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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2001-07-25 Housing MIN ASHLAND HOUSING COMMISSION MINUTES JULY 25, 2001 CALL TO ORDER - Chair Larry Medinger called the meeting to order at 4:10 p.m. Other Commissioners present were Richard Seidman, Joan Legg, Jan Vaughn, Aaron Benjamin, Nancy Richardson and Cate Hartzell. Joe McKeever arrived at 4:30 p.m. Staff present were Bill Molnar and Sue Yates. APPROVAL OF MINUTES - The minutes of the June 27, 2001 meeting were approved. PUBLIC FORUM RICH ROHDE provided an update to the mobile home ordinance. The committee has put together a draft ordinance and it has been submitted to the City Attorney for his review. He passed the draft out to the Commissioners. He will come back with another draft when it is ready and the Commission can discuss it. KRISTA TANNER of Medford said she spoke to the Citizens Public Advisory Committee (CPAC) last evening and they are willing to create a formal recommendation back to Medford City Council to create a commission. REQUEST FOR QUALIFICATIONS Hartzell talked with a consultant and with Kim Miller of Options about the RFQ and they thought this was an overpriced needs assessment. Last night she worked on trying to break the RFQ into two positions. Kim Miller of Options is going to do a needs assessment in Illinois Valley. Maybe we could work with the same person. In other words, share a consultant who has expertise in this kind of work and call on them for his/her specialty. Then, we can call in a local person to start work on planning and convening meetings and someone who starts to identify pieces. These people could be hired about the same time and while one was doing the needs assessment, the other could come in a little behind the needs assessment person to start their work. Medinger did not think the needs assessment would take any longer than two weeks. We need someone out in the community making contacts and making partnerships. He wants to see it result in something. The needs assessment should be really minimal and the other part much bigger. Benjamin said he has shared a lot of material from the American Planning Association on needs assessment with Molnar. We could probably get a needs assessment done for a reasonable price. We should use the resources we have and build on it. Legg believes the reason we want a consultant is because we have not come up with the ideas to solve our problems. We want the consultant as a resource as well as someone doing a needs assessment. She thinks $10,000 should cover that. She agrees with Hartzell that this is the smallest part. She also did not think we would have much trouble matching the $20,000 for a staff person or a consultant. She thought we might want to funnel this idea into the bankers that meet regularly and the banks could collaborate on financial help. Hartzell sees it to be a four to five week project. We don't want to minimize it. Medinger probably sees this differently than Hartzell. As a developer, he would give a person about three weeks for the needs assessment. Richardson feels we would have two different people with two individual backgrounds. One who focuses on needs assessments and that is what he/she does. The other individual has a background in affordable housing that finds the funds and gets the programs going. They would have projects ready to go with maybe even grant funds. The person you are going to pay for the shorter period of time will probably charge more per hour. Hartzell would suggest that the second person would work on employer assisted housing, density bonus and land use. They would take the pieces of the plan we already have and start to move forward as much as possible because if you get something past a certain threshold, you can write a grant for it and get some operations funds to move it forward. McKeever said the Ashland Community Land Trust is finding that $30,000 will pay for about six months and within the grants they are allowed to charge a development fee and that money will help sustain the project. Hartzell said if there is agreement about separating the job out, she and Richardson could look at it and get something out by Friday. Molnar said his reason for putting it on the agenda was to see if there was consensus on the scope of work. Staff had some ideas of fine-tuning this a little. Should we get a little bit more specific in terms of the needs analysis? Identify target populations that are most needed and set benchmarks for how many rental units and how many homes. Look at the four categories of work and stick with those. Perhaps we could have a subcommittee to fine-tune this. Molnar said they need to focus more on the specifics of the deliverables. Joan moved that the Commission agree in principal with modifications that could be made to the Request for Qualification and mailed it out in the next couple of days for the Commission's review (either e-mail, fax or mail). Richardson seconded the motion. Everyone favored the motion. STRATEGIC PLAN Seidman said two things are going on. The Strategic Plan has not really been finished. Do we finish it first or do we get committees going or do we do both? Medinger said we might to keep working on the Strategic Plan and give the consultant one with two or three goals to work on. Seidman also wondered if everyone wanted to put the plan on hold for now. Medinger said he did not want it on hold. Hartzell said they could use the general categories and see who is attracted to each and create subcommittees. This could help them make their action plan for the year. Define it through the people who are interested in particular items. Seidman suggested convening three to four subcommittees and see who is attracted to each one. They can develop an overview of where they want to go and then more detailed goals which would be subject to revision as they get more information. The subcommittees broke down as follows. Each member gave their preferred choice and then a second choice. Employer Assisted Housing #1 Hartzell* Seidman Richardson #2 Benjamin Vaughn Staff Support Orientation #1 Vaughn Legg Medinger Benjamin Goodwin-Shavey* #2 Richardson Community Outreach & Education #1 Richardson Legg* Land Use Practices #1 Vaughn McKeever Medinger* Hartzell Funding (deferring) #2 Seidman Legg * Members taking the lead on the subcommittee. Seidman felt Commission members should take the lead but other people not on the Commission can be on committees. Medinger said he would talk to Goodwin-Shavey on Monday about the subcommittees. Molnar wondered if a part of each meeting should be used to break into subcommittees. Medinger did not think so. Hartzell felt there should be monthly reports. Molnar said he would send an e-mail out asking for items to be placed on the agenda. Legg explained it is useful to state on the agenda the “Subject” and “Motion” and “What Action is Expected”. McKeever and Vaughn will be on vacation for the August meeting. Molnar asked if they could all get the same Strategic Plan. ADJOURNMENT- The meeting was adjourned at 5:35 p.m.