Members of Middleton's Strategy & Finance and Education & Outreach subcommittees described progress on a draft Affordable Housing Action Plan at the Oct. 20 joint meeting and outlined next steps for merging, prioritizing and public outreach.

Jen, lead of the Strategy & Finance subcommittee, said the group has drafted five core strategies and a list of supplementary recommendations. The subcommittee preserved the core strategies in the draft but removed broader market-shaping goals from the fund-specific action items and placed them in the plan's "parking lot" for other city bodies to consider.

"We hammered out 5 strategies and then included another list of recommendations," Jen said, describing a prioritization process that will be completed once the two subcommittee drafts are combined.

Outreach staff said the Education & Outreach draft focuses on messaging and target audiences (builders, teachers, police, restaurant and retail employees), recommends FAQs and a glossary to explain how TIF and other funding tools work, and proposes targeted outreach materials using wage and labor-market data to illustrate affordability for specific occupations.

Committee members agreed staff will attempt to merge the Strategy & Finance and Education & Outreach drafts in November, return updated drafts to the subcommittees for review, and hold a joint subcommittee meeting on Dec. 3 to finalize prioritization and prepare recommendations to the CDA and common council.

No formal vote on the action plan was recorded at the Oct. 20 meeting; the discussion closed with scheduling and staffing directions for the drafting process.