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HomeMy WebLinkAbout10-15-13 Minutes CRA `i`! COMMUNITY REDEVELOPMENT AGENCY COMMUNITY REDEVELOPMENT AGENCY ANNUAL BUDGET MEETING Ocoee Commission Chambers 150 North Lakeshore Drive Ocoee,Florida October 15,2013 MINUTES 6:00 p.m. CALL TO ORDER I. Roll Call and Determination of Quorum Chairman R. Johnson called the Community Redevelopment Area Board to order at 6:00 p.m. in the Commission Chambers of City Hall. City Clerk Eikenberry called roll and declared a quorum present. Roll Call: Member Grogan, Member Wilsen, Member C. Johnson, Member Vandergrift (arrived at 6:10 p.m.), Vice Chair Corless, Chairman R. Johnson, and Member Keller Also Present: City Manager Frank, City Attorney Cookson, City Clerk Eikenberry, CRA Administrator Russ Wagner and Assistant City Manager Shadrix. II. Annual Designation of Board Chair and Vice Chair Member Wilsen, seconded by Chairman Johnson, made a motion to elect Member Keller as the CRA Board Chairperson. Motion carried 6-0 with Member Vandergrift absent. Member Keller, seconded by Member Corless, made a motion to elect Member Carla Jonson as the CRA Board Vice Chairperson. Motion carried 6-0 with Member Vandergrift absent. III. Approval of Minutes of the February 19, 2013, Regular CRA Board Meeting Member Wilsen, seconded by Member Keller, made a motion to approve the Minutes of the February 19, 2013, Regular Meeting of the CRA Board. Motion carried 6-0 with Member Vandergrift absent. IV. Review and Discussion of FY 2013-2014 Budget CRA Administrator Wagner noted that this year they included a budget message that has been included in the budget packet this year. This message summarized what has been done and what is planned for the next year. He said it has been an active year as far as interest in development in the CRA area and all over the city. He said many of the marketing and planning efforts 1-1 overlap into other areas, however the focus is to bring it all back into the CRA. He said the TIF revenue has gone up slightly this year and we are hopeful it will go back up as quickly as it went down. At one point we were earning over one million per year in revenue and hope to get back there one day. This budget is slightly less than last year because the carry over is less. As a result they are not doing a lot of capital projects, but hoping to make a big impact with the ones that are being done. He said they keep track of what is going on in other CRAs and they are all spending a lot of money on marketing and branding, which is what we are also trying to do. He stated this year they would like to expand on that by holding more events and activities that bring people down to this area. Member Vandergrift arrived at 6:10 p.m. Gateway Signs. He summarized some of the activities that have occurred. He said the gateway sign went up on Clarke Road and that went smoothly. There are two signs for Highway 50 constructed and ready for installation. The sign for SR 429 should be going up in the next few weeks. The sign for SR 50 is being delayed by a recently revised FDOT permitting process. A couple of the smaller gateway signs are constructed and will be going up on city property as soon as they can get some frangible fittings. A few of the smaller signs are also caught up in FDOT and county permitting processes. Three industrial signs are under construction and should be up by the end of the month. Some of them are outside of the CRA area, but he has been involved in getting all of the signs placed. He mentioned the Maguire Road Bridge sign has been a problem because engineers don't want to be involved due to liability issues. They are continuing to come up with a resolution for this because it would be a sign that 100,000 people would see each day. There is also money in the budget to put up the new street signs with the new logos. Later in the year the widening to SR 50 will begin which blocks the entrance to many businesses. The CRA would like to assist our local businesses in addition to the FDOT signs by adding some additional way-finding signs, etc. to get the customers to the businesses. Banners. New banners and new hardware have been added this year. He has had a lot of positive feedback on them. There is more money for additional banners this year. Fountains. The Lake Bennett lighted fountain is up and running. We would like to add more fountains, but did not have enough money to do any more this year. Maine Street Extension. The widening and opening of Maine Street all the way through was finished this year and it has created a lot of interest including some serious proposals; they are hoping that this year we will see something start to develop out there. Widening of SR 50. He said the City Engineer Wheeler and he had been involved in regular discussions with FDOT in Deland with regard to the SR 50 widening project. They have been discussing lighting along SR 50 and they seem to be in agreement that there will be all LED lights along our portion of the roadway. We will be one of the first major projects that FDOT has done using LED lights in this area, which will stand out as LED lights give off a completely different light and brighter light than regular street lights. They have also discussed the landscape issues. We are also discussing a walking park off of Bluford near the police station; it would be a circular walk around the large retention pond. iShopOcoee. CRA spent a lot of time and effort on this project; Adena, a recent college graduate hired to promote the program, ran into some push-back from businesses and at this time and residents are not responding as they had hoped. He stated recent technology apps that allow people to look up things quickly on a smart phone may be why residents aren't showing interest. He said he feels it is still a good resource for the businesses in the community, however they have not really grabbed on to the rewards part of it. For the moment, they are maintaining the site, but there needs to be more discussion with how much more money we want to put into it. Member Wilsen asked why this program is successful in other places, but not here. Mr. Wagner said larger businesses are not interested and too many business owners in Ocoee do not reside in Ocoee or have any