As a followup to Sunday's Weber County Forum writeup, which narrowly focused on the Godfrey administration's "stealth" proposal to "extend the Ogden River Project Redevelopment Area tax increment period through Tax Year 2027," we'll issue a second reminder of tonight's various Ogden City Council/RDA sessions, which include a variety of other interesting and important agenda items, as more particularly set forth by WCF reader/contributor Dan S. in Sunday's article comments section:
Just looked over all the agenda packets for tomorrow's meetings, and there's a lot in there.For the convenience of those WCF readers who'd like to dig in even a little more deeply, we link all of tonight's Council/RDA packets below:
The River Project materials indicate that the project's budget has been cut from the original estimate of $105 million down to a revised estimate of $85 million. The projected tax annual tax increment has correspondingly decreased. About 28% of the tax increment is being passed on to the taxing entities, so they're not losing out completely. The debt to other city funds stands at $3.7 million and it says the city will have to shell out at least another $2 million, with "similar, if not greater, levels of public assistance" for the Lincoln-to-Wall phase.
Also on the RDA agenda is an agreement with the new anonymous owner of the Earnshaw Building for use of additional parking spaces, allocation of some parking structure space for a chiller, and an "aerial easement" for a pedestrian walkway between the parking structure and the building. It mentions that the number of condos in the building is being increased from 28 to 40.
The City Council special meeting agenda includes the long-awaited rezone of most of the city's public parks to the "open space" zone. This will provide some additional protection against any mayor who tries to sell off park land, because the land couldn't be developed without another rezone by the council.
The Council work session agenda includes a meeting with Laura Lewis, their water rates consultant, to review the current water rates and the work that went into establishing those rates four years ago. This is the first step in the process of revising the rates to address several concerns that have come up in recent months.
- 12/13 City Council-RDA Work Session
- 12/13 City Council Work Session
- 12/13 City Council Special Session
- 12/13 City Council-RDA Regular Session
- 12/13 RDA/Council Study Session
In accordance with our usual practice of course, we hereby dedicate this thread to any Ogden City political wonks who'd like to comment before, during or after tonight's meetings.
Update 12/14/11 7:15 a.m.: The Standard-Examiner reports this morning that the RDA Board last night scheduled the Godfrey administration's proposed Ogden River Redevelopment Project Area Extension for a January 17, 2012 "public hearing":
- Ogden RDA sets public hearing (Updated)
