good afternoon we're calling this meeting to order and at 3:48 today at this time we call for public commentary on any issues or Mr walker good
afternoon watch out for the power of the gavl here uh in 2002 uh the citizens were invited to a meeting in the old city hall with the old people and most of us were old
people too and it dealt with the CRA the formation of the CRA cra was set up to take care of the blight in the communities that meant that the governing bodies were
neglecting certain things to keep the upkeep of the town so this it was formed we were given certain things that we were told and promised number one was we were promised that citizens would get and be put on
the board and eventually the board would be taken over by the citizens naturally so because citizens were going to be the ones that were being taxed they set the CRA up under TIFF tax increment financing which
nobody knew anything about they told us that it would take years years to get any money together because tax increment financing was on the property and it was set at a certain
level and yes it would take years and we would get nothing done if we could we possibly could get the entrance and exits labeled and etc so we knew what we were getting into um the the u it went
out and it was established in 2003 to 2004 the first director was u taken from the uh dog dog pound he was a dog catcher he was very young he didn't know what Sierra was nobody knew what Sierra
was he quit and then he had to be taken back by the city office of the city manager um he knew nothing about CRA but he did exactly what the
CRA supposed to do and that was become a lackey to the city manager office of the city manager the first director that really had any sense about it was hired um and that was a couple of years later and of course
the money started coming in and they started doing things fast forward ahead uh we are on the verge of CRA sunsetting money that we were promised in the early stages finally attributed
and came through budget has $640,000 in it goes to a million has to be spent out of that comes the funds for the CRA
employee one he is semi part-time okay Mr walker I'm so sorry to say this but your time's up just keep in mind it's sun setting
600,000 to a million anyone else in the audience like to speak right we'll move on to the consent agenda that's the approval of the minutes the reappoint of several people and the reappoint of one more
um would you like to approve the consent agenda so moved second all right so there's been um a motion for approval and a second um will city manager call the role
please commissioner Perno yes commissioner War yes commissioner Peebles yes mayor Bro Tim Vanderb yes and we're now moving on to new business which is the approval of the CRA annual
report for 2023 24 mr jankee good afternoon so according to Florida statute once a year each CRA has to prepare an annual
report that summarizes all the its activities um over over the last year um I did this for the Linhaven CRA and I'd like to kind of provide a synopsis of all the activities that we have done the changes the the improvements that we've
made uh throughout the CRA in the fiscal year 2023 24 so you'll see here on the first page we u installed about a little bit over half a mile of sidewalks in the CRA um spending about
$360,000 on on this projects uh another item I'd like to highlight is the incentive program um we spend about $20,000 in um um as an incentive um to individual property owners the benefit
from this is really that we increased the taxable value of within the CRA just through this incentive by 1.3 almost $1.4 million which is excellent news um this is exactly why we established this incentive program so it's working really
well um I do want to point out that we also um worked with city staff Chris Lightfoot Bobby Baker Miss Gainner on uh securing some grants for the CRA that will directly benefit the CRA the
infrastructure of the CRA infrastructure is very important a lot of times you don't see it it's underground but it is crucial to have good functioning infrastructure and so we were able to secure um infrastructure grants around the 10th Street corridor
in the amount of 5 $3 million I think 5.25 yeah and and then um as you know we're working on the improvements of Florida and Ohio Avenue at 4.3 million so this is definitely good news you don't see it in the budget
but it's definitely benefiting the CRA talking about the financials as of September 30th of 2024 we have 1,355,072 in the bank um if you scroll down that page I
love this graph it really shows where we at in in terms of the um financial position or the tax increment changes over the years within the CRA the the light blue line that you see on the bottom is was the projection
um they made back in 2003 as Mr walker pointed out back then there was a study done and um to see what the benefit would be of establishing a CRA and they estimated an annual increase of about on average of
about 3% of the taxable values um the dark blue with the red dots that line actually shows the real numbers and you can see it went it took off in the beginning very well but then we had the real estate bubble burst at the end of
the uh 2008 2009 and it took us a while to recover from that and then um the value uh which is definitely good news u moving on to the next uh page um
so this is the budget uh we started u from last fiscal year we started at 993,000 at revenues of almost 600,000 no revenues of 954,000
uh total expenditures of uh almost $600,000 and our the fund the ending fund balance was $1,348,394 $4 with that I'm going to open it up with for any questions you might have um
I'd be happy to answer them all right any questions from the commission um Mr walker made a statement that he feels that this there's going to be some suns setting I think is the term that he
used of the CRA is it the budget the CRA budget yes so now I know there's been some talk statewide of that but would you like to comment on that absolutely okay yes so two separate things here um the lifespan
of each CRA is 30 years by default um so our CRA the Linhaven CRA will expire um in 2033 well the it's 34 because it the trust fund was set up in
2004 um so we do have an option available to extend the lifespan of the CRA by another 10 years and um so that there is a certain due process that we have to go
through we have to notify the county um and if you if you go back uh to the to the graph that I showed I think it would looking at at these numbers I think it would be justified to extend the lifespan of the CRA by another 10 years
since we had some setbacks um from the real estate uh challenges in in the you know in the 2008 air uh time frame and then also through COVID and um and Hurricane Michael specifically there is some discussion right now item
number two discussion right now in Tallahassee um to um make some changes to the requirements for CRAAS and to set a certain date to sunset all CRAAS within within a certain time frame by 2045 I
believe so even if you were to extend the time frame by another 10 years we would still be within that limit should that proposed House bill pass so right now everything is just up for discussion nothing has been voted on
thank you for that explanation any additional questions that was the question I had so thank you is there a motion to approve the Linhaven CRA annual report for fiscal year 2324 motion to approve second right
motion by Commissioner Ward second by uh Commissioner Pero any comments from the public city manager if you call the vote commissioner Warick yes commissioner Per Perno yes commissioner Peeles yes mr