LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – The plan for fully establishing a public agency that would control and spend future tax revenues in western Louisville is beginning to take shape.
The West End Opportunity Partnership board announced a timeline early Friday for how it will choose and seat its remaining members. The goal is to have those members, who will represent nine neighborhoods, in place by February.
Partnership leaders say more than 300 people have expressed interest in joining the board that was created by the Kentucky General Assembly earlier this year. It would decide how to allocate monies from a proposed tax increment financing district in an area that includes the neighborhoods of Parkland; Shawnee; Park Duvalle; Russell; Portland; California; Chickasaw; Park Hill; and Algonquin.
The partnership board approved a selection process last month that will start by launching an online portal for interested candidates starting Monday and running through January 14. An application can be found at westendpartners.org, or at the Louisville Urban League offices, 1535 W. Broadway.
For each neighborhood, a group of three “nominators” chosen by the existing 11-member board would then narrow down the pool of applicants to three people. From there, a three-person committee would rank the three finalists before the board would choose one for each neighborhood.
At a November 20 meeting, the board approved an approach that would use a weighted approach to grade candidates for the neighborhood seats, taking in factors such as years of residency, business ownership, professional experience and previous work serving on boards or working as volunteers.
The system prioritizes renters over homeowners, a move meant to address concerns that people who don’t own property don’t have protections such as property tax rebates that were granted to homeowners in House Bill 321, the legislation that approved the partnership on the final day of the Kentucky General Assembly.
“It is out of the cries we have heard from the community that really feel that it is important that there is definitely a process as to how they determine persons from their neighborhoods,” board member Frank Smith Jr., executive vice president of Simmons College of Kentucky, said at the November meeting.
The nominators for each neighborhood will be chosen at the discretion of the partnership board, although an advisory council member for each area will be one of the nominators.
Kristal Jones of the Parkland, Tiffany Johnson of Park Duvalle, Gerald Joiner of Shawnee and Kara Mackey of Chickasaw have been appointed as advisers to the board by Gov. Andy Beshear. The other five members of the council, a subcommittee of the partnership, haven’t yet been named.
The partnership’s board has planned an online meeting about the application process for December 9. That meeting can be accessed at https://bit.ly/3Eo8qZZ.
Two other online meetings hosted by Kentucky state Sen. Gerald Neal and state Rep. Pamela Stevenson are scheduled for December 4 and December 11. The link to those meetings is https://bit.ly/3DpiIrw.
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