interest in the community. There are only about 10% of business owners that have a stake in the community. Member Grogan said he was at the Battery Shop on SR 50 and asked if they knew about iShopOcoee and they knew nothing about it. He felt we should promote it better by going door to door and placing notices in the water bills. Mr. Wagner advised that those things were done and that Adena was able to get about 1 of every 8 businesses she personally spoke to, a total of about 250 businesses. Member C. Johnson asked what the cause was for the push back from businesses. Mr. Wagner stated there was a lot of skepticism about getting something for nothing from a government agency and they are deluged with people coming into their businesses trying to sell something or get them to sign up for something. He said we don't have the staff needed to keep it going. Commissioner Keller stated one of the issues was that people signing up were not at the top of the list. Mr. Wagner said that was taken care of as well as many other enhancements to the site. Member Grogan later noted that there are 951 people on the list, to which Mr. Wagner said they were just on the list and not "registered"users. West Oaks Mall. The new owners are proceeding but not as quickly as we had hoped. We are in constant conversations with them and the CRA did a separate marketing brochure for the mall, but we are not sure they are putting the effort into it that we hoped they would. They don't seem to be doing anything to reach out to the residents. We could have a meeting regarding this and other issues to develop some strategy on. Chairman Johnson asked if all of the entranceway signs are not lit, why can't we go ahead and get them installed. Mr. Wagner said the ones on that are on city property will be installed as soon as we get the frangible fittings; we are doing the work in-house for the laying base and construction and installation of the signs. Chairman Johnson said it has been several months and they should be done. Tri-Cities Partnership. This has become a valuable study and resource for us and the whole region. We just got the first draft for the first part of the study and we are very impressed with the data that they are gathering and the job they are doing. We are spending a lot of time on that but he believes they will pay off in the end and get us a lot of exposure. The community surveys are giving us a lot of information. People are saying they move here for the quality of life, smaller town living, and good transportation. Most residents don't work here. BUDGET Q&A Mayor Vandergrift asked why there is $15,000 in the budget for attorney fees. Mr. Wagner said it is just an arbitrary figure because they felt they would be spending more time on the Colony Plaza issue. He said they paid about $7000 - $8000 in legal fees on that issue this year. City Attorney Cookson stated the owner is processing a legal document to terminate the condominium right now; once that is accomplished that will free things up for us to move forward. This would extinguish the rights of owners who have a box of"air rights" where their condominium used to be. Member Vandergrift stated that we have been trying to resolve the problem for 10 years and close to 2 million in costs. He said we need to make it a property that can be developed without all of the restrictions. Mr. Cookson stated that he believes over the next year the easement and condo issues will be resolved, we have our demolition lien protected so that when the property is sold we can be paid for the liens on the property. Assistant City Manager Shadrix said we worked with Foley and Lardner and our lobbyists to get this action taken to resolve the condominium and timeshare issues. The legislation has passed. Cypress Colony filed the action to resolve the easements and resolve the condo and timeshare issues, all things are finally aligning the way we have wanted them to align for many years. Mayor Vandergrift asked about historical administrative requirements to operate the agency. Mr. Wagner said that is the standard costs incurred for those line items. Member Vandergrift asked for the breakdown of line item 9000 Transfers Out. Mr. Wagner explained for $165,000 allocated from the general fund to cover a proportionate cost of employee salaries for CRA; that is 70% of his salary and 30% of Assistant City Manager Shadrix's. Member C. Johnson asked if there would be a written agreement between the City and the CRA with regard to the Transfers Out of the general fund; she thought it had been done previously. City Manager Cookson said he does not believe that this is necessary for the Transfers Out; he believes the budget was approved with this item in there. Finance Director Horton said that last year there was an agreement for the $100,000 loan, but there has never been an agreement for the Transfers Out. V. Resolution adopting CRA Budget for FY 2013-2014 City Attorney Cookson read the title of the resolution. CRA RESOLUTION 2013-001 A RESOLUTION OF THE OCOEE COMMUNITY REDEVELOPMENT AGENCY ADOPTING A BUDGET FOR FISCAL YEAR 2013-2014; PROVIDING FOR BUDGET ADJUSTMENTS AND THE APPROPRIATION OF FUNDS; PROVIDING FOR SEVERABILITY; PROVIDING AN EFFECTIVE DATE. Member C. Johnson said that she was shocked at the $22,000 for Line Item for Professional Dues, until she read it and understood what it was for. She feels it should not be called Professional Dues and asked for clarification on what the Tri-Cities Partnership will do to market the CRA that we cannot do on our own. Mr. Wagner stated that each city puts in $50,000 toward the overall marketing effort, $20,000 comes from the CRA and the additional $30,000 comes from the City. Member Wilsen asked if signs for business are allowed on the turnpike at the exits. Vice Chair Coreless said the only businesses that are put on the turnpike exit signs are those that can also be used as a rest area, such as gas stations, fast food, etc. Vice Chair Corless, seconded by Member Keller, moved to adopt CRA Resolution 2013-001, approving the budget for FY 2013/2014. Motion carried 7-0. VI. Board Member Comments -NONE VII. Public Comments - NONE ADJOURNMENT–The meeting adjourned at 6:54 p.m. APPROVED: Attest: '1/14%4 , -Bzth-E kenbert , Secretary Rusty Johns Chai