Fiscal Responsibility & Local Government Revenue

By Brian Parker

Albany residents routinely vote for bonds and special measures to fund our city services. One project we did not fund was the $2 Million of Measure F bond money the city is planning to spend to remodel city hall.

Remember, City staff first proposed spending $4.2 Million on the remodeling/expansion job (plus the $2.5 for the retrofit). That constitutes $6.7 million of the $15 million of Measure F funds on one project. This would have left very little for all the other projects on the list.

The City's original reason for asking voters to approve the bond measure was that we had a backlog of pressing projects that needed funding without delay. Accepting that as true, we voted for the bond measure. How can the City then suddenly bump all those projects in favor of one not even on the list? This is less about which projects to fund first than about keeping faith with the voters.

Albany is a community where the voters want to support and trust the elected officials to do the right thing. We routinely votes for bonds and special measures to fund our city services. This partnership between the city officials and the voters is based on the honor system. We trust our elected officials to abide by the projects on the approved list.

Tempting as it may be to rationalize spending the money for other projects they want to fund, they have a higher duty to honor the trust they are given. There should not even be consideration of projects not on the list. And they definitely should not waste our scarce money on lawyers to justify why they can fund a project not on the list. Be straightforward. Go back to the voters and make a case for the new project. It is understandable that the city staff want to have an improved city hall complex. It is human for them to see this as a higher priority than other projects that do not see every day. But the other projects affect the lives of ordinary Albany residents. The city officials should respect and honor the trust of the voters first and foremost. Asking voters to approve bonds in the future will be far more difficult if the trust is broken.

To be clear I do not oppose the $2.5 million for the earthquake retrofit work. That spending was approved by the voters and should go forward. I have even suggested that the city empanel a committee, including citizens, to examine whether we need to do a renovation or modernization of city hall. This could be an opportunity to bring the community together. If the earthquake retrofit funds were combined with a voter approved plan for city hall justified renovations, the dollars could be stretched wisely and the community would support such an effort.

I'm not an anti-tax conservative. I'm actually a progressive Democrat. I just want to see straight talk and fair dealing from City Hall. You can count on me to deal responsibly with financial issues and to never abuse voter trust.

Local Government Revenue and Sales Taxes The State has consistently taken money from local government to balance the state budget. We need to support efforts to stop this yearly raid on local revenues. The California League of Cities and others in Sacramento have been putting pressure on the legislature to correct this situation, to stop the yearly raids. We need to push for a responsible set of permanent protections for our funds.

To address our fiscal needs we need to look as well at our commercial opportunities. The absence of store frontage on lower Solano costs us twofold. First, foot traffic is not discouraged from areas where apartment garages or other not retail uses dominate. Focusing our zoning to help promote retail business on Solano will help make the street more lively for shoppers and will bring in tax revenue to the city. In the process, the pedestrian traffic will help keep the streets safe. Additionally, the city should do an overview of commercial needs and current zoning and permitting practices. Creating an advisory committee comprised of citizens, city planners, representatives from our Chamber of Commerce and the Solano Avenue Association, as well as school district and youth group representatives would give this the attention it deserves. Our Planning and Zoning decisions should be made with the information this group can provide. This group can elicit support and expertise from local and state agencies and organizations to craft a set of recommendations for the cities financial path for the future.

This process of exploring and planning for the future of Albany will help avoid the recent rush to approve the Target Store out of fear that we might lose this golden goose. We hope that Target fulfills its promise in providing revenue but we need a more thoughtful process lest we end up a concentration of chain stores along Solano and San Pablo Avenues.

In the long term there are structural problems with the way cities raise revenue that date back in part to Prop 13. We need to bring more balance into the property tax structure so that commercial properties share the same tax burden the rest of us have. We need more long term fiscal planning on the state as well as the local levels. Partly due to the tax laws, we feel forced into zoning decisions that fail to take into account the balanced needs of our community.

One thing we can control is the narrow minded thinking at City Hall. They tend to look at development projects purely according to how much revenue they will produce. This is a very one dimensional approach. That leads to thinking that we should "take a look at" a huge shopping center at Golden Gate Fields. They are wrong. We shouldn't look at every land use decision as a business deal. The CESP/Sierra Club plan provides for a large amount of open space but still allows limited development near the freeway to safeguard current revenues to the City and School District. That's reasonable. Selling our waterfront to the mall developers to make up for a problem created in Sacramento is not.