Community Development Committee - Regular Meeting

Okay, we can call the meeting to order.

Please rise and we'll do the 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.

A roll call of membership shows that we have two excused. Jim Van Dyke and Todd Brockel won't be here, they're excused. Can we review the minutes from last meeting and have a motion to approve? Move to approve. Do we have a second?

Second.

And approved and seconded, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, we do not have a public hearing, but we do have an information item. Are we gonna have, Stephanie, are you gonna introduce them? Okay.

Thank you very much. So at your last meeting last month, we gave a brief introduction on the Thriving Communities Technical Assistance Grant that the city received. Now we have our consultants here with ABT Global and Horizon 54 that were chosen by HUD to do this project for us. And we have James Stroll, Sam Kling, and Nagrika Sanga. They're here to give a brief presentation and answer any questions that you might have. answer or ask some questions of you.

Here we go.

I'm sorry. I'm new at this. All right. As Stephanie said, my name is James Schroll. It's a pleasure to be with you all this morning to talk about the Thriving Communities Project, the technical assistance that our team will be providing to the city. A brief presentation, welcome questions along the way. And yeah, as staff noted, we do have a couple questions for you all to kind of better understand the technical assistance that we can provide. I just wanted to introduce the folks at the table here. We can do brief introductions. We do want to provide that kind of overview of the program, the kind of phases and the timeline for the program. Also want to provide some examples of technical assistance that have been provided through thriving communities in other jurisdictions, including some in your own backyard, one in Wisconsin, another in Illinois. We want to talk about the city's goals for the technical assistance over the coming 18 months and talk kind of timeline as well. So I'm James Sheroll. I'm an associate at a firm called App Global. We are a consultancy located in Rockville, Maryland. We do a lot of work with the federal government, including HUD. We do a lot of technical assistance projects as well. I'm the work plan lead for this effort, and I'm joined by my colleagues, Sam and Nagnika. I'll just pass this down.

OK, thanks. Hi, I'm Sam Kling. I'm with Horizon 54. It's a pleasure to be here. We also work on a lot of technical assistance projects. Previously, I worked on the HUD TCTA program in Rockford, Illinois, which I think James will talk about. And nice to meet you all.

Hi, I'm Naglika. Sorry to be a couple minutes late. I am from Detroit, actually, Midwestern, and I work on a lot of HUD projects, and my specialization is in housing, and I am looking forward to hearing what you all have to say today, and we will present a little more about our own work.

