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Selma BID tables façade-improvement grant update after questions on prevailing wage and retroactivity
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Summary
Board reviewed revisions to a façade-improvement grant that add prevailing-wage language and remove a matching requirement; members and a downtown business owner asked the city attorney to clarify retroactivity, property-tax eligibility and wage thresholds before the program returns for reconsideration.
Selma City Business Improvement District board members paused consideration of a revised façade-improvement grant on procedural and legal questions, voting to table the item pending counsel review.
Staff said the updated draft adds prevailing-wage requirements, removes the matching-fund requirement to improve accessibility for business owners and raises the stated maximum award per property in the draft to $1,010,000. Staff said the board would retain an advisory review role while the city manager and staff would finalize and sign grant awards.
Board members pressed staff to ask the city attorney whether the program could be applied retroactively to work completed within the past 12 months and whether property-tax status should be a condition of eligibility. "Does it have in here also, you must have your property taxes paid?" one board member asked; staff responded that the draft did not currently include that requirement and suggested counsel review.
During public comment, downtown business owner Scott Robertson praised the application as “user friendly” but urged the board to specify limits on project scope and to confirm prevailing-wage thresholds. "I think prevailing wages only required after $1,000 in costs have been used," Robertson said, urging counsel review of that threshold.
The board voted to table the item and asked staff to return with revisions and the attorney’s guidance on retroactivity, prevailing wage application and property-tax eligibility.
Next steps: staff will confer with the city attorney and return the revised grant language to the board for further action.
