Our Governor did it again. “We the people” the foundation of our country is strong and we are finally free from the boondoggle that is redevelopment agency.

Ironically, it was RDA's own doing (Prop 22) which hammered in the final nail in their coffin.

I don't know that this spells the end for RDA's, but it does take away the local control of them. That might be incentive enough not to create them anymore of course. But who's getting the money that has been generated by the ones already created?

Some affordable housing were created by RDA, but for every dollar that went to affordable housing more than a thousand dollars went to the pockets of RDA's rich friends...enough is enough. The only people to benefit from redevelopment was RDA's favored developers and some corrupt officials, while most got the short end of the stick.

Let our community flourish. Let the free market rule; this is the end to crony capitalism. This is the end to eminent domain and property rights abuse.

This a big victory for all of California! Now the money can be allocated to schools and other public services. Tax revenue that were diverted to RDA from our county and school districts were not justified with incomplete redevelopment projects, projects that did not target blight, and inefficient and poor performing projects. I just hope our local government does not reconstitute RDA in a different form...we should have all learned our lesson.

With RDA's gone, urban infill projects in general, and affordable housing in particular are DOA. That means, 99% of the new housing built will be white-bread suburban, where the subsidies are better hidden. Might as well rename us New LA.

Our local RDA was doing a better job funding police and fire than before they started functioning. Now essential services will be lost. Further, they were really using the money to build projects that benefited the whole community. This is a disaster for our rural area.

Good riddance RDAs in Sacramento. I go to school in San Diego and can smell the corruption 400 miles away.

As a colleague of mine once said, when RDAs and their developer buddies get together, money seems to travel from the right pockets to the left pockets. I'll let you fill in the blanks on whose doing who costly favors.

I find it fascinating that when the Sacramento Press does articles on the construction going on or soon to be going on downtown (La Valentina, 7th and H, 626 I St, 700 Block of K) or new businesses opening up on K Street (Estelle's Patisserie most recently), the comments are all generally positive. But when the article is on ending redevelopment, which supports all of these good things, many of the comments are about the evils of the RDAs and their "rich friends".

It is true that money that goes to RDAs does not go to schools, and I understand why one might choose schools over redevelopment. It is also true that some RDAs in this state have done egregiously bad things (e.g. spending money on "blighted" golf courses). But Sacramento in general uses its tax increment money to do good things, including a great deal of affordable housing, dense transit-friendly development, and encouraging business growth in otherwise depressed areas.

If you lament the high unemployment rate, you should note that all the construction currently going on in downtown and midtown, with the exception of Sutter hospital, is funded by redevelopment--that's a lot of construction jobs in an economy that needs them. And yes, those construction workers work for SHRA's "rich friends", the private developers. Would you prefer that they be government bureaucrats? Would that be more efficient? If government is going to spend your tax dollars in a way that supports the economy, then the money eventually needs to find its way to private industry. Remember, these guys aren't bankers who make huge bets on the economy without producing anything. They take the money, employ a bunch of blue collar workers, build new buildings downtown, and create new places for us to live, work, and play.

I'm not trying to say redevelopment is perfect; it is not. A big reform that shrinks it and refocuses it on its original goals is probably warranted. And if the money is determined to be more effectively used in the schools, then so be it. But redevelopment has done positive things for Sacramento, and I would be sad to see it disappear completely.

Joetrip
Our state tax rates are the same with or without RDA's You seem to imply that tax dollars diverted to RDA's somehow creates more jobs and more local economic activity than if those same tax dollars were funding police, fire and schools. That is simply unsubstantiated.

\If you look at local educational performance and dismal crime rates for our area, I argue we need more cops and teachers then we another shiny building.

Yes news sources such as the SacPress always gravitate towards tangible images of construction and rehabilitation. The alternative uses of those RDA dollars, such as better educated children or a crime not happening, just aren't as easy to summarize in a headline.

