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Armando Vazquez. Courtesy photo.
By Armando Vazquez / Guest contributor
As early as January, 2017 the city of Oxnard through the Successor Agency, that was hastily patched together sometime after 2012 by city officials, is the “illegitimate” progeny of the abolished Redevelopment Agency (RDA’s) throughout California in 2012)-must begin selling and/or artfully depose) all of it RDA’s 52+ properties and parcels with the urgency of a department that has in the 5 years lost many costly administrative and courts battles; and now clearly has run out of legal shenanigans to further delay the inevitable and force to comply with the state with its it back against the wall! Oxnard like many state municipalities, RDA’S, and developer fought Governor Browns efforts to eliminate the RDA’s and they waged a costly, protracted and losing battle; they lost when the California Supreme Court ruled in favour of Governor Browns to eliminate the disastrous DRA’s.
The best estimate of current value of the cities land and parcels is approximately $125,000,000.00 dollars (2012 estimates) of the 52+ properties and parcels that city the of Oxnard’s Redevelopment Agency (now defunct) purchased and currently owns. Many properties have been vacant for years and are an embarrassment, an eyesore and fly in the face of the posturing that city officials do in claiming that they are handcuffed by the state to come up with creative to ideas and solution for the occupancy and use of the 52+ properties and parcel that by their very purchase, legal acquisition and ownership belong TO THE PEOPLE OF OXNARD!
Fast forward to 2017 and now the city of Oxnard will scrabbling to liquidate all 52 plus properties, as quickly as possible. This is where the greed, maleficence and madness of the history of Oxnard’s RDA’s is painfully illuminated! The city must sell these 52+ properties as quickly as possible, delays in the selling of the properties can result in costly penalties being assessed by the state. To add insult to injury the city of Oxnard will receive at most an embarrassing 20% of the sales proceeds. So the one thing the city of Oxnard can no longer do is drag its feet, like it has for the past 5 to 6 years. The “usual suspect” developer and the well-connected money know that city is behind a rock and a hard place; the perfect scenario for easy pickings! So in January 2017 these high rollers will descend on Oxnard ready to gobble up all of the properties at super discounted give away prices (the city of Oxnard is not mandated by state to follow basic market value protocols; they are only mandated to liquidate their inventory!). The city can sell the properties at whatever price; as long as the greater mandate of fulfilling the city’s master plan objectives are met.
State and Oxnard’s RDA’s ORIGINS: A Dubious History
The history of RDAs in California dates to the California State Legislature’s passage of the Community Redevelopment Act in 1945. The act provided the mechanism to create RDAs; however, most of the agencies relied on federal funding until 1952, when Proposition 18 established “tax-increment financing.” Under the new financing structure, cities and counties were given the authority to declare areas as blighted and in need of urban renewal, and a city or county was allowed to distribute most of the growth in property tax revenue for the project area to the relevant RDAs as tax-increment revenues.
Redevelopment expanded in the number and size of project areas in the 1970s and 1980s, in large part because of two major state policy changes that dramatically incentivized the use of property-tax income for redevelopment by limiting the options available for local governments to otherwise finance redevelopment projects. By 1976, the number of project areas in the state had increased to 229 and. received 2 percent of total state wide property taxes. During the period 1980-2011, the California State Legislature enacted laws aimed at, among other things, strengthening regulations regarding the percentage of tax-increment revenues that RDAs used to develop housing for low- and moderate-income households. Passed in 1993, AB 1290 tightened the definition of a “blighted area” to “an area that is predominately urbanized and where certain problems are so substantial that they constitute a serious physical and economic burden to a community that cannot be reversed by private or government actions, absent redevelopment.”
