2019-07-15 EDA Minutes (signed) - Laserfiche WebLink

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REDA Meeting Minutes—Monday,July 15,2019 Page 7 Member Willmus indicated with respect to southeast Roseville initiatives, there has been a tremendous effort on place making and things along those lines. He wondered where the conversation was about actually taking some concrete steps forward to address the issues of crimes, things like that, more in the short term than the long term. He asked where the city is at with the partners. Ms. Gundlach thought that was a very timely topic in light of some of the things that recently occurred there. She is sitting on a subcommittee of the Rice/Larpenteur Alliance and planning on a neighborhood event to happen on August 17th and the topic got completely overwhelmed by the crime issues that are going on and the business community being concerned about some of the crime that is going on and the alliance is exploring how to address it. Obviously, the long-term intent of the Alliance is to do those place making initiatives that will have, over the long term, a big impact on crime and the short term there are not a lot of tangible things that are happening. The Alliance has committed to investing that further, but she did not have any additional details for the EDA at this time. She noted the Alliance did meet with the business community and the business community did express a very big concern about crime and there is an intention to follow up with them as well. President Roe explained subsequent to the meetings about the August 17th event, there was some exchange amongst some of the elected officials from the three communities as well as the folks from the Chamber. A letter was sent to various public safety agencies in the area reminding everybody of the need to continue to do work and that there have been some collaborative efforts begun in the process, having the agencies talk and work together, including the Ramsey County attorney's office. One of the things that was figured out, a missing piece, is that there should have been representatives from the law enforcement community on the Alliance board so an invitation did go out. He believed all of the entities have expressed positive desire to participate. He thought that was an important group to have at the table. Member Willmus thought with Open to Business and a small business loan program, one thing that would be important for him to understand when coming forward is what are those entities able to do that private sector lenders are not? Ms. Gundlach indicated staff will have those entities address that question. Open to Business does have access to capital but can come in and provide some gap financing above and beyond what the bank can do and also provide some options to the business as to how it can levy funds in combination with other funds.