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Special Meeting <br />June 7, 2005 <br /> <br /> <br />development may not help or may hurt the City financially. Ms. Welsch suggested that <br />both the Plan and the ABEP report say that new economic development/redevelopment <br />should improve the fiscal status of the city and should add to the quality of life to the <br />residents. Mayor Adams said that it is very difficult to accomplish those goals because <br />they are not always mutually agreeable. For example, he said that the City could take <br />out an x number of houses to build a new shopping center. That new shopping center <br />will generate some new revenue as far as property taxes, but as far as sales taxes are <br />concerned, it will have a minimal effect, because it doesn’t have people residing in it. A <br />question is whether the City should do economic development because it benefits the <br />region, but not specifically University City, because people are lost. People will love it <br />because it is new and shiny and it gives the perception that the City is doing something. <br />He also mentioned the talk about the City annexing Wellston. He wondered if this would <br />be a good economic development strategy. Wellston does not operate their own fire <br />department and is a member of a fire district. He explained that if a City is annexed that <br />is in a fire district, then the City would have to pay for the fire district rate. It could <br />become very uneconomical for the City to annex Wellston. <br /> <br />Ms. Brot reminded her colleagues that the Council was here tonight to look at the <br />recommendations of ABEP and whether or not they should be recommended to the <br />Plan Commission for inclusion in the Plan. She doesn’t think that this is time to talk <br />about whether or not we will be annexing Wellston. She believes that the ABEP <br />recommendation and the Plan really mesh very well. Much of the wording is the same. <br />The Council created a board that worked a long time who came up with this report. The <br />Council needs to determine whether it can be agreed to insert some of these ideas into <br />the Plan. Mayor Adams disagreed and said that Wellston was mentioned in the ABEP <br />report. Ms. Brot replied that it didn’t say anything about annexing, only about sharing <br />services. <br /> <br />Ms. Brungardt thought that the Mayor’s comments were interesting, but she doesn’t <br />know that his concerns are everything that this discussion is about. She thinks that <br />looking at how cities breathe; it behooves the Council to move beyond the question of <br />big boxes taking out houses. The City is really going to be a very congested area in fifty <br />to seventy years. The influx of population in all metropolitan areas in the United States <br />is going to be exponentially explosive, which is just a fact of life, unless a bomb is <br />dropped or a great plague occurs. Just coming back from Manhattan, where her in-laws <br />live in a very small apartment, she is aware of the fact that space is an issue in other <br />larger older cities. Whether the Council wants to deal with it or not, we have to focus on <br />the larger issues of how that strand of Olive Boulevard comes a part of a fabric of a very <br />heavily populated community. She doesn’t even know if University City is going to be <br />called University City in seventy-five years, but she bets Olive Boulevard will still exist. <br />What the Council does as the people who are trying to keep University City healthy right <br />now, is to understand that the Central Corridor is going to become a very crowded place <br />one day. The Council should be addressing some of the underlying issues, such as <br />Page 6 <br /> <br />