Update on County Use of Redevelopment Funds - James T. Beall Jr. E-Newsletter (Jan. 2005)

Update on County Use of Redevelopment Funds

In October, I requested that County administration prepare a report on San Jose Redevelopment activities in response to questions raised at a neighborhood association meeting. Constituents wanted to know what happens to the funds the County receives from the San Jose Redevelopment Settlement Agreement. Below are some of the highlights from the report that the Board just received. Given school closings throughout the County and budget deficits for many school districts and the County. I think the facts speak for themselves.


State law allows Redevelopment Agencies to be created to eliminate "blight".

Since 1954 San Jose has never closed a Redevelopment project area.

San Jose administers more projects, and receives more money from those projects than any other RDA in the state.

Once redevelopment is created, property tax "growth" within the area is diverted from the general funds of cities, counties, schools and special districts; creating budget deficits.

Since 2001, the County has lost $212 million in property tax increment revenue to the City of San Jose Redevelopment Agency. Since 2001, the County has received $120 million in San Jose RDA Settlement agreement funding. These funds partially mitigate the lost property tax increment revenues normally due to the County government. The remaining $92 million in property tax revenues are lost to the County from San Jose RDA.The following cities in the County have Redevelopment Agencies: San Jose, Milpitas, Santa Clara, Mt. View, Morgan Hill, Campbell, Los Gatos, Sunnyvale, and Cupertino.K-12 Schools in Santa Clara County lost since FY 2001 over $99 million in property tax revenues due to redevelopment agencies. Community colleges lost over $20 million to redevelopment agencies.The County RDA Settlement funds have been used as follows, in compliance with tax and RDA laws:

Project

Franklin-McKinley Health Center on Tully Road: $19.6 million

Specialty Clinic at Valley Medical Center: $11.4 million

Purchase new County building on First Street to eliminate rental space: $25.5 million

Total: $56.5 million

The remaining $63.5 million of pass through funds has been used to offset general fund deficits.

Despite budget deficits, over the past three years the County has invested over $34.7 million in infrastructure projects in unincorporated county pockets including; pavement management, sidewalks, curbs and gutters, pedestrian improvements, drainage projects, street lights, intersection LOS, traffic operations, and bridge replacement and rehab.

City Council Committee Meeting On Park Fees Canceled

According to the city clerk and the parks department, the entire city council committee meeting set for Monday afternoon, 1/24/05, has been canceled. The "Driving A Strong Economy" committee was scheduled at 3:00 PM that date to look at the city's proposal to divert "developer-paid parkland in lieu fees" from parks to a wide variety of other uses, like equestrian trails, mountain bike trails, and dance recital buildings. To verify cancellation, call the city clerk at 277-4424 and parks at 794-1311

Flea Market Housing Project

A major presentation was made to the North San Jose community last night (1/20/05) at the Berryessa Community Center by representatives of no fewer than five city departments, a planning company, and representatives of the unidentified developers who are seeking to develop a Flea Market Housing Project around the site of a future Berryessa BART station. Also unnamed were the owners of the property -- the Bumb family, which also owns "Bay 101," a local cardroom casino. SOS officers met after the presentation to outline the five specific problems we hope the city and developers resolve early in the development process.

Very High Density

The city and developers propose to build 2,500 dwellings on fewer than 120 acres. That is a downtown density, not a suburban density, and North San Jose remains under the classification of "suburban" in city rules. SOS urges the city and developers to consider reducing the density to no more than 11 dwellings per acre. That would still allow 1,320 dwellings on the Flea Market site, a more human scale and a better community fit.

Traffic Congestion

Given that the city is increasing motorist congestion along North Capitol Avenue, and that Berryessa Road, Mabury Road, and Commercial Street are already overused, it was unsettling to see the off-handed way that officials dismissed concerns about the new levels of congestion we expect when and if 2,500 dwellings (or even just 1,320 dwellings) are constructed. There was a disturbing lack of seriousness on the part of city hall representatives about traffic congestion. BART will not "rescue" us from congestion until 2014, if then.

Recycled Water

City officials don't seem to get it that this is really a desert ecology, and that every effort must be made to use recycled water. There was a distinct lack of urgency last night about this issue. For any development of this size, every effort must be made from the very beginning of the development process to include use of recycled water for fire hydrants, landscaping, and flush toilets.

