Revitalization Commission Agenda and Packet 2024 10 30

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Revitalization Commission Minutes September 18, 2024 Page 3of8 Commissioner Lipton commented that he doesn't think we don't have nearly enough funding needed to do all of the proposed improvements. It looks like we may have to choose elements of the various plans, or discard elements of the various plans in order to get some reasonable budget that we can actually do two phases. He would like a conversation with the commissioners to get a sense of this. Doubling down on Front Street seems to be important and should be a priority to anchor all of this. He wouldn't want to give up on Front Street to do other parts of the plan. He feels we need to figure out how to do both early on. The Director of Community Development asked if the commission thinks the plan is structured in a way that supports those priorities, if the commission would like a paragraph added to the plan to emphasize it in the presentation to Council staff can add that language. Commissioner Lipton asked when staff intends to bring this to Council. The City Engineer responded that it depends on the recommendation from the Commission today. If LRC approves recommendation to City Council for adoption, we will add it to the next possible City Council meeting depending on the availability to add it to Council's agenda. Commissioner Lipton commented that it would be difficult for him to make recommendations without seeing numbers. The EV Manager commented that we will not have any more numbers other than what we have in front of us. We cannot move forward with construction documents and the next round of consultant work unless the project is adopted and the plan is adopted. From there we will go into construction document phase which will home in on actual costs. We will not have more detailed monetary costs unless the plan is adopted to move forward with construction documents. Commissioner Lipton asked for clarification on the $14,250,000 indicated on the presented phasing plan. It doesn't seem to him that this number is a relevant number. He asked how can they make recommendations to council without actually having a better feel for that. The Director of Community Development commented that as we have developed this plan, the number continues to increase; but the phases, the short-term focus has remained the same. We have heard from LRC, City Council and from the public that these are the highest priorities, but we don't know what it is going to cost. It may end up costing more and we may end up value - engineering the project. We won't know that until we get into construction document development and then we will have to start making hard choices. We want to design for the whole phase and then bid. Then we try to get it within the budget the best we can. It has to go in that order, to design for the full first phase, and then bid it out to get it within budget. The EV Manager commented that this plan is intended to live beyond what the LRC is able to fund so that the City can use additional funds to continue future phases as funds are available to do so. The City Engineer clarified that the way it would work is we would send out for RFP for design and award the design, then come back to the LRC with 30% design for everything in phase 1. Then the LRC would need to make decisions on priorities based on budget availability. Commissioner Williams commented that it would be helpful to say that the LRC knows what their budget is. It would be Council's decision to pursue additional funding to cover anything they deem important that the LRC is unable to fund. The LRC can be clear to Council what they have available to fund this project. Commissioner Lipton expressed concern about what the LRC can recommend to council while acting responsibly. We can say it's a beautiful master plan, the LRC can only commit $9M, and these are the LRC's priorities. The Director of Community Development responded that we have heard pretty universally that Front Street is a priority in the first phase and he's not sure how