So I read that UCLA report.

Regarding Best Buy, it currently averages sales of approx. ~30MM per store. That number was undoubtedly lower in ’97, but even if it was 30MM then, Burbank’s 1% of the sales tax take was approx 300M per year. This does not come close to recouping the principal 3MM subsidy, as the study trumpets. Depending on terms, it probably covers the debt service on BBY’s portion of the project, but if BBY is the highlight, the project cannot be considered a financial success. Well, not for Burbank. It is a smashing success for Best Buy…

What did you think about the hotel developer being guaranteed a 12% profit before making any debt service payments? Is that sound fiscal policy? Did you notice that the project defaulted? Thoughts on that?

If this is the most positive redevelopment study you can find, you are damning it with very faint praise.

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John:

I detect bit of cyber-umbrage in your posts, but why? I did agree with you that MORR, et al had weak and downright inaccurate arguments. I simply said that these weaknesses do not cancel out their fundamental conclusions of redeveloment’s harmful effects. I’m still waiting for you to counter that, as you indicated you would.

As far working on my “gut” & disregarding the facts, I have actual experience in rdevelopment finance. I know first hand what a scam it is. What is your experience with it?

And are you really saying that subsidizing Fry’s with tax dollars is an appropriate government function?

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As for the theater, you could argue that. It’s a terrible argument, but you can make it.

With stores such as Ikea, Frys, Circuit City, Office
Depot, and Virgin Megastore, to name just a few, Burbank saw its sales taxes increase 3,000 percent between 1991 and 1997…The
success of both has greatly exceeded almost everyone’s expectations, and Frys repaid its
$3 million subsidy in the amount of sales tax it generated in only two years. [original emphasis]

The more interesting overarching theme of the study was the connection between the passage of Prop 13 and the proliferation of Redevelopment agencies as a way for cities to “take back” some of their lost property taxes through the power of Redevelopment agencies.

An “essential” public purpose is pretty subjective, if the redevelopment agency achieves its goal like Burbank of increasing sales tax revenue then couldn’t one argue that it is providing an “essential” public purpose? eg. bringing additional revenue into the City?

One could argue that the redevelopment monies being used to rehabilitate the Alameda Theater is going to an “essential” public purpose: the revitalization of a piece of Alameda’s history.

Can you name a redevelopment project that used tax dollars for an essential public purpose? Cuz, ya know, that’s what tax dollars are for.

But if you believe that tax dollars ought to be used for non-essentail private purposes, can you name a redevelopment project that generated sufficient revenue back to to its issuing city to A) cover the debt service B) compensate the city & its taxpayers for their risk?

Bringing it down to an Alameda level, which after all is the topic at hand, do you care to justify the use of public funds for a movie house?

Being for redevelopment means you are in favor of bad fiscal policy and bad public policy.

Or, as you wrote in a comment elsewhere:

Now I ask for an honest admission that redevelopment is an abhorrent waste & abuse of tax dollars.

I have not heard Mr. Knox White or anyone else in Alameda claim that redevelopment is always good under all circumstances. How then, with a straight face, can you make the claim the redevelopment is always bad under all circumstances?

The evidence on redevelopment is mixed: Like most instruments of public policy, it can be good under some circumstances, and bad under others. It seems that the need to paint everything as black or white, good or evil is the approach that lacks credibility.

Yes, the MORR, et al arguments JKW has presented are weak and contain several inaccuracies. While he’s getting his jollies punching down those strawmen, though, he is willfully missing the essential point: Rhetorcial weakness notwithstanding, their conclusions are correct:

-Redevelopment DOES take tax dollars away from public purposes, redirecting them to non-essential private ones.
-Redevelopment DOES reduce, even cripple, future fiscal flexibility.

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And random responses to the cloying sophistry of the rest of your post:

-Govt contracts for govt purposes are not the same thing as government funding for a movie theaters or strip centers. That’s not apples/oranges, that’s apples/anvils.

-Re: Bush/War — the war is not being funded under the table by redevelopment bonds, it’s being funded in the open by Congressionally authorized spending & debt sales. If you’d like to start a convo about Bush, the War & the federal budget, we can start a new thread, but the two are not even tangentially related.

-There are good examples of redevelopment finance? Name one. Explain why it’s so good.

Aren’t our public funds used for private non-essential purposes all the time depending on one’s perspective on what is non-essential? For example, most paratransit companies are private and I don’t use paratransit, does that mean that it is non-essential because it’s non-essential to me? And yet public funds are used to subsidize the service.

I don’t recall voting for this current president or going off into this war yet a massive public debt is being accrued in order to finance it.

Redevelopment, the way I see it, is a tool. There are bad examples and there are good examples, but to blanket it as bad fiscal and public policy without evidence that it has done any direct harm is as bad as being pro-Redevelopment without considering the possible repercussions of Redevelopment.

I don’t feel as though JKW is passing judgment on Redevelopment being good, but rather showing that the basis in which some would condemn Redevelopment is based on flawed assumptions.

I mean, come on, what does per capita income have to do with redevelopment? And even if it did have something to do with redevelopment comparing Benicia to Alameda is ridiculous, talk about apples and oranges. Its population is a fraction of Alameda’s and is a largely industrial city. Not comparable. And the other examples on that chart from the MORR document are equally flawed.

Being for redevelopment means you are in favor of bad fiscal policy and bad public policy.

Is this the sort of public servant you aspire to be?