Budget Committee - June 03, 2026   6/3/2026

St Paul, City Council, Budget Committee

Roll call, please.

Council Member Bowie.

Councilmember Coleman?

Here.

Councilmember Kim?

Here.

Councilmember Jones?

Here.

Council President Baker?

Here.

Thank you guys.

So we have two presentations today.

One on the Tax Increment Financing, so TIF, and then another on the Community Development Block Grant, so CDBG.

First up I have Ms. Wolf who will be presenting on TIF as well.

The presentations are attached as well for folks who are looking in.

This is item number one for discussion.

Thank you, Ms. Wolf, for making the time over to come across the street here to give us this presentation.

We appreciate just you taking some of our questions in advance.

I think we were able to cover quite a few things in our previous conversation, but just to preface, there were several different topics that came up throughout the year last year.

As a part of the budget process, there was a TIF district that was decertified last year.

which prompted questions as well.

So I was just wanting more insight when it came to just learning more about the process overall and the process after to certification.

And so upon review of just Ms. Wolf's presentation as well, there's actually quite a few different things in here that I think will be not new information to our council members, but definitely good refreshers, especially for community members who may have been watching our TIF presentations that we've now had every year since we've been here.

But really, really excited to hear your presentation.

Good morning Chair Johnson.

Thank you on members of the City Council.

My name is Jenny Wolf with PED I will be presenting today on tax increment financing with annual update information The summary of topics listed here is all included in my slides, but many Will be very brief as they have been included in prior presentations

TIF is authorized by state law and enables the HRA to capture the increased taxes to finance development that otherwise would not occur Here is an illustration from the State Department of Revenue that I like to use as a classic example of TIF

It demonstrates that when properties have declining values due to blighting factors and disinvestment the taxing jurisdictions will benefit from a stabilized taxable value creating a steady revenue stream and then they'll realize the gain when the TIF district expires increasing the overall tax base.

How does TIF work?

At a high level when a new TIF district is certified by the county

They set the original market value tax capacity that will be fixed for the taxing jurisdictions and then they calculate the increased tax capacity each year and remit the portion of taxes from the increased value to the TIF authority.

All properties within a TIF district pay their tax bill like any other property and the distribution of the taxes is what is handled differently.

The taxes from the value in place prior to the creation of the TIF district will continue to be sent to the taxing jurisdictions.

The local tax capacity based taxes from the increased value will be sent to the TIF authority and in the case of HRA or the Port Authority.

All property taxes generated from other tax levies would be sent to the applicable taxing jurisdictions on the full value of the development, which includes market value-based taxes for the school district and state levied taxes for commercial properties.

This slide includes illustrations from the Office of the State Auditor reflecting the full payment of taxes by TIF properties

and the purpose of capturing the increased taxes to pay the eligible costs that enabled the development to occur.

And this slide shows a graphical depiction of the distribution of an annual tax payment.

And this is an actual, this is actually the proposed TIF district graphic.

So this reflects a housing only project so there isn't any commercial

taxes and it reflects a pledge of 65% of the collected tax increments to cover the eligible costs enabling the development to occur and

and this is approximately 53%.

You can see a little over half of the pie of the total tax payment which is the lighter blue slice and then the remaining 35% of the collected tax increments are for admin and pooling for affordable housing and this equates to an additional 28% of the tax payment and that is 8% in the orange slice for admin and 20% in the gray slice for affordable housing.

This leaves 19% of the tax payment that is remitted to taxing jurisdictions.

That's the darker blue slice.

Thanks, Chair Johnson.

First of all, Ms. Wolf, thank you so much.

I feel like every time we see a presentation like this, the slides get even more clear and helpful, so thank you.

And I know that one of our discussion points today is going to be the decisions we make about that gray part of the pie chart pooling and sort of things that go beyond just helping the project happen.

Can you say a little bit more about, I think, the green and blue parts of the bar chart?

In particular, is the school district affected and not affected when a TIF district is created?

Thank you, Chair Johnson, Council President Naker.

So the school district is unique in that they

they get to determine what their tax capacity base levy will support for school operations and then the state of Minnesota provides the difference.

What is shown here in the green is the market value base so that's their referendum taxes so that is outside of the state funding that so that's when they do a referendum for a capital project or an operating

takes into account that new $100,000, the total market value, even if some of it is going into a TIP district, and gets that amount into their levy referendum.

Correct.

Right.

Chair Johnson and Council President Nagar

It's based on what is the tax base.

So the tax capacity base is what the school district can maximize their levy.

And then the state will then cover their operating per pupil or whatever.

So that's all they're protected in TIF, unlike the county and or the city.

OK.

Thank you.

Okay so the next two slides just describe the two types of TIF districts used by the HRA, a redevelopment TIF district and a housing TIF district.

both which are allowed to capture tax increments for a total of 26 years.

I will just highlight the main difference in the two when creating a new TIF district.

A redevelopment TIF district, for a redevelopment TIF district the proposed boundaries of the TIF district are required to exhibit qualifying conditions including substandard buildings

and the redevelopment to occur in the district is not what's prescribed in state law, although the eligible use of tax increments is.

And for a housing TIF district, the resulting project when development is completed is what is prescribed in state law, namely income restricted rental or ownership housing with a prescribed percent affordable to a set household income.

Both types of TIF districts allow tax increments to be spent outside of the TIF district boundaries for qualifying affordable housing projects.