All right. I want to provide a brief overview of the program. So the HUD Thriving Communities Technical Assistance Program, you'll see it abbreviated here as TCTA, is a no-cost technical assistance program for local governments. Those local governments have to be receiving federal transportation funding to be eligible. working towards addressing housing needs, particularly for disadvantaged communities, they can receive technical assistance in four topic areas. So that's land utilization, preservation, regulatory reforms, that could be kind of zoning ordinance reform, and coordination, community engagement. The asterisk there by land utilization is because the city is pursuing that topic area. The program is divided into two phases. The first phase is up to six month readiness assessment. This is to identify the technical assistance needs for the community, to document review, review documentation, conduct stakeholder interviews, go on a site visit, which is what we're doing this week. And that culminates in the development of a technical assistance plan. That plan would then be the plan that we would use to deliver technical assistance in the second phase. So this first phase kicked off in May of this year and would culminate in October. The second phase is an up-to-12-month technical assistance delivery phase to provide capacity building support according to the plan that we would be developing with the city and with HUD's approval. So technical assistance is different than normal consulting services. This is co-developed. It is capacity building. This is helping people fish. It's not fishing for them. So it is different than some other services that the city may have received in the past. Oops, there we go. So I want to provide some examples from some of the other communities that either kind of went through the first phase of the TCT program or are in it now. So Sun Prairie is one community that we supported. They have a bus rapid transit program, and they were looking for outreach support and how to better communicate the benefits of that. So the team helped. This city developed a communications plan, an outreach plan, kind of the nexus of housing and transportation, and kind of brought in best practices and whatnot to help them develop that plan and kind of institutionalize communications best practices. In Rockford, Illinois, where Sam and I have done some work, the city wanted to design and develop a housing framework to both preserve and create new housing. They also needed help, and Sam can speak a lot more to this, with doing a lot of stakeholder engagement. Sam and his colleagues led a fair amount of working groups and facilitation. over time to build that network with housing partners and developers and other key stakeholders. So the culmination of that technical assistance effort was the city's adoption of a housing framework that would create or preserve 9,000 units by 2035. And then currently we're working in Bridgeport, Connecticut. The city is looking to very similar to some of the things you all are looking at is trying to look at transit nodes and transit corridors and looking at how to kind of preserve and develop housing, expand housing production and supply. So they are, we are helping them create a a site prioritization guide. We're also facilitating some internal meetings to understand their transit and housing needs and the kind of nexus of those. And then we're going to be looking at their code and their development guidelines to see what changes they could make as well. So this is an ongoing engagement as yet to conclude. So for the city's goals, the city is, through this technical assistance initiative, is really targeting five major transit corridors. So this is kind of the College North area. This is West College Ave. This is Wisconsin Ave. This is South Oneida. And, oh, Redmond, sorry, Richmond, the North. Yeah, sorry. So those are the five corridors. And the city is interested in getting help with developing an inventory of existing properties along these corridors to see which would develop privately and which would need public subsidy or intervention to help the future redevelopment. Touching on some of the key objectives. The city is looking for analysis of these sites along the key corridors. They want to build off the good work that they did at the conclusion of last year to develop the new comp plan. They're looking for also input to identify funding sources, federal, state, and local level. And they're looking for best practices and case studies along the way to see what they could be doing. And then they'd also wanna discuss the opportunities for how they could coordinate better with you all on the ARA. So for timeline, as I mentioned, we kicked off the projects in middle of May. We're here on the site visit, got here earlier this week. We'll be kind of working with the city, kind of following this on moving towards developing that draft TA plan. by the middle of September, and then finalizing that plan the following month. And then we would move into TA provision starting in November through the end of October 2027. Those are the slides I have. I would welcome any questions that you have. And then I think we have, if time allows, potentially some questions to get some more information, if the Chair would permit it.

Questions? So I just had one quick one. With regards to the comment you made regarding teaching to fish, is that then creating policies, procedures, kind of next step guides, things of that nature so that not only those wonderful staff that we have today who are going to be able to be a part of this process, but then in the future that we can activate those plans and kind of whoever the staff might be for the training and technical assistance type stuff? Yeah, good question.

So pursuant to our agreement with HUD, the work we can do is show you how other communities, the policies and procedures that they have adopted. We can discuss trade-offs of if you wanted to adopt this policy versus that policy, what would that mean? And why would you want to do this versus that? What are you trying to achieve? but we unfortunately cannot write a policy for you. Yeah, so that's the limitation of this technical assistance program.

So it's kind of working together with the current team to identify what the needs are kind of today and into the future, and then the team will take that information policies or activate, maybe learn from other communities, bring in some of those best practices, and we'll kind of put them into that in place for the City of Appleton kind of moving forward.

Yeah, and we could also, you know, if the city drafts ordinance amendments or they develop a policy, our team can review it and provide feedback and say, you you know, this may be a reason to do this versus that, or we might suggest different language here, or, you know, this may lead to an unintended consequence that you didn't, you know, that kind of thing. So we can provide that kind of input. But yeah, when it comes to taking the pen, really ourselves, that's kind of where the limitation is.

Thank you. And Josh, if you wouldn't mind me stepping in. they're really helping us kind of identify what we need to kind of consider before the policies or tool or anything that we do create does happen. So they're helping us kind of brainstorm a little bit more than just brainstorm, and they'll be kind of helping us lay out some of those factors that we need to be thinking about.

Thank you. One question, and just to confirm, and I wasn't at the last meeting, so I apologize, but So your contract is funded through HUD, through the grant that was already received by the transit?

Yeah, so, no, perfectly okay. So the city applied to HUD to receive technical assistance.

Oh, separate from what we are, okay, so that was separate. Yeah.

Yeah, the RAISE grant they received made them eligible for this. So you need to receive federal, you know, part of the application. It's a pretty short application that the city submitted. It's like, I don't know, three pages or something. But part of it is, yeah, what federal transportation dollars funding have you received? And then we're paid by HUD, and it's, somebody's talked about it as a grant, but the city's receiving kind of no-cost technical assistance. Okay.

Anything else?