RDA’s Out of Control: Money, Maleficence and Greed and the Inevitable Financial Disaster
Despite substantial efforts by the state to limit and refine the focus of redevelopment spending, RDAs received 12 percent of state-wide property tax revenue in 2008, with six redevelopment projects that exceeded 20,000 acres in size. In fact, despite paying higher borrowing costs than ever before, RDAs issued more debt in the form of tax allocation bonds during the first 6 months of 2011, approximately $1.5 billion, than they had in all of 2010, $1.3 billion. RDAs also rushed to transfer assets to other local agencies to suppress the level of funds that could be taken by the state via ABX1 26. That is called greed and/or malfeasance on a local and state wide level. In the new world of no truth politics; Trump call this bald face malfeasance “financial brilliance” when you use taxer money, not your own to cut deals, go broke in the process and walk away unscathed from the financial disaster, because after all it is only the taxpayers money!
Oxnard residents must demand a place at the Successor Agency Community Advisory Table
Where does the abolishment of Oxnard’s RDA’s and the Successor Agency that now hold more than 52+ properties and parcels of land in their portfolio leave the resident of Oxnard who all had to pay in some way (think local, state, and federal taxation) for the purchase of the more than 52+ properties and parcel (in most cases purchases that exceeded prevailing market value) currently owned by the city that according to high ranking official must now be sold ASAP? Residents of Oxnard quit succinctly and simply will be left with pennies on the dollar if the properties sell. The likeliest scenario is that the city will obfuscate and foot drag, and continue to leave the 52+ properties vacant and without temporary and creative partner occupants.
This “city created blight and neglect” can no longer be tolerated; we must mobilize, organize and demand an equitable share holder place at the Successor Advisory Board, and negotiate out successfully the ownership of downtown properties (Social Security Building or the So. Cal Gas Building, downtown) for the creation, growth and development of a community arts and cultural centers, low income housing, shelters for the homeless, battered women and foster/displaced youth/student housing and building needs that are unique to the disenfranchised Oxnard community. Time is curtail, at the last Oxnard Multicultural Community Health Coalition meeting we initiated a petition, signed by 20 Oxnard community members requesting that the city of Oxnard make one of its building available to the Acuna Gallery/Café on A. Come January, 2017 we will approach city officials and negotiate terms of purchase and ownership of one of the downtown properties, we want to the city of Oxnard to deal with us in good faith and sell us one of their downtown properties.
Yes it look complicated but the fact remains that many city controlled properties have been vacant and/or virtually abandoned for many years and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Let’s make the disposition of real property assets in accordance with a State-approved City of Oxnard Long-Range Property Management Plan. The Café on A/Acuna Art Gallery is the perfect occupant (per master plan specifications; arts and culture) for short list consideration. We can fill those now empty building, which means more pedestrians, business traffic, revenues and taxes, the possibilities are quite exciting and limitless!
We must act now!!!!!!
Our request is simply: to occupy one of these vacant buildings (preferably the Former Social Security Building or the former S. Cal Gas Building in the down town area). Both of these buildings have been vacant for years. The Acuna Gallery/Cafe on A and our partners fit perfectly into every study and best case scenario revitalization planning that has been research, documented and has city council approval; and is the very idea now being floated as the best use of urban redevelopment/design protocol, namely; partnerships with a long well established arts and culture non-profit institutions that have historically provided the residents of Oxnard the opportunity to experience the magical transformative and economically stimulating exchange of local and diverse creativity, that will greatly enhance and support the financial, safety and entertainment vitality in the City of Oxnard. The City Council member can do the smart and right thing and sell or donate one of the identified downtown vacant properties over to the Cafe on A/Acuna Art Gallery.
I have read the Redevelopment Dissolution language and it is couched in a lot of creative wiggle room, as long as it benefits the “redevelopment scheme of the city and pass muster with Sacramento. Our request I think is a slam dunk for approval by all parties. We are eager to hear from you Mr City Manager, Greg Nyhoff on this urgent community matter.
Respectfully,
Armando Vazquez
If you would like to help us please sign this “petition” and email it to all the Oxnard City Council members En la Union Hay la Fuerza! Oxnard Unite! Oxnard Act!
— Armando Vazquez, M.Ed., is the executive director of the Acuna Art Gallery & Community Center/Café on A, The KEYS Leadership Academy@ Café on A in Oxnard and president of the Oxnard Multicultural Mental Health Coaltion.