Last week, Carroll City Manager, Michel Pogge-Weaver, traveled to Omaha to meet with Amy Haas of RDG Planning and Design about the $30,000 Carroll County Housing Study, commissioned and paid for by the City of Carroll, Carroll County and the Carroll Area Development Corporation (CADC). Pogge-Weaver said he wanted to get more information on this priority item as it is an important piece in the economics of the community. The City of Carroll, he said, has higher than average home values, which can make it difficult for businesses to attract and recruit individuals to live and work here. During his visit with Haas, they focused on some of the opportunities identified in the study. One of those is for the city and county as a whole to develop housing partnerships and financing mechanisms for construction of new housing.
This, he said, would enable individuals making living wages more opportunities to purchase a home. Pogge-Weaver said they also discussed how to stabilize the existing neighborhoods and ways to assist residents with property improvements.
Another opportunity is to increase builder capacity, working with builders and our local education centers, like Des Moines Area Community College (DMACC), to encourage more people to enter into the building trades. Pogge-Weaver outlined the first steps in the process of turning some of the opportunities into actualities.
Pogge-Weaver said they will follow up on strategic plan items at the next City Council meeting on Monday, Dec. 12. The housing study will be included in that list of items.