Why don't you fire away at questions you have for us? Yeah. All right. Well, I'm going to, I think, stop sharing here.

You can just unplug.

Oh, that works too? All right.

Sorry.

It's okay. I need a lot of technical.

I just wanted to let you guys all know that we are holding stakeholder sessions both yesterday and today with developers in the area, and this is really the readiness portion, so there'll be more stakeholder sessions later on in the process. This is really trying to help our consultants better understand how Appleton operates and the different areas that need need some help and some of the factors that might come into play.

And maybe while we're waiting, just to clarify a little bit more on exactly what the city hopes for from this. I mean, I know this comes with the transit piece, but you're really focused on the housing portion in these corridors for this technical assistance.

So the technical assistance isn't necessarily just housing focused. It's more so better understanding what factors come into play that might make development a challenge on different sites, any kind of development. So we're looking at just really infill in different corridors and what opportunities might lie out there. We did our comp plan last year. That kind of set the stage for here's what our general goals are. We know that housing is a goal. So this is just kind of looking at that and seeing, you know, does something that we discussed yesterday is like, does the airplane flying area, does that impact how dense a building could be in different corridors? Could that be a limiting factor to development? And from there, we'll be able to Kind of pull those factors together and then be able to look at the city as a whole The city's goal is to then go beyond the corridor specifically, but those are really what we're prioritizing at this time so we're really just trying to better understand the development landscape out there and see what the city might need to step in and help make a project go and Maybe there's some environmental contamination or something like that that maybe the ARA could step in and have a redevelopment plan done in that area. Or maybe it's a simple enough property that the private market is going to solve on its own.

And it doesn't necessarily have to coordinate with any kind of transit station along the way or meeting at all?

So it is a part of this. All of the corridors that we're focusing on are in transit areas as well. So the technical assistance does impact that.

So we would like to kind of better understand how you all envision ARA's role in advancing redevelopment along these five corridors?

Big question right off the bat. So I mean, I guess I can go ahead. Sure. So from so from my perspective, I see the areas role right is helping to be that mechanism for the city to kind of address some of the purposes for what area is what right the blight prevention, you know, where there might be development opportunities that without that private isn't going to be moving forward so in my mind I think of this as a for lack of a better word a tool in the city's tool belt as a way to receive funding and allocate that funding for projects that are going to be beneficial in the big picture but might not move without that additional support of the work that we're

And I think, too, just adding on to that, you know, especially sites that could be catalytic to more, right, bigger initiatives, but, you know, there's some blighted, not even blighted, right, maybe just vacant or underutilized parcel that just has been sitting and no, at some point, the private market's not touching it, right? And we don't have any resources as a body funding as of today where we can deploy funds to help A lot of municipalities have that. We don't really have that. In fact, I don't know if we're always been funded in our budget. So we just, it needs to be a refocus sort of how to engage and utilize the ARA more.

It is one of the things I think you guys talked about yesterday is that providing us with some ideas to where we can obtain funding other than just going to say the Mr. Mayor, we need some money, uh, which isn't going to work. Um, you know, well it could work, but you know, we do need to figure out ways to be able to do that because without the resources, we're really good. We have our hands tied pretty much. and then some help developing ideas for direction as well.

I think that funding thing is a really big component, right? Because it seemed that for several years, this committee has met and been kind of aware of what's happening in the city, but doesn't necessarily always have that resource to then leverage. And so in addition to identifying where the opportunities are, I think knowing that where some other pathways for that funding or other, you know, public-private partnership opportunity might land, things of that nature, to just give us in the area some additional tools in our tool belt to then utilize in the community, because I think we all are a part of this because we care about the city and we care about the the future development and it can be frustrating when you come together regularly or semi-regularly, but then feel like you're not really able to do much with even the information that we have, right? As we're looking out in the community, I think we all have a couple parcels or plots in our mind that we already are thinking like, why aren't we looking at or thinking about those? But that's just scratching the surface.

Yeah, that's helpful. In terms of, and this came up with our conversation with the Chair yesterday, are there any kind of limitations statutorily with regard to different funding mechanisms? You mentioned public-private partnerships and other things. Are there any limitations that you're aware of that would hinder the kind of creative models that could be explored? That might be a better question for staff.

I was going to defer to staff on that one, probably. Dying batteries today.

