Items on the City of Warsaw Redevelopment Commission’s agenda Monday included investments, the Winona PVD bond agreement and Market Street appraisals. At past meetings, City Planner Jeremy Skinner said the commission had talked about the city looking at investment options to get a better rate of return than what it currently gets. He said he wanted direction from the commission as to whether or not they wanted to do it as a commission with the city. “It is my recommendation that we do it. What we’d be looking at is investing our bond reserves and the Northern TIF. I’m not recommending that we invest the other funds because we don’t have enough funds to allocate some for investment out of our operating costs. But in the Northern TIF, because we are generating enough money and we do have quite a few projects and we can’t do all of them at the same time, I think there’s some opportunity there to get some great return on that money as we complete projects,” Skinner said. He estimated the commission could put about $2 million in that “staggered kind of investment that Umbaugh would be charged with overseeing.” There is a fee associated with that, with the Redevelopment Commission paying a percentage of that fee based on the amount of money it would invest. Information provided states that there is an annual fee of 0.1 percent charged on all investments held in the custodial account. Fees are charged on a quarterly basis and are based on the monthly average cost basis balance of investments outstanding. President Rick Snodgrass asked for the general estimate of the rate, but Skinner said he didn’t have that. “I know it’s a substantially greater rate of return than they’re getting now,” he said. Tim Meyer, commission member, asked if the investment was limited to certificates of deposit, and Skinner said they were. “Also for the record, there’s no problem with co-mingling our funds with the city’s?” Meyer asked. Skinner said there was not, and the commission would get its return on its investment. The board approved investing funds with Umbaugh. On Market Street appraisals, Skinner told the board they talked about the project a while ago. “We looked at possibly ... doing a affordable housing component on Market Street with property that had Habitat (for Humanity) homes,” Skinner reminded the commission. “The intent was to purchase that property from Habitat and then package it with some additional property for an affordable housing development.” He said they’re still working toward that with an intent to get affordable housing on Market Street. Part of that would be the appraisals to purchase the Habitat property. He told the board he needs their approval to do the appraisals, and the commission approved the two claims for the appraisals earlier in the meeting. “We got the appraisals,” Skinner said, but when they were done one came back reasonable in his opinion but the second did not. The reasonable one was $5,800 per lot, while the other appraisal was $15,000 per lot for five lots. He asked the Commission to approve the reasonable appraisal, reject the other and give him permission to seek a third appraisal. The board approved Skinner’s request. Finally, Skinner told the Commission that earlier in the Winona PVD bond process, they approved both the resolution for the taxpayer agreement and the economic development memorandum to approve the resolution to create the forms. Monday, he had the forms and needed the board to approve and sign the economic development memorandum and the taxpayer agreement. The mayor and clerk will sign it, and Winona PVD already has signed it. The bond purchase agreement, engagement letter and final certificate for offering circulation also needed signed by the board. City Securities Corp. will be the underwriter for the Winona PVD bond issue. The commission approved and signed all documents presented to them. In other business, the board: • Heard from Skinner on the Winona PVD bid response that, “We did not receive and we were not expecting to receive any bids for the Winona PVD bond issue. So I just wanted to say publicly that we did not receive any bids for that.” • Approved the following claims: Troyer Group, $1,040; Bayview appraisals, $200; Gloria Ostrowski, $500; A&Z Engineering, $7,342.40; Niblock Excavating, $115,000; and Kosciusko REMC, $2. • Announced the next meeting will be at noon Dec. 7.
