Clearing the air, part 2
I wanted to take a minute and thank reader Gretchen Lipow who writes in with concerns about my education. In one of my favorite rhetorical devices, she offers up two perfect fair options to explain a difference of opinion she has with me. Either I’m stupid, or I don’t care about the truth and am hoping to pull the wool over people’s eyes for some undisclosed reason. It’s a great choice, isn’t it?
“I’d really like to give you information because either you’re a complete fracking moron, or you’re a whoring sea-donkey who just likes spreading lies. Email me!” (I imagine some sort of Sarah Palin wink at this point..with apologies to Heather Havrilesky)
But I’ll pretend that the comment was posted in good faith (I mean this is a writer who has taken the professional history of Helen Sause, twisted it in ways that one really has to be generous to assume wasn’t vindictive for some unknown perceived slight, and truly slandered (not Action Alameda’s loosey-goosey definition of the word) someone who has never done anything negative to anybody in this town. Go fighting double-A’s! We’re proud of you!)
Ms. Lipow points to a report (The PPIC’s “Subsidizing Redevelopment in California”) that will apparently clear up all my lack of understanding. A report that I’ve actually written about in the past, and so I was surprised to see the findings presented as they were. Lipow writes:
“Dardia began his study to show what he soon discovered was the opposite …that redevelopment ends up as net drain on public resources …that redevelopment was being subsidzed by taxes drained from the schools, etc.”
We’ll ignore that Ms. Lipow clearly didn’t mean what she wrote, that Dardia wanted to show that redevelopment is a drain on public resources but proved the opposite. I believe she meant that he meant to show that there was no drain, but that he found one.
What struck me, having you know, already read the report, was the “drained from the schools” line, because Dardia said just the opposite (so maybe she did write what she meant). Here’s Dardia direct words in talking about why schools have not fought hard for pass through:
“School districts had little incentive to fight for the pass-throughs, since the state reimbursed them for any lost property tax revenue.”
Prop. 98 requires that the state continue funding schools at specific levels. So, while redevelopment does have some effect on the state budget it does not steal money from schools. Dardia’s report points that out specifically. If the schools were to collect more property tax money (and there are arguments that they do, Dardia’s focus was very limited), the state would reduce the amount of money that they give the schools in the same amount.
Here’s another thing that the report says:
“The report does not provide an overall cost-benefit analysis of redevelopment in California.”
And it’s conclusion:
“Redevelopment does provide infrastructure, affordable housing, and commercial development. Given that the state, counties, and special districts provide subsidies of this size, however, it might be worth targeting these monies more narrowly on the most blighted areas.”
It should be noted that the “more narrowly refers mostly to identified greenfield developments and other extremely broad definitions of “blight” that some jurisdictions use. If one looks at the redevelopment projects in Alameda (Bridgeside, Alameda Theatre, Naval Air Station) one sees literal crumbling infrastructure.
This report did not try and ascertain if the property values in areas surrounding redevelopment areas went up or down due to redevelopment. For example, is it possible that the East End’s property values will go up now that Bridgeside is not a bombed out shopping center rotting next to the Fruitvale Bridge? I’d say that’s likely. What is the effect of this increase? 1%, 2%, 5%? None of that increase is collected by the redevelopment area. It’s all new revenue for the city. Like I said before, Dardia’s report is a good one, but he’s clear that he’s looking at a single issue in a very defined way. He’s also clear that there are benefits beyond recapturing sales tax, like removing blight, building affordable housing, etc. And that he hasn’t tried to address them.
So thanks for the tip Gretchen, keep ‘em comin’!
Tomorrow’s a holiday, but we’ll continue this conversation on Friday. Happy Thanksiving everyone.
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