So the Appleton redevelopment authority is a special purpose unit of government that is technically independent of the city of Appleton. However, we have a relationship in terms of agreements to cooperate and also they can only acquire land that has been authorized by the Appleton common council to be approved for redevelopment. In terms of my understanding of, Like, can there be creativity? The answer is yes. So long as the land in question that the creativity in terms of financing or grants or outside sources of funds is being applied to land that's been approved by the city through an ARP or a redevelopment plan, if that makes sense.

Right. So I think our discussion yesterday, you have to have an ARP ARP in place and then and then that funding would have to be applied to that site. That's the subject of the ARP. Is that right?

Correct. Yep. So whatever, if there's creative agreements between the city and a third party, we would just need to make sure we're on strong legal ground in terms of how the agreement is structured in financing.

That's helpful. And then in terms of how properties have been sold or disposed of previously, are most of them being kind of sold in fee simple? I mean, are there properties that this sounds like some of them may be still retained and there's ground leases. I was wondering if you could speak to sort of how that's been done historically.

My understanding is most have been fee simple. The only land lease that the area has done has been for the exhibition center where the redevelopment authority owns the land, but then the city, leases the land and owns the exhibition center, I think with a 99 year lease or a long-term lease. So we have done both. Typically it's fee simple, but could be other alternatives explored if it makes sense.

Yeah. Yeah, but one of the things that I think we were kind of tossing around since we've had these discussions is yeah, whether, retaining, the city retaining or the ARA retaining the properties and having ground leases could allow that kind of cash flow in the out years. So you could have, be appropriating some funds or using funds to acquire property that then, you know, you still kind of build a portfolio over time that you would have the cash flow for future invest, you know, future investment.

Or, I mean, I think part of it too is that we don't, if we were to sell a property, it's not always clear if we can keep the funds in our ARA coffers. I think just with my development hat on, I don't know, the ground lease I think is obviously not as attractive for a developer. So if you're really trying to encourage some of these developments, it may be nicer for for it to be an upfront payment, but then just to be sure that we can keep those funds to circulate on more projects, which is not a given. I don't know how that all works, but it's not always given that we can keep the funds because we're borrowing from the city to buy it or something.

What I would say is that would be a policy decision of a future council through the budgeting process. So that's where that gets complicated.

Well, that was a word you used before that I centered on was the cash flow. We don't really have a cash flow. We don't have a method for a cash flow at this point in time. We do have some assets, but they're pretty limited.

Yeah. there's certainly upsides and downsides. Yes, developers want to get properties in fee-simple so they have control over the property and they're not hindered and that makes their lives easier. So it wouldn't be a perfect solution in all instances. It just might be something that you all, coming out of our conversation from yesterday, something we certainly heard and that maybe some of the other redevelopment authorities had sort of more dedicated funding and it sounded like maybe

taxing for that or adding taxes wasn't sounded like not viable at the moment potentially so um one one question i guess to that um is it something that would be in your scope that you could suggest maybe modifications to how we have our i don't know if it's bylaws i don't know what it is whatever the agreement we have that could be I mean, because this was written in, what, the 70s, the 80s? I don't know. These are old documents. You know, is it something that needs a refresh to make this body more, make it easier? And not without any oversight. Of course, I mean, staff does all the work for the ARA. But it makes it easier for us to be more active.

Yeah, so... We're here on kind of fact finding. So the city has asked for help with how to best redevelop parcels along these five transit corridors. The city has indicated that they, in their view, having this tool, this kind of site inventory, is one of those key elements. In our readiness assessment and the plan, we might include some other things, and that might include, yes, policy changes or bylaw changes or procedural changes or other things that might be kind of outside of that initial scope. What we would have to get to is an agreement both with city that that's a direction they want to go in so um and also we need approval from hud that um that the scope we're suggesting you know is sort of in scope um i'm going to jump in here um i'm the person who's been here the longest and this is just an interesting conversation because it reflects the change in the community in terms of

