On the agenda

1. 1Call to Order - Roll Call▶ 0:14
2. 3Approval of Minutes▶ 0:14
3. 4Consent Agenda▶ 0:14
4. 5.a

   Authorizing the Execution of FY25 CRA Audit Engagement Letters

   approved

   The CRA Board authorized the execution of FY25 CRA audit engagement letters. No public comment was offered, and the motion passed.

   • motion:Motion to approve authorization of the execution of FY25 CRA audit engagement letters. (passed)

   #FY25 CRA Audit Engagement Letters

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   Favor signify by. It's five. Nothing. Authorization of the execution of of fy 25. Cra audit engagement letters. Nobody at the audience. I will move approval for it. I'll. Second. Oh, can we just make sure that the audience. We got to give them a. Sorry. Anybody like to speak on approving the audit. Seeing no one come forward. Okay. All those in favor signify by I. I didn't hear a second. Was there a second? Yes. Okay. Thank you.

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5. 5.b

   Parking Signage

   discussed

   Staff presented three design options for directional public parking signage to be placed throughout downtown to guide drivers to public parking lots and the parking garage. Board members generally favored Option 1 for its inclusion of street names/landmarks, and discussed adding transit/bike/DART monikers. Public commenters raised concerns about parking garage visibility from US-19, the broken garage elevator, sign durability, and suggested larger lit signage atop the garage.

   • direction:Board gave informal direction to staff/consultants on parking signage design, with general preference for Option 1 and to consider better identification of the parking garage from US-19. (none)

   📍5532 Delaware📍5922 Wyoming Avenue📍Adams📍Grand📍Main Street📍Rivergate District📍US-19🏢A Club🏢Jimmy's🏢Kaiser🏢The A Group👤Anna Wilson👤Donna Jensen👤Gammon👤Manz#CRA Incentive (next item)#DART#Free Trolley#Parking Garage#Public Parking Signage