Push To Milpitas

The Flea Market Housing Project will emphasize North San Jose's orientation toward Milpitas. Almost everything that city hall proposes pushes us to make major purchases in Milpitas, and to use fine dining and entertainment facilities in Milpitas. At some point, city hall will need to take this phenomenon into account and create similar sales tax collection opportunities in North San Jose.

Parks Shortchanged

North San Jose has a huge deficit of city parks, especially in the area between North Capitol Avenue and North First Street. Except for small areas in Alviso and a five-acre park at Rio Robles and North First, this area is definitely the unloved step-child as far as city parks are concerned. We have to be vigilant in this matter.

Housing project developers are supposed to dedicate three acres for public parks for every 1,000 new residents (or pay in lieu fees). If there are going to be 2,500 new dwellings, and if the average occupancy will be three people, then we are witnessing a new mini-city of 7,500 residents, requiring slightly over 22 acres of new public parks. This is an area about 2/3 the size of Cataldi Park on the east side of North Capitol Avenue.

Last night, developers proposed to count city-mandated riparian setback strips along Penitencia Creek and Coyote Creek toward required public parkland, but these riparian setbacks strips are only 100 feet wide and, while quite long, will never be used for picnic tables, barbecue grills, or softball fields. There are very strict city and water district rules for the use of these strips that mean they will never be true parks.

Written by SOS - Save Open Spaces in North San Jose

Controversial Park Fees Proposal

San Jose's parks department proposes to allow diversion of "developer park in lieu fees" from public parks to projects like mountain bike trails, equestrian trails, dog runs, and structures for theater productions and dance recitals

A city council committee ("Driving A Strong Economy Committee") will consider the proposal on 1/24/05 at 3:00 PM in room 204 of city hall. This is the most important event to attend if you can attend only one. At this meeting you will see city council members discuss and vote. They will allow only two minutes for any testimony so if you have remarks of longer duration, please bring written comments for the record. Again, watch for discussion of
diversion's impact.

Effects of Park Fees Diversion
The diversion of "developer park in lieu fees" represents a serious danger to our city's park development program. At this time, city policy requires developers to dedicate three acres of park for every 1,000 new residents living in the developer's new housing project. City rules provide that the developer may pay in lieu fees to the city if they think they cannot afford the land for the new park.

In practice this means that developers rarely provide adequate parks on sites of new housing projects, and instead negotiate in lieu fees with the city which are paid into a park trust fund and languish there for up to five years. The park trust fund has approximately $100,000,000 in unspent fees, and the city is already slow in using these funds to develop public park lands.

A second problem with the proposal is that neighbors will quarrel, for example, over whether they want a trail for equestrians, a dance recital hall, or a dog run. Neighborhoods will split over these expenditures, conflict will emerge, and neighborhood associations will be destroyed by this issue. We need adequate parklands for all residents -- we do not need to engage in community brawling over which project should receive funding. Let's ask the city council to keep "developer park in lieu fees" for parks only.

Berryessa BART Station Rezoning
The home page of the planning department's web site has announced a community meeting about its plans for rezoning the flea market site adjacent to
the proposed Berryessa BART station on Berryessa Road for a "mixed-use transit-oriented neighborhood." The meeting will be at the Berryessa Community Center at 3050 Berryessa Road at 6:30 PM on Thursday, 1/20/05. No fewer than 2,500 dwellings are to be crowded onto fewer than 120 acres under "transit corridor density" rules (no upper limit). Here are six good questions for the community meeting.

1) If you add 7,500 new residents (2,500 new dwellings times an average of 3 residents per dwelling) in this small space, where will you put the required 22.5 acres of public parks? A park this size would be about 2/3 the size of Cataldi Park east of North Capitol Avenue.

2) What protections (police, fire, ambulances, stop lights, crossing guards, street & sidewalk lighting, etc.) will be offered new and existing neighbors when crime, drugs, and gangs spike near the BART station, just as they do at most BART stations? The very large parking structure planned for the station area will be a perfect setting for nighttime gang fights and other nefarious activities.

3) How will you accommodate the massive influx of motorists on Old Oakland Road, Berryessa Road, Mabury Road, North King Road, Commodore Street, North Jackson Avenue, Taylor Street, and Commercial Road? How will this increase in motorists be handled in view of the city's embrace of intersection congestion along North Capitol Avenue?

4) What are the plans for medical, dental, commercial, retail, industrial, and educational buildings?

