Community Development Committee - Regular Meeting

2026, can we rise in pledge of allegiance?

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

OK. The membership, the roll call, let it show that Marissa is excused and we have one vacancy. Otherwise, everybody is here. We'll move on to the approval of the minutes from the previous meeting. Do I have a motion to approve? Move to approve. And a second? Second. Anything to discuss or change? Okay, all those in favor? Aye. Public hearings, we have none, do we? No, we don't have any public hearings. We have an action item, a request to approve the appointments to the ARA's Exhibition Center Advisory Committee. Those are in the, that's here, okay. So we need a motion to approve the committee. Move to approve. And a second?

Second.

Any discussion? All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? It is passed as well. We need to elect a chair. I didn't realize my term was that short. But anyway, we're opening the floor for nominations for a chairperson for the committee. I elect, or I nominate, I would accept. Any other nominations? Well, that's a real rude job.

I need a second in there. Somebody needs a second. I believe we do not need a second.

No second, but still vote. Okay.

All those in favor?

Aye. Any opposition? Okay, that's passed as well. We need a nomination for a vice chair.

You know, Marissa, was willing to serve again as vice chair. She didn't say.

You don't know. She sounded pretty open when last time when it happened, um, can we nominate her without her being here? Is that kosher? Somebody want to nominate? I'm on it.

Marissa Downs as vice chair.

I'll second. Okay. We have a nomination in a second on that. Any other nominations? Okay, all those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? That is passed as well. Set the meeting date and time. Are we okay with this rotation that we've been on? I know we haven't had a lot of the meetings, but are we okay with 8.30 on the, what is it, the third Wednesday of the month? Everybody's okay with that? Yep. All right, we'll just, do we need a motion for that?

No, I think we have unanimous consent.

Other than Marissa. We kind of railroaded her, but that's okay. All right, we'll leave the setup like that. And a designated contact person. You'll do it. I don't need. Yeah, okay. That doesn't need to be voted on, does it?

Okay, there you go.

Okay, informational steps. We have a presentation, which is the ARA next steps. Who's going to do that?

All right, so at the last meeting that you all had, there was some direction to staff to kind of draft some next steps specifically regarding the Appleton redevelopment plans or area redevelopment plans. So we're coming back with some more information on that. So first off, I wanted to say thank you for your work on the recent projects that the ARA has had impact on. So first one being the business enhancement grants. There's roughly 20 grand left in the BEG funds. So less than three, seven grand grants that are left. Over $160,000 of ARA funds have been committed or spent. And just less than 800,000 has been invested by business owners for exterior building improvements with this program. 27 grants have been awarded throughout the city since 2020. That's been honestly a really great resource for businesses to take advantage of and I still get questions all the time about availability. The other big project that we'd like to thank you on is the transit center project. The ARA did have a hand in acquiring some of that property and helping assemble the sites. The project has finally received its build slash raise grant from the federal transportation, and that's now moving forward. Construction is expected to begin in 2027, and we're currently finalizing negotiations with the developer. Now, because they were able to receive that build grant from the federal government, the city was able to apply for a technical assistance grant, which I'll be getting more into later on in the presentation. We also wanted to take this opportunity to just do a quick overview of the steps needed for ARA action. This is a sequential step. So you need to have a redevelopment plan completed first, then you can secure funding, then you can go forward with property acquisition, then clean up, request for proposals or sell, and then redevelop the site. So I know the last three steps are usually the most exciting and it's easy to have that as, Hey, we want to, we want to do this, but we need to make sure that we're getting steps one and two done before we're moving on to those other steps. So last time we met, like I mentioned earlier, the ARA identified that the group should discuss how to identify property to potentially include in a redevelopment plan. And now staff is back with a strategy on the next steps. So through the build grant from the federal government, the city was able to apply for this the HUD Thriving Communities Technical Assistance Grant. We have dubbed our efforts as the Appleton Redevelopment Readiness Initiative. We will be working with ABT Global and HUD to help identify sites within our corridor plans to help create an inventory of sites for potential redevelopment and to establish a tool to build inventory long term. We're not sure what the tool will look like right now. We're in the very beginning stages with ABT Global. But ABT will be visiting the city next month actually for the next ARA meeting. So you'll all have the opportunity to meet the people that we're working with on that and we can kind of have a little bit more information about the grant specifically or about the technical assistance specifically. Um, we're intending to utilize this tool to create ARPs, um, which is step one in the area action plan to then focus on acquisition and other action in those areas. Um, we are focusing on the corridor plans that the city already has planning efforts on. Um, those have been identified as more priority areas. So we're focusing on that first and then hopefully this tool can then be expanded in the future to look at other areas in the city, not just the corridor plans. So those areas of interest are the Northland Avenue and Richmond Streets corridor plan, the South Oneida Street corridor plan, Wisconsin Avenue, College North neighborhood, and the West College Avenue corridor plan. We do have all of those plans available on the website. So if you're not familiar with the specific boundaries of that, feel free to take a look at that after the meeting. And I'd be happy to answer any questions. So on the screen, I have the... One quick one.

