own (HOYO) for $15,000. Welty seconded the motion, which passed unanimously.
Welty moved to fund 10b, Habitat for Humanity Land Acquisition for $76,000. Randolph seconded the motion.
Roussel said she wanted to fund Habitat but had not wanted to allocate that much. They are looking at another large development project and they are looking at buying existing infill lots.
Welty said what they want to do is buy the run-down trailer park on Walnut.
francisco asked if the Committee wanted to talk about replacing affordable housing – we are losing a lot of it if this trailer park goes away.
Swarts said that argument came up at the time the 31st and Iowa trailer park was acquired and the information that came forward was that in reality, living in a mobile home park may be no more affordable than renting in other areas of town.
Randolph said there is a density issue here – we are going from denser to less dense.
francisco asked if there is a program in place to help with relocation.
Collier said someone has purchased the mobile homes and is charging high rents and they may be homes that have already been condemned. Habitat must be talking about a larger area than the mobile home park for this acquisition.
Swarts said if federal funds are used to purchase property where people are currently living; maybe the Committee should require it be used to acquire existing vacant land. Funding relocation costs can be very expensive.
Collier said there are very few people living there.
Swarts said that regarding relocation, if there are people living there and federal funds are being used to acquire the property comparable housing for displaced tenants would have to be found. Relocation and some rent costs would have to be paid. It has been the Department’s preference to stay away from activities that would require relocation.
Welty suggested modifying the motion to say it will be used for vacant land that will not trigger displacement.
Swarts said staff will look into all of that prior to actual land acquisition. Staff will also have to take into consideration flood plain and other issues.
The motion was amended to fund 10b, Habitat Land Acquisition for $76,000, with the stipulation that the land is vacant and will not trigger any relocation costs.
Mangan asked if private funds were used, would they still have to comply with relocation costs.
Swarts said no, if no federal funds are involved.
The motion passed, Harris dissenting.
Roussel moved to fund 14a, Tenant Based Rental Assistance (TBRA) for $200,000 and 14b, TBRA Administration for $18,569. Harris seconded the motion.
Collier said this is the only program that provides assistance to families and individuals who have been homeless. There are currently 70 people on the waiting list and they can only serve 45-50 families per year. That is now a 6-9 month waiting list. It used to be only four months – additional funds should be allocated to this program.
The motion passed, Collier dissenting.
Roussel move to fund 19c, NR First Time Homebuyers Program for $157,841. Randolph seconded the motion.
francisco asked how many buyers it would help.
Swarts said about five and noted the Department has already spent the entire 2006 allocation.
Moore clarified that it will put five homes into the permanently affordable program.
Randolph asked why the Department requested a higher amount than last year.
Swarts said historically it has been funded at much higher levels – all of the housing activities have been.
Randolph read from past allocations.
francisco said she would like to take the average amount of assistance for a homebuyer as noted by Swarts ($30,500) and multiply it by five and fund the First Time Homebuyers Program at $152,500 and fund TBRA for an additional $5341.
Swarts noted the maximum amount of assistance to homebuyers is $35,000, and that would bring the cost of helping five homebuyers closer to $175,000. The estimate she mentioned was a ball park figure that many projects are somewhere between $28,000 and $34,000. The Department will likely be able to help five with the proposed $157,841 since occasionally the amount needed is slightly less than the $35,000 limit. She also asked the Committee to consider that there are waiting lists for NR programs too. All money is spent by all agencies and programs to the penny.
francisco clarified that if a buyer comes close, the CHDO will come up with a way to finance the remaining amount.
Moore said he wants to invest in the Housing Trust since it is money that can continue to stay in the community and perhaps help those TBRA renters down the road.
The motion passed unanimously.
Randolph stated that all HOME funds are allocated and unless there is other HOME discussion the Committee will move on to the Neighborhood Association (NA) discussion.
Public Services Deliberations
Harris said the Committee has concerns about funding these groups. He feels NAs are the most important part of CDBG activities. He wishes they could fund 100% of all requests but he is willing to have the discussion.
Moore said he agrees in theory with Harris about funding NAs. He questions some of the requests such as salary increases to the living wage and he noticed in the budgets that CDBG funds are being used to pay for newspaper subscriptions.
francisco said that probably started with Oread because the Board was asking the coordinator to look at public notices and talk to the NA about what was going on. The people they hired did not have money for a newspaper subscription. Often if this is someone’s job they may not have a lot of budget flexibility. At one point they paid for cable to watch CC meetings, although not with CDBG funds. For $181/year, that cost seems reasonable to fund with money the neighborhood earned.
Moore said that going through the budget it is apparent that some raise money through advertising and some depend solely on CDBG. He agrees with coordinator salaries but is wondering how long the Committee should enable NAs to keep relying solely on CDBG.
Harris said there are individuals being paid to care about neighborhoods and the resources of this Committee should fund everything they ask for.
Randolph said there is a $150,000 difference between available funds and requested funds.
Mangan asked about the ELNA budget regarding requested vs. actual funds – does that mean there was money left over?
francisco said there was a time that ELNA did not have a coordinator and so they would not have received the coordinator salary funds from the City.
Randolph asked what direction the group wanted to move in.