5) What happens if and when BART does not go to Berryessa Road? Even now, the implementation date has been pushed back to 2014 for BART to reach Berryessa Road.

6) How can you guarantee that a Berryessa BART station will not look like the Fremont BART station? If you make promises about the quality of life adjacent to the Berryessa BART station, kindly let us know one example of "transit corridor" development of this size in Santa Clara Valley that already embodies these promises.

Dale Warner
SOS Secretary

Residents Have Their Say on Martinez Draft EIR

By Liz Tascio
CONTRA COSTA TIMES

MARTINEZ - Residents this week questioned a report that says development between the city's railroad tracks and shoreline would be safe for people and the environment.

Earthquake safety, train accidents and other topics came up Tuesday night at a public hearing for an environmental impact report that studied the city's plan for its downtown. The draft plan endeavors to bring vibrancy to the quiet neighborhood.

The report, prepared by LSA Associates of Berkeley, says the city can accommodate about 1,000 new residences downtown without straining city services, housing, traffic or the environment.

"Because we didn't have any significant or unavoidable impacts, there was nothing that pushed us to say the plan should be changed," said Lynette Dias, an environmental consultant from LSA.

About 270 new townhomes and apartments could be built north of the railroad tracks, which some residents want made into a park and open space. The land is zoned for light industrial use.

Gigi Walker of Martinez brought up last week's accident in South Carolina, in which a train carrying chlorine crashed, releasing deadly fumes. Nine people died and thousands were evacuated.

"My concern is that our tracks here in this town carry toxic and hazardous materials on a daily basis," Walker said, asking why "we want to build houses down there by these tracks when these accidents can happen."

Resident Julianne George said the report needs to analyze further how emergency vehicles would reach the new development, since trains would sometimes block the only routes in and out.

Housing near the shoreline would pollute and damage the wetlands, said Carol Baier, a Martinez resident for 50 years.

The number of houses north of the tracks can probably be negotiated, said Igor Skaredoff of Martinez. But he was concerned by the report's finding that land north of the tracks would be less stable than nearby land during an earthquake.

Resident Tim Platt asked if the report considered that the city could see more than 1,000 new housing units once the city rezones downtown, as called for in the draft specific plan.

Not everyone wanted more information in the report. Maurice Huguet, an attorney for one of the property owners north of the tracks, said the report erred when it said an endangered mouse near the shoreline would need protection. He said a 1997 study found no such species.

The strongest criticism of the report came from Beth Rainsford, who helped create an alternative plan that recommends about half the number of residences studied.

"The specific plan is not the community's vision," she said. The report does not explain how the city can significantly increase its housing and population downtown and build near the shore without affecting the city's small-town character and scale, she said.

The East Bay Regional Park District, which owns land near the potential development, will prepare comments on the EIR, said Ted Radke, a member of the district's board of directors, in an interview Wednesday.

The public has until Feb. 7 to submit comments to the city. State law requires that the city provide a written response to every comment in the final draft of the EIR

This article can also be found at the Contra Costa Times website

GNATS Newsletter - January Edition

The latest edition of the GNATS Newsletter is online, and available for download!

GNATS - January 2005

CONTROVERSIAL PARKS PROPOSAL

Dale Warner

San Jose's parks department proposes to allow "developer park in lieu fees" diverted from public park development to many kinds of other outdoor projects, including mountain bike trails, equestrian trails, dog runs, and structures to house theater productions and dance recitals. This covers redevelopment agency property as well as other city areas. The controversial proposal was presented in public for the first time at a parks commission meeting on 11/3/04 with no notice to neighborhood associations, no publicity about the proposal, and no input aside from a very small set of developers.

PROPOSAL ON FAST TRACK
The parks department scheduled the controversial proposal for city council committee consideration on 11/29/04, just 26 days after the proposal's first appearance. Several neighborhood advocates testified at the 11/29/04 hearing about the inadequacy of public participation and about the profound betrayal to long-standing parks policy that the proposal embodied. The advocates won the day, and the city council committee postponed consideration of the proposal until 1/24/05 and called for community meetings to be held before that date.

SUBSTANCE OF PROPOSAL
Some parts of the proposal are valuable to the establishment and maintenance of city facilities, but one part represents a serious danger to our city's parks program. And that's the part that provides a legal basis for diverting "developer park in lieu fees" to non-park purposes.

