Committee Minutes

MINUTES/URBAN DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE
Wednesday, November 12, 1997 - 4:00 p.m.

Members present: Beach, Polovitz.

1. Matter of 1998 CDBG Entitlement.
Sue Redman, Comm. Dev. Coordinator, distributed copies of the annual action plan for the City for fiscal year, 1998, and stated they are making recommendation to council for approval of the plan and ending comment period, that they have received comments on this plan, as well as the Disaster Recovery Plan, and included summary of comments at the back of the plans since they went out for com-ments on both plans at the same time; comment period ends at 5:00 p.m. today. She reported that they had been given tentative ap-proval to develop this plan (description of CDBG activities for 1998). She stated that Projects 1 through 4 continue City's af-fordable housing program where they provide counseling and educa-tion for homebuyers, do downpayments and closing costs assistance and also set aside CDBG monies for housing rehab activities for single family dwellings; that Projects 5 and 6 have to do with creating additional rental housing for low and moderate income families, that these are houses deeded to the Housing Auth. and will be moved to Grand Forks, that Project 5 is for lot, and Proj. 6 for $155,000 for doing foundation, rehab and site work; Unpro-grammed monies, $20,000; and Admin. of $100,000. She reported that Flood Emg. allowed them to do streamlined process - to amend citi-zen participation plan and decided to emphasis area housing because of flood emergency and staffing needs. Once this plan approved by council, will be forwarded to HUD. Committee held the matter to 6:15 p.m. on Monday, November 17.

Ms. Redman reported that the first part of this has to do with expected resources and summarized the cost matrix that council has been working with, and due to public comments sent a draft of the disaster plan to HUD and drew some comments; that they needed to change their budget to correspond with recovery monies.

2. Matter of HUD Disaster Recovery Funds.
Ms. Redman reported that one of the things they had to do for disaster monies from HUD was to come up with action plan sum-marizing of needs, activities to undertake, and budget; and to do public comment. She stated it was important to get a plan into HUD; she stated that when she developed plan, sent to HUD for comments, received word from them that the city council hadn't approved or allocated all of the disaster relief monies and wouldn't have been able to accept recovery plan based on what had been allocated because it would show that there wasn't a need or that hadn't developed recovery plan in full. She stated that it is important to get plan to HUD and to get approved so can start drawing down or access second $121 million from HUD. She stated they recommended going through different categories and review potential of that type of activity or potential need in other
activities and to rearrange budget, which makes it easier to amend
or transfer funds from one activity to another if less than 10%. MINUTES/URBAN DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE
November 12, 1997 - Page 2

She reported they stated that to streamline and approve had to come up with different budget categories, that she reviewed with Terry Hanson and added some of that money to the various activities and ended up with contingencies of $4.8 million. Plan is based on cost matrix and draft recovery plan City is working on.

Terry Hanson, reported that the cost matrix doesn't show $4.8 in Contingencies but they have been advised to keep Contingencies as low as possible, so shows have need. He reported that they have generalized categories - infrastructure, housing rehab. and can work within those guidelines. He reported that HUD allows 20% of any grant towards Admin., and they are directing less than 10% but don't want to short themselves because they are paying for lot of consulting fees, costs and other costs city departments might have that are not covered by a specific project, and until have project set up can't charge costs to it so use admin. He also stated that majority of temp staff will come out of these funds (est.cost of $8.2 million doesn't reflect true cost because not that number of employees being hired), some employees charged to specific pro-jects. Ms. Redman recommended cross-referencing this with cost matrix of November 3, 1997. Held until 6:15 p.m. on Monday.

3. Matter of review of city government.
Beach reported that this committee was given assignment of con-sidering reorganization of city government which was deferred until after November 1 and should get back at that; that he drew up rough outline of how to approach and should include on next committee agenda. He stated that there probably wasn't a lot this committee would do alone but to recommend an approach and do through commit-tee of the whole. He stated he had discussed with Howard Swanson, city attorney, and owing to some new State legislation they mandate a self review of governmental entities every five years, with 1998 as first due date under this law, have to do something, with format up to each entity and have to report that have examined our own governmental structure to decide if adequate or to make changes. Comm. suggested that they invite Mr. Swanson to their next meeting, however, Beach stated he didn't see going into lot of detail in committee because repeat in committee of the whole.

Beach presented prelim. outline as follows: 1) need is because as council required ourselves to revisit subject, 2) certain amount of expectation on part of public to examine issues, 3) mandated by State statute and suggested the following grouping of topics: 1) status of mayor, 2) status of council, 3) committee structure (standing and special committees and boards) 4) relationship with other governmental entities; that right forum would be committee of whole and any recommendations could be discussed further in a public hearing, want to make sure opportunity for public input. He stated he will bring in draft proposal.

Meeting adjourned at 4:40 p.m on motion by Polovitz and Beach.
Alice Fontaine, City Clerk
Dated: 11/13/97.