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   Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Okay. Parking signage. Okay. Mr. Gammon, to handle the presentation and the discussion item related to this agenda item. Thank you, miss manz. Mr. Chairman, fellow directors, appreciate your time. We wanted to just get the board's approved, not necessarily approval, but just direction and thoughts on some of the directional parking signs for public parking downtown. Our consulting team at The A Group came up with a couple of designs. We want you to just take a look at them. Just weigh in on them if you don't mind. This first option. This is the only one that actually shows kind of. It tells you where the parking lot is with the street above and then the public parking above. It's a little it has a little bit more wording. This one is very simple one. I'm going to go through them quick because then I have them all three on one slide. So you can kind of compare them all together. And again option three day night photo of the same thing. So these will be spread throughout the city. These are the three just kind of wanted to get your thoughts right from the get go. We've got staff comments, but we'd sure like the five of yours opinions. If you have any. Important to note on the first option, it wouldn't have a yellow band on the pole. The pole would be all green. And these would be the signs in the parking lot. There would be a different. It would have the same look, but there would be signs getting you to the parking lots as well. Why do we need a sign when you're in the parking lot? These are actually more directional signs on Main Street on 19 on adams. So right. I've got in the next slide after this one, some of the location where those locations would be. And those are streets. Yeah, we already have parking lot sign. The fact that it's in the parking lot in the picture. Is that right? Right, right, correct, right. Are we giving our opinions now? I don't know if I know you can or if you'd like to see where they're let's go this one just to kind of show where they are and then we can go back and you can take a look. These are just generally where we were talking, where some of these signs. We had some several meetings with The A Group about where these can go. And these are some of the recommendations they came up with. This is the west side of the river, obviously over in the Rivergate District where we put a couple. We even want to put one on. 19. So when people are coming northbound on 19, they can turn in and get into the garage. These are the ones around downtown. So as we were saying, they're not necessarily in the parking lots as much as they are directing people to get to our public parking lots. And then I can go back to that one. If you want to weigh in, just give us your opinions one way or the other and we can move from there. Well, my photographic memory is already lost. All of the spots that they're going to be. Well, there's a lot. Yeah. And we're still working on those. Yeah, yeah. I, I'm going to say I like option three because it says parking nice and big. No one can miss that. I like option one is the public public parking and the the is that is that going to be the case where they all would have the street address or the street names, [00:05:04] Correct? Yeah. Which one it's pointing to. It's a bit more bulky than option three. And option three is more traditional, more classic, but I don't know, option one with the added benefit of like designating where it is kind of, you know, throws out names, landmarks, people can talk about it more the streets, I'll concede the option. I like option one as well. You know, we have a lot of people who don't know how to use gps. So some people just like to give landmarks and roads. So I think that could be very helpful. I'm afraid they might start going around in circles. That's just a u-turn. It's not a circle. Could we put like dart in 90 degrees the other way instead of 270 the other way? The ngo you have guidance there? I do, okay. Thank you. Oh, but before he does, can we remember that we're trying to do the the transit, the bike and the dart. And I wouldn't mind it if that big p had maybe a moniker in it. Like what if you're going to park and ride, you know, or park at the garage or is there a qr code on there? We could just scan it. Well, they'll, they'll crash if they do that. But I don't know. I know it's simple. That's fine. Never mind. That's a good point. If it says public parking, you might not need the p there. You could put a trolley there or a parking garage. Like maybe use the same sign and say free trolley and put a t there. No, put a we got a professional to decide this. Why don't we leave it to the professionals? Well, look what they've done already. They put it in the parking lot. That was the first mistake. Parking facing away from the parking. Continue. You got guidance from us? I've got it. We can move on to the next item. Thank you very much. Is there more slides or is it. No. That's it. That's it. Can we have to do a public comment here? I do, I have one more. Thank thank you. Slide public comment. Seeing no one come forward. No. Just kidding. Come on down. Go back to the go back to that slide again. Yes. One of these. No, no. The three signs. Yeah. Streets. Well that's not what I want. I want the first one. The options. All the options. You got it. Thank you. I like the first one because it says exactly where you're at and where you could possibly need to get. You know, you can always look on your map then. And I am concerned about the parking garage is not identified properly. When we come down to that, we come down 19 toward Main Street and you don't know where the parking garage is, except we've been there a couple times. So we know that we go in behind kaiser or the side of kaiser and the bank and then make the left. But I think there should be a parking garage sign there. So people going and even going, coming north to south or south to north, there needs to be signs so that people knows it's there. Because every time we've been there, two cars and do you know that the elevator is broken? There's a sign on the elevator