how the council has engaged with private development. I think there has been a very great change over the years, and I don't think we're unique this way. Those community elements that would come forth to say, what's the vision? How do we play a role in the vision? How do we work with the city? And obviously the redevelopment authority existed to allow us to do things. in a quiet way before it became a major public discussion, which it got to be, it had to be at one point, but it allowed you to put certain things in place in terms of a plan. And so, Brenda, you mentioned the, or Steph, you mentioned the stakeholders, and I think that's been, I mean, one of my foundations is when we created Appleton Downtown Inc. and we ended up creating a bid district and a lot of ways to generate funds. This is not a huge amount of money, but it makes it possible to do what that organization does to support the downtown. Most of the other areas that we're talking about haven't had that kind of stakeholder investment, not that they're not there, but they haven't been able to organize or follow that pattern. So one of my frustrations has been, as kind of Marissa's, there was a time when it was able to, okay, city, here we are, we've got a need, we've got private developers, private community, stakeholders that really want to help see this happen. And I think part of it is information. So what you're talking about is providing information. and bringing people to the table as stakeholders is a lot easier when you have that information. I think when it comes to federal dollars, people's eyes glaze over, including people who make decisions for the city of Appleton. And I'm not talking about staff, I'm talking about when you engage as a community person and you don't know how these things work, it's very intimidating and it's very easy to say, I'm walking away. So I look at this as, What tools does this give us to make a claim that we need to have more funds? I don't think the bylaws have been looked at, but I think we could change the bylaws, but it would then also recognize there's gotta be some buy-in by either different groups within the city power structure or within the community that understands it. So I'd be interested in knowing a little bit about the meetings with the stakeholders. How's that been going? What are you hearing from them? Because I do think ARA still has a role to play, but I'm not sure how it relates to what we're getting in terms of other input.

Yeah, so I can kind of give an overview on who we've talked to already and who we plan on talking to. Like we said before, this is a readiness assessment so we're essentially just getting a flavor of what appleton has going on, so yesterday we met with Rick carpenter we had a session with with the Chair. And then we also had an established business focus group, we tried to find one from each of the the corridors. So we ended up talking with James Fenland from US Venture and John Julian from Wilmar Chocolates. So that was two out of the five, but it was really just availability. Then we took the consultants on a corridor tour throughout the different areas and actually stopped and walked out and kind of showed them some of the areas and discussed some potentials. Then today we've got the ARA, so you guys are all answering the questions today. Afterwards, we'll be going to the library and discussing with some of the alders, so Lambrecht, Fenton, and Jones. Then we have some department heads that are going to be providing some feedback, so we have Public Works, Park and Rec, and Valley Transit. This afternoon, we've got a developer workshop with Marissa Downs. Lisa Strandberg from Pillars, Tim Seaman from Drift Code Group, and then city staff. And then they're meeting with the mayor later on, and then we're having an in-person debrief. So this is just kind of the initial, hey, this is what we have happening here, just trying to better understand what some of those factors might be. There will certainly be other stakeholder groups involved later on in the process.

There were definitely a few that we had tried to reach out to scheduling just didn't work. So we will be trying to see if we can in the next couple weeks follow up with some people as well, that we know would be great to talk to you that would have great feedback, but just the scheduling didn't quite work for the site visit this week. So

So one of the questions we have for folks is, who else should we be speaking to? So there are perspectives that we haven't received yet. We'd like to know that. So our site visit concludes today, but we would love to be able to reach out to people and have virtual meetings with people to understand more in the coming months as we're developing the readiness assessment.

I mean, I didn't hear on that list Jen Stefani from Appleton Downtown Inc. I think she would be a great stakeholder, as well as the Appleton Northside Business Association would be another group to reach out to. They're much more active on Wisconsin and Northland avenues, so those corridors would be really tied to some of the work that they're focused on.

And Southside? Yeah, I agree. I think those are, if nothing else, because if it gets to even the leader of the group, it has a better chance of being dispelled to the larger group. And I remember, I mean, those groups would engage their members in these discussions. And if you can reach more people, because I feel a lot of times it's a matter of if the average person that's involved in these corridors knows that there's a discussion going on, they're a lot more likely to start engaging and then the people who are making decisions know that they're out there and they care. So.

I guess I have a question regarding like nonprofits and affinity groups, right? I would think like people of progression among Americans, New Hmong professionals, some of those types of organizations might also be valuable to connect with just because, A, to kind of inform them about what's happening, but to hear some other perspectives that maybe we aren't necessarily considering at this table or even in some of the departments in the city. That's great.

