FFFF supports causes that promote intelligent, responsible and accountable government in Fullerton and Orange County
Category: Redevelopment
Redevelopment is Government removing existing homes, businesses, and other buildings and replacing them with something different. The history of redevelopment in Fullerton has lead to a long string of ugly, deteriorating buildings and outright failure.
DT HB has even more bars than DT Fullerton, apparently, and that’s saying something. Looks like some citizens are finally fed up with the trouble and the reputation all the bars bring to town. The City has no idea how to fix the mess they’ve made.
Here in Fullerton we have the answer to the problem: declare victory, legitimize the troublemakers and subsidize their fire sprinkler infrastructure. Why? ‘Cause this is the New West, dagnabit, ‘n we’re open fer bidness!
The authors have come to some disturbing, but not unexpected conclusions beginning with “The Controller found no reliable means to measure the impact of redevelopment activity on job growth because RDAs either do not track them or their methodologies lack uniformity and are often arbitrary.” No one who follows the travails of redevelopment in our state should be surprised by this revelation.
The full report is replete with examples of agencies in different cities improperly filing required reports or not filing them at all as well as using funds improperly. Chiang concludes that “The lack of accountability and transparency is a breeding ground for waste, abuse, and impropriety…”.
Even this short term study confirms what many people in Fullerton and elsewhere have maintained for years, that redevelopment law in California has allowed local agencies to abuse their mandates with impunity from the very start with the dubious establishment of the areas themselves.
“The report notes that the 18 RDAs share no consensus in defining a blighted area.” The definition of blight was, of course, at the very crux of challenges against the unjustified expansion of the Fullerton Merged Redevelopment Area. It is encouraging to see the state government challenging agencies to define the blight in their cities in clear terms instead of allowing laughable images of gum wrappers and aluminum cans in a vacant lot to stand as justification for the wholesale diversion of tax dollars away from vital city services.
Tuesday night’s city council meeting includes an agenda item asking the council to approve transferring all assets owned by the Fullerton Redevelopment Agency to the City of Fullerton. Agenda item number 12 asks the city to take ownership of a soup to nuts inventory of everything the Redevelopment Agency has been using our bond money to buy for the last few decades.
In an urgent sounding letter to the council Acting Redevelopment Director Romona Castaneda explains that the council may only have a few weeks to move these assets from one pocket to the other if the state adopts Gov. Brown’s budget plan to eliminate redevelopment agencies. If this happens, it seems, the agency will be forced to sell the properties “expeditiously” and turn over the proceeds to the county.
One has to wonder what would happen if Redevelopment was indeed forced to sell all eighty of its properties, including the Fox Theater, the empty lot where four craftsmen era houses were torn down just east of it, Union Pacific Park, the site of Costco, a 2001 Chevrolet Malibu (?), the Santa Fe Depot, and some fencing around the Police Department. It’s a fun list.
The city would still be required to move forward with projects already approved for these properties, including affordable housing projects. Anybody have a guess about how legal this maneuver is?
Today the ever-increasingly pathetic OC Register ran an editorial trumpeting the creation of something called the Association of California Cities, a homespun effort to replace the California League of Cities. The Register wants us to believe that anything that replaces the League is a good thing. To which I respond: not so fast.
Here’s a quote from the article, the first couple of paragraphs dutifully and immediately passed along verbatim by Red County repuglican flunky Matthew J. Cunningham:
Orange County cities often have stood for sensible, taxpayer-friendly municipal reform in a state where fiscal sanity is the exception rather than the rule. So, while we applaud the 21 O.C. cities that left the League of California Cities (and its Orange County division) and started their own Association of California Cities Orange County, we also want to ask, “What took you so long?”
We’ve long had a beef with the Sacramento-based League, which is essentially a taxpayer-funded (dues come from city coffers) lobbying organization that tilts toward big government. Currently, the League is battling Gov. Jerry Brown’s sensible plan to close down the state’s 425 redevelopment agencies – those fiscally profligate entities that abuse eminent domain and dole out corporate welfare to companies that build development projects hatched in City Hall.
I can’t remember any OC cities that “stood for sensible, taxpayer friendly municipal reform…” so that’s a load of manure right there. But notice the anti-Redevelopment hook there at the end of the second paragraph. Cunningham obviously did. But he didn’t bother passing along the very next tidbit from the editorial:
Certainly, one finds support for redevelopment among Orange County officials, including some whose cities have fled the League…
Well Jesus H.Crisco, that’s the understatement of the freaking year! Is there a single municipality in OC that isn’t addicted to Redevelopment like a low grade junkie is to black tar heroin?
Maybe I can do facebook for the Association @ $200 buck an hour!
