3.0. SR 02-19-1996 - Laserfiche WebLink

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CIP Memo February 19, 1996 Community Center Task Force Letter Page 7 Attached for your review is a letter from Cliff Lundberg regarding his presentation to the City Council and EDA last December. This presentation related to a multi-use auditorium facility. As a follow up to this presentation, Mr. Lundberg has submitted the 1/10/96 letter requesting the city to renew the existence of the Elk River Community Center Task Force. With all due respect to this request, I believe that we should respectfully decline at this time. Currently, our agenda is rather full and I don't know that the city staff could do justice to another public facilities task force. Additionally, the funding for such a facility is very questionable when looking at a public referendum type of issue, especially when considering the needs of the School District. Update on Status of Surface Water Management Fund The Surface Water Management (SWM) projects that were authorized in 1994 came in slightly over budget. This is due to expansions of the projects and the extra attention that the project/city engineer provided to the affected property owners. Additionally, the cost to the city for the western area SWM project was greater than anticipated. The city really needs to reevaluate its impact fees on developers for the benefit they are receiving for the SWM infrastructure. Our impact fees for SWM are far lower than other developing communities and, consequently, our taxpayers are picking up the balance of this benefit while the developers are making the profit. The SWM fund has been highlighted as a major concern ever since projects began a few years ago and the funding mechanism was put in place. It is very unlikely that any projects of significance can be undertaken in the next few years until the fund catches up and we can afford more projects. One way that this project fund may be helped is through using TIF No. 2 (Guardian Angels) for the Main Street/Evans Avenue project. As the Council may recall, this TIF project was amended last December in order to allow use of excess funds for other activities including this drainage project. The down side of using the funds for this project is that fewer funds are available for economic development activities. As discussed at the 2/12 economic development worksession, there are a lot of expensive projects out there including the riverwalk, the King and Main intersection, the downtown sidewalks, the purchase of industrial or business park land, and the east Elk River public improvement project, and a very limited amount of funds are available for these activities. Use of TIF No. 2 for the Main and Evans drainage project would affect the amount of money available for other