State law allows tax increments to be expended on activities geographically outside the TIF district boundaries, commonly known as pooling, a redevelopment TIF district

has a limit of up to 35% for a pooling which includes admin costs and housing TIF districts are similarly limited although expenditures for qualifying housing projects are considered within a TIF district boundary even when they are outside of the limit.

PED staff track and monitor pooled tax increments for affordable housing from existing TIF districts

As shown on the following slide and housing projects for housing projects affordable requirements mirror a housing tip district So on this slide

I am showing what's been generated from the TIF districts, the capture tax increments, and these are retained in the TIF districts.

So even though the term pooling is used, the balances stay with that TIF district unlike some other

We do oftentimes pool because one district alone cannot support the total the total costs needed to fill a gap in a project So what this shows is we currently have 14 million dollars with 11 million generated from redevelopment of districts

and three million generated from housing TIF districts and these balances have accumulated over multiple years.

An allocation of pooled tax increments to a project must be authorized by the HRA board.

Examples of prior approvals are shown on the following slide.

Council President.

Thanks, Chair Johnson.

So just again to put this another way, and this will make sure I understand it, so when we are considering creating a TIF district and doing pooling, what we're essentially saying to the developer is when you create this additional tax value that we didn't have before, you will pay that full amount in taxes.

Some of it we'll use to pay off the debt from the project you did.

and some proportion of it we'll use for building affordable housing in this tip district or in the project area if it's a redevelopment tip district somewhere else in the city.

So essentially we're using the carrot of tax increment financing to the developer to gain this pool of dollars to be used for affordable housing that we otherwise wouldn't have.

I want to make sure I'm stating that right and then I also, is there a limit on what percentage of

Chair Jensen, Council President Nieker, so for a redevelopment TIF district the maximum pooling is 35% and at least 10% of that would have to be for affordable housing.

We can use all of it for affordable once we cover our admin costs and generally our admin is limited to up to 10% as well, but it's rare that we hit that limit.

And then affordable housing, any percent can be allocated to other affordable housing projects that aren't the projects that the TIP district was created for?

I have a question around the 35%.

Chair Johnson, Council Member Bui, so it's of what

The tax increments we collect is 35% of what we collect.

We can then spend on admin and pooling for affordable housing.

The other 65% of what we collect has to be used for the project in the TIF district.

As a follow-up, when you say pay for cost is 65%, is that the developer's fee?

Is that the actual capital that goes into building the project?

Yeah, Chair Johnson, Council Member Bowie.

The 65% has to go to the eligible cost for that TIF district.

So in the case of a redevelopment TIF district, it could go to acquisition, it could go to demolition, it could go to site work.

As previously detailed, TIF is a state authorized financing tool and there are specific requirements that must be followed.

This is a high level list of requirements.

I'm not planning to walk through it, but just so you know there are statutory requirements as this is a state finance tool.

Now I'm going to talk about our existing TIF districts.

For page 2026, there are 57 TIP districts that are generating tax increment.

There's 47 administered by the HRA and 10 by the Port Authority.

The anticipated collections total 32.7 million with 28.5 million for the HRA districts, which is 87%.

Of the 47 HRA TIF districts generating increment, 26 are housing TIF districts and of those 26, 24 of those are rental housing.

As shown in the past, we continuously track

What percent of our tax base is captured in TIP districts?

This slide shows a five-year history and reflects our current capture rate of 6.08 percent.

We do have some new TIP districts.

There's seven new districts that have been established and we'll begin collections this year or later.

Six were authorized by the HRA board and three of those are at the Heights.

and one was authorized by the Port Authority for the Fairview St. Joe's site.

The HRA is also proposing to establish a redevelopment tip district for the Galtier Plaza site downtown and that item will be introduced this afternoon at the HRA board meeting.

These next four slides include the specific outcomes for the HRA TIF districts that are generating Increment this year or planned for future years.

I will not walk through each slide However, I do want to just highlight the total summary 7400 new housing units nearly 2 million square feet of commercial uses over 300 hotel rooms and

and 4,000 parking stalls all within the TIF district boundaries.

Without TIF as a tool, these outcomes and the resulting increase in the tax pays would not have occurred.

The table here includes the unaudited collections for pay 2025.

There were 46 HRE TIF districts and 12 port TIF districts generating increment in 25.

and the overall collections were 90% of the expected revenue.

The reduction in the actual collections to what was expected are due to petitions for the values and some of those are settled, multi-year petitions that are settled reducing the percent collected.

Ms. Wolf, I appreciate that we're moving through these quite quickly.

And can you actually go back to the previous slide on the collections?

And then can you just share a little bit more about total expected, total actuals.

Is this a point in time?

Is this overall for the projects?

Is this the collection rates?

When I'm looking at the collection rates, what is that 86%?

actually mean?

So this is just what was received from the pay 25 tax settlement.

So we receive, you pay your taxes in May and we receive those in July.

The second half paid in October, we receive in two pieces.

We receive

Payment in early December and then the county sends what's called a Final cleanup payment of anything that they collect by the end of the calendar year so we receive that in January So this just reflects what we received in those three settlements Last year so in July December in January of this year Compared to what the county told us we should expect to receive from our tip districts and similarly for the Port Authority and

The reason that you would see 86% versus 94% is the petition.

So when a TIF district settles a petition, the county will issue a refund and then they'll take that refund out of our collections.

in that year.