Absolutely. The West College Avenue, that's the one that's with the state in Grand Chute that's developing the whole corridor all the way out to airport land?

Correct, correct. Thanks.

I got a question as well. How familiar with ABT Global? Are they a consultant? Have you worked with them in the past?

Yeah, so they're consultants through the HUD technical assistance program. So they're not going to be basically creating the tool for us. They're going to be helping us lay out the steps that we need to do in order to create the tool and create this inventory. So the technical assistance is more, hey, this is what we think should be included in this type of tool. This is what other communities have done. And I can kind of dive into some of the other guidelines that we've, the key objectives that we've discussed with ABT in the following slides. But other than that, I'm not familiar with the city having any experience with ABT. Olivia, you can.

District three, please. I've received some technical assistance support through ABT Global, through HUD in the past as well. So I'd say they're an experienced technical assistance provider that HUD regularly contracts with to provide the types of resources that we're getting from them. So I worked on another project through HUD that they were also the technical assistance provider and they had good insights for us.

So they're the kind of the HUD technical assistance people. They have been selected by HUD. They weren't necessarily selected by the city. Correct.

Yeah, HUD contracts with them to provide technical assistance for this grant.

Are we okay with that? Yes. Are there other options available, or you're okay?

I'm not aware of any other options, so... All right. And then on the screen, I have the draft key objectives that we have sent to ABT global. These are the main things that we're hoping to get out of this technical assistance program. Bolded is evaluate the Appleton redevelopment authorities role in public redevelopment opportunities. So we just wanted to have the area be aware that we are one we do want the areas involvement with this program to be a high priority. And then goals and next steps of the RE program. Analyze the properties in the corridors and develop a tool for analyzing and identifying sites needing intervention. The tool will then be utilized long term to continue to expand the inventory of redevelopment opportunity sites. And inventory will be used to apply for funding opportunities related to redevelopment and guide the ARA when establishing ARPs. And I'll turn this over to Olivia. She's got District 3. Oh, Josh.

Can I ask a quick question?

Yes.

For the creation of this tool, do we have a sense of what the timeline might look like, what the length of the contract is for the technical support, that sort of thing?

Yep. So the technical assistance grant is expected to take about 12 to 18 months. So it's a pretty deep dive with them and their team. We are having a meeting every other week with them, kind of discussing things that need to happen, next steps, and coordinating different things that need to happen. So we're actively working with them, but this is certainly not going to be a very quick review. Thank you.

And just for some quick context, too, with the technical assistance opportunity, so I know we've said grant a couple times. The city itself is not receiving funds for this, so we didn't contract directly with ABT Global, but HUD has funds available that they then use to contract with ABT Global, and then because we received the build grant, we're an eligible community to be a recipient of ABT Global's support through the technical assistance program, so just wanted to make that clear, too, that we're not expending any of our own money or even really expending money that was given to us by HUD. Rather, the opportunity to receive the assistance was given to us by HUD as a result of receiving the BUILD grant there. So, yeah, and then they said we're kind of in the initial phases of the readiness assessment for building the tool, and then So they said about six months there and then about 12 months for the actual time to build the tool and get all of the data and all of the pieces that we would need. And that's kind of where their technical assistance advisement and information will really come into play for us.

