County staff rebuffs city’s claim to CRA cash

A draft letter from county to city officials speaks glowingly about the efficacy of the downtown Community Redevelopment Area, stating that the program “has exceedingly accomplished the goals and objectives envisioned by both commissions at the time of inception.”

Although the letter concludes by calling the CRA “a testament to what can be accomplished via a mutual accord,” describing the funding mechanism in the past tense speaks to a discord between city and county governments.

At a meeting Tuesday, the County Commission will discuss the CRA and that letter, which would reject the city’s request for an additional year of CRA funding. In September, the County Commission voted to end the downtown CRA, originally approved in 1986 to eliminate slum and blight conditions. Following the county's vote, the CRA was scheduled to expire Sept. 30 of this year.

Or at least, that was the accepted thinking at the time. On April 4, City Manager Tom Barwin said the city had a new stance — that the county was responsible for contributing an extra year of payments. The CRA is funded with city and county property tax revenues from within the district's boundaries, which then must be spent within those boundaries.

The CRA only captures revenue above a baseline established using 1986 property values. This is crucial for the city’s argument: Because the first year of the CRA was used to set the baseline, there have only been 29 years of contributions into the trust fund. When the city and county agreed to a 30-year CRA in 1986, the city suggests it meant 30 years of funding — which would necessitate one more payment.

Barwin was optimistic that the two governments could work together on this subject, but the letter makes clear the county isn’t on the same page.

“Since at least 2003, it has always been the county's understanding and expectation that the CRA, including all deposits in the redevelopment trust fund, would terminate in 2016,” the letter states. “This understanding and expectation is memorialized in several documents.”

Those documents include a 2015 county resolution, a 2013 city resolution and a financial report from a joint city-county meeting in 2007, all included as attachments in the agenda for Tuesday’s meeting. The full text of the draft letter is also included with the agenda materials.

At the meeting, the commission will consider whether to officially approve the letter and send it to city officials.

Also on the agenda for Tuesday’s commission meeting:

• The board will vote on a $4.37 million project for a portion of a project to decommission the Siesta Key wastewater facility. Residents raised concerns about the timely completion of the project at a Siesta Key Association meeting earlier this month.

The full agenda for the meeting can be found on the county website.