So what I'm not showing you here, and I can follow up and show you, but I can tell you what was current taxes that we received, what was delinquent taxes that we received, and what was refunds that reduced our collections.

But that's why it's kind of variable.

But it does just reflect those three settlements that the HRA received.

Chair Johnson, I can provide that detail, but I think last year was quite a few petitions settled for apartments.

OK, thank you.

Chair Johnson, thank you so much.

I just have a question particularly around this slide.

Chair Johnson,

Council Member Bowie.

So a property owner has the right to petition the value that the county assesses, right?

So they assess, they send that out in the tax statement in March.

They'll send the most current assessed value for the following pay year.

Every property owner has the opportunity to petition that value.

That process is not fast.

It can take quite a few years.

There's onus on both the county and the property owner to detail why they think their property is overvalued.

And so when a petition settles that means a refund has been issued.

When it's a pending petition that means the county holds back tax increments because they think they might send a refund before our next collection.

So the county doesn't want to send the HRA and TIF authority the taxes if they think they're going to have to issue a refund.

So they'll hold back a pending amount.

and then in the next collection they'll settle that.

Does that help?

Just a quick follow-up, is that process handled through the county or is the city the county?

Yes, they have an entire board for it that I used to sit on.

Thanks, Madam Chair.

I'm just noticing, I'm glad you went back to the slide, I'm noticing the difference in the amount captured from redevelopment TIF districts versus housing TIF districts, even though we have fewer redevelopment than housing TIF districts.

I'm wondering if that is because redevelopment TIF districts just end up being more valuable because they're typically taking a blighted property and creating something, some new

of the City Council.

I would agree with your statement.

I think the main driver in the large redevelopment TIF collections is we have

some very large TIF districts and those so Minnesota event TIF district in downtown that's you know 20% of our total capture and then we have the Riverfront Renaissance and we have the Emerald Gardens out at University and

I'm blanking on the at the border Minneapolis and St Paul.

So those large those are large redevelopment tip districts that have contributed to pooling for affordable housing and then otherwise most Most housing projects are or housing tip districts as you mentioned are single single projects, so they're on scale.

They're never going to

create what a large redevelopment site would create such as Riverfront Renaissance or Emerald Gardens which had you know multiple blocks and Ford site for example Ford site would be our next on par with Minnesota events where by the time it's fully built out it'll be capturing you know that 20% so that's probably you know I mean but they do redevelopment of districts do have more ability to

So now I'll finish with the topic of decertification.

So first I want to cover what is statutorily required.

All TIF districts have a statutory length for collections, which is 26 total years for housing or redevelopment TIF districts.

State law, however, limits the spending within the TIF district that could result in early decertification of the district.

The driver is the law that limits pooling.

For a redevelopment TIF district, the maximum pooling is 35% of the tax increments,

However, pooling not only applies to expenditures outside the TIF district boundaries but pooling is also defined as an expenditure within the TIF district that is after a certain date and this date is five years from the certification date.

This therefore restricts the use of collected tax increments and when a determination has been made that no additional spending is allowed the TIF district must be decertified.

In summary, for a redevelopment of district, if the qualifying expenditures not deemed limited by pooling, aka in-district expenditures are completed and they fall below the 65% of the actual collections,

The district must be decertified.

So in the case of Westminster, the district, the Port Authority, decertified.

So their pooling was 75% because they did not elect to do the additional 10% for affordable housing.

So they had collected enough increments to cover what were the qualifying in-district expenditures, and therefore they could no longer continue to collect.

And we closed the Cope Mobile TIF district a few years ago.

for that reason as well.

I'm sorry.

I don't understand that.

So we just have it said.

It seems very important.

I almost want to ask here just to basically even rephrase the question and just what is being answered.

I think we are being walked through the statutory requirements which I think makes sense and if you could just share a little bit more of like an example maybe subbing in hypotheticals and adding in amounts and just so we can understand the percentage pieces I think that would be really really helpful for folks like myself who are visual learners as well

I want to follow what you're sharing.

Chair Johnson, President Naker, Council members, I will try.

So it's kind of, I think I've covered this before, that it's more or less a math exercise, right?

So if we've collected $100

We would have to spend or $100 we would have to spend $65 of that that we've collected in the district for qualifying project costs and so that if we only had $63 that qualified we would have $2 over What we could keep

I understand that.

Yeah, it's Chair Johnson, Council President Naker.

That was something that the state law had amended originally, and there's kind of these pre-82 pooling or whatever.

So there was two districts where they didn't limit

the

recession or delays in developments.

They extended that to 10 years.

We did that recently for the Ford TIF district.

We extended our five-year rule to 10 years because of the delay in building out the housing units at Ford site.

So put another way, maybe this five-year rule made it even more difficult to reach our $65 that we had to spend.

Previously, we could sort of come up with another project that could use those $2, but now we can't after five years that the district was started.

And so when we can't spend $65 anymore, we have to close it.

Yeah, correct.

You can exceed that 65% or be lower than it.

But once you've incurred the last cost or you think you're going to, you can project forward and say, well, I think we're going to have more than what we can spend.

Then you would start setting aside those tax dollars to pay off your in-district costs.

But it's cumulative.

I just have another question just trying to get the picture clearer with using the example that you gave but I also want to just ask in a different type of version so like my understanding when a developer is building a project those like the costs

could be pretty stationary.

But until you start actually developing, there's some flexibility with those numbers.

But whatever we certify is like that ceiling.