And just to add on to that, when ABT Global is meeting with the city next month, we're going to be taking them through some of the key corridors and also talking with some of the initial stakeholders. But this is certainly just the first step in the process. They're just trying to understand Appleton a little bit better and have a better idea of what areas really need assistance. And we're still kind of playing around with what this tool could look like for the end product. Currently, we're looking at whether a GIS option would be feasible. So we're investigating that, but we're also, things could change. So the- a mapping software. So having an interactive map that we can import different data and do different types of queries to get different results. So that could be a tool to maybe look at what the assessed value on different properties are, comparing it to other properties, or whether utilities might be a concern, or other kind of key inhibitors to development for different areas.

Do they... Do they have any other plans that they've done for other locations that you've looked at at all?

They do have some available on the HUD website. They've done this technical assistance for other communities throughout the nation.

I would say other communities that have also received technical assistance through this program. So there were four kind of like major areas that you could receive technical assistance under through the thriving communities program. And the one that we chose, which is better investing in underutilized and vacant land seems to be one that there's been less uptake on that topic and that strategy and everything than some of the other topics that were available. So I haven't seen kind of a direct example of the inventory and tool that we're looking to build. But like Steph said, they do have experience with this kind of technical assistance. And then they are providing similar examples of technical assistance under some of the other groups. program types that were provided through this technical assistance program as well. So they do have examples of some of the other types of things they've done available online as well.

I'm sorry, we keep going back and forth, but part of the key objectives that we have drafted is to identify other examples of these types of tools to help us better understand what other communities have done and use something similar.

Would the, and I know we're very, very early and we don't even have a full sense of what I might encourage is thinking about whether that tool becomes proprietary or becomes something that other organizations in the community might be able to leverage that might be helpful in the grand scheme of trying to have a comprehensive approach to how we tackle some of these things.

So now we're gonna move on to our next section here. So from some prior feedback, I believe from Appleton Redevelopment Authority, and then also at the city level, just kind of reconsidering the way that we use grant funds that we have available to us. There was guidance for staff to look into further allowing the Appleton Redevelopment Authority to utilize community development block grant funds. So just for some quick background here, the city of Appleton is an entitlement community for community development block grant funds, which means every year from HUD we receive an allocation of these CDBG funds. Typically, it's somewhere between $550,000 and $600,000 a year in CDBG funds, and there's a wide variety of activity types and eligible uses of this funding. So in order for the Appleton Redevelopment Authority to pursue CDBG funds, we would potentially need an update to the city's CDBG policy, which would allow the Appleton Redevelopment Authority to become a regular recipient of CDBG funds and just kind of slotting ARA in there so that we know each year that you could be an eligible applicant. That doesn't necessarily mean that every year funds will be awarded, but just kind of opening up the opportunity there. As this says, we have funding available on an annual basis as an annual recipient of CDBG funds from HUD. And as I said, the block grant has a lot of different activities that are eligible, but some ones that are particularly relevant to ARA are listed on the slide there. Acquisition and disposition, demolition and clearance, public facilities improvements, economic development and rehabilitation of private properties, and then planning and capacity building are all eligible uses of CDBG funds that feel particularly relevant to the work that the Redevelopment Authority does. But one thing to keep in mind as you think about those eligible activities is that each activity must tie to a national objective. So the three national objectives are listed on the right up there. So benefiting low and moderate income persons, preventing or eliminating slum and blight, and then urgent need. The two most relevant to ARA would be benefiting low and moderate income persons. So an example of that would be doing an acquisition, demolition, and clearance project in a low and moderate income neighborhood where maybe it's some property could be reinvested in. And then preventing or eliminating slum and blight could be an area that's maybe not low and moderate income but has blighted conditions or a specific building maybe that's been blighted for a period of time and needs some additional investment. It's kind of where we would see those tying in. But it is critical that any activity be tied to one of those national objectives in order for it to be eligible to receive CDBG funding. So that's something we would consider throughout the process there.

Quick question.

Yes.

CDBG funding is set by the government on what kind, like how do we get the amount we get?

