Setting Fiscal Policy through Public Un-Hearings

Should new development pay for itself?  In a time when the City’s programs and services are being scaled back due to lack of funds, you’d think that the City Council would be concerned about not digging the hole any deeper.  But maybe not…

An interesting item can be found in the City Council agenda for their June 19, 2012 (yes, over a year ago!!) meeting.  Economic Development Manager Ron Gerber was scheduled to speak to the Council about the impact new multi-family development has on the City’s budget.  Mr. Gerber wished to share with the Council a financial analysis that showed the costs of providing public services to the new residents of these developments outweighed the revenues those projects and their residents generate.   Mr. Gerber hoped to have the Council adopt a “Fiscal Neutrality” Policy.  It was estimated that a Community Facilities District fee of $429 per multi-family residential unit per year would be required to offset the costs of such development.  Here’s an excerpt from the agenda item:

The evidence shows that new multi-family housing projects produce a net cost to the City that has the potential to diminish services to the existing community. Accordingly, the City Council is asked to consider adopting a “Fiscal Neutrality” policy that requires multi-family residential projects to offset their negative fiscal impacts with a financial payment based on an accepted fiscal impact analysis model.

The appearance of this item in the meeting agenda generated a great deal of concern among the City’s development interests.  The Regional Division Director of the California Apartment Association, an Executive Officer of the Building Industry Association of the Bay Area, and a representative of local developer Hall Equities all dashed off emails that made it into the public record.  (And I imagine the mayor’s phone was probably ringing off the hook.)

The agenda item was quickly pulled - “continued to a future date, unknown” – so that City staff could “seek input” from the development community, and the matter could then be brought back to the Council at a future study session.  In a brief discussion, the Council members all concurred with the study session proposal.  (At least they all concurred when the lights were on and the public access TV cameras were rolling.)

But something seemed to have happened once the lights were turned off, and the Council retreated from public view.  It’s been over a year since this agenda item was noticed, and discussions related to the City financial health have consumed a large portion of the City Council’s subsequent meetings.  Somewhere around a thousand new multi-family housing units have been approved.  But no further public hearings have been held on achieving Fiscal Neutrality.

In theory, at least, the Brown Act prevents the Council members from conferring privately among themselves and making public policy decisions outside of noticed meetings.  Apparently it’s OK for them to confer among themselves and decide to NOT HOLD a public hearing on a subject their developer friends would rather not open to public discussion.  It may be legal (I don’t know, I’m no lawyer).  But it would certainly seem to violate the intent of the Brown Act as written in the Act itself:

“The people of this State do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know.”