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QUESTION

Council Member Amanda Farias Asks EDC About Community Priority Fund Establishment and Usage

1:25:37

·

3 min

Council Member Amanda Farias inquires about the establishment, nature, and utilization of the Community Priority Fund within long term agreements with cruise lines. The Economic Development Corporation (EDC) specifies that the efforts to track community benefits, including the fund, are a development of new agreements initiated in Fall 2023. The discussion emphasizes the need for equity and local business support in economic benefits distribution, along with plans to establish a governance structure for the fund with community involvement.

Speaker 1

1:25:37

And can we actually talk about the community fund.

1:25:40

So I know in your system, you refer to it that there's an EDC contributing to or perpassion through procrastinator fees to a community priority fund.

1:25:51

Can we talk about what the fund is, how it was established?

1:25:56

What maybe what's within it, how it's utilized?

Speaker 8

1:25:59

Yeah.

1:26:00

Thank you very much, council member.

1:26:03

One thing I wanna be clear about is that the information that Sabrina was just sharing in terms of tracking, local provisioning, MWA workforce, even the Community Priority Fund.

1:26:18

Those are new things that are being implemented as part of these long term agreements.

1:26:24

And you know, to council member Avila's earlier point, we completely recognize that Many of our local businesses or small businesses have not seen the economic benefits of cruise industry in the Redhook in particular as council member, Batcher, laid out.

1:26:46

And so part of the impetus of negotiating these long term agreements was to take corrective action to ensure that we are being very intentional about how this industry and how we are thinking about economic development from a sense of equity and from supporting our local businesses.

1:27:07

So to your question of what kind of tracking has been done historically, the the answer is none.

1:27:13

What we are saying is that as part of this work, because we have heard very loud and clear that we need to do better, on transparency, on reporting, on being able to clearly show how funds are being spent in our local neighborhoods.

1:27:29

That is part of the work and part of why as Sabrina laid out, these long term agreements are what we see as being the future of ensuring that we can actually do that in a way that has real implications for the cruise industry.

1:27:47

And so to your question about the Community Priority Fund as Council member Avila's and and Batcher can attest to you.

1:27:56

We are looking forward to working with them and their stakeholders to establish the governance for that fund so that it's being used to meet the needs of both cruise terminal communities.

1:28:08

We've had some early conversations with them to that point.

1:28:13

We don't do not yet have a governance structure established because, again, we want to be mindful that it's not an EDC led decision making process.

1:28:23

We are a conduit for the funds from the cruisers to but that it's actually the the council on the community.

Speaker 1

1:28:32

So when was it initially established?

1:28:34

I understand it hasn't been established for a decade, but when was it initially established?

Speaker 8

1:28:38

So we received board approval for the long term agreements in the fall.

1:28:45

Fall 2023.

1:28:46

So that process and and as counsel counsel member of Velez is mentioned while we have shared language around the community and the sustainability benefits, especially around SurePower.

1:29:02

With the council.

1:29:03

We do want to work with you to be able to share that full language, but it is still in process because we only received that board approval a few months ago.

Speaker 1

1:29:14

Okay.

1:29:14

And then so it's used are you saying that it's a dollar per passenger?

Speaker 7

1:29:19

Dollar per passenger.

Speaker 1

1:29:20

Dollar per passenger.

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Council Members Discuss Establishment and Potential Impact of Community Priority Fund