{"id":22186,"date":"2014-10-22T11:39:18","date_gmt":"2014-10-22T15:39:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/raleighpublicrecord.org\/?p=22186"},"modified":"2014-10-29T18:27:57","modified_gmt":"2014-10-29T22:27:57","slug":"council-reviews-non-profit-funding-impact-of-union-station","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/news\/city-council\/2014\/10\/22\/council-reviews-non-profit-funding-impact-of-union-station\/","title":{"rendered":"Council Reviews Nonprofit Funding, Impact of Union Station"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Raleigh City Council met twice Tuesday, covering issues ranging from the approval of grants by the Human Services Agency to the altering of non-discrimination policy language by the Human Relations Commission.<\/p>\n

The first meeting scheduled for council members was a work session, where two groups completed presentations that outlined two key issues that will be moving forward for fiscal years to come.<\/p>\n

Kristin Larson, Budget Manager for the City of Raleigh, conducted a brief presentation outlining the changing process for how nonprofit organizations will receive grants in the future. According to Larson, the Human Services Agency will adopt a process that promotes consistency, transparency, and the perception of fairness for nonprofits seeking grants.<\/p>\n

\"The

City of Raleigh<\/p>

The nonprofit Raleigh Business & Technology Center came under fire<\/a> last summer following a city audit<\/p><\/div>\n

In addition, there will be possible financial criteria for the amount of money received, notably that the amount of the grant should not exceed 25 percent of the budget of the organization receiving the grant.<\/p>\n

For organizations currently receiving more than that percentage\u2014specifically the Southeast Raleigh Authority and African American Cultural Festival\u2014there will be a \u201c3-year step down\u201d process, according to Larson, in which the two organizations will need to increase funding from private sectors to keep the full amount of grant money they\u2019re receiving currently in the years to come.<\/p>\n

The second presentation in the work session focused on \u201cMarket Impact Evaluation for Union Station.\u201d Gil Johnson, Project Manager-Transit Facility, highlighted that their evaluation of case studies revealed that building a mixed-use transit center has no negative impact on private sector development, that there is no decrease in surrounding land rates, and that a mixed-use transit center is an \u201cattractive selling point to many target end users.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the presentation focused on successful mixed-use transit centers across the globe, questions were raised by the City Council about mixed-use transit centers that had failed in the past, most notably the bus transit center in Charlotte that is surrounded by parking lots with little possibility of economic growth.<\/p>\n

\"A

Union Station will likely have a positive economic impact on the surrounding area<\/p><\/div>\n

Johnson admitted it was difficult to find cases that failed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to find a [project] that had failed and say, \u2018This is why it failed,\u2019\u201d Johnson said.<\/p>\n

They were unable to do so, he said, for a variety of reasons, including the fact that failed projects were often difficult to locate either through the Internet or otherwise, simply because they failed and lacked any public presence.<\/p>\n

The regular session of the City Council was fairly uneventful, though numerous items were passed in the consent agenda that are worthy of note. They include:<\/p>\n