Grass Valley is not alone in calling special meetings to discuss transferring money from their redevelopment agencies to city control — a move critics say is intended to “subsidize developers” at the expense of providing vital services.
“A revolt by city officials against Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposal to abolish municipal redevelopment agencies is rapidly spreading across the state,” the L.A. Times is reporting.
“To block the governor, some cities have launched a mad dash to lock up future revenue — in effect laying claim to the money Brown wants. They are quickly approving deals with their redevelopment agencies to move forward with a long list of projects, even those described in the vaguest of terms.”
The list includes Long Beach, Pasadena, Palm Springs, Los Angeles, Culver City, Citrus Heights, Santa Monica and so on. Some held meetings on Martin Luther King Day, when their offices were closed.
Some state officials are questioning the priority of city leaders.
“How do you justify maintaining a system that takes billions of dollars from schools, law enforcement and other vital services and uses that money to subsidize developers?” Tom Dresslar, a spokesman for state Treasurer Bill Lockyer, asked.
It is a relevant question, and it applies to money for the Dorsey Drive interchange as much as any other project.
The rest of the article is here.
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It reminds me of when the corrupt Bell bozos asked for their legal fees to be paid for by their own city and county…the people they greasily and pukily ripped off. Sounds like the same dirty pigs snuffling and hustling for slop…some more. Eminem’s song “Puke” about covers it…Kate Hancock
Kate,
Thanks for your comment. The argument also could be made that dollars are flowing into the community, helping to make/keep it vibrant.
Like all stories, this one has two sides.
Cheers.
It depends on the project Jeff…like wi-fi for instance…good redevelopment, federal dollars, mixing it up. But shoveling bad projects after good in there out of fear of losing the money is a little hard to stomach. Thoughtful redevelopment helps, greed hurts. It seems to be the basics. Kate Hancock
I served on the committee that started the Truckee redevelopment agency. I don’t think redevelopment should be eliminated permanently. However, if the state cuts it’s funding for basic services in lieu of receiving the many billions of stored up redevelopment dollars, cities are going to end up paying anyway. It would make more sense to me to bite the bullet, make the sacrifices we need to make now, and get our system of governance between state and local government reset, rather than squabble over the redevelopment pot. The bottom line is redevelopment is dependent on
economic growth and rising property value to fill it’s offers. No economic growth, no redevelopment anyway.
I don’t think there are many people out there arguing that no good comes out of redevelopment. But the no-new-taxes camp has achieved their decades-old goal of “starving the beast,” and now is when we have to start making cuts that actually hurt–as they’ve demanded all along. So when it comes time to weigh redevelopment against other essentials like K-12, fire fighting, public health, and so on, I say do it. Cut redevelopment first.
And even though redevelopment does a lot of good, it’s really true it has a dark side. It sometimes does become a slush fund for developers, as the LAT pointed out this morning. In San Francisco in the 60s and 70s redevelopment decimated the Fillmore neighborhood and kicked off the decline in the SF African-American population that continues today.
Even in the best of times, as Jerry Brown has pointed out, redevelopment is better at shuffling dollars within the state–they don’t bring new dollars in from outside.
“Overall they [redevelopment agencies and enterprise zones] don’t add to the general economy of the state. They move money around. And I know both these things in Oakland were helpful, but I can tell you this: that if the local government cleans up their regulatory underbrush–really goes out and helps people develop and overcomes a lot of the NIMBY-ism–that you can do economic development in a very solid way.”
–Gov. Brown, Jan. 10
(google the quotation for source)