Following the money in North Beach: a guide to the North Beach CRA series

Over the next few months, the North Beach Community Redevelopment Agency will decide how to spend about $3.4 million a year in property tax money, and whether to borrow against it for bigger projects. Those choices will shape the streets, parks, storefronts and housing between 65th Street and 87th Terrace for years. Red Sidewalks is covering the process as an ongoing series, “North Beach’s next five years,” and this guide explains what that means and where to start.

What an ongoing series is

Most stories on Red Sidewalks stand alone. A series follows one subject closely over many stories, called installments: a meeting preview, then what happened at the meeting, a new draft, a vote, a grant. Every installment carries a box linking the others, and all of them are collected on the series page, newest first. Each one is written to make sense on its own, with a line or two of background and a link back to the last development.

The CRA series is the site’s first. It’s built mainly from the agency’s own records: its budgets, audits, year-end amendments, presentations and minutes, all posted on the agency’s city page. When those records raise questions, the agency is asked for its side, and its answers are published.

Why North Beach’s CRA

The agency keeps the growth in property taxes inside its district and must spend it there, through 2051, on redevelopment: removing blight, promoting economic development, and improving infrastructure and quality of life, according to its October presentation. Its consultants are now writing a five-year strategic finance, investment and implementation plan for that money. No adoption date has been set, the agency told Red Sidewalks.

What the series has found so far

• The basics. What a CRA is, who runs it and where its money comes from, including a map of the district.
• The spending. The agency spent $569,000 last year and carried $2.95 million into this one, its audited financial report shows. Business grants paid out $2,000 of $97,000 budgeted.
• The rules. The consultants’ new slides list festivals, marketing and public art as things the money can’t pay for, though their own 2021 plan calls for them.
• The wish list. The agency’s 2021 project list adds up to $409 million, which raises the question of borrowing.
• The history. How Plan NoBe, new historic districts and the Town Center set the stage.
• New money for storefronts. A one-year pilot offers up to $20,000 in rent help for businesses that replace vape shops and pawnshops, or for new arts tenants.
• The agency’s answers. In written responses, staff said two facade grants have been paid, the plan contract is $68,028 and its “can’t fund” chart isn’t new policy.

What’s next

The agency’s advisory committee and a local stakeholder meeting with the consultants take place Tuesday, Nov. 10, at 4:30 p.m. at Normandy Shores Golf Club, 2401 Biarritz Drive, the city says. The consultants are to give a progress update on the plan and discuss early projects and funding tools. A report on what was presented and said will be the next installment, and 12 questions the agency’s records raise are posted for anyone who plans to go.

Know something about a CRA project, grant or property? Send it through the tips form. Or sign up for the morning email, which carries each new installment.