Development, redevelopment, and working "around (CM Price) to accomplish something."

Earlier today, my NAC colleague Bluegill offered these marquee-worthy thoughts. For context, see: CM Steve Price auditions for Geico commercial, dismisses education and economic development as "feel good projects."

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I'm glad you brought up the topic of Development/Redevelopment. I was going to address it anyway, particularly in light of Steve Price's "isn't that what we pay Paul Wheatley for" comment.

The city has an Economic Development Director, Paul Wheatley. He's been on the job a couple of years and is paid and budgeted solely via Economic Development Income Taxes. He receives no money from the general fund.

Currently, Wheatley's paid $38,000 per year plus benefits at $13,267 for a total of $51,267.

He's given an office budget (supplies, travel, postage, printing) of $8,500 per year.

The only marketing/development funds he has access to without Council approval is a contractual services line item funded at $35,000 a year. For real world perspective, that's about what it costs to run a quarter page ad in the Courier Journal once a month for the year.

If my math is correct, that brings the grand total to $94,767 per year. Outside of the $137,000 allocated to leveraging a much larger private investment in Scribner Place, that's the only money the city currently has specifically budgeted for economic development.

For comparison, consider that over $1 million in EDIT funds will be spent on the sewer system in 2007.

In addition to his daily routine of dealing with business owners, real estate agents, developers, etc, Wheatley has brought ideas before the Council to improve the development atmosphere in the city.

During this summer's budget hearings, Wheatley presented two solid ideas to the Council. One was to use EDIT funds for preliminary design studies on vacant historic buildings downtown, sparing prospective investors the upfront costs of determining suitable uses. The other was for the city to use some EDIT as matching funds for a revolving, low interest loan program in cooperation with the Urban Enterprise Zone and local banks.

Both ideas have proven successful in other communities but were immediately shot down by Coffey, Price, et al, as "corporate welfare".

A general breakdown of recent Redevelopment spending is available via The Tribune here.

One large expenditure not included in the paper's breakdown is $150,000 allocated for emergency repair to owner-occupied, low income households. Because compliance with federal regulations becomes much more difficult above a specified dollar amount, repairs are limited to $5,000 per house or about 30 houses per year.

Their budget comes from federal Community Development Block Grants, again not from the city's general fund. If CDBG money dries up, as almost happened last year per a President Bush proposal, we'll have no Redevelopment Department.

You'll notice that $149,777 has been set aside for payroll and administrative costs, approximately 20% of the overall budget. That's supposed to cover five full-time employees and one part-time employee, plus office supplies, equipment, postage, etc.

I know that Redevelopment has been living with fewer employees to counter CDBG reductions recently but I'm not sure to what extent that will be remedied. To my current knowledge (and don't quote me on this) they recently had four employees but are now down to three since Adam Dickey just moved on recently.

One of the other items you'll notice in The Tribune breakdown is "$10,000 to train neighborhood-association representatives in community leadership through the NeighborWorks program."

NeighborWorks is a national nonprofit with an extensive network of successful revitalization professionals across the country. Amongst many other services, they provide training and certification in community and neighborhood revitalization.

They recently started a national pilot program to bring that training directly to communities rather than requiring locals to travel to conferences in major cities and then try to replicate their activities at home.

Through the diligence of New Directions Housing Corporation, the Louisville metro area was selected as the locale for that pilot program and New Albany was offered five seats in exchange for $10,000 dollars of CDBG funding.

The normal cost of that training for five people would be roughly $15,000, not including travel and hotel expenses for the five to attend several different conferences, a number that could easily equal another $10,000 to $20,000 and make it much more difficult for people to schedule. The total cost for bringing the whole program to the metro area is around $150,000.

After discussing the funding proposal with the Redevelopment Commission, it was decided that the five persons would be selected from a cross-section of citizens and not just neighborhood associations. In fact, only one seat was made available to association representatives.

During the Redevelopment budget approval process (the Council has to approve it even though we have a Redevelopment Commisssion and the money is federal), Steve Price singled out the training money for removal from the budget. His objection? Too many people in his district (or more specifically, certain neighborhood associations) might be selected for training. I'm neither kidding nor exaggerating.

When Redevelopment Director John Rosenbarger reminded Price that the Redevelopment Commission, of which Price was a member at the time, had decided to select a cross-section of citizens, he still refused to yield, insisting that the $10,000 be moved to the building demolition line item, enough to demolish one to two houses.

There was a legal question concerning whether Price and the Council had overstepped their bounds. The law isn't clear about the Council's authority to amend the Redevelopment budget. It seems to be a matter of either approving the budget or sending it back to the Redevelopment Commission for changes. The Council, with Price in the lead, amended it themselves against the wishes of the Redevelopment Commission and then approved it in one maneuver. It could've been grounds for a legal challenge.

In the end, it was decided to not waste additional resources fighting the inanity. Still, Price's political vendetta nearly cost New Albany the chance to participate in the program. Luckily, the City of Louisville and the Federal Reserve stepped in to cover the costs but that wasn't settled or known at the time.

Given the opportunity to learn and cooperatively achieve, Price spit in the face of those trying to improve things and, as usual, neighborhood associations, other nonprofits, and the Redevelopment Commission had to work around him to accomplish something.