So if you're saying the $100, but we can only reimburse up to $65.

So are you saying if a developer does not incur

up to that ceiling at 65, and that's will we decertify?

So does that mean if a development actually costs less, then the commission or the HRA commission is more incentivized to decertify that?

Or if a project takes longer?

Chair Johnson, Councilmember Buie, that's a good question.

Most of the talk about if we have all these costs and we don't have enough are probably more for

like phase developments, like the Ford site.

So I'll give an example, which the pie chart that I show here, which is what's proposed for the Galtier Plaza, right?

So the developer will have to demonstrate that they had the eligible cost once the project's done, and that'll set the principal amount that we'll reimburse over time with the 65% that we collect plus interest.

What could happen in that case is the collections could come in greater than we expected, and we would still give 65%, but we may pay that obligation off in 15 years.

And so that would be an instance where we've paid it off, that's our only in-district cost, and now we have to close the district because we maximized the pooling, we kept 35%, we gave them only 65%,

If the development does cost less and we end up reducing the principal amount of a note, that could be a factor as well, but we would still be sending them 65% to pay that note back.

So I think the best way to look at it is it's generally collections come in quicker

Thanks to everyone for your patience with all of these questions.

I really appreciate, Ms. Wolf, your explanation.

So 35% is the max that we can pool for affordable housing.

What if we had decided for this particular project we're only going to pool 10%, and the 90% is going to the eligible project costs?

How would this apply in that case?

Would it be that the 90% has to be the amount that we pay to the project

for the life of the project, and as soon as that's done, we close?

Chair Johnson, Council President Nager, so our development agreements and our TIF notes call out the pledge.

So we can't change it once we've issued that note.

So if we're pledging 90%,

because we expect to only keep the 10% and that note pays off early and the reason it pays off early is because we've collected more tax increments or quicker.

We maybe would not have incurred as much interest so two things could happen.

We might have room in our TIF budget that we could still collect tax increments and then

do pooling at the end, so once the developer's note is paid off.

But it will depend on what the TIF plan budget, what condition it's in at the time that happens.

So an example of that is the Shepherd Daven rental housing TIF district, where that note paid off early.

And we brought forward an amendment that was approved by HRE board and city council to increase the budget in the TIF plan

and allow us to continue to capture tax increments and use those exclusively for additional affordable housing anywhere in the city because that TIF district performed better than what was expected.

Okay, I think I've covered the statutory reasons, so now I am going to cover, if not statutorily required, should the HRA elect to close a district early.

First I want to just state that the HRA only keeps a district open to pool for affordable housing.

If a TIF district has met its development objectives and covered all obligations, it can be closed early, even if pooling opportunities exist.

Alternatively, a district may be kept open to pool tax increments for qualifying housing projects.

That housing TIF district, though, I'll just say, has to remain income restricted for us to continue to collect tax increments.

So Shepherd Daven was just mentioned and this was shown on a few slides back with an available balance of 1.8 to 8 million to be expended on qualifying affordable housing projects and is expected to generate 500,000 per year going forward and has a final collection year of 2031 but for the HRA board

and City Council's decision to amend that TIF district and keep it open.

We would not have those dollars existing today, the $1.8 to $8 million, or the ongoing half a million dollars each year into 2031 being the statutory final collection year.

and we only keep a district open to pool for affordable.

Upon decertification, the tax capacity captured in the TIF district becomes available for the taxing jurisdictions and I have a graphic from the state auditor that I'd like to show you.

So this shows the impact on the city tax rate

with TIF and without TIF and without TIF is the district is decertified.

The tax rate would decline, all things equal.

On the other hand, the release tax capacity could result in an increase to the levy and then while maintaining the same tax rate.

So you basically have two, yeah, well, two somewhat two options.

If you want to reduce taxes,

you don't raise the levy and you allow the tax rate to fall because you have a greater tax capacity all things equal just looking at a TIF district when it expires or you increase the levy to capture that increased tax capacity from the decertifying TIF district so for page 2026

The HRA has 47 TIF districts, and of those 47, we have five that have obligations that were fully paid by the end of last year.

So we have two housing TIF districts, the aforementioned Shepherd-Davurn, and then we also have Highland Point Housing TIF district.

It also has paid off its TIF note early and has enough budget so it hasn't had to come forward to be amended.

and we are continuing to collect and retain those dollars for pooling for affordable housing.

And on the slide earlier, I think I showed about $500,000 from that one.

I would have to go back.

So anyway, so there is a balance shown.

That one only generates about $270,000 a year.

and then we have three sub-districts within the Riverfront Renaissance Redevelopment TIF District, which TIF District includes two additional sub-districts that have existing debt obligations, the upper landing and the US Bank.

The final collection here for the Riverfront Renaissance is coming up here in 2028.

However, we do have five districts or sub-districts that I'm expecting to pay their obligations in full this year in 2026.

allowing early due certification.

This is the Emerald Park redevelopment TIF with three sub-districts.

The Phelan Village uncommitted sub-district and the Pioneer Endicott redevelopment TIF district downtown here.

As previously mentioned, we may collect and spend tax increments from housing and redevelopment TIF districts if legally permissible after debt is retired.

For the five districts that I just mentioned, future HRA action will be needed to authorize early decertification.

This is required because we have maximized our pooling from those three districts or subdistricts.

So now I'm going to show the districts that are decertifying by their statutory terms and those three that I just mentioned we will be proposing some HRE board action to decertify those early.