Right now, city policy requires (whether under the redevelopment agency, or under regular city rules) that no fewer than three acres of park be dedicated by developers for every 1,000 new residents who will live in the developer's new housing project. City rules provide that the developer may pay in lieu fees to the city if they think they cannot afford the land for the new park.

In practice this means that developers very rarely provide adequate parks on site of new housing projects, and instead negotiate in lieu fees with the city which are paid into a park trust fund and languish there for up to five years. The park trust fund now amounts to approximately $100,000,000 in unspent fees, and the city appears very unwilling to use these funds to develop public park lands.

ADDITIONAL EFFECT OF PROPOSAL
A second problem with the proposal is that neighbors will quarrel over whether they want a trail for equestrians or a dance recital hall or a new park. The advocates of special structures are much more tightly organized for their special projects, and the advocates of adequate parklands are diffuse and unorganized. Neighborhoods will split over these expenditures, conflict will emerge, and neighborhood associations will be destroyed by this issue.

We badly need adequate parklands for young and old people -- we do not need to engage in community brawling over which project should receive funding. Let's keep a clear mind about this proposal, and ask the city council to maintain the present long-standing policy of using "developer park in lieu fees" for parks.

HEARINGS
There will be a community meeting in city hall, Room 204, on 1/19/05 at 7:00 PM to discuss this proposal. If you attend, watch out because the parks department spokesmen are confusing in the way they present the proposal. You will need to pay particular attention to what is said about diversion because that portion of the proposal is often soft-pedaled even though it is the most basic change in parklands policy in a quarter century.

The city council committee ("Driving A Strong Economy Committee") will consider the proposal on 1/24/05 at 3:00 PM in room 204 of city hall. This is probably the most important hearing to attend if you can attend only one. At this meeting you will see city council members discuss and vote. They will allow only two minutes for any testimony so if you have remarks of longer duration, please bring written comments for the record.

Turning a Deaf Ear to the Displaced

By Colbert I. King

Saturday, January 8, 2005; Page A19

Drive-by news gathering, which passes as journalism
today, conveys a superficial and misleading picture of
gentrification in the nation's capital. The stories
tell nothing of the wrenching consequences of people
being pushed out of their neighborhoods. But how would
those journalists know? They've never lived through
the process of gentrification, and they don't spend
nearly enough time in the community getting to know
what they write about. Facile writers with clueless
editors can get away with anything.

The tragedy is that this benign view of what's taking
place in the city is also shared in top D.C.
government circles, where our town's tightly drawn
class and racial fault lines -- and those established
residents who have been made to feel marginalized --
are ignored.

But why worry about any of that? The city's growing
tax base of middle-class couples and singles makes
D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams giddy. The sight of
"undesirable" neighborhoods being rapidly transformed
into places where wealthier folks want to live makes
Williams go weak in the knees. These changes are just
what the mayor, his economic planners and his business
friends ordered. Besides, there's no time for the displaced.
The mayor's too busy with the National League of
Cities and, when he's home, being wined and dined in
glitzy downtown restaurants, Georgetown salons and the
homes of folks he never thought he would meet when he
was laboring as an Agriculture Department bureaucrat.
The whole thing has turned his head. So what if booming property
values and a richer downtown cultural life aren't
doing much for renters or the evicted?

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for growth and economic
development. But not the kind that forces people out
of their neighborhoods or across the D.C. line.
Empathy for people about to lose their homes? Not
today's Tony Williams. He is much like the fabled
senior black Army officer who, when confronted by overly familiar
black enlisted men who thought they had something in
common with him, put them in their place with the
gibe, "I'm your color, not your kind."

Besides, the mayor will tell you, it's not as if he's
doing nothing. He touts the Housing Production Trust
Fund and his plans to transform homeless shelters and
spruce up public housing for the poor. And, as he and
his minions will tell you, the pushed-out -- at least
some of them -- will have somewhere else to go when
the city gets some affordable housing up and running
in other parts of the city.

But if he really wanted to prove he doesn't want a
District of Columbia of just the rich, he could
support adoption of a mandatory inclusionary zoning
policy to make sure new and rehabilitated residential
developments include a certain minimum percentage of
housing that low- and moderate-income folks can
afford. D.C. Council Chairman Linda Cropp has proposed
such legislation to make certain current residents can
afford to stay in the city. The mayor should seek
permission from his developer friends to support the Cropp bill. Fat
chance.

But city life is more than having a roof over your
head -- a point lost on Williams and his minions.

