14 August 2014 Dearborn County Redevelopment Meeting Notes

14 August 2014 Dearborn County Redevelopment Meeting Notes

Present: Dave Deddens, Chairman, John Rahe, Jim Deaton, and Dennis Kraus, Sr.

ABSENT: Jim Helms and Dusty Burress (non- voting school board member)

Also present: Terri Randall, county administrator and economic development director, Andrea Ewan, attorney, and Randy Maxwell, consultant (arrived at 8:20). Leah Bailey covered for Gayle Pennington.

Erika Schmidt Russell (Register Publications) covered this meeting

Call to Order

Approval of July 17 special meeting minutes- approved

.

UNFINISHED BUSINESS:

Sign at entrance to Industrial Park on Randall Avenue- Terri Randall showed a picture of the sign and the missing spots and incorrect signage for businesses no longer there. John Rahe said that a group of volunteers bought the land years ago and then we sold it to another private group. (Rahe was involved with that) There is an acre that the sign sits on that belongs to someone else. Chuck Taylor was an original also. One of the businesses had bought from Rack and has no sign for his business out there. The asking price for the acre is $59,000 now. Craig Distributing is very interested. Someone is interested in purchasing the property. Brett Fehrman was contacted- as realtor. Ewan asked about the piece across from Randall Avenue as an option for sign? Randall thought that maybe they could write the letter as redevelopment to support them. Deaton asked if they could get an easement for that. We don’t want to own the property without some constructive use of it. Randall said they could maybe use TIF dollars for it. Ideally the easement could be for all the other property owners and they would pay for their part of the sign. The old sign needs to come down. The new owner of that property may want this to help the looks of their property anyway. DCRC approved Randall to send a letter to property owners and attorney for that estate and realtor to let them know DCRC is interested in helping out with a decent sign on the property.  

Fire Coverage in West Harrison Area- Randall said the township trustees are in charge of fire coverage. Commissioners are in charge of EMS. The West Harrison trustee contracted with 3 different entities as they are in 3 fire districts. The Mill needs to show robust fire protection for their insurance. Thus they need to contract with the city of Harrison for that purpose. She said “they” have had some real open discussions. There is an interlocal agreement with the township trustee and Harrison where we pay $10,000. She met with the trustee and Art Little. They ran the numbers and because of the runs done it is now $30,000. She has not got enough money in her tax base to support this. This cost is more due to the industry. She said this board at some point will have to consider helping out there. Harrison will work with the trustee now and “swallow it” for the time being. The trustee is worried about being fair to the other two fire depts. that she contracts with. Randall said these are not really apples to apples as Harrison is full service. The trustee will sign the contract because Harrison is willing to increase it to just $12,000 at this time. They discussed using the TIF money to pay for that. They have about a year to research this. 

 

NEW BUSINESS:

Claims and Financials- Sue Hayden said there are two different ways there are claims to show the two different funds they are coming from. Randall said -This group is administering those grant funds for the Research Technician etc. also. Rahe moved to approve the first page for less than $3000 and it included the register news claim. The second claim set for $ 9471.98 was approved. 

Financials-$406,792.79- land acquisition funds. Growth and dev has ½ million in it. $97,021 left in Lawbg grant. TIF funds were also read off.  Approved.

2015 Budget- Randall said that they all have a copy of this and it is pretty much the same as this year. $25,000 is coming in from County Council. Everything is being paid out of cash on hand. CVTB has always provided $50,000. Now they say they are not going to fund it any more. The funds from innkeepers are for tourism. The other riverboat admissions can be spent on economic development. It was well received when we talked to them. She wants to know if this board wants to formally request that money in writing and attend the budget meeting. Rahe agreed and the DCRC board voted to write CVTB a letter and copy the Commissioners. The letter will go to Charlotte Hastings as Pres of CVTB Board.

Approval of signature on ED Research Technician contract- Economic advisory committee that was set up with cities and county DCRC as sponsor of the Lawrenceburg grant. Deddens signed it recently and the DCRC board ratified his signature. Dennis Kraus, Sr. abstained as this was the first time he’d seen it. 