And then this table shows the anticipated capture tax capacity projections when accounting for decertifications and accounting for new TIF coming online.

You will see here the overall captured tax capacity rate remains below 6.2% and this goes through 2034 tax pay year.

Lastly, I will provide a very high level impact for pay 27 with the districts that will decertify as of 12-31-26 either by their statutory term or early

As mentioned, when a TIF district is closed, the captured tax capacity is returned to the tax base and could result in a reduction in the city tax rate, as was shown in that graphic, if the levy is not increased.

A rough estimate is that this would be $9.11 per year in city taxes for a median valued home.

from those that are statutorily expiring, so those that are required to close because they've met their term.

And then a reduction of $18.27 per year when including the early decertification of the three districts listed.

The $18.27 represents 1.26% reduction of the annual tax payment

to the city and this is a median value home and it's based on pay 26 information.

It's just very high level of what that would mean, but we don't have any information yet for pay 27 of course.

Okay, so Miss Wolf, can you just simply share at least about the last couple of slides?

in simple terms.

So we have a couple of different TIF districts that will most likely be brought forward for early certification.

When we look at the projected release tax capacity, what a lot of this actually translates to, and then also just what happens to the financing afterwards?

What happens to the total amounts?

Chair Johnson, so when a TIF district is decertified that means that those properties in the TIF district will no longer, the taxes, increased taxes will no longer be sent to the HRA as a TIF authority.

They will be part of the overall tax base.

So we will no longer collect

tax increments from that TIF district.

We still have money that we've retained.

We still have reporting requirements.

We still have to spend all of those dollars we have collected in accordance with the adopted TIF plan and the requirements.

Right, so in regards to that, and in short, just also making sure that we understand, it doesn't change the overall.

The tax value itself is just basically rolling back on to the normal tax base.

Well, the HRA as the territory.

Correct.

Thanks, Madam Chair.

I have two questions from the whole presentation.

Ms. Wolf, once a district can decertify early, obviously when it has to decertify, you're coming to us, right?

but when it can but doesn't have to decertify early, do you come to us to ask whether or not we want to decertify early and give us the pros and cons of that decision?

In other words, this is how much we would continue to pull for affordable housing if you kept it open.

Chair Johnson, Council President Nieker, I have not, so an example of that is the Highland Point Housing Tip District that paid its obligation off early.

We've been just continuing to, we know the project is affordable, it's income restricted due to tax credits, so we've continued to collect those dollars and we're reflecting those as available for furthering affordable housing in our community.

So our PED resource team,

reasons we had this briefing was because we've gotten questions from folks in the community about TIF districts, staying open, closing.

So we might want to have that decision point as a matter of policy.

I'm just bringing it up.

And then my other question is, how do we decide on any given TIF district when we're establishing it how much to pool for affordable housing?

Do we always just do the 35% because that gives us the most flexibility?

Chair Johnson, Council President Naker, so our HRA application does put forward TIF guidelines and it mentions that criteria is to pool 25% for affordable housing as applicable and we've used that as applicable to mean if the project isn't producing its own affordable that it would be applicable to pool

And that comes to us when we approve the TIF districts and

Yes, correct.

Can you also share a little bit more about the application process?

So what happens, we have an application, we have these pieces, but on the back end as well when it comes through, what exactly does that look like on the back end?

Chair Johnson, so if it's a housing project, it'll start with the housing director, Jules Atogina.

He will discuss the project.

We don't fixate on TIF when a project comes forward.

We evaluate the project itself and then we determine what is the best course to have it happen.

Our application does include a request for TIF, but we don't solely say that that's the only thing we're going to look at.

for projects that there's other funding sources out there.

If it does have affordable components, we would be looking for it to go to other funders as well.

If it's a market rate project, we might be looking for it to apply for pass-through grants or other sources as well.

But one of the determinations that has to be made if it's a redevelopment TIF district is that the site even qualifies.

As I mentioned, a redevelopment TIF district can only qualify based on its current conditions.

So if it doesn't meet that requirement, then we're going to end a conversation.

The developer has to pay for that cost of that study.

And we won't do that until we receive an application.

So they would have to submit the application to the HRA

requesting that we establish the TIP district and then we would work to get the report

from LHB that says it can qualify, then we would engage our municipal advisor to talk about the project and make sure that they actually need a subsidy for the project to happen, meeting the but-for test.

And that's under the assumption that we really don't have other tools in our toolbox for non-affordable housing.

and TIF is one of those tools.

Alright, I see a couple questions that have popped up.

Thanks, Chair.

Thanks so much, Ms. Wolf.

This presentation is really helpful.

I'm going back to the tax capacity captured in TIF slide.

I'm just curious about these five-year trends.

I think that it's super helpful to see these.

It feels like they don't totally match what the public narrative has been around our use of TIF in the city.

And so I guess

I'm curious for any thoughts you have on this slide or any color commentary you want to add, but specifically I guess I'm wondering about, well sorry I had gone back even further to the one about the last five years rather than the next five years, but there's definitely overlap between the two.

I guess I'm curious if you could just kind of comment on if that's been a result of the projects that have been available to the city, if you feel like that's been a result of intentional decision-making by the HRA board or others within PED to kind of go down.

And then a separate question that's less commentary and more just fact-based, is it 10% of the city's tax base that can be captured by TIF?

And is that a legal requirement, or is that a city policy?