that says broken. Now, what good is that to somebody that might be handicapped having to park on the second floor? It's no good. You can't get that person down the steps if you want to throw them off. And hopefully someone's going to catch them. Maybe it'll work, but that's the purpose of an elevator to be functioning so that it's usable at all times. Anna Wilson 5532, delaware. I would really like to see the parking garage utilized. I think it's really cool. We have it. We didn't used to park on the streets downtown, and I don't I travel downtown all the time because I live downtown and it is a little scary to me, [00:10:07] Especially Main Street. Now I, I know we all go slow because we have to, but it is. I am so nervous about someone opening their door or there's. It's so congested. I would like not only the signs. I think we should do everything we can to try to get people to use the parking garage. I do agree, I don't think a lot of people see it there. I think signage would be great or a better way of everyone knowing it's there and that we have the dart, and I know they've been working on the dart to get more ways out for the people that come downtown. But I think when we do the additional areas we're talking about doing, I was at that meeting and I would like to see us do away with less street parking in our new plans that we're going to be doing. And even if perhaps we just left more golf carts or had it where more people were forced to use the garage because with everything in it now it's progressing even further down grand on weekends, and there's businesses in town that have nowhere for their people to park. And one example is the A Club they don't that's shared with jimmy's there. The people have nowhere to park for their meetings on the weekends. You know, this has been going on now for years for them. I'm surprised they're not in here fighting to have some designated space. There's businesses that, you know, run businesses during times on the weekend that there's no parking for them because there's so much generalized parking all over our streets, behind every corner building, anywhere you can shove a car, there is one on the weekend. We all know it. So I would hope in the when we start getting into the. The next time they come and show us some of the street things. Or maybe we could suggest less street parking. And the other thing too, I can't see the businesses when I'm going by. You know, if you had less congestion on the street, I could maybe, you know, look around and have a little more freedom driving to kind of look at a storefront or see a new sign, oh, something new opened. You cannot do that driving through town, you know? So that's just my thought on the garage. I just had a couple of quick questions about the signage. I love the idea of having more signs because no one knows where to park, where allowable ar is the material like stainless steel or what is it that? Is it hurricane rated? Like all of those things. I just wondered and see how all the signs have the sharp pointy. Is it one solid piece? If, for instance, someone were to vandalize it and knocked over, was it will spin around like just those sorts of things, just wondering just about it and then the vibrancy of it. Will they withstand the Florida sun? I don't want to see it just wither really quickly. So those are just the kind of questions that I had just when I saw it. But I love the idea of signage. I would really like to offer the council to consider doing more signage all across the city. It would be nice if we had a map in the park or separate areas, because there is a lot of really cool locations in town and people just don't know about it unless they're on their phones. That could be a way we utilize something like that, and we can do qr codes and do all that sort of thing as well, but just a regular old fashioned big map in the park, I think would be really, really good for all of the tourism and just even local residents, just not knowing a lot about this thing. So thank you. Any other public comment? So bring it back. I just want to say one other thing. I think that the location of the garage is so close to 19. By the time you turn and get organized on Main Street, you've passed the garage. So I'd entertain having a lit up light there that said parking and had arrows. And not just one of those kind of signs that light up. Just a more permanent identifying. I mean, even that one in the middle of the road doesn't say the parking garage is right to the right. So entertain that in your all good comments. And, and you can see we were trying to get the 19 traffic as it's coming northbound to turn into comfort in before they get to main. And then the people that are coming southbound and coming to downtown, they get that sign so they can come right through the parking lot and get back. You're asking you're asking somebody who doesn't live in town. They might go past it and get on main. They know. They know to [00:15:02] Come to main. They don't know. Yep, yep. And if they miss it, they'll get that first sign on main. It's it's not enough. That sign's not enough. We need some kind of, you know, noted. Light up, light up, you know, parking. The first time would allow you to say downtown instead of main and nebraska. So you have a little space for some additional info. And to your point, if they see that sign and it said downtown under it, they might take it because it could lead them to the parking garage versus what street it was. Anyway. Good point. All right. Discussion regarding CRA. Oh will be stimulated. Another thought. Donna Jensen 5922 Wyoming Avenue. I was when you were talking about the sign on the garage parking garage, what about something across the top of it that you could see from the highway, lit up at night and visible during the day? It would be up high. I know maybe it's higher than what your regulations are, but I think we do have three story buildings and that's what, two. So maybe something up high that you could actually see from the highway as you're coming north and south and in the front, maybe three sided. So you can see it. Just my suggestion. Lights. All right. Discussion regarding CRA incentive