Yes, that's a great question. So HUD has a complicated formula that they kind of, distribute the funds to recipients every year. So like I said, typically we're somewhere between $550,000 and $600,000. I think it kind of depends on these different metrics that they're looking at, which is pulling from census data, American Community Survey data. And then the other thing is, so each year new communities are eligible as entitlement communities because they've hit, it's about a 50, I believe $50,000, or sorry, 50,000 person population threshold, and then other metrics that go into that formula there. So as new communities become available, funding availability can kind of shift up and down depending on how much Congress has allocated to the program as well. So but it kind of just depends on what Congress allocates, and then from there, how many communities are eligible, and then those specific metrics that they look at for awarding the funds, how those have maybe shifted some between different years for the city as well.

So it's nothing we do to affect how much money we get from them. It's all based on... Okay.

Yes, yep.

Yeah. Before we move on to the next slide, I wanted to make sure everyone... kind of followed what Olivia walked us through. Right now, ARA doesn't have access to CDBG. Can I ask that question? Yep. In the current policy, there's special access to ask for the funds each year for certain entities. So right now, the Appleton Housing Authority is allowed special access. And I think what my team is proposing and wants to make sure you support it is that the Appleton Redevelopment Authority is put at that same plane as the Housing Authority and the first tier that can request funds.

Well, my question was going to be, who is pursuing that update?

It would be, my department would initiate it. I believe it would flow through the CDBG Advisory Committee, up through Community Development Committee, and then ultimately Common Council would approve that.

When would that be happening?

over the next few months. Late summer. Yeah, sometime over the next couple months as we have availability. And then we would have to pull together the CDBG advisory board. So getting everyone that's a member of that together to kind of go through the policy as it exists. But yeah.

Thank you. And maybe just to shuffling the microphone. Thank you, Chair. Maybe just to expand upon that point a little bit, our typical process for allocating out the CDBG award amount basically happens in three different waves. The first wave, if you will, is kind of the set aside for some of the entities that Kara just described, the Housing Authority, potentially the redevelopment authority if we make the necessary policy changes, the city administers a homeowner rehabilitation loan program, the city administers a neighborhood program. Those programs and entities are all kind of in that first wave. Once those dollar amounts are subtracted out, we make the funding available to city departments to make requests that align with eligible activities and national objectives. Some years there are requests, some years there are not. And then the remaining balance is made available in the third wave to external community partners. So think not-for-profits like Rebuilding Together Fox Valley, Habitat for Humanity, Pillars, and so on. So again, what we're describing here is the potential to make a change to the CDBG policy to insert the redevelopment authority within that first wave.

Who's going to make a determination on the amount that we would be looking at? Secretary?

I as the executive director of ARA would work with my team. We'd come and make a recommendation to the ARA as to what we're planning to pursue. And then we would submit it through the process.

Just for some background on what that looks like. So typically as we start the budgeting process for the next fiscal year, so right now we're working through our 2027 budgeting process. That's kind of in the summer when we start to consider the amount that we think we'll get in CDBG funds for our entitlement allocation. And then from there is kind of that first stage when we look at those core, we call them our core projects or core city applicants. Not really an applicant necessarily because we just know that we expect to give funds to these programs, but that's when we start having discussions, you know, with our housing coordinator who does the homeowner rehab loan program to see how much we think she'll need for her program, reach out to the Appleton Housing Authority and kind of work with them to see what we think that they would need. So kind of that early summertime is when we would start to have those discussions and kind of put it in as a preliminary piece in our budget, and then more fall time would be when the preliminary allocation would come through to our Community Development Committee and Common Council. Typically that would be wrapped in with those applications we received from city departments as well. It would kind of be maybe we'd hear about it earlier in the summer and start thinking about the amount that we'd like to see for the ARA and then come fall time is when it would be more of a kind of preliminary amount be available and for public discussion and everything like that.

So the Community Development Committee would make the presentation to the council and the council would approve to slot us in as one first tier, right?

Yes. Yes, it would first start with the Community Development Block Grant Board making a recommendation to the Community Development Committee that makes a recommendation to the council.

And the board is made up, Kara, of who?

We have Alder Lambrecht, I believe you are on it, correct? Last year. Oh, that was last year.

