01-08-2025 Workshop Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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HED-13 WORKFORCE READINESS Metro Cities supports financing, regulatory tools, and increased flexibility in the use of Tax Increment Financing (TIF) to nurture TOD. Metro Cities supports funding Transit Improvement Areas (TIAs) and ensuring that the eligibility criteria encourage a range of improvements and infrastructure and accommodate varying city circumstances and needs. Metro Cities supports expansion of existing tools or development of new funding mechanisms to correct unsuitable soils as well as city authority to redevelop land previously used as landfills and dumps. If a city receives initial approval from a state regulatory authority, a city’s redevelopment project approval should be considered final. Local governments and cities may choose to revitalize historic structures rather than construct new buildings. Metro Cities supports extension of the sunset of the state income tax credit and maintaining the federal tax credit for preservation of historic properties. Metro Cities supports collection of the state refund for the historic expenditures over one year. The COVID-19 pandemic changed the way Americans work. As more employees are working from home on a full-time or hybrid basis, more and more employers are downsizing their office spaces. As a result of this national trend, cities are experiencing significant commercial vacancy issues, especially in their downtowns. At the same time, cities are facing a shortage of housing, and a severe shortage of affordable housing. This is a national issue. According to an article published in the New York Times in December 2022, there is about 998 million square feet of vacant office space in cities across the U.S. This presents an opportunity to convert vacant, functionally obsolete, and/or underutilized commercial space to housing units, and many U.S. cities and states are responding to this opportunity by creating incentives for these conversions. Metro Cities supports state funding, tax credits and policy tools that will assist with the conversion of vacant commercial space to residential or new types of uses that support economic growth of cities. Metro Cities supports state funding to allow cities and/or their development authorities to assemble small properties so that business expansion sites will be ready for future redevelopment. A trained workforce is important to a strong local, regional, and state economy. Cities have an interest in the availability of qualified workers and building a future workforce based on current and future demographics, as part of their economic development efforts. Cities can work with the public and private sectors to address workforce readiness to include removing barriers to education access, addressing racial disparities in achievement and employment gaps, addressing the occupational gender gap, and support training and jobs for people with disabilities. The state has a role to prepare and train a qualified workforce through the secondary, vocational, and higher education systems and job training and retraining programs in the Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED), including youth employment programs. 52