You know, as the staff noted, there are and I did my presentation, they're trying to better understand the nuances of why parcels might develop on the private market and what might need public dollars to do so. I'm sure you have specific sites in your head, but kind of without getting specific and maybe talking more generalities, could you share what you're hearing about the challenges in redevelopment, and then why some things have worked in certain places and why some other ones haven't worked?

I mean, I think your big driver is WIDA and what you could, just because some of these sites are overpriced. A lot of them are overpriced. So WIDA is a way to get some of the housing done on sites that sellers might be looking closer to a full price offer. We have no money to support development. That's the problem. I mean, without ARPA, now that ARPA is no longer It's really hard. Wisconsin generally just doesn't have a lot of soft money gap financing. We have TIF. That's pretty much it. We have a home program. that now has BABA restrictions. I mean, there's just not a lot of money. And I think a lot of these sellers are looking for dollars that don't make sense. So people just don't even, you talk once to them and you just move on. It's overpriced. They're not willing to lower their price. Or there are some sellers, like our taxi building, that won't sell. They won't actually sell it. It's listed, but it's not for sale. So I think that those two things make it really hard. And then we have things that, like even in these comp plan, the corridors that we looked at, I mean, there are some parcels that would be great to redevelop, but they're not for sale. And they're not, they're maybe underutilized, but they're not available. We don't like how they look, but they're not, no one's interested in selling them.

They're aesthetically unpleasing.

Right.

To put it mildly.

Yes. I think that's one of the bigger things is that we're somewhat rudderless. We don't have a clear, having a workshop working through really what our directions would be and trying to prioritize some things would be just as advantageous for us as the funding part of it as well, because funding is going to be relevant to what we prioritize. I mean, it's a whole different issue to go to site A and saying it's going to cost this much money to do something here or site b i mean there's a big difference between some of the sites we talked about yesterday in in my indoor voice you know we can you know talk about that kind of stuff but i i really think that uh having help to prioritize some of the targets and then help prioritizing the funding mechanism would be a big deal i mean it's different from marissa who's is a developer and is familiar with finding funding for things like that. But there's lots of targets in my mind, and I'm sure Tash has targets, and I'm sure you do, and you do as well.

I think it would be interesting to look at some of the example communities you know what resources they had available compared to what we have and you'll see it in Wisconsin now more so you know counties are coming to the table with some funding for certain things you know like Sun Prairie you know Dane County has a lot of money that they put forward for different initiatives we don't really have that yet so I think some of these you know I don't know what Rockford or what the community in Connecticut had available, but I think that that is something that, I think that the development community in Wisconsin struggles with a lot. This state does not have a lot of resources, not at the state level, not at the county level, not at the municipal level, so.

I think we spoke about it briefly yesterday. I'd like to know how Green Bay funded so much development along the river corridor there because it had to be expensive to buy those warehouses and tear them down and put up condos or whatever they put up in many of those sites. But that money had to come from somewhere, but it all worked out about that because I've worked with them before.

They have a lot of resources and ones that they create themselves as well.

The ARA creates them or?

They have the ARA creates and loans money. They use the tax incremental financing, the tail on the tids for affordable housing. They are a PJ. They have their own home funds. They use their CDBG in a different way than we do.

if I remember correctly, their funding mechanisms and things like that, that flow into all of that are just constructed differently.

Just one note there too. We are exploring opportunities to move ARA to a more regular recipient of community development block grant funds. So we are looking at amendments to our current CDBG policy to allow ARA to receive funds under the CDBG program. on a yearly or, you know, like kind of as needed basis and have it be a very limited application process to a kind of under our core process for city departments or under kind of our core process that we do. So we are looking into some changes there. But yeah, that is definitely a little bit different for how we're structured versus what you'll see in city of Green Bay or Milwaukee or other communities around us.

And I think that's really exciting. I would just go back to the chairman's comments here with regards to also having direction, right? And so being able to access those funds I think is fantastic, but if we don't know what we want to do with them or how to best leverage what limited funds might be available, all of those types of things I think are gonna play a role into it so I think like the timing of this couldn't probably be better in my mind for us to kind of have a lot of parallel aspects of this kind of moving in the same direction and eventually they're gonna kind of all converge so that we're able to kind of do more sorry that's great Are you okay?