The Rag pathetically goes on to cite as some sort of local OC accomplishment the totally discredited Anaheim “Freedom Friendly” policy of “upzoning” property, a conspiracy that put dozens of businesses out of business, hundreds of workers out of work, that was engineered to produce vast profits for Kurt Pringle’s clients, and that has left the Anaheim city scape cratered, dark and dismal. The editorialists who are employed by The Register may think we can’t tell the difference, but boy are they wrong.
I am somebody! At last.
Of course you can check out the leadership of the new Association. It doesn’t inspire any sort of confidence. In the roster we find a sad collection of small town political hacks, bag men (and women), and poseurs whose only true resentment of the League is likely based on the fact that it precludes them from cashing in on anything. Oh, yeah we know the sort: the brain dead, yet greedy city council members who make up the boards of things like the OCTA, the Vector Control District, and the Sanitation District: just the perfect sort of drones who can be manipulated to direct “policy” in the direction of the Pringles, Dick Ackermans and John Lewises of the oh, so conservative Orange County.
Cunningham claims the inaugural dinner was the scene of near euphoria. Eu-effing-phoria. For him and people like him who cash in on government largess there was probably every reason to feel giddy.
The real question is why should we poor plantation hands substitute one collection of overseers for another?
Yesterday Norberto Santana of the Voice of OC (EA) did a post on a report by a group called OCCORD that accused the cities of Santa Ana and Anaheim of “rubber stamp” planning. Among other things the planning commissions in these towns were identified as living preponderantly in small enclaves and it notes the undue influence of out-of-town developers.
I’m having a little trouble separating the message from the messenger. See, the troubles are real all right. We’ve seen the same operation in Fullerton, as with the creeps who are trying to ram Amerige Court and the hideous Jefferson Commons down our throats. Our electeds got their drinkies, and their boat rides and their thirty pieces of silver from slimers like Steve Sheldon; and we got the shaft. Yet while I can’t disagree with thing the obvious OCCORD conclusion that development in Anaheim and Santa Ana is all tied up by goons with financial ties to people like Kurt Pringle and Miguel Pulido, I have to wonder what it is OCCORD is really promoting.
A quick trip to OCCORD’s website rewards visitors with a list of boardmembers and contributors that reads like a veritable who’s who of leftist, labor, and low-income housing advocates. Here’s what they say they are about:
In Orange County, California, top-down economic development policy and institutionalized anti-immigrant sentiment have served to exclude low income, immigrant communities from government decisionmaking processes, and in many cities, rapid demographic changes have created a political environment in which people are increasingly disconnected from their elected representatives. As a result, income inequality is growing faster in our region than in the nation as a whole, and our sense of community is declining.
I notice with satisfaction the name of Lorri Galloway who not only has approved just about every developer-wet-dream megaplex put in front of her in Anaheim, but also supported SunCal’s mammoth project on Anaheim Boulevard with its sham veneer of “affordable housing.” And that may be a telling.
What else will she pull out of her cookie?
So what’s the real deal? OCCORD seems to be promoting authentic, popular participation in land use decision, of the sort promised by Pam Keller when she first ran for Fullerton City Council in 2006. Pam ended up voting for a bunch of megaprojects, herself, so maybe the whole thing is just some sort of make-people- feel-good-about-looking-like-they’re-trying-to-do-something-anything, scam. Or maybe they actually want “immigrant communities” to have input into decision making land use processes – especially the development of subsidized housing projects.
I think the mistake of swapping “top-down” development policy driven by developers, and that driven by the professional houseacrats and do-gooders, and social conscience hand wringers is a distinction without much of a difference. Overbuilt, overbearing, subsidized, architectural monstrosities built on public debt are bound to follow either way. Will OCCORD ever come out against the idiotic Redevelopment housing policies and ethnic cleansing pogroms? Not likely if there’s a jaw-droppingly expensive “affordable” project of some kind, any kind, at the end of the bureaucratic rainbow.
Here’s the details on tonight’s edition of the Martha Montelongo show. Listen live Saturday night on AM870 at 11PM or online at KRLA870.com.
Steven Greenhut, CalWatchDog.com‘s editor in chiefand former deputy editor and columnist for the Orange County Register and author of Abuse of Power: How Government Misuses Eminent Domain, joins Ron Kaye, publisher, editor and columnist for RonKayeLA Blog in a discussion on Redevelopment.
And on Education, a Superior Court Judge ruled this month in favor of the ACLU versus The Los Angeles Unified School District over the district’s last hired first fired layoff policy. It is a landmark decision hailed as such by education reformers, but teacher’s unions denounce it as a step toward dismantling tenure policies.
Larry Sand of the California Teacher’s Empowerment Network joins Martha to talk about this ruling, the firestorm it has caused statewide, and you can be sure nationally as well, and what happens next. He’ll also speak with us about a little known law that was passed by the legislature last year, as part of a move to capitalize on the President’s Race to the Top financial incentives for states to adopt certain education reform measures.
