LAKEPORT, Calif. – With concerns rising about the future of redevelopment, the Lakeport City Council and Lakeport Redevelopment Agency will convene a special Tuesday meeting to transfer agency assets to the city in order to protect property and funds.
The meeting will begin at 4 p.m. Tuesday, March 8, in the council chambers at Lakeport City Hall, 225 Park St.
On the agenda is the transfer to the city of redevelopment agency properties, approval and authorization of a cooperation and funding agreement between the redevelopment agency and the city, and execution of a funding agreement between the city and the agency.
Also on the agenda is a closed session to discuss public employee discipline.
A report to the council from Richard Knoll, the city's community development and redevelopment director, explains that California legislators are poised to take action on proposed legislation that would support Gov. Jerry Brown's plan to abolish redevelopment.
If that legislation passes, Knoll said it would effectively shut down the state's hundreds of redevelopment agencies, “and no further action would be allowed by the Lakeport Redevelopment Agency.”
Proposed actions for the Tuesday council meeting include transferring a property on Bevins Court from the agency to the city. They also will transfer bond funds and tax increment funds totaling approximately $3,006,155.07 from the agency to the city for construction of the Downtown Improvement Project's second, phase, Knoll reported.
Knoll is out of town until March 14 and could not be reached Monday for additional comment on the proposals.
Lakeport isn't alone in taking such emergency action.
Among other cities acting this week, on Monday, the Santa Rosa City Council took action to protect $28 million in redevelopment funds and the Long Beach Redevelopment Agency agreed to transfer 200 properties to the city, the Santa Clara City Council is considering moving land and money Tuesday night and the city of Monrovia is looking for ways to protect about $40 million in redevelopment funds, according to media reports.
“Redevelopment agencies around the state are working to sew up projects in the pipeline and protect them” so they can move them forward, said California Redevelopment Association (CRA) spokesperson Kathy Fairbanks.
Such projects are “years in the making,” said Fairbanks. “The agencies rightly want to protect them” in order to ensure jobs and economic opportunities.
Fairbanks said the CRA doesn't have numbers on how many agencies across the state are positioning themselves for the worst.
Fairbanks said she didn't know if a vote on the redevelopment legislation would take place this week as Knoll had indicated it might in his report.
Brown said Monday that he may not make his self-imposed Thursday deadline for a budget document, and media reports indicate he is getting pushback from Republicans in the state Legislature on the budget plan.
The CRA reported that redevelopment creates 304,000 new jobs a year, $40 billion in economic activity statewide and $2 billion in state and local tax revenue, numbers which Knoll recently took to the council in discussing his concerns about the redevelopment proposal.
However, a Monday report issued by State Controller John Chiang's office questions the actual impact of redevelopment and the jobs it creates on California's economy, and faulted several agencies that it audited on issues of accountability and inappropriate uses of funds.
The governor's plan would essentially take all uncommitted redevelopment funds out of communities and use them to plug the state's budget gap, Fairbanks said.
Raiding local funds for the state budget is exactly what Californians voted against last November when they approved Proposition 22, said Fairbanks.
The California Secretary of State's Office reported that Proposition 22 passed by a margin of 60.7 percent to 39.3 percent.
Now, just four months later, Fairbanks said lawmakers are dismissing the will of the voters with the redevelopment take proposal.
That way around Proposition 22 is unconstitutional, Fairbanks suggested.
As a result, on Monday a coalition of local government, business, labor, community groups and other redevelopment supporters launched the “My Vote Counts” effort, which Fairbanks said is an attempt to reach out to voters and remind them of how they voted for Proposition 22.
The group has launched a Web site, www.MyVoteCountsCA.org , as well as radio ads, a Facebook page and a petition effort.
“The voters, our ultimate lawmakers, have spoken loud and clear, and they have every right to expect that the constitutional amendments they enact will not be undermined by illegal schemes like the budget proposal to take local redevelopment funds,” said Chris McKenzie, executive director, League of California Cities, in a statement issued by the group.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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