The 10% is not of any state law and that is something that came out of the finance office many, many years ago in talking with the credit rating agencies in order for the city to maintain its AAA credit rating.

The rating agency looks at what is their capacity to levy taxes and so if it's captured in TIF they can't levy taxes on that.

because they're looking at their GO Bond credit rating, right?

So they are pledging the full faith in credit and taxing powers of the city.

So if they have more than 10% captured in TIF, that might be a reason to not give the AAA rating.

So that's where the 10% comes from.

It has been something that has been measured every year and it's used when we're

when we receive requests.

It's used to project going forward.

And I think this slide here shows two things.

The Great Recession in the late 2000s and the declining values, and I think not until maybe

did we actually recover to where we had been.

So obviously with declining values that puts a lot of pressure on that percentage.

So the percentage has been shrinking

all things equal every year since then since values recovered because now values have been gaining and you can see here that the city's tax rate or tax base has been growing until between 24 and 25 and then the TIF percent change has been growing but not as much or actually declined and the reason the decline you'll see is because of TIF district

was decertified.

That's going to be a reason why you'll see a decline there.

So from 24 to 25, there's probably Williams Hill with the Port and the Coke Mobile with the HRA are reasons why that.

And then also just declining values.

I think our TIF districts are largely, I would say, more

Rental and commercial than ownership housing Whereas the city's tax base is more ownership housing So that might be where if you see a reduction in one it doesn't mirror the other I've tried to kind of look and see you know the makeup of it, but it it's You know it's hit or miss

Yes, the narrative has been that we're including more TIF than what we should.

I'm going to go to Council Member Bui and then I'll have Council Member Bui ask the last question only because I want to get us to the second part of the presentation as well.

I see you, you're going to be the last question.

We'll do those two and then we'll end this part.

If you have follow-ups, I think Ms. Wolf is

I'm willing to talk about TIF any day.

I do appreciate being able to have this come back through this body.

I think one piece that wasn't necessarily touched on in the presentation that would be helpful, especially when we're thinking about the respective TIF areas.

So when port TIF is decertified, when housing TIF is decertified, redevelopment TIF,

to whom does the if there's any resources or leftover pool TIF that needs to be allocated or utilized to whom has the authority to do that and like what is the process when there is a balance left that can be utilized this was a topic for discussion last year because a port district TIF had rolled over and there were

and the budget

Chair Johnson, I'll just add real quick, and I will send that, but I'll just add real quick.

As you saw from the actual collections slide for Pay 25, we did not collect what we expected, right?

And that was because of the refunds.

So when a TIF district is decertified, so if it was decertified for 25, was its last collection year, the county can issue a refund for those 25 taxes for up to three years later.

So that causes

a resulting holding on to dollars until you know they're not going to be captured back.

So Coke Mobile was was decertified 2024.

We still have one more year of where we could and we got a negative collection in 25 because refunds were issued.

We could still get a negative collection and so until we we are assured that we're not going to be sitting there with

the HRA General Fund having to bail out a TIP District because we closed it and returned the dollars.

That's why there isn't an immediate, here you go.

I think you could ask the Port Authority what kind of analysis they did to make sure with Westminster they were comfortable returning what they did because I know they did that analysis because they too have been hit with negative collections due to refunds being issued.

Thank you Chair Johnson and thank you so much Ms. Wolf for just like your wealth of knowledge and the patience as we're you know asking you to kind of reiterate yourself and you know dive deeper into this topic.

I just want I definitely want to follow up and I'll make sure I can send some emails or some questions particularly around the follow-up and I know we're gonna have more of these conversations in the future in terms of

and City Council.

just like some past examples.

I'm just really curious to learn more about what was the rationale with the city going in a direction where we source out a third party to be able to determine blight.

I'm going to ask this question just because as we're just going over all the different reasons and scenarios of when TIP districts were designed, it really appears as if it's driven by the developer, right?

has a

At times the city has taken on determining blight and I can say we did that with the Ford site.

We did that because Ford was going to start demolishing buildings and unless we made the determination of blighting conditions without a developer at hand, we would have lost that tool in our toolbox to help with redeveloping the site.

It has happened, but not very often.

I think it's for something large and impactful, and the Sears site is probably along those lines as well.

And so, yes, the city could take that on.

We could engage.

We will always engage a third party because they're the experts in the field, but we could engage that without a developer, and then we could make those determinations and findings.

Thank you.

Council Vice President Yang.

Thanks, Chair Johnson.

Jenny, I really appreciate the presentation today, even if this is like my seventh refresher on TIF.

I am always learning and getting clarification from you, so I encourage you to continue doing this for the Council.

I want to go back to something that the Council President said earlier, which is around this question on policy for the pooling.

For me, I do want to share with folks that I'm interested in making sure that when there is a district that can be up for decertification that we do get info about it, even if in the end we don't decide to do the pooling instead.

It would just be helpful to understand that.

and I remember when Insight St Paul came sometime last year and said hey the council should consider decertifying these you know this handful of districts that I didn't realize that that we could have done that and so it was new information for me that I I believe it's really important for the council to understand in terms of

will offer transparency and for us to be able to decide what are the trade-offs that we would want to make in a decision like that, knowing that this is an opportunity for us to reduce the amount that we could be putting on to our property owners when it comes to the levy.

And at the same time, if we decided to do the pooling, it's more money for affordable housing.