Roussel said she agrees philosophically that strong neighborhoods are the core of any community but we allocate a disproportionate amount of funds to this activity. Let’s look at keeping things status quo for now and taking a closer look as performance measures become useful. There is a huge disparity. She doubts they can justify spending more than 30% of public service funds on NAs.
francisco said neighborhoods are the reason we have CDBG and that NAs were originally written into the regulations.
Swarts noted that NAs were not written into the regulations. NAs were the mechanism for reaching out into the community to determine needs. Originally CDBG was looking into areas that had fallen into decline or areas that hadn’t been allowed to rise to surrounding areas’ levels because of income. They looked at what was needed to bring those areas up to standard (infrastructure and otherwise) and they used NAs as a mechanism to figure out what people thought was best for their neighborhoods. Rather than the City coming in and telling people what they needed, they solicited input from neighborhoods.
francisco clarified that the limit on dues is not a part of the regulations?
Swarts said that is a part of the locally adopted Citizen Participation Plan (CPP).
francisco said the Committee should look at that – ONA could raise their dues and rely less on CDBG.
Swarts noted that a CPP is required by the regulations but the requirements are minimal and the local CPP is actually more stringent.
francisco said the rules of the CPP are limiting the NAs.
Roussel said newsletters are vital but do we need to have a coordinator to do that?
francisco said that ONA is dealing with significant turnover in the neighborhood. It is a huge challenge and getting newsletters out takes a paid coordinator.
Welty said what is so difficult about this is that the NAs are in competition with all of these other agencies. It isn’t up to her to tell them what they can or cannot do but perhaps a cap would make sense so they can decide the best way to spend their dollars. This is the only group who funds NAs whereas all of these other organizations also get funds from other sources. It is a dilemma.
francisco said she called and talked to the City Manager about a proposal for the Lawrence Preservation Alliance and she feels they need to see a map of blighted areas in the city and somehow the Committee needs to work with the map to target resources to these blighted areas. Her proposal for figuring out what is blight is how it is classified by the County Appraiser. It could tell us where to invest funds. There isn’t currently a good way to adapt or to measure progress.
Roussel said North Lawrence was the only neighborhood that ever qualified on an area-wide basis based on blight – the others qualified by income. We know that these five NAs aren’t the only ones who would qualify but unless we get something from those other areas how can we invest in them?
Moore said it is difficult to encourage other areas to request funds when funding is so limited. The Committee has been up and down this issue for years and talks about it until we get tired and then we just fund them.
Collier asked how impact is being measured. She sees no impact in the Pinckney Neighborhood. Pinckney is a very high rental area with many low-income residents and she doesn’t see the people who need it benefiting from it.
Roussel said they have talked about measuring meeting attendance, but what does that tell us? She doesn’t see a lot of innovative or significant need projects coming out of these neighborhoods. Her NA gets together twice per year and talks about what they want to ask the City to put into the CIP. Does that require 30% of Public Service funds?
Moore said it was interesting reading the applications. ONA actually included a meaningful measure of performance in their application. It is very proactive.
Randolph said it has come to the point where the funding is expected and no innovation is occurring.
francisco said she took the discussion back to the NA earlier in the year about performance measures and she assumed the expectations went beyond paying a coordinator and publishing a newsletter. Blight has been an ongoing focus. They want their neighborhood to look different and it does look different because of CDBG funds. They have also done historic preservation work and they have been successful because of their coordinator. NAs should be challenged beyond newsletter creation.
Randolph asked about some type of tiered funding to reward NAs for innovation. Maybe there should be different funding levels. It is something to consider.
Welty likes the idea of project break-down to be able to approve requests independently but at the last meeting the minimum amount of funding was discussed.
Moore said those small requests might be a product of our new application.
Roussel asked if salaries and operating expenses had to be separated.
Randolph said we may have inadvertently with our past funding recommendations, discouraged NAs from applying for project funding.
Roussel suggested thinking about NAs more but starting with allocating Public Services somewhere else.
Moore agreed.
Roussel suggested considering what else is important and then try to balance that with neighborhoods. This is different from what has occurred in the past when the Committee has fully funded NAs and then whatever is left over goes to other agencies.
Miscellaneous/Calendar
Swarts stated the February 8 meeting conflicts with the annual legislative meeting for Kansas NAHRO and CDD staff will be attending that. She suggested the Committee could either cancel the meeting and pick up on February 22 or postpone the meeting to February 15.
Moore moved to cancel the February 8 meeting. Mangan seconded the motion, which passed.
Public Comment
Marilyn Roy spoke on behalf of the Pinckney Neighborhood Association (PNA). She said it has been a rough couple years in Pinckney and she hates for people to judge the effectiveness of the PNA based on the last two years. She has been pushing for more activity and involvement but there is a problem with the person who is at the helm. Without the PNA coordinator there would be no activity in the neighborhood at all. It is because of the coordinator and her attendance at City meetings that the PNA has a report and is better able to keep up. She works overtime and doesn’t even live in the neighborhood. PNA will have an annual meeting in February and will invite incumbent city commissioners and decide on an agenda for the upcoming year. She has found out that board meetings are not permitted without notifying the rest of the neighborhood. Pinckney issues include neighborhood blight, bad sidewalks, no lighting and on top of it all Pinckney is historic and important to the city. There is a lot of potential – we just need to make some adjustments.
Adjourn
There being no further business, the meeting adjourned at 7:00 pm.