Blayr Barnard- SE IN Small Business Development Center- she has been helping Randall. She said Lawrenceburg has hired away 2/3 of her staff and she had to come down and cover the area in the last several months. She said she and Randall met over someone needing grant money. She found them private financing. Mark Hemmerle is the new hire covering our 5 county area. They cover one-on-one counseling. They do it for older businesses and new ones too. Many are seeing how to market and also getting financing. The research alone is worth about $50,000 for these businesses. We work with them 4 or maybe 40 hours. They have also worked with some home businesses. CBEC model was a social services model originally. Now they are more of a business advocate. Access to capital, working with all the local lenders is a service. Packaging the deals with federal funds if available and need a revolving loan fund in the area. Friends and family funds, crowd funding, and getting private financing is what they work with. Mark Hemmerle is housed in the Chamber. DC funds $5000 to them annually. Last year started 9 businesses here. It’s a little low as staff was low this year. One business was 156 jobs. Last year they had 48 jobs. They worked with 81 clients this year. They have had 2 workshops here. One was on retailing. They do in depth analysis of staffing, etc. Also analysis of product- offer the people want they want to buy- change inventory. They troubleshoot problems. This program has been in existence for 30 years. 5 years ago she revamped it and now they have a stronger presence in this area though the Chamber. She says she has no problem being the bad guy to let people know they can’t get a loan- to prevent future foreclosures for non- viable businesses. Randall went on about how Kelly (who was with SBDC) had vetted the Mills. Blayr went on to talk about how they wade thru the tax returns and financials. They have to be under 500 employees. Mark Hemmerle- was introduced to the DCRC Board- been here 15 years- a “recovering attorney” who used to work for Grand Vic. He resides in HVL.

Lead Economic Development Officer’s Report- Terri Randall-turned it over to Oren Turner who has been here 1.5 weeks. Even though he doesn’t work with DCRC. Worked on Main St in Aurora. He has worked on political campaigns in the past. He is getting an associated in addition to his degree from IU. Associated at Cincy State is in computer programming and IT. He is looking at the website for economic development. He is reviewing RFPs. He is looking at utility info to be in professional format. Hope to have a good strategy in place to court our county and market it better. He will do a great job- energetic and enthusiastic per Randall. He may get a spot in Lawrenceburg near their IT guy. He is from the area and moved from Aurora to Stateline. They are going to get him around to the other smaller Redev Commissions.

 Randall will send out the simulated site selection report to the DCRC board. She said they got a lead and responded. She let John Rahe comment on what happened in that process. Rahe said that in response to our letter response for the company seeking out a site for selection. We found out that Terri was doing a good job but that there are other things we should be including. They basically said we are nuts and need to do it another way. Previously we hadn’t even responded to these requests. They now know what things are important to include in a site promotion letter. They stressed that the web page has to be good- really good- because people go there first.

Randy Maxwell said that the moment we got the “secret shopper” lead- he knew it was fishy- the secret shopper people were trying to build a database from responses. There are not a lot of properties for sale. We need to know what the owners of properties want for their land so we can market it. The bare minimum is that they want us to have control of the property we are marketing. The confidential project from last executive session checked in and – no news so far- so that is still good news. Continue to be encouraged per Randall.

The flood plain survey data is in and $5,000 will take the existing survey and make model and see if we have any standing to take to FEMA to take some of this out of the flood plain. Randy and she think the $5,000 is high. Do you want to give me a not to exceed number? She will forward the data to the board and they will think of this for next meeting. The process will take a long time with FEMA. Kraus asked- did we know what this cost was up front when we did the survey? He thought we would know what the cost would be before we started on it. Why start if you aren’t going to finish? Maxwell said we will finish it- but this guy is squeezing us in the corner and we need to renegotiate this step.

Attorney’s Report- Andrea Ewan- no report

OTHER BUSINESS: none

Meeting adjourned at 9:20 AM

Christine Brauer Mueller

Lawrenceburg Township