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6. 5.c

   ↳You arrived here from a search for “Commercial Real Estate Redevelopment Grant” — transcript expanded below

   Discussion Regarding CRA Incentive Programs

   discussed

   Staff (Dave Gammon) presented an overview of current CRA incentive programs from the 2019 plan and proposed new and revised programs for the 2026 CRA Plan redraft, including capital investment reimbursement, commercial property improvement, business relocation, jobs reimbursement, public art, upper floor residential, coastal cottage, homeowner reinvestment, home beautification, lot improvement, Railroad Square street cafe awnings, and adverse economic impact loan grants. The item was discussion only with no vote; board members requested additional time to study and a future workshop including the project architect.

   • direction:Board directed staff to schedule a future workshop meeting on the CRA incentive programs and to invite the project architect to participate. (none)

   📍Railroad Square🏢Casco🏢Steamworks🏢Villa Del Sol👤Altman👤Barnes👤Bertel👤Dave Gammon👤Manz#2019 Community Redevelopment Plan#2026 CRA Plan#Adverse Economic Impact Loan#Business Relocation Grant#Capital Investment Reimbursement Grant#Coastal Cottage Reimbursement Grant#Commercial Property Improvement Grant#Commercial Real Estate Redevelopment Grant#Cultural Affairs Committee#FRA Conference#Home Beautification Grant#Home/Lot Improvement Grant#Homeowner Reinvestment Grant#Job Reimbursement Grant#Public Art Grant#Railroad Square Street Cafe Awnings Grant#TIF revenues#Upper Floor Residential Grant

