6:59pm | The Long Beach City Council moments ago unanimously approved several agenda items related to the city’s assuming ownership of 200-plus parcels valued at about $180 million currently owned by the Long Beach Redevelopment Agency.
As we reported yesterday, the Redevelopment Agency Board of Directors approved Monday the asset transfer in a 5-0 vote, two board members being absent.
The transaction is considered vital to maintaining local control of the properties, many of which are in various phases of actively being redeveloped.
Vice-Mayor Suja Lowenthal said Tuesday that as Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposal stands, not only would redevelopment agencies be dismantled, but successor agencies would be sent in to dispose of the their assets.
“The governor’s proposal outlines that all land and assets be sold off immediately to the highest bidder,” Lowenthal said.
Brown’s proposed state budget, which includes dismantling redevelopment agencies as a means to save roughly $1.7 billion this budget year to help close a $26.6 billion state budget deficit, is approved by the state legislature. They fear that should redevelopment be terminated, control of the properties could go up for grabs.
State lawmakers could vote on the budget proposal as soon as tomorrow.
The $1.7 billion would be redistributed to fund Medi-Cal and the courts system, said Tom Modica, director of government affairs and strategic initiatives for the city of Long Beach, in a Monday e-mail.
“In the future (under the governor’s plan eliminating RDAs) the tax increment would be distributed to local taxing entities like schools, counties, special districts and cities,” Modica said.
There are 398 active redevelopment agencies in the state, and their expenditures are estimated at about $5.5 billion a year.
Roughly 40 percent of Long Beach lies in a redevelopment project area, all of which have active Project Area Committees whose members supported the asset transfer and are fearful of what losing redevelopment could do to their ailing, though improving, neighborhoods.
Amy Bodek, director of the Long Beach RDA, said that the state Health and Safety Code permits redevelopment agencies to transfer assets to a city.
Bodek said that should state lawmakers remove redevelopment from the chopping block, the city would have the ability to transfer the properties back over the agency, though that process would be governed by the state Government Code rather than the Health and Safety Code.
Downtown Long Beach Associates President and CEO Kraig Kojian lauded the city and agency officials for being proactive and working “expeditiously to secure the agency’s assets.”
Many of the elected officials asserted that the city would challenge the state in court should Brown’s plan garner approval, citing Proposition 22 as being in violation of the state constitution. The proposition was approved by voters last fall and bars the state from subsidizing its deficit by pillaging local government coffers, including redevelopment funds.
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