Yeah.

There are several nonprofit representatives, a council representative. Who am I missing?

So it's Common Council President, representative from the Community Development, or sorry, representative from Community Development Committee, representative for the mayor, a representative from the Appleton Redevelopment Authority. So we might have to do a kind of, what is that called there? conflict of interest or something like that, you know, just to avoid anything there. A representative from an outside funding agency, so like United Way, U.S. Venture, other philanthropic organizations, Community Foundation, and then a representative from the City Plan Commission as well. So I believe it's a six-member board there.

I was wondering, depending on the size and scope of the project, would there be the potential to supplement those CBDG funds with general funds?

That would just have to come through the annual budget request, through a capital request.

It's a possibility depending on the size and scope of the project.

I would say it's possible with support from our elected officials.

So just to make sure I'm hearing correctly based upon kind of the process and what you've discussed, the likelihood would be, or if this is what the committee decides to recommend and continue to move forward with, then the process to get ARA into that pool of funds will likely happen after the fact of what we're doing for the 2027 budget this year. So the likely, the soonest we could theoretically be applying for that ARA funding or utilizing some of those funds potentially would be in that 2028 budget is maybe likely.

But we would be planning for it this time next year. Yes. Yes. making the request. So between now and then, the readiness assessment would help us scope.

To help to be able to identify then the ARPs.

Yep, and how much we need.

Connect the ARP directly to maybe what the requests through CDBG would be. And then we would be able to theoretically because CDBG might be the way that we are acquiring the funds.

You got it. And what, if any, capital request we might need from the general fund to supplement state and federal grants?

Thank you. Sorry, I jumped ahead of you on this last slide.

No worries at all. So some key considerations here for the use of CDBG funds. So we would need to determine the eligibility of CDBG funds during the ARP process for a specific site that we're looking at. So kind of that first piece there, the creation of the redevelopment plan is when CDBG applicability should be considered. So that's when we might be looking at whether the property is located in a low and moderate income area, or the property could be considered a blighted site that we could use CDBG designation under. So some different pieces there, as well as the total amount of funding that might be required and how that fits into the availability of CDBG funds, what we expect to have for the program year, and then also just kind of how much we expect to have available for each different portion of our process there as well. So one thing to keep in mind here that not every ARA action will be eligible for CDBG funds, just depending on the location, potentially the characteristics of the site or the use, end use of the building or anything like that. But we obviously want to consider the use of CDBG funds. This is a resource the city has access to and we've been trying to increase our use of the resource at the city level and kind of use it for different project types that we haven't pursued in recent years. So definitely consider the applicability of CDBG funds. And another piece to consider is CDBG funds can be used to assist planning efforts. So that may be an ARA-specific planning effort or even just city planning that could help us get to a spot of developing the redevelopment plans in the future as well. And then just kind of on that second stage there as we go through the redevelopment plan to the secure funding, if it's determined that during the development of the redevelopment plan that CDBG would be applicable and that it's a site that it really could and could beneficially be used for, then kind of in that secure funding stage is where we'd get into actually going through the process to get CDBG funds allocated during the next program year.

Are there some restrictions as to the percent of the CDBG funds that have to go to low and moderate income if we were going to do acquisition may not fall under that?

Yes, so this is another consideration and it would be something as we're considering the total amount of CDBG funds that we plan to allocate and then the amount that the project would need, we would need to be considering. So I believe the threshold there is at least 70% of funds on a yearly basis are required to go to projects that benefit low and moderate income persons. Potentially, depending on the national objective we're using, if a project for redevelopment is in a low and moderate income area, we might be able to kind of use that. It might count toward that ratio, but if it's like slum and blight spot basis or something else it might not necessarily. So that's another piece that we would be considering kind of honestly in that between stage maybe there of the redevelopment plan and then securing funding and how that would balance with that 70% threshold as well of how much funds need to benefit low and moderate income persons on a given program year.

And I just want to stress that even if we are able to add the ARA as an eligible recipient for CDBG, because of how strict the standards are, does not mean that for any CDBG project or ARA project that CDBG funds will be able to be used. So it's just another tool that we can then use to make the goals of the ARA a possibility. Did you want to add on about the blighted and slum requirements at all? Doesn't there need to be a slum or blight study?