I'm not sure what side to take on this topic. I had the opportunity to be in one of the committees for the redevelopment agency a few years ago; specifically, RAC for Oak Park. It was a struggle with other committee members on how to use the funds. And it was a struggle with all the bureocracy, because after we adviced on how to invest the money, and which project we would like to see in the area, well, at the end the mayor and the city council decided and even changed the projects, and what I remember the most, was that they always said, we need a study on how this will affect the area and the benefits, and of course, the refevelopment agency has to pay a quarter million or half a million for these studies, and almost 80% of the time they would go back to ask for more studies or for another design. And of course, this takes years. Someone mentioned that there were good things that the redevelopment agency did, and it's true, and they are all around the city. but at some point there was always an excesive waste of money. So, in my experience, the redevelopment agencies were created with good intentions, and they had very nice master plans and ideas on how to redevelop. But unfortunately the final decicions were down to themayor and the city council. I have been living in Oak Park for ten years now, and I went to a groundbreaking around 2002 for this vacant lot that is on Stockton Blvd, corner with 9th avenue. Well, as of this day, it is still vacant. In conclusion, there will always be a division on wether it is good or bad that the redevelopment agency is gone. What is important now is to be sure that the new plans on how these funds are going to be used don't have to go through this infernal bureocracy that just wastes the money of the tax payers.

My personal experience with SHRA is they are an inept, bumbling, bloated"Pork Project" agency that has contempt for the clients they are paid to help. Several years ago I used to live in a HUD apt building and the landlord refused to make basic repairs which violated health code such as non-functioning toilet, roof caving in, infested with bugs, etc. SHRA was paid to "supervise" the HUD contract with the landlord but never did anything. Every time I called SHRA they treated me like I was a welfare moocher or drug addict. I was a disabled senior - not a junkie welfare hippie! When I explained to SHRA that I was a good tenant who just wanted a habitable place to live, they told me I should feel lucky I wasn't living in a tent down by the river and I should just shut up. I gave up on SHRA to get the repairs done in my apt - and contacted the Health and Building Code inspector who wrote citations to my landlord - "fix it tickets" - that finally solved my problem.

A friend of mine who is a disabled senior citizen tried to liase with SHRA in order to move from one HUD apt bldg to a different HUD apt bldg. She had a portable voucher - so it is quite simple in terms of paperwork to transfer from one apt bldg to a different HUD apt bldg with a portable voucher. The only thing SHRA needed to do was complete 2 pages to calculate what her new rent would be. Actually, she was going to be paying the SAME rent - since it is based on income and her Social Security benefits which was the same amount for a year. The paperwork should have been completed in less than a week - it wasn't that big of a deal - just a formality because the amount of her rent was going to remain the same....but SHRA was so disorganized and discombobulated it took several months to straighten out. My friend told me she spent several hours one day sitting in the lobby of SHRA and demanded they fix her paperwork so she could move to a different HUD apt bldg. Finally a supervisor came out to assist her - my friend and the supervisor sat down at a table together and went over the paperwork. The supervisor went through the file and admitted to my friend that 90% of the her file had been mismanaged - that all the paperwork was filled out wrong - pages which did not belong together were stapled together. Even other clients paperwork somehow wound up in her file by mistake! The two of them worked on the file for about 5 hours together - and finally got it fixed. But in order to get that accomplished - my friend literally had to do a "Sit In" strike in the lobby of SHRA and spend almost one day with the staff. She said she wouldn't leave unless they fixed her file - even if it meant getting arrested at 5pm when the office closed! It shouldn't take that much effort to do simple paperwork.

If SHRA loses funding and closes it would be a good thing. For years I've heard that many of the apt bldgs they run are slum type conditions. I also spoke with many community organizers who work on afffordable housing issues who told me there was plenty of graft, corruption and mismanagement of funding at SHRA. I believe them - when an Oak Park slum lord - Art Ballard who owned what used to be the Woodruff SRO apt bldg burnt down due to faulty electrical wiring, in the mid-1990's - a tenant died in a fire when the building almost burn down completely. Art Ballard was a notorious slum lord in Oak Park for years. He should have gone to jail for manslaughter - the building burning down was 100% due to fried faulty electrical wiring. Instead, SHRA gave Art Ballard a known slum lord a low interest loan to remodel the Woodruff. The bldg was never brought up to code - Art Ballard just had some contractors make superficial cosmetic improvements on the surface to make it look like it had been repaired and he kept a lot of the redevelopment money for himself - not remodelling the building. Eventually, the IRS took slumlord Art Ballard to court because he didn't pay his taxes for years - he lost the Woodruff Bldg and also the Guild Theatre - the IRS took all his assets and Art Ballard lost his shirt. Why did SHRA award a known slum lord with very low interest loans when his SRO burnt down due to faulty wiring - and some tenants died in that fire?

I am sure there are some very good and decent redevelopment agencies - but due to chronic abuse - I think there era is over. If SHRA goes out of business - it was their own fault from mismanaged projects.