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   Programs. I wanted to introduce to you more fully the CRA incentive programs that are currently available and then introduce to you those that we are proposing in conjunction with the 2026 and. Redraft of the CRA plan. And Dave Gammon is prepared to do that for you this evening. Are we voting on this as are just know, we're just we're just introducing it to you. We're not asking you to vote on it tonight. We're just looking for some input and some direction from you in case you have something you want to share with us tonight. Thank you again, miss manz. Absolutely. Mr. Chairman, this is a discussion item only just to see where we're thinking and make sure you guys are on board and might have ideas that we haven't been thinking about. So a lot of this comes from discussions we've heard over the past several months in various meetings. So hopefully this gets a lot of things you guys have been talking about. Just a real quick recap. This is what we currently offer through the two night 2019 community redevelopment plan. We have a couple of commercial and retail facade and interior build out grants. We have a redevelopment and infill business expansion. That's what we used for Villa Del Sol. New projects. Basically the one below that is commercial real estate redevelopment, the redevelopment that's for businesses and buildings that's already exist and want to do improvements to it. And then we have two that we've never used before, the upper floor residential grant for downtown buildings, which would be fabulous if there was a if somebody took advantage of that one. And I haven't seen, maybe miss barnes can tell me. I haven't seen one jobs grant, one jobs grant. So those are two that we can work on more. That's what we've got right now. So we took that as a base and working off of that list. These are some of the goals we were trying to establish in the 2026 crp. Obviously, we want to do things that are in the district. We have to do that. Obviously, we want private sector investment. The grants should either add value or improve appearance, or maybe reduce slum and blight. Obviously you always do that in CRA or improve safety, public safety. We also address the but for question. If it weren't for these incentives, these projects might not go forward. So that's a good. But for thing. And of course, all of them are subject to funding availability or. I get a lot of hassle from the finance director. I don't like to see or are also subject to staff or board approval. This is how we define it in the crp. We say these are our incentive programs, but they're not limited to what you see that way. It gives us the flexibility in case some other great idea comes up and we can still do it. So you're allowed to do that. From this fra conference we went to, they said, keep these crp very flexible so you can keep working on them. I'm going to go through each one, which is longer than I'm used to talking. So anytime you want to interrupt me or tell me to go faster, I'd be happy to do it. This is the first one capital investment reimbursement grant. This encourages again private sector investment into new real estate projects. It's again a reimbursement. We don't do any cash up front. We do up to 20% of the capital invested. It can be paid back with increased tif revenues. That's why we need private sector generated by the project. Again, think Villa Del Sol, we gave them a big incentive package, but they [00:20:03] Generate the revenue to pay themselves basically. And this requires a developer's agreement that would be approved by this board. Again, number two is a commercial real estate redevelopment grant, very similar to the one I just talked about. But this is for existing real estate assets. This one we can do a grant up to $100,000. It's a 20% match, but they have to do at least half $1 million. So it's going to be 100,000. Whether they spend 500 or 1 million or 2 million, whatever it is. Again, reimbursement requires a development agreement. Also, this is the commercial property improvement grant. Basically what we did is we this helps facilitate the establishment of new businesses and helps existing businesses businesses expand. This combines the former facade grant and the commercial interior interior buildout grant. So we don't come to you like we did, for instance, on casco in with the facade grant and a commercial interior. It's one business. Let's let's put them together. It can be by the landlord or the tenant. This is going to be permitted improvements. It's a dollar for dollar match program. Again reimburse. The max can be $50,000. We could make exceptions if we want to maybe take it up to 200. But if we do that, it has to come before this board and get a developer's agreement. The eligibility, staying on that commercial property improvement grant, the eligibility improvements, they can be site improvements, they can be facade, they can be landscaping or any permanent interior build out improvements. And again, we'll build on these, but we're just getting the generals in the crp, the eligible businesses. We didn't adjust. This is these are again from the 2019. We didn't really change these very much, but we did add bars. And I'd like to also note at the very bottom that we can also include businesses, eligible businesses that are benefit the residents or support the mission of the CRA. So that's a that's a subjective ruling we can do on those. And lastly, the not eligible businesses, again, the exact same that we have on our existing grants. And you can see those are the kind we really don't need incentives to bring them here. Some new ones that we haven't really talked about. This is called a business relocation grant. Again for your thoughts. This helps create a more pedestrian friendly downtown. Maybe if some of the businesses that are more commercial businesses, insurance title, something like that, that doesn't support pedestrian traffic, maybe if they would consider vacating their first floor commercial, we could give them a grant to move them to somewhere else. If we can get a retail tenant to replace them in that, again, attract stuff downtown. The job reimbursements keep this one. Obviously, this is for high, higher income jobs. It's they've got to prove it first. They've got to be here a year and we can go $25,000 per job up to 25,000 per company to bring employment down into a c r a. This is another new idea, again, a public art grant. Obviously, we have the cultural affairs committee that does their things, but this is maybe another way we can encourage public art. Again on prime on art that might be visible from a primary roadway, a reimbursement as always, no cash up front, up to 25% of the cost capped at $20,000. Just an idea to reflect, you know, history and culture of New Port Richey keep obviously the upper floor residential grant. We'd love to encourage more residents downtown, especially in some of the buildings, the historic buildings that could put residential up top. It's been a dollar for dollar match up to 25,000 a unit. Maybe