Yeah, there's, we can get into, like, I would say some of this, but there's definitely a lot of additional details that we would need to consider with the use of CDBG funds. So depending on that national objective that we're using for the slum and blight spot basis, for example, there may need to be some either additional study showing that it's a slum or blighted area or just some additional information looking into the property itself to prove that there's spot blight at that area. So, you know, for example, if we're looking at a burned down property, it's pretty easy to show that that's a blighted property and that the, you know, the improvement value of that property is worth more than what are the costs that it would, you know, cost to take a fire burned, you know, really messed up property to nice again is gonna be more than the cost of what that building is worth. So there could be some additional studies or information that we would need to look in kind of during that development of the redevelopment plan that would play into the availability of CDBG dollars and other things that we would consider for the use of CDBG dollars. for the project as well. So there's a lot of moving pieces related to CDBG, but it is, we've seen the use of community development block grant funds in other communities in Wisconsin for their redevelopment authorities. The city of Green Bay has some different projects that they use CDBG funds through the Green Bay Redevelopment Authority for. They have a facade improvement program. The city of Milwaukee uses funds through their redevelopment authority, or they provide funds to the redevelopment authority to do large investments, improvements, and different things. So there are definitely examples in different communities throughout Wisconsin with the use of CDBG funds for different programs. and that the redevelopment authorities have really benefited from having availability of these funds. So we'd like to unlock it as an opportunity for the Appleton Redevelopment Authority going forward.

Question. Would you say because of the requirements that it's typically housing related? Not necessarily. If it's a blighted area in a lower moderate income area, It could be a commercial property.

Yes, it can be commercial. I would say housing is probably one of the more common types of projects that we see CDBG funds invested in, but it's certainly not the only eligible use for it and not the only thing that we could consider. this can get kind of into the weeds with CDBG. There's different, as I said, different eligible activities, and then within that kind of the overarching use of it, whether that end use of the property would be for housing or for commercial use or other things, there's additional considerations that would come into play there, but projects that actually support economic development is a use of CDBG, and it is something that we've seen other communities do. Maybe they reinvest or they invest funds into a project that they know is going to serve low and moderate income residents through job opportunities available. So it doesn't only have to be housing, it just kind of depends on what's necessary in that area and then meeting all of those CDBG kind of requirements.

All right. And then just kind of recapping, here's some upcoming behind-the-scenes work that staff is planning on doing. So we're going to be working on the RE grant over the next 12 to 18 months. And just a reminder, that's the Appleton Redevelopment Readiness Initiative that we're working with with ABT Global. ABT Global will be here in July. They will be at the next meeting, and we'll you'll have the opportunity to ask them more specific questions about their experience and some of the tools that they've been able to create and just kind of see how they're going to be helping the city. Some of you will also be asked to be a part of some stakeholder groups, so particularly the chair and vice chair will be included, so there will be ARA participants. support through that process so we'll be getting getting your perspectives throughout throughout the process as well um something that we also just wanted to to kind of focus on is that the the arps that the the ARA should then be looking at, once we have the inventory and tools available to identify those properties, looking at the properties that are not easily developed by the market. So if it's basically shovel-ready property, that's not something that the ARA should be looking at investing in. So focusing more on those more difficult projects that need that municipal assistance in order to make something happen there. That's ultimately the goal of the project. The other behind the scenes work that we're going to be working on is reviewing and amending the policies to provide more opportunity for the Appleton Redevelopment Authority. So staff will be evaluating the existing policies and programs for opportunities to aid the ARA mission. That would include the CDBG funds. And then also looking at the BEG program, because we have had great success, but we are running out of funds in that. So we'll be looking at whether we can allocate additional funds for that or whether we should amend policies to maybe prioritize corridor areas or things like that. We're ultimately going to be looking into that a little bit more in detail. We're also going to be considering some other funding opportunities. As I just mentioned, replenishing BEG funds, researching other grant opportunities, and then the future CDBG allocation to the ARA. that's that's right business enhancement grants so that is a program that allows different businesses throughout the city that are not in tax increment districts to apply for a $7,000 matching grant that they can then use on exterior improvements so it's a Nice project that we can see that visible difference in the investment. And with that, since it is a matching grant, we're also seeing a large amount of other investment from the personal property owner in their building, which is ultimately a good thing.

