Politics & Government

Contentious Council Gives Nod to Alternate Redevelopment Program

City officials compared the state to pickpockets and referred to the required payments from the city as a "ransom."

The Fountain Valley City Council voted 4-1 Tuesday night to adopt an ordinance that opts the city into a new state program that will prevent the dissolution of the city's redevelopment agency.

The program, part of the two-bill budget signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown last month, allows the city to keep its redevelopment agency—and money—as long as it makes payments to the state and to school, fire and transit districts. The state's Finance Department will determine each city's obligations by Aug. 1, but Housing Coordinator Brent Hoff estimated that the city would owe an initial remittance of $3 million to the state and another $720,000 for the 2012-2014 fiscal year.

In voting against the ordinance, council member Mark McCurdy had the honor of making sure at least one of the council chamber's red "Nay" lights still works. McCurdy cited a nonpartisan study that questioned whether redevelopment agencies create jobs and highlighted loose standards for determining how an area is deemed blighted.

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"We don't offer these things to everybody," McCurdy said of redevelopment program money. "If I were the family grocery store next to Costco, I wouldn't be getting these things. It's not a level playing field. It's not the free market."

But it was those voting in favor of participating in the program who expressed the most ire, all of it directed toward Sacramento. Even Hoff's presentation seemed to suggest that opting into the program was the lesser of two evils, with the first slide depicting a hand labeled "The State" picking a pocket labeled "RDAs," and the remittance required to the state referred to as "the ransom."

Find out what's happening in Fountain Valleywith free, real-time updates from Patch.

"I take my marching orders from the people of Fountain Valley," council member Larry Crandall said. "I am so embarrassed that I have a colleague who wants to read from a document prepared by some congressional district. I'm not going to take my marching orders from anyone outside the city limits. This is just unconscionable what the governor has done. It goes to show that the leadership in Sacramento? There is none. This is just totally crazy."

The council also voted 4-1 to enact an administrative citation system that would impose fines on code violations and other minor infractions rather than making such violations criminal offenses. A first-time violation would bring a fine of $100, with second and third offenses within a year bringing fines of $200 and $500. McCurdy, who again cast the only vote against the ordinance, expressed concern about the lower standard of proof used in the system, as well as the system's proposed collection policies, which include placing liens on real property.


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