BRADENTON — As the Bradenton City Council moves forward with a proposal to strip away the governing authority of the city’s three community redevelopment agencies, officials with one of the agencies, the Central CRA, are concerned that the strides they have made within the community will be lost.
CRA designations are typically for low-income communities where tax increment funding from property taxes is re-invested back into those communities.
The Bradenton CRA, which is administered by the Downtown Development Authority, is somewhat different under the DDA’s mission of promoting downtown development. The DDA has had measurable success in recent years, but not so much in the 14th Street West CRA, which appears to be the cause of most friction between the DDA and city council.