See, Bruce campaigned on a platform of reforming Redevelopment, recognizing that redevelopment grabs needed funds from schools and other core government functions. And where does it go? To subsidize boondoggle after boondoggle with no accountability; and the creation of “affordable” housing empires in which staffers create fantastically expensive housing for less poor people than the ones they pay off to skeedaddle.
Well, at Tuesday “emergency” Redevelopment/city council meeting Whitaker stood tall and was the lone vote against an 11th hour encumbrance of funds meant to stymie Governor Brown’s long-overdue plan to put Redevelopment in California out of business. His argument is clarity itself, and he opposed the panic mode plan.
On a sad note, Sharon Quirk went a long with the pro-Redevelopment crowd. Well, we obviously have more work to do.
The Gov has proposed axing Redevelopment in California and redirecting its revenue back to local municipalities and school districts. Of course the Redevelopment camp followers are squealing like stuck pigs.
Today the Register entertained two essays on whether or not to keep Redevelopment. On the no side was Assemblyman Chris Norby who wrote a pretty comprehensive obituary for this misguided government revenue scam. On the pro side? Some unknown stooge from Brea – one of the most heavily Redevelopment bond indebted municipalities in California, and a poster child for Redevelopment havoc and abuse.
According to commenter Art Brown the plaintive Redevelopment wail signed by Mayor HeeHaw on behalf of all of us was actually scribed by the League of Cities and sent out as a boilerplate template for the incompetent locals who, presumably, couldn’t be trusted to mount their own intellectual and philosophical defense of Redevelopment (think: “we neeeed the muh-nie!”)
Of course there is space at the end of the missive to insert one’s community’s dubious Redevelopment accomplishments. And Fullerton did.
Mr. Brown’s claim certainly has the ring of truth to it. It reminds me of a gang of dope addicts defending their habit.
As to the letter itself, observe the following:
The claims that Redevelopment is a job creator and some sort of economic engine is, of course, utter nonsense. It is indeed a massive boon to subsidized corporations and Redevelopment master planners, consultants and bond salesmen. Redevelopment is simply a zero-sum revenue diversion scheme whose manifest failures are immediately forgotten. The funniest part of the letter may be the way one bent branch of government uses the screw-ups of another (SB 375 and AB 32) to justify itself.
Then there is the hilarious claim that Redevelopment is really poverty-stricken, once the bond holders are paid off!
You would think a letter honestly outlining the effects of Redevelopment in Fullerton would have described just a few of the disastrous quagmires that Redevelopment and it organizers have gotten us into: boondoggles amply illustrated in these pages. But no. No Harbor/Commonwealth; no SRO; no Poisoned Park; no endless succession of useless downtown master plans; no attempt to relocate a McDonald’s 200 feet. Wait. Come to think of it they did: cited as an accomplishment is the idiotic Richman housing project!
Affordable housing. Where poor people are cleared out and replaced by less poor people. And this was never one of the rationales for Redevelopment. The housing set-aside was created to protect the poor from dislocation due to the great Urban Renewal mega projects of the 1950s and 60s.
Well, there you have it. An intellectually and morally bereft letter signed by a clown who cannot grasp anything more complicated than a fried chicken.
The urgency of the council/Redevelopment Agency meeting comes after Governor Brown announced his intentions of squashing Redevelopment Agencies as component of saving money and redistributing funds to their normally allocated destinations.
In a nut shell, City Hall sees their glass house shattering and is looking to pull out as much money as possible from the Redevelopment Agency in order to install street lights in the Lemon/Truslow area, stabilize the slopes along Harbor Boulevard just below the YMCA, work on Hillcrest Park, and build a parking garage at the Fullerton Transportation Center.
In all, the City/Redevelopment Agency is looking to move $14,100,000 from the Redevelopment agency coffers to the City of Fullerton coffers to help cover some of the upfront costs associated with these projects.
If any of those mentioned sound familiar it’s because just last Tuesday the City Council decided to ask Congress for some money to address them.
This sounds like the scheme of someone who desperately pulls out every bit of equity from their house ($14.1M from RDA’s tax increment), maxes out all of their credit cards ($29M intax bonds) for that new sports car (town homes and condos and garages) knowing they are about to get slapped by a court-ordered judgment (governor’s proposed budget) that will surely leave them penniless.
Once again, the lack of leadership has manifested itself by the procrastination of City Hall to tackle our crumbling infrastructure. Water-mains continue to erupt forth from our streets like Old Faithful while the ever-expanding potholes begin to resemble the Grand Canyon. At this rate, residents will be able to sell tickets to the spectacle as our city sinks into the abyss of municipal doom.