And so it seems like maybe this might be like in how we're operating now, it's an unwritten

I'm very supportive of I don't think in my seven years here that it was something that the council voted on however it would be helpful to understand is this something that we do need to have a written policy for if we were to decide to operate differently from from here on out so if you can clarify that that'd be really helpful overall again I wanted to name him

Chair Johnson, Council Vice President Yang, I think that's something that we can discuss with PED leadership.

I'll just share that the housing team has full-on applications for projects within the city and desires from developers.

That's about 24 projects long, requesting

So I'm actually going to ask if Director McMahon would also just be able to come.

I think this is an important question for this topic.

I think it's a practice piece that Council Vice President is asking.

And so we're just wondering around whether or not this is a, I think this seems like it's a piece of whether it has to be a resolution, or does it have to be something that HRA or the City Council would take formal action on?

I think it's something that we've worked on in partnership.

State law is pretty prescriptive.

And so when we're talking about policies and sort of rules and guidelines to follow, state law being as prescriptive as it is with TIF is really the benchmark, right, to make sure that we're following and working under.

Within that, we do have practices, standard practices, that we've done over the years.

And those are things that, always in discussion, right, continuing with you all.

They're things that also impact other departments when we talk about the 10% and things like that.

is a larger conversation and sometimes site specific.

And so those general practices and guidelines that we have internally guide our work.

even if the ultimate decision

I did say this was going to be the last question.

So I'm going to hold us to that just because I do want to be able to have Beth come up and talk about CDBG, Director McMahon, but I appreciate that clarification.

I think it's just opportunities.

I didn't want to talk about PED leadership with you sitting in the room to be able to just ask.

I think when we have opportunities to not have to prescribe things to the form of resolution or to a policy direct policy change because we can just operate with that practice in mind I think that's always a great opportunity to capitalize on so thank you council vice president for raising the question and thank you for coming up and being put on the spot Director McMahon.

Good morning, Chair Johnson, Council members.

My name is Beth Ulrich.

I'm the Grants Administrator for PED.

I work on our federal, state, and regional grants, but I'm here to talk about our federal grant, CDBG.

So our team in PED for federal grants is comprised of our CFO, Deputy Director Nicole Green, myself as the Grants Administrator, Grants Compliance Supervisor Jessica Deegan, and then we have three specialists that work with our partners and our city departments, Austria Zong and Chu.

And our team manages not only CDBG, but there's three entitlement grants through HUD.

that include our home partnership program and our emergency solutions grant as well.

All of our funds are allocated through the consolidated plan.

The consolidated plan is a five-year plan.

Our most recent one just started in 2025.

The program cycle is June 1 through May 31.

We approve our annual action plan around April every year, so you would have recently saw the 26 plan come through in April.

In our consolidated plan, our five-year plan, we identify our goals.

Most recently were development of new housing, housing rehabilitation, economic development, some public services, public improvements, and some remediation of substandard properties are the ones that are in our 25 and 29 plan.

and this will guide all five plans under that annual action plan for 25 through 29.

When working with CDBG, we always have to meet national objectives that is in the regulations.

Most frequently and required, we have to spend no less than 70% of our funds on low to moderate

of the City of St. Paul.

We can be done in an area or a spot basis.

We do not have a certified area in St Paul, so all of our sun blight activities are on a spot.

You can also spend these type of dollars on urgent need.

We have not had that type of need.

We don't see hurricanes and natural disasters.

It can't happen, it just hasn't.

So our HUD formula grants have been not keeping up with inflation and actually declining a little bit.

So this graphic just shows our 2026 allocation at 6.7 million, just a little over.

Our home declined at 1.3 this year and our emergency solution holds pretty steady at just over half a million.

So what we can expect for 2027?

This administration's been a little hard to project.

The president's budget came in with a significant decrease to the civilian agencies.

And it actually proposed zeroing out any funding for CDBG and home.

However, May 21st, the House Transportation Housing and Urban Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee voted to advance their spending bill, which provided level funding for CDBG, so they restored it in the budget.

However, it did come with a 60% cut to our home program.

and a 6% cut to ESG.

One thing that was positive out of the bill was that they are proposing that a regulation called BABA, Build America, would be exempt to CDBG and home projects for 27 and prior years.

This particular regulation has been causing a little bit of delay and

I see a question from Council President Naker.

Thanks, Chair Johnson.

Yeah.

So if we look back at what happened in 2026 funding, the President's budget zeroed it out.

Both the Senate and Housing had put in some form of funding.

CDBG is typically very

has wide bipartisan support.

It's widely used in all of our states, all of our areas.

And there's been a couple of home housing, affordable housing bills that have been proposed.

A lot of policy work that's been done in the last year, nothing that's been approved and put in place yet.

But there's wide support behind the activities that these funds support.

So prior to the new administration, HUD had a proposed rule that was about ready to be put into effect.

However, all rules were suspended.

This proposed rule would change our timeliness

which is something that I know you folks have had some interest around is our timeliness and our spending.

We are hoping that at some point this rule will get released and put in effect but right now it's still pending.

So just, you know, what is timeliness?

Basically, 60 days prior to the end of our program year, so our program starts June 1, which means by April 1, we have to have no more than one and a half times our annual grant, so our most recent annual grant

on

What causes us to not be timely is sometimes, so it's increased or unused funding.

Increased funding would be when we get program income.

Sometimes we'll have large projects that have been financed in previous years.

They'll pay off to refinance or just pay off early because sometimes they're selling.

