Downtown business owners are working to revive Seminole’s Main Street and they need funding to do it. The question is, how can the city afford to provide it.

During their monthly meeting on Thursday, the newly established Downtown District group of Seminole merchants worked with city officials in an attempt to answer this question while also assessing the progress which has been made so far through their efforts.

Lead by City Manager Steve Saxon, the meeting was kicked off with a report from Seminole’s code enforcement officer, James Moon, whom Saxon classified as the “resident expert on code enforcement.”

According to Saxon, Moon’s enforcement of Seminole’s codes has resulted in recent improvements to downtown landscaping. “I can’t remember downtown looking as good as it does right now,” Saxon said.

Following the discussion over code enforcement, the committee switched gears to debate what is perhaps the most essential and the most frustrating topic when it comes to restoring downtown in any substantial sense: the city budget.

One thing which everyone in attendance was in agreement on was that there are a lot of things on Main Street in need of some sort of repair, from the streets, to the buildings, to the sidewalks.

Businesswoman Jamie Carter said it was, “embarrassing to have people come from small towns just like ours just talking about how sad our downtown is,” and asked for guidance in how best to approach getting the district back on its feet. Public Works Director Bryant Baker asserted, “it’s gonna take a team effort.”

However, according to Saxon, the budget is just not there for all of the improvements the merchants would like to see.

“The bottom line is it would take $40 million for the public sector of the city of Seminole to do what needs to be done down there. We can’t throw enough money at it. Until the building owners do their part, you can’t just pump money until we don’t have it. It’s not there,” stressed Saxon.

What they do have to work with is about $1.5 million, according to Saxon.

As far as what the downtown merchants can do moving forward, given these circumstances, Saxon said he believes the establishment of a business improvement district would be crucial to their success and also encouraged them to advocate to their city council for the funds they so badly needed.

“So that’s what we need to do next is to get organized,” concluded Carter.