Opinion: Redevelopment subsidy crippling South Lake Tahoe
To the publisher,
The City Council’s 1995 decision to subsidize redevelopment debt by giving all of the hotel room taxes in Redevelopment Area 1, Herbert Avenue to Stateline, set the table for the city’s economic woes for the last 15 years.
After the 1995 decision, the city manager and the council began a reorganization plan called Destination 2000. As a result, 18 city employees left the city. The finance officer left, and the police chief and fire chief officers were combined into one. The fire chief became the police chief in the dual role.
Bill Crawford
Sometime between the years 2000 and 2002 $7 million was filched from the city’s general fund and given to the Redevelopment Agency. The City Council didn’t know about it until after it was disclosed. It was then called a loan.
In 2002, bonds were sold to finance the city garage at 7 percent interest when the going rate for muni bonds was 4 percent. The garage is a millstone around the city’s neck and is one of the factors that has led to the city to nearly drown in debt.
Now there’s the Hole in the Ground bankruptcy which is the third bankruptcy for redevelopment in South Lake Tahoe.
About a year and half ago while Mr. (Dave) Jinkens was city manager there was another reorganization of the city’s workforce. People were terminated. Some were given early retirement. But the subsidy to redevelopment remained whole.
Now there’s another attempt by the city to salvage city operations with the Strategic Plan 2011-14. What’s new? The plan is one more reorganization somewhat like the Destination 2000 plan, reducing staff, etc. But the gift of $4 million a year to redevelopjment remains intact.
Redevelopment remains the sacred cow. Well, that’s politics. Ignore the facts so that the same old stupidities are repeated.
Bill Crawford, South Lake Tahoe
During the last campaign, all of the candidates who have since been elected to serve on the City Council enthusiastically endorsed redevelopment and insisted it had helped our city. I opposed it and called it a toxic fraud, which many voters did not want to hear or believe. Thankfully, Bill Crawford has opened some eyes and people will wake up to this unmitigated disaster and how it has bankrupted our town. Meanwhile, the current City Council seems condemned to repeat the stupidity of the past and prospects for real reform remain beyond the courage, vision or intellectual capacity of the Council.
After being fleeced with this city’s redevelopment debacles, voters should be given the right to vote on future redevelopment schemes and costs associated thereto. “Beauty” should be in the eyes of the beholder, not the crafty bureaucrats with the enormous and dangerous power of eminent domain and bottomless buckets of public funds. Like many debacles, by the time the house of cards implodes, the persons responsible are long gone and not held accountable.
By the way, it was the other way around. The police chief, Brad Bennett, became the fire chief too. That cross-training appeared to have worked without mishap or inconvenience.
You’ve presented a good background overview of what happened. What do you propose should be done to fix the problem? The Project 3 TAHOLE is both a financial drain and embarassment for the city. How can this be rectified and return this critical part of our city to a contributing participant? I believe the city used eminent domain to put the properties into Randy Lane’s hand. What should they do today with the investors who have taken over this bankrupt project in order to make something happen?
Thank you Bill Crawford for putting things straight. This new re Organization attempt will cost the city more good employees and will cause the moral of the employees the erode even more. this new City Mgr. is some place out in left field with his plan. It will cost this City more than anyone can understand right now but will see when he up’s and leaves. This is just a City for him to place on his resume, then off to bigger things.
Wish Bill Crawford was still a Councilman and we had four more just like him, Then we would see a City in the Black and not in the RED
Anyone know a good attorney? Maybe it’s time to hold the people involved in this fiasco accountable and take them to court like they did in Bell, CA. It’s not going to get any better till people get off the pot and do more than just talk about it in forums like LTN.
Hal Cole, Tom Davis ????? Get Ready, are you ready for the new Judy Brown ?
Aside to Bob, There is no way to fight the South Lake Tahoe Machine,they are part of the ElDorado County Machine.
Bill Crawford has been informing on the Good old gang for years, to no avail.
A redevelopment sales tax was rejected by ElDorado county voters in 1986. City voters approved a TOT increase in 1987 which started redevelopment and the demise started. The first blunder by the city was to give Mr. HODGE fee title to the land they condemed at ski run and hy 50. Mr. Hodge gets a loan for 15 million, on the land the city gave him, then files for BK. That hole is there until 1996. Thats the start of the long downside for SLT.
tahoeadvocate, I don’t know if he can propose anything be done to fix past problems. Its like cutting wood, once cut, that’s it you can’t undo it.