Quite a bit, as a matter of fact. It looks like they're doing seven times what we're putting into it. They're doing seven times their own. So that's pretty good.

So question, I know that, and I know this is quite a ways off, but there are other funding streams potentially in the future related to TIF and TID districts. Is there any way that you might just highlight a little bit of that? I know we don't have one of those gonna be closing or being close to closed in a while, but I know that might, that could be another avenue to help with some development in the future.

Yeah, so to your first point, When a TID is approaching closure, a municipality can exercise a one to two year TID extension for affordable housing. I believe our next TID closure is eight to 10 years out. However, if there's an existing TID or a new TID created that has in the TID plan funding for real estate acquisition, remediation and redevelopment, one opportunity to Jim's point earlier about capital planning is if a TID is performing and we have fund balance or we anticipate there'll be future revenue, the ARA could request TID funding for land acquisition if it's within an existing TID and eligible within the TID plan. So that would be in addition to general fund capital, there's also TID capital that could come to bear as well.

And as we're looking at some of the planning with the ARRI work, let's say a big opportunity, right? I think of like an Eagle Flats or something like that, which ARA helped with in the past. It sounds like part of CBDBG could be the planning and we could request funds for a planning of a larger project of that scale. which the CDBG might not be able to fully cover those funds, but it could help us to set the groundwork for a capital improvement request of the council as well to do a large scale if something like that is appropriate and meets the criteria that we're looking at as well.

Yeah, potentially.

Cool. Do you have any specific needs from specific people on the committee right now or in the very near future, or are you just...

Um, chair and vice chair, please be available after the meeting next month.

That that's the specific, specific need that we have right now for the tour, right? Yes.

Or for, for the stakeholder meetings we'll be holding. Excellent.

And you said that there's no TIF or TIDS coming up for eight years?

That will be closing. However, there's existing TIDS if any redevelopment plan is within a TID where if that TID has cash on hand or cash flow in the future where we might be able to do capital planning for acquisition, cleanup, and then redevelopment.

All right. Anything else? Nice job. Yeah, thank you.

Just one extra quick note. We would love to use this ARRI tool that we create to apply for other potential HUD grants or other opportunities potentially through the state of Wisconsin in the future as well. Now, once the tool is developed, our hope is that we'll have that inventory and have specific sites or examples of projects that we might be able to kind of utilize that to show in the grant application process that we've already thought through these issues. We're already considering different project sites and that we're ready to utilize HUD funds for different things. So I feel like we've definitely seen more investment in recent years and additional development, additional supply of housing, additional just different types of development that HUD is willing to support going forward as well. So definitely looking into other grant opportunities, whether that's the federal level through HUD or or different federal departments or through the Wisconsin state level and having this tool as kind of a leverage point for us to show that we've really started this work before funds even became available at a large scale as well.

All right. Any other questions? We're good? All right. Nice job, Steph. Next informational item, we have a resignation of Jerry Fisher from the ARA. That was last month, right?

A month or so ago. Just wanted to say thank you to Jerry for his years of service on the ARA. If any of you bump into him out and about in the community, make sure to thank him. Um, we do now have an opening on the Appleton redevelopment authority. There is a, um, application available on the city's jobs page. So if you go to the city human resource page and click on view employment opportunities here, and if you know of anyone who's interested in being a mayoral appointee for the Appleton redevelopment authority, have them submit an application on that, um, application page, and then the mayor's office takes those in and evaluates them just like they would for a job candidate.

I haven't been here for a real long time with Jerry. I met him, but I would like to thank him officially from the ARA. Is there some mechanism the city has to put a thank you in place officially, or is this... We can do something official.

If you would direct... me as the executive director of the area to come up with a certificate or some nice, um, thank you gesture for Jerry for his, his service. We could, um, maybe consider at a future area meeting, presenting it to him.

