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Regular City Council Meeting Monday, September 14, 2015 Page 18 focused on jobs and redevelopment since the mid-1980's, but for the last six months had begun reconfigl.iring their efforts back to the county and creating an EDA to present a different face in the inarketplace. Mayor Roe asked for more specifics and clarification on the housing activities of the South St. Paul HRA. Mr. Bilotta advised that the City of South St. Paul had ten staff inembers for HRA and building management functions, overlapping with the county's functions, and they were now attempting to eliininate that overlap as much as possible. Councilmember McGehee aslced how many other cities in Minnesota, outside the major Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul with real ports, had PA's. Mr. Bilotta clarified that when EDA statutes were created, PA's required special legislation, and in the City of Roseville's case, it held PA powers even though not a port city. However, Mr. Bilotta noted that the legislature began asking how and why those powers were available and used, and suggested giving cities something beyond PA, thus creating the EDA process, which could be handled locally like an HRA versus PA requiring legislative action, but mirroring PA and piciced up HRA powers. Councilinember McGehee encouraged her colleagues to keep in mind the consid- eration needing to be clearly addressed regarding elected versus non-elected offi- cials for bonding and taxing authority. Taking a strictly theoretical path, Mayor Roe questioned, depending on the ins and outs of how it inay occur, rather than using the existing HRA with a broader charge, if it made inore sense to keep the HRA specific to a certain ainount of housing-related efforts (e.g. rehabilitation of existing property, multi-family hous- ing, and GMHC programs) but not taking on other HRA powers reserved for PA. Also, Mayor Roe wondered if changing the scope of the HRA should include that body's buy-in or simply be recognized as a function of the City with the ability of the City Council to change that role and purpose. If an HRA continued to exist, Mayor Roe questioned if the balance of existing HRA fiirids allocated for eco- nomic development efforts could transfer in part to a PA. Mr. Bilotta responded that the HRA would have statutory powers as it does now and noted that the City Council could not take those away, but it could limit them through a cooperative agreement and enforce that prior to the HRA's annual levy request at which time the City Council was presented with their preliminary budget and could set a levy within those specific housing activities; and if that process was chosen going forward, could take the remainder of the HRA levy un- der the City's PA levy as long as it wasn't maxed out.