So that would increase a large chunk of dollars coming back.

We have returned funds from programs or projects that aren't used, some projects

of the City of St Paul.

Our funding is mostly allocated through the city's biannual CIB process.

We get roughly $6.7 million in CDBG.

CIB allocates about $4 million of that each year.

We can safely say we budget $4 million a year.

The remaining funds, we are allowed to spend 20% on admin and then 15% on public services.

We have a question from Council President Naker.

Did you say that we have

that the 15% is the max that we can spend on non-capital?

Correct, on public services.

I guess I'm wondering, is the amount that we're sending through CIB the amount that we have to send through CIB?

Chair Johnson, Council President Naker, we are required to spend no more than 15% on public services and no more than 20% on admin.

The remaining amount isn't required to go through CIB, but it is required to have some kind of allocation process.

So the CIB process has been what was established many years ago.

but it isn't the only process available to be used.

Thank you.

So this little bar chart just shows what our allocation looks like.

We have been getting less dollars than we used to in the past, and when you consider inflation and the decrease in funding, obviously there is way more need than we have funds available to address.

Currently, the non-capital funds that we're using in CDBG are Capital City Youth Employment, so that's commonly known as Right Track.

So our Parks Department runs that program.

$540,000 in 26 is going to fund that.

And then $100,000 goes through Public Health, Ramsey County, the Block Nurse Program.

So those are currently the only two public service dollars that we use.

for 26.

And then we use roughly 1.4 for program administration.

That's mainly spent by PED in the city attorney's office.

And then PED also spends what we call project delivery, or HUD calls project delivery.

We call them direct project costs.

All right.

Thanks Chair, just a quick question on this.

How do those spending totals compare to that 15 and 20 percent respectively?

Thank you.

As a follow-up as well, I believe that district councils counted under this historically and just wondering where or if we

In 2026, those funds through the consolidated plan process that you approved in April

were allocated to some additional projects.

I'll identify them on a slide later here, but it went to two projects that did not make the funding requests through CIB.

Thanks, Chair Johnson.

Following up on Ms. Coleman's question, I think it's $900,000 would be the 15% of the $6 million, and we are well below that in terms of the program expenses or services.

So we would need to make a decision basically prior to the two-year process for CIB, which I know is going to be coming up this next year because this last one allocated 26 and 27, or recommended 26 and 27.

So if there want to be a change, that would be

the time to make that change for the $4 million that's already been allocated.

For any additional funds that would be available, so like the $345,000 that we know is there for, has not been allocated for $27 million, we would, it's up for discussion.

I mean we don't have a process to allocate that $345 million.

We knew we had the extra money.

So that's why it came through the annual action plan the way it did this time.

So it was proposed and available for you through the action plan process.

If there is a different process that we are considering, we can definitely consider options.

We do need to follow federal procurement.

I know that the public hearing I think on some of these items with the CIB's recommendations I believe are going to be taking place on the 8th of June I think is when they're doing some of the recommendations for certain projects but can you share a little bit about how like

For example, I have a couple of different organizations that have come to me with youth complex ideas or community center ideas.

And so I just wanted to just ask, some of these are broader, I would say bigger programs.

And then some of them are specific projects that are maybe happening in a particular area.

How do they get to this stage when it comes to just, for example, the community center allocation?

So OFS owns the process.

So on how they approach CIB, that's a question we need to pose to the CIB staff in OFS.

I have an idea, but I can't.

you know, speak for it.

So the process that's coming up this year isn't for CDBG because our process occurred previously.

So we'll be on the next year because every two years they do the community process one year, CDBG the next year for two years at a time each way.

So PED

We actually compete in that CIB process with our partners and other city departments for that $4 million.

So occasionally, depending on the project, if it fits the program

that we have allocated funds for.

They could make applications to PED for the funds that we have.

And we don't have a community center, obviously, program.

But occasionally, we do have returned funds, like I said, those out of cycle projects.

When that happens, we usually notify OFS.

That's when we get those.

Requests through other departments.

It's how we funded some of like North End Community Center was recipient, you know a few years ago because we had some projects after COVID that Didn't go so we had some extra funds.

I guess just one final question.

Looking back at the goals that are just from the consolidated plan, and I know approving the consolidated plan happens, but from my understanding, how do we determine where we spend those resources per goal?

So for example, I see housing rehabilitation on the goals.

has an extensive community engagement process.

It takes about a year.

The neighborhood and community, that community engagement that takes place, that's where those goals get identified.

So it's where we see the needs.

And there's also this whole needs analysis that gets done.

I can definitely provide you more information at a later time on the consolidated plan process.

So those are identified there.

In our annual action plan,

which takes place every year.

It's a quicker three-month engagement process that identifies where we're going to allocate those funds.

The funds have to match up with those goals but they don't necessarily have to fund all of those goals.

PED and our multifamily project that we ask for funds for does some housing rehabilitation.

So there is in the multifamily we have that

And the annual action plan comes when?

So it usually shows up on a council agenda in April.

So in April you just approved 26 because again we run different than the regular city budget.

Thank you.

I appreciate that as well and you coming in and talking about this too.

I'm happy to answer any questions.

So yeah, Chair Johnson, whatever questions your team has, just send them my way.

Sounds good.

Thank you.

With that, just a quick thing for folks while I have you is just you'll be getting an email from all of us about the budget meeting dates and things that will be coming and so keep a lookout for that.