I would appreciate if you would do that. Perfect. Um, he was, he was on the committee a long time, very long time.

So, and previous to that, he was planning commission, right?

Yes, I believe so.

He was also one of the first establishing members of Appleton Downtown Incorporated.

Really? So knowing that, at the very least, we can plan something at ARA. However, given the magnitude of his service, this is something I'll take up with the mayor to see if something at Common Council, given the breadth of his service, may be more appropriate.

I would be surprised if we're not talking... 40-plus years.

Really?

In a service, yes.

Well, I would appreciate it if you would do that, and we can go from there.

Absolutely.

Thank you. Okay.

Was he an alderman?

He was an alderman. I think he was involved in the Riverwalk.

Yep, yep. It would be interesting to even ask him because it's a long time, and he was very involved. He wasn't cursory ever.

I have to say, I remember his name being bantered around when I was working for the school district for a long time. I never met him or ran across him, but I do remember the name. Okay, we would request for future agenda items. Does anybody, I mean, we just got a lot put on our plate, but does anybody have anything else that they would like to see in the future agendas?

I saw on here that there's a link for the one slide that you guys talked about with the areas of interest. I'm assuming you just go to that link because I would like to kind of know more about, like even within these areas, yeah. Are there priorities even for the area? I mean, you referenced the College Avenue, you know, that that involves working with other municipalities and things. Just an overview of those elements and whether or not, and maybe the best thing is just go back, follow the link and read,

Yeah, I would suggest certainly taking a peek at the five sub area plans, corridor plans that are identified in the presentation. And to your question, yes, there are high level opportunities that are identified within each plan. I think the emphasis of the Appleton Redevelopment Readiness Initiative is to drill down deeper and take a lens toward implementation. And I think that this tool really helped to further evaluate, are those high-level opportunities still relevant? And if so, where do we prioritize our attention? I think Steph and Olivia both did a really nice job this morning. One of the points that they were emphasizing was that not all opportunities are going to be the right fit for the redevelopment authority to step in. And so narrowing that list and really focusing in on opportunities that may need some outside intervention to make it go is going to be really an important part of this overall initiative.

Well, developing all those plans is probably the biggest priority that you guys have to do over the next 12 months.

Right. And the redevelopment plans are much more targeted in scope. I mean, some of the past examples are only six, eight, 10 pages in length, and in some cases only looking at a block or two in area. So it allows us as staff and you as the redevelopment authority to sort of roll up your sleeves, get more granular on the possibilities and really, again, focusing on the action and implementation piece as opposed to just sort of like high-level circling some areas that may need some TLC throughout the community.

All right. I got a question, I guess, regards the future agenda items. I know we're looking at funding sources for outside of the city and that type of thing, but we do have a budget anyways, or funds anyways that were from the sale. Have we talked, are we just holding off on those, reinvesting at this time, or is there plans for potential investment to the communities?

So right now we're just holding onto those funds to benefit the area. As we work through this next year, it may provide additional insights as to where we should put those funds. But for now they're just staying where they are. They're not going anywhere else. So they're just in the area account.

We have an exact amount on that.

We had presented it in December. I don't want to pretend I remember exactly what it was, but there was a, staff memo and I see Dave clicking like he's going to try to find it.

Are we on 8?

If I may, I did find it. So based on the information that was presented back at the December ARA meeting finding at that point was the ARA has a balance of $207,129. 207? 129. That's a lot of money.

Okay. I would suggest that, is there a method that we can request an update on the progress of this as we go through meetings in that as we we only meet once a month we cancel many so I'd like to make sure that we have something to do at our meetings rather than just cancel them so now that we have something to do what I'm hearing you say is for future agenda items is status update on air I what I would caution is

when we get to the point where we're drilling down on specific properties, it may warrant closed sessions if we're talking about potential acquisitions.

And I would expect that to be true for legal aspects, if nothing else. Correct.

Yep. So the further down you get, we need to be really thoughtful about how we structure those meetings to make sure we're protecting the city's negotiating position in the future for if and when we do acquisition.

Okay. If there's nothing else, we have nothing else for informational items. I would entertain a motion to adjourn. Move to adjourn. Second? Second. All those in favor?