we could consider going higher than that again in the crp. We could do higher and not be obligated to do it. So maybe something to think about. Coastal cottage we've talked about coastal cottage reimbursement grant before. This encourages new resilient type homes in flood prone, prone district districts. This is the r for coastal cottage. What we've done there is a $25,000 grant at issuance of certificate of occupancy. So they've done the work before they get the grant. A lot of things that have been coming up on residential. So I've got the next 3 or 4 slides are all residential type grants. This is a homeowner reinvestment grant. And if you noticed in 2019, we really don't have any residential grants specified in the 2019 crp. So we've added them on this one. This is designed to help seniors and low income residents with code compliance issues. We make sure that the properties are homesteaded, obviously, so they're the owners and maybe do up to $10,000 grant to help them get settled their code issues. This is a home beautification grant. I think director bertel has been talking about this for a while. I think this is what we were talking about, the $250,000 that's in our budget. This is to assist home homeowners to enhance the charm and visual appeal of their homes, single family detached homes. Again, it's going to be a dollar for [00:25:01] Dollar match up to $25,000. We can talk about that if if you just wanted a grant without a match. But that's how we've got it proposed right now. And actually in two weeks on our next CRA meeting, we'll actually bring this with its things. If the executive director approves it, we'll bring it to you to take a look at what we're talking about there. This is a little bit different than beautification grant. This is for a home or a lot improvement grant that you can't really see the value in it. You know, you might drive by. It's not a new painted house or a new roof or something like that. This is a improvements that you don't see but benefit the community. For example, if they're on well and septic, if they want to go to city water and sewer, we can help and do a dollar for dollar match up to 25,000. So it helps the community, even though you might not be able to see it. Another idea we came up with, maybe Railroad Square street cafe awnings grant, so we can kind of keep encourage the awnings for some of the businesses, steamworks and all those kind of businesses on Railroad Square to have their nice street cafe. Maybe we can match them all, maybe with the same kind of shade sales that's already up there. Maybe that's too much, but it's just an idea that we can maybe give a grant up to 25,000 to encourage the activity on Railroad Square. Last one. Director altman and I were at an emergency conference a couple of months ago, and some of the things that came up there is how the businesses suffer when there's an economic impact due to natural disasters, pandemics, whatever it is, and how hard it is for businesses to survive until they get their insurance proceeds, which take a long time. So what we're proposing here is maybe have an adverse economic impact loan where a business can apply, get $25,000 from the CRA immediately, and then that will be paid back when they get their insurance proceeds. I mean, we've all gone through that. If you've had any insurance damage, it takes a long time, but this makes sure our businesses survive any economic impact, hopefully, and then can pay us back. Of course we have fee waivers. Cra can always pay dales department, any of those impact fees that they incur to help the businesses. So we've always got that in our back pocket. That's what we've got. Again, I want to note that we put in the crp that we can. These are not all inclusive. There can be other ones as time comes up. But that's what we've got right now. Just like to see if those are hitting the targets you all were looking for. If we missed something, if some you don't want to put in there, the numbers are right or if you're just ready to go. And I want to also note nobody left when I was talking. I think there's a lot of information there, and I think you should get us this on a on a Friday meeting, you know, and so then give us a chance to go over and make ourselves notes, to come back and talk with you. Absolutely agree. We have a quick, quick response while it's on their head. No, because you won't be a quick response. Go ahead. Well, you could be. I gave you, I gave, I gave my proposal, my proposal was to would table it. We can look at it. No, I'm not for that. But I'll be quick. I'm listening. All right. The 1 to 1 match the amount of words you use. Okay. So micro loans, when we're talking about some of this residential and all being grants, in some cases with the property values and the cost of housing and the benefits that we're providing, I think we need to look at across the board at the the life cycle that we're in is a c, r, a, and make sure that we put things out. Second thing I would say is this is incentives. And then how is that packaged in terms of the overall budget and where all of our other financing goes? In particular, interior improvements? I'm not so sure how far we want to go with that in terms of the percentage of what's outside is going to attract people into our city and how much money we're paying people to retro fit, in some cases multiple times as business fails and then come back. We saw that with the restaurant out on 19, I think, where we had a couple of occasions where we did improvements. And then finally you under the law, you can't provide rent assistance or some assistance and you're keeping the nonprofits out. But I think that some of the the caveat you had at the end was projects that benefit the city. And so I think that the capital improvement plan wants me to say, when we do meet, I would love to invite our architects so we could talk to them because when we did meet the architect for the first time, the whole discussion was to an angry audience over boat ramps. And I think I've asked and I [00:30:02] Think we need to have an architect designer with us going through some of this discussion, if we can schedule them for that meeting that you want to have, then I'm I'm happy with that. And I'm I'm done. It wasn't too bad, was it? No, it wasn't about particular things at all. That's fine. It was. No, it said no, no nonprofits. And so I got to squeeze that. Anybody else want to speak. I want I want to study a little bit more. Do I have a proposal to adjourn? Do you have the walkout item or do you want. Oh, excuse me, we

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7. 6Communications▶ 30:02
8. 2

   Pledge of Allegiance

   Recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance.
9. 3.a

   March 17, 2026 CRA Meeting Minutes

   Approval of the minutes from the March 17, 2026 CRA meeting.

   #March 17, 2026 CRA Meeting Minutes
10. 4.a

    Purchases/Payments for CRA Board Approval

    on consent

    Consent agenda item authorizing purchases and payments for CRA Board approval.

    #CRA Purchases/Payments
11. 7Adjournment