The East Baton Rouge Redevelopment Authority board meets Thursday morning to approve a 2017 budget that will include a $200,000 appropriation from the city-parish.
Mayor Kip Holden included the surprise appropriation for the beleaguered agency in his final executive budget, and RDA officials say it will help them scrape by until the middle of next year.
“I’m really heartened that he did it,” says RDA Board Chairman John Noland. “If we keep the expense level like it is we will get months of life out of that.”
The RDA has been managing on a shoestring budget with just two employees, including interim executive director Gwen Hamilton, for two years. Though Holden gave the agency $100,000 earlier this year to help keep it afloat, he has refused to help the agency find a long-term, permanent funding source.
A business plan for the agency prepared early this year suggests the RDA needs a dedicated funding stream of between $1 million and $4.5 million a year in order to adequately fulfill its mission of cleaning up the city’s blighted properties and getting them back into commerce.
Noland says he is optimistic the $200,000 allocation—assuming it is approved next month by the Metro Council—will hold the RDA over until the city’s next mayor can come through with a more permanent source of funding.
Both mayoral candidates, Sharon Weston Broome and Bodi White, have pledge to support the RDA and say they believe it has a vital role to play in the future of Baton Rouge. Though neither will commit to annually dedicating $1 million or more to the agency, Broome says she “supports the RDA’s mission” and looks forward to “examining the city-parish budget and the general fund to determine the level of support moving forward for the RDA.”
For his part, White says he believes the RDA can play a key role in rebuilding flooded areas of the parish, possibly serving as an administrator of federal Housing and Urban Development recovery dollars that come to the area in the form of Community Development Block Grants.
“It could be one of the best tools we have moving forward,” he says. “That is just one way we could use them to help rebuild Baton Rouge.”
In other business Thursday, the RDA board is expected to hear from the development team led by architect Dyke Nelson that is negotiating with the agency to redevelop the former Entergy site at 1509 Government St. The six-acre site, when completed, is expected to be a catalyst for redevelopment in the Downtown East area between downtown and Mid City. The RDA was given the property in a donation three years ago.
—Stephanie Riegel