Remember he was the guy who was labeled “a pain in the neck” by a news source when he was against all this stuff and pointing out the problems. He was the guy who was named in a suit for this redevelopment he voted against. He was the guy who refused help and financial aid when he ran for office (I know I offered to help 15+ years ago and he politely declined).
Who is Crawford? He may be rough around the edges. But he was a quarterback in college. He has a masters degree. He was an educator. He sees through crap and doesn’t care for PC. He knows his astronomy (not astrology) and the science behind it.
In short he’s a person of experience and knowledge beyond the average. He is someone even if you didn’t agree with his perspectives and opinion we all could benefit from sitting down and just listening for an hour.
Thank you Hank for your past service, and please keep calling out people when you think they are wrong. Please keep up your commentaries and observations, even if you can’t provide a solution, call us out on it. We need fewer promises and yes men in life, we need the Bill Crawfords out there watching out for all of us.
Good work Bill – your analysis of any situation was always the one we listened to. When you were on the Council and all of these mistakes were being made, you tried to stop them. They should have listened to “Uncle Bill”. While the blowhards on the Council were “out pontificating each other”, we’d watch you leaning back in your chair and thinking. Waiting for you to come out with your point of view…it was always worth waiting for!
Louis, I could not have said it better thanks.
LOUIS, The Tahole may be a past problem but it is a current day one as well. I hear many people talking but no one offering what can be done. It would seem that the current lien holders could be made to do something rather than sitting on the property wishing someone would be stupid enough to pay them them amount of money they loaned to Randy Lane.
So far the Machine hacks have declined to rewrite history. OOps why bother, Tom and Judy are back Good old Hal never left. Kerry is getting closer to Tahoe. Is it time for John Upton to join Sweeney and Nutting,or Hal and Tom ?
Redevelopment Agencies are mandated by the State Housing Element to provide Low Income Affordable Housing. This requires private parties and RDA’s & profit and non profit developers to work together to accomplish a tremendously difficult endeavor. Because it takes grants and below market loans to finance these projects. Punishing the poor immediately is what elimination of Redevelopment Agencies will result in. Not protecting the Low & Moderate Income Housing Funds for affordable housing will not only jeopardize projects currently funded but will certainly delay all new construction of affordable housing for 5 to 10 years. Thinking that total elimination of RDA’s will not effectively kill the construction of low income rental housing for the next 5 to 10 years is a mistake.
Using the money from the Low and Moderate Income Housing funds that RDA’s provide restricts the units to low income workers that are carefully screened and must prove their income to qualify to be eligible. Combined with Low income Tax Credits and other grants, these restictions ensure that only hard working families that otherwise could not live in the communities where they work, have decent quality housing that otherwise wouldn’t be available.
Assemblyman Norby’s position with Governor Brown, to eliminate subsidized housing for the poor is a decision that is wrong. Redevelopment Agencies abuses, frauds and wastes should be corrected immediately, but not by the total elimination of Redevelopment Agencies. Affordable housing should not be eliminated or delayed for decades until Prop 13 is overturned. Throwing out the baby with the bathwater is not a logical policy. The Republican Party is not about harming the poor. As a matter of fact, the Republican Party is affordable housings best hope.
The Democratic Party’s intentions to eliminate Redevelopment Agencies is a fact. Only Republican Assemblyman have blocked that effort. But this proposal to eliminate Redevelopment Agencies is more than eliminating affordable housing. It is the only way that the State Democrats will ever overturn Proposition 13. And that is what this is really about. Raising Property Taxes for local control of services. (which may not be a bad idea) But I believe that raising taxes inhibits economic growth. The Democratic Parties proposal to eliminate Redevelopment Agencies is intended to eventually get a majority of voters to overturn Proposition 13 for all commercial real estate. But not one dime will ever go to building affordable housing after Prop 13 is overturned for at least 10 to 20 years, if not longer. Saving affordable housing programs in Redevelopment Agencies is what needs to be focused on. Affordable Housing must be saved. That is the issue. Not blind political support of one party or the other.