09-10-2003 Council Agenda - Laserfiche WebLink

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potential tax levy. The issues at that time were governance and disbursal of money. There were also some concerns regarding the Housing Resource. Center. Commissioner Rettman said she devised this plan in order to move forward. Points she considered were: ➢ There is a'need for maximum local control and flexibility of the dollars if there was a levy; ➢ All suburban communities would benefit if a levy was done, yet the County could continue to leverage maximum Federal and State dollars by the aggregate dollars; ➢ Every municipality would have at least five years to use their dollars; however, if a longer time was needed, the dollars could be banked or communities could co- mingle the dollars if one community wanted to go with another community to buy the services of the Housing Resource Center. Commissioner Rettman continued she wanted minimum County involvement and maximum ability by the local elected officials to be able to use Minnesota Statutes, Chapter 469. At this point, Commissioner Rettman called on each municipality to comment as follows: White Bear Township Not represented White Bear Lake Mark Sather, representing White Bear Lake told the group this proposal had been discussed with their city council and they reflected back to when the County originally formed an HRA. At that time, there were concerns about creating duplicative levels of government or additional levels of government as some cities already had an HRA. There was concern at that time regarding the potential of a County levy and it was pretty clear that the message sent to the units of government was that the County had no intention of getting into the business of levy. The HRA was only to create a conduit through which the municipalities could bring these plans to the County. So with that in mind, the White Bear Lake council saw somewhat of a potential change in policy. The reference to creating additional levels of government is incorrect because White Bear Lake and Roseville, were patterned to have similar HRA's without necessarily a separate board. The White Bear Lake city council has vested the HRA authority in itself just like the County board does.- -They have absolutely no additional staff, it is simply a method of gaining access to different forms of taxation and /or to execute different projects. White Bear Lake is concerned about the County change in the policy. They think that it is a step more into the County getting into the redevelopment business and perhaps not necessarily consistent with what was mentioned as the objective of maximum local -4