The Portsmouth Redevelopment Agency (PRA) met this afternoon to review work on development plans for the Navy properties on the West side of the island, confirmed good progress, and tentatively scheduled a presentation for the Town Council in April.

There was general agreement that the bulk of the staff work was complete -- the task remaining was to pare down the 26 pages plus appendices into a pithy executive summary. In the review today, the major items were insuring the final document's re-use proposals tracked with the West Side Master Plan, that it articulated a crisp value proposition our Congressional delegation could use for leverage with the Navy, and there was sufficient flexibility to attract the right mix of open space, residential, and commercial development.

Ensuring a tax-positive mix was very much on the PRA's mind. "There's no reason for this Agency to exist if we don't come up with an idea for who's going to pay," said Fred Faerber. And Gary Gump reminded the group of the long-range nature of the process, with ongoing cleanup work, negotiations with the Navy, and enlisting developers, "It's going to take until 2013 until you can start building." Allen Shers agreed,"It's going to take the Navy 3-5 years [just for remediation]," which might seem like forever, but given the complexity of preparations, was appropriate lead time. "We're right on track," he said.

And, finally, stressed Chair Helen Mathieu, the right solution must also ensure that development "fits the character of Portsmouth."

To tell you the truth, I went to the meeting today mostly because I had no idea what the PRA did, but also because my interest was piqued by an odd moment at the Town Council meeting on Monday. Among the usual "motion-second-unanimous" appointments and recognitions, there was a hiccup in the request to reappoint Allen Shers to the PRA. Before the council could vote, Dennis Canario announced that someone else was interested in the position.

Now I don't know Shers personally, but he's done appraisal work for me a couple of times, and I've found him to be a very sharp guy and a straight shooter. He also made an excellent point at a Town Council meeting last month -- which he reiterated today -- about the insanity of the Paiva Weed tax caps which essentially penalize a town for growth by subtracting it from the incremental increase. (That is, if a town has 2% growth next year, their permissible tax hike gets slashed to 2.5%.)

So I also went to the meeting to suss out the character of this team, and saw what looked to be a pretty high-functioning group. My Spidey Sense® tends to get triggered by seemingly random events with phantom political dimensions, so I may be overreacting. But I'll be most interested in learning who the new applicant for the PRA position turns out to be.