Redevelopment

February, 2012

David Howard and other local Alameda citizens are concerned about redevelopment agencies and their potential abuses of taxpayer monies including their impact on funding for Alameda schools. The fact is that Alameda Unified School District will not receive any additional monies until redevelopment funds until are redirected back into general tax fund, either through legislation or ballot initiative. Much like Prop 13 which caps the property tax increases (thus having an indirect impact on school funding), reform of redevelopment agencies is a very long term strategy to fix funding of schools. Complicating the picture has been State fiscal problems that has led the State to taking redevelopment monies from the cities. As result in 2010, number of cities stopped making payments to their redevelopment funds. In 2011, Governor Brown proposed elimination of redevelopment agencies moving forward as part of massive $26 billion budget solution.In theory, the Governor believed the elimination of redevelopment agencies would save $1.7 billion. However, the new analysis was still trying to sort fact from fiction in late February, 2011. In December, 2011, the California Supreme Court in a ruling agreed the Legislature could be eliminated. While it was not the intent to eliminate redevelopment agencies, will be dealing creating a new mechanism to allow redevelopment agencies to exist.

Background and History

California first authorized cities and counties to create redevelopment agencies in 1945 as a vehicle for addressing blight and economic distress. One of the main tools of redevelopment is tax increment financing. Under tax increment financing, the property taxes that existing taxing authorities