Over 30 people attended a special meeting to discuss housing projects in Greene County Tuesday morning.

The groups that were involved in the discussion were the Jefferson City Council, Greene County Development Corporation (GCDC), Grow Greene County Gaming Corporation (GGCGC) and Greene County Board of Supervisors. The purpose of the discussion was to open a dialogue between the different entities to establish if there was a greater need for housing throughout the county and whether or not further research was needed to develop a possible public and private financial incentive model for housing developers.

Several people agreed that there is a need for housing. Guy Richardson represented the Supervisors and GCDC thought that there is not only a need for housing, but that there should be a partnership between both the public and private sectors to invest in housing projects because if there isn’t, then there won’t be any housing projects. But that there needed to be a financial model in place to protect public funds.

Jefferson City Council members Lisa Jaskey and Gary Von Ahsen agreed that there needs to be a survey conducted, involving employees of the major businesses to establish a housing priority list.

GGCGC President and GCDC Past-President Norm Fandel thought that using an outside source, like McClure Engineering, to help push along the housing study so that it doesn’t just sit in a “parking lot”, like what happened in 1995.

“Some of the projects we jump on and move them forward and some get stuck in what we call the ‘parking lot’. So when they’re in the parking lot, they’re stationary, they’re not moving forward. There are things that we want to do, but no one has really taken the lead and championed that project to bring it off the parking lot to move it forward.”

Supervisor Chair John Muir said one of his concerns was that McClure Engineering had a self-interest if the company was the one who would initially begin the process for the project. However, Economic Development Director Ken Paxton thought that the community development company has state-wide experience in developing housing studies and knows what works for communities the size of Greene County. Sid Jones was the moderator of the discussion and represented GCDC and said the advantage of using an outside source was that they would push along the project and it wouldn’t be slowed down by local politics.

At the conclusion of the meeting, officials with the two public boards of the City Council and Supervisors, would consider voting on moving forward with a housing assessment, developing a financial model and hiring an outside source to lead the project. GCDC would then make a recommendation to have McClure Engineering be the entity that the respective boards would hire to do the initial research.

The special meeting was the result of several presentations made by Terry Lutz of McClure Engineering to gauge interest in the respective boards to work together on developing a financial incentive package for developers to establish housing.