Wheeler council workshop weighs urban renewal district to fund waterfront redevelopment

WHEELER — City officials and residents spent the workshop focusing on whether an urban renewal district (URA) could finance waterfront redevelopment and shore up the city’s finances, but they did not make a decision. Mike, who led the presentation, said a URA would let the city capture the growth in assessed value inside a designated area and use that ‘‘tax increment’’ to fund public improvements while other taxing districts are temporarily held at their current rates.

The discussion centered on process and trade-offs rather than approval: Mike said the plan must be ‘‘extremely detailed’’ and include maps, a time horizon and line-item costs; he added that affected taxing entities would have to be notified and would have 45 days to respond. Speaker 10 (Steve Palmer in the meeting) emphasized that ‘‘a key to starting an urban renewal district generally requires proving blight,’’ pointing to flat or declining property values and a deteriorating city hall as evidence. Multiple councilors and residents urged careful study before moving forward.

Speakers ran through preliminary financial examples presented by Mike. He said the URA would receive roughly $22,000 in its first year under the assumptions he provided and that annual receipts could grow (he described a scenario where annual URA receipts approached about $162,000 by year six of a waterfront buildout). Mike stressed those figures are based on assumptions from the developer and assessed-value calculations and warned the city ‘‘doesn’t have any money’’ to pay for the necessary professional work without a grant or other funding source.

Residents and some councilors pushed back on market assumptions and risks. One resident asked who would live and work in a proposed hotel inside a tsunami zone and said several local properties had failed to sell recently. Speaker 2 and others urged skepticism about developer projections; the council noted the planner had deemed the developer’s application incomplete and that the developer has time to resubmit. Questions also focused on how the URA would affect the city’s general fund in the short term — councilors noted the URA can depress revenue available to the general fund for the URA term even if long-term property-value gains could later return revenue to other taxing districts.

Councilmembers discussed next steps. Multiple participants recommended forming a feasibility committee — either an ad hoc URA committee or expanding the existing economic development committee — to gather detailed information (cost estimates, assessor data, needed city work, grant possibilities) and to recommend whether to proceed. Remote participant Heidi urged a town hall to explain the city’s fiscal condition and the URA’s risks and benefits and to solicit resident priorities. Speaker 1 summarized the procedural next step: bring a proposed town-hall agenda and feasibility plan to the next city council meeting and route public input through the incoming city manager’s office.

No formal motion or vote was recorded at the workshop. The council agreed to return to council (and to a public town-hall process) with a draft agenda and options for an ad hoc feasibility study; the meeting adjourned at 10:49 a.m.