I was just going to add on to the comment you had on TIFF. That is something we're hopeful that this effort will lead to, such as if we create a new tax incremental financing district, say on Wisconsin Ave or one of the other corridors, there would be a mutual agreement between area and the city that if, and when we have revenues, it can be used for acquisition or site remediation. On the affordable housing TID extension front, we also envision a role for ARA in the city when we get to that point where we can exercise that. I haven't had that opportunity during my time in the city. I believe our next TID closure is eight to nine years out.

So a long time. Sorry, Dave?

2034.

Yeah, it's a long time.

Yeah. So the TID affordable housing extension until recently, it would, it would allow you to take the increment created in a tax incremental financing district. At the end of its life, a local unit of government can exercise to elect previously of as one year. Now you can elect for up to two years of incremental revenue to be used by the local unit of government or their designee. In some cases, it's a redevelopment authority such as the city of Waukesha. Um, that pot of money can then be used for affordable housing. So communities do have latitude. Some of them use it for portion goes to land acquisition for the redevelopment authority. A portion might go to a habitat for humanity or a city initiated rehab program. Um, there is latitude, but there's lots of precedent throughout the state where redevelopment authorities or community development authorities are used to deploy those funds out within their municipality. Um, our last opportunity to do that occurred the year before I started.

And I'm still sad about that when I think some of the communities I've seen do it create a revolving loan fund with it. So then they're continuing to be able to utilize those funds when the nine years in between closures happen.

Yeah, one of our colleagues, John Beatty, who's on the team and has been in housing programs for a long time, That is, you know, his observation as well, that that's how a lot of these redevelopment authorities can really kind of start to leverage money is kind of operating kind of like CDFIs where they're, you know, giving low income, or sorry, low interest rates loans and the revolving loan fund, and they can do that, or TIPS was the other things. So those are the things that our colleagues have seen kind of across the country to really start to change the calculus. and give you predictable flows back into your coffers and let you do some more long-term strategic planning. Wondering, as we're kind of reaching the end of our hour with you, what things haven't we asked about that we should have? What things do you want to share about challenges, opportunities?

know maybe information you don't have that you would like to have or what are what are we haven't we touched on I don't know that I don't know that there's any specific questions we may have back to you until we see really where this process goes a little bit more I mean, I'd like to see us as a committee develop some sort of a target list and a funding method that's a little bit more concrete so that some of us can start to think about what we wanna do long term. And I think that's your, I'm sure you'd like to see that too. You'd like to see us have millions of dollars every year. I'm curious, is the meetings that you're having with developers, you're the only developer that you're going to be meeting with?

No, there's going to be other developers that we're meeting with this afternoon. So Marissa is certainly one, but we're going to be meeting with some other folks. So I think we're looking to understand you know, the challenges and talk in, I think, greater detail about some of the things that kind of came up today or this morning about, you know, site acquisition was mentioned, dimensional standards and parking and density and height. I think we want to get into some of that with you all and understand your perspective on what has worked, what isn't working, and If any of that plays into the site analysis that the city wants to have, in addition to things like current infrastructure, what would need to be upgraded? Is that a barrier? Where are the brownfields? Things like that that might need site remediation.

So, since this is transportation corridors that are kind of primarily being identified too, I think not only what is our current status of transportation, but in thinking about what you just said, right, what transportation options in the future are gonna help to enhance and improve these corridors as a whole, and so even thinking about the goal of bringing passenger rail back to this area in the next 10 to 15, maybe 20 years, how do we plan ahead for that? I think about parcels and locations that are along that that are maybe for sale or are sitting there and continuing to degrade in nature, and how can we just kind of layer in the long-term vision to say, okay, this is something that we're thinking about 10 years from now, where does it make sense to acquire a piece and sit on it, where does it make sense to encourage development right now so that it makes this a more likely and more attractive place for when and if that type of transportation becomes available. So I think that's a really big piece as well for me with regards to the development and how we ensure people can get where it is that we're helping to build and create things.

Yeah, we um it's a great point. We are meeting with some of the department heads um as Stephanie noted later today, and we have that I believe that includes valley transit. Um so yeah, I think one of the things we. Want to help think through with the city is. You know, understanding um kind of the current transit service headways cost recovery on those routes like you know, and then what the service they want to provide in the future and. What does that look like? What density might be needed to support that? So I think that's all kind of part of the calculus of having the city think about and evaluate sites that, okay, it's not redeveloping, but the potential here is such that if it could be redeveloped, it could really move the needle in terms of transit service, right? And so I think Marissa mentioned kind of catalytic projects that could really sort of kick things off. And so understanding kind of what those are and what that could achieve.