Today's gentrified West End is much more to the
mayor's taste. He even lives in Foggy Bottom. And
what's not to like? The area is blessed with good
transportation, nice restaurants, well-kept rental
apartments and condos, less crime, fewer large
families with children, and more middle-class
dwellers. Not like when I lived there. Back in the
1940s and '50s, employees arriving for work
at the U.S. Weather Bureau at 24th and M Streets NW,
or ambulatory patients and workers entering the Columbia
Hospital for Women at 24th and L Streets NW, had to
pass through my West End neighborhood, which bordered
Foggy Bottom. To those outsiders, we were just a
working-class community on the edge of Rock Creek
Park.

Some of that was right. Words such as "new" or
"modern" were seldom spoken in our neighborhood.
Everything was old: the corner grocery store, the
churches on every other block, the schools and
playground equipment. Our clothes were clean, but they
were old, too. Most adults were working-class people:
domestics, laborers, elevator operators, porters and
the like. Those in the Weather Bureau's white-collar
workforce hardly gave us a second look, except maybe
when they were forced to step around us as we played on the sidewalk.

But when gentrification came to the West End and Foggy
Bottom, the character of our community died. To the
new arrivals, tenants being kicked out were just
faceless renters, women who cleaned other people's
houses or cared for other people's children. Men who
dug ditches and hauled trash, and who, when they had
to, scratched when nothing itched, and laughed when nothing was
funny. They went off to work in homes and on jobs
where they were called by their first names, even by
tots who hardly knew their own names.

But those same men and women, at least to kids in my
neighborhood, were community pillars. They served as
deacons and deaconesses in our churches, taught Sunday
school and sang in the choir. They grew up with our
parents and disciplined us as if we were their own. We
knew them as the respected "Mr." or "Mrs." So-and-So,
or as Sister Johnson or Brother Jones. It was
disrespectful for a child to call a grown-up by his or
her first name.

It was a community where a child could walk three
blocks and run into someone, a relative or friend, who
was known to the family. Financially embattled, yes.
But no one went hungry. Neighbors, black and white --
like the Jones family down the block -- didn't let
neighbors starve. People looked each other squarely in
the eye. They spoke on the streets. We weren't afraid
of each other. We enjoyed the same kind of food and
music, and played the same childhood games. We were the
community.

Gentrification didn't care about any of that stuff.
Once our neighborhood got "discovered" -- as when Columbus
"discovered" America -- all we shared and held dear
was destroyed. Families, churches and lifelong friendships
were ripped from their moorings and scattered. That
explains why Liberty Baptist Church on 23rd Street NW
ended up on Kentucky Avenue SE; why 19th Street
Baptist Church at 19th and I Streets NW is now on
upper 16th Street NW; why Rock Creek Baptist Church in
Foggy Bottom is now east of Georgia Avenue on Eighth Street
NW.

Oh, most of us managed to keep roofs over our heads.
We grew up and moved on. But lost forever was the
sense of community and belonging that we once had.
That is what's happening today in our city. The mayor
and drive-by journalists can't see it. Or they see it
and simply don't care.

Washington Post

San Jose Medical Center

The Save San Jose Medical Center Coalition needs the help of neighborhood organizations, SNI/NAC participants and other interested community groups. The future of the San Jose Hospital Site will be discussed at the January 11th City Council meeting and we would appreciate your help in the form of a letter to the Mayor and City Council supporting the following points:

Public officials should officially affirm the conclusions of the recently released Closure Impact Study. The study highlights the current and future demand for hospital facilities and provides evidence of the shortage of acute care medical facilities in San Jose.

http://www.sjmayor.org/event_library/new_website/Press/SJMC%20Impact%20Study%20News%20Releasefinal.html

Public officials should proactively asses the options for reestablishing an acute care hospital at the Santa Clara Street site. This should be a high priority issue and the City Council should take all necessary and appropriate actions for the greater good of the community.

Zoning for the former San Jose Medical Center property must remain public/hospital.

Letters should be mailed by January 6th, 2005 to the Mayor and City Council, 801 North First Street, San Jose, CA 95112. The topic is Item 4.3 at the 1:30 PM, January 11th City Council Meeting.

Now is the time to speak up on this important citywide issue. The level of documented comment received in January will establish the basis for future City Council and Planning Department actions. A sample letter is attached below.

On behalf of SSJMC Coalition www.sosjmc.org