Okay. Anything else you guys have for us?

I guess one question would be, I know it's been a while since ARPs were prepared, but thinking about what kind of information is helpful for you to decide from the ARA side, whether a site or a corridor for infrastructure expansion, what kind of information would you like to see to consider whether that's a project for ARA or not?

I think the big thing is trying to get together to some sort of a I'm gonna call it a hit list, for lack of any other word, of something that we should be looking at and some help making decisions. If nothing else, help identifying a decision-making process for that.

And the catalytic value of those sites.

I think there's a lot of, I mean, even when we did all the compliance, I mean, there's a lot of opportunities, more opportunities than we can even address in the short term. So I think it's almost makes it harder because there are so many, where do you start? Where do you even, and again, yeah, like not an area that just has sort of one part, you know, what's better to try to address one thing that could kick off a lot of different investment or somewhere that has five opportunities. I don't, you know, I mean, I think that there's so much, I don't even think we know where to start. Obviously staff sort of directs what they want to work on too. So it's not like we just say we like that and, Go do it.

So it's sort of... Well, one of the things I think that we need to develop into is becoming an asset for the staff. The staff reacts to people that come to them and say, we want to do this. And then you go through and work with them and get it done or not. And it's not like there's a whole lot of... There's not a lot of growth that happens that's directed growth. so to speak, and I think this committee could become an asset to the staff to try to say, okay, we've now identified this chunk here, we wanna work on it, let's figure out what we gotta do to get that done. And my big thing is that we have to start to get a list of things to do.

I would say the other aspect that I'm thinking about is some of the cleanup spaces, right, some of the places that maybe need remediation or phase one, phase twos and things of that nature that, right, I think those are harder for sometimes to develop and that could be a role that the city and ARA plays is to come in, purchase that, work with the state to get the funding to hopefully clean that up. And then it now becomes an asset that is clean and ready to be developed, perhaps by the private market. And so something like that could, in my mind, be a successful model as well. And so I'd like to see ways that we can utilize something like that.

One thing just to chime in here in terms of likely deliverables or outcomes and recognizing that AptGlobal wouldn't necessarily be developing it themselves, but assisting us and being thought partners as we develop it is kind of inventory tool, likely GIS interactive web-based tool. Chair, you'd use the term hit list. That may be more of like a heat map, so to speak, right? That if we can feed in the appropriate inputs into that tool. It should help us further refine our list. We've got a number of sites, as Marissa had identified, that came up more through anecdotal or qualitative information through some of the open house and neighborhood sessions that occurred through the Plan Appleton process. So this will be more of a data-driven exercise to hopefully validate some of the ones that are already on our list and maybe help us key in further on locations that ought to be at the top of the quote-unquote hit list.

Yeah, definitely.

Anything else?

Thank you, guys.

Thank you.

I think the deliverable will be very helpful to us. I just wish it was eight weeks, not 18 months. I'm kind of that way, though.

18 months, so there's potential for an early deliverable. So we could get it next week?

Not that early. By our next meeting?

We might not meet for six months.

I was going to say there's something wrong. Okay. Thank you. I think it's going to go well. I think it'll help a lot, and I think we've spurred some other ideas here that we can talk about more. Carol loves hearing from me. All right, what do we have for requests for future agenda items other than this deliverable? Anything else you guys want to put on the agenda? What would you like to see us do in the next meeting?

I feel like it's kind of what we just talked about. I think we're still trying to figure out direction and strategy.

I'd like to talk to Carol a little bit about between now and then about potentially working on a workshop to start to identify, you know, like, I'd like to know what you think, you know, you'd like to see happen within those five corridors, or it doesn't even have to be within those five corridors. And I'd like to know everybody's opinion here. I did meet with a couple of you and I think I know, but we're not getting any clear, I mean, we all have the same target that we keep mentioning either subtly or not so subtly, and nothing ever happens with that. So how do we make that happen? I got lots of radical ideas, but you know. Anyway, all right. If there's no other requests for future agenda, I would entertain a motion to adjourn. Move to adjourn. Second?

Second.

All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Will we stand adjourned?