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mdlbearActually,
it's a pretty good shirt -- it shows a giant gorilla labeled "Redevelopment
Agency" astride the city of San Jose, grabbing neighborhoods out of the air.
My own neighborhood, which is in an unincorporated ``county pocket'' and
not even in the city at all, isn't mentioned by name, but it's in there.
It's enough to make me cynical about government, except that it's too late for that (cue Darth Vader breathing heavily in the background). Standard operating procedure for the council seems to be to listen for several hours to a seemingly-endless parade of mostly irate citizens (there were over 100 coments on this issue, at 2 minutes each), then rubber-stamp whatever they were going to do anyway. In the end, only one councilman had the backbone to vote ``nay''; the rest preceeded their vote by remarks to the effect of ``I know that eminent domain is easily abused; you'll just have to trust us to do the right thing'' (over the 30-year life of the RDA -- sure).
For those who don't know, eminent domain is the power of a government to appropriate private property for some public purpose -- building a school or a park are common examples. Redevelopment agencies are different: they can use eminent domain to take your home and give the land to a private developer for some project they think will benefit the city. Of course, they have to pay ``fair market value'' for your property, but if your neighborhood is in a redevelopment area it is by definition ``blighted,'' so property values are lower. There are ``blighted'' neighborhoods in this plan with homes ranging in value from $600K to over $1M.
Now observe how redevelopment projects are financed: property tax increments! That means that, after the RDA goes into effect, any increases in property tax go to the RDA to fund its projects, and not to the city or county. What's the best way to increase property taxes in an area? Right: condemn a bunch of homes and turn them over to a developer for some big, expensive project that will generate lots of tax revenue.
My own comment ended ``I ask you to prove in the only way possible that you actually care about our neighborhood and are not after our homes simply for the money.'' Needless to say, they didn't.
It's enough to make me cynical about government, except that it's too late for that (cue Darth Vader breathing heavily in the background). Standard operating procedure for the council seems to be to listen for several hours to a seemingly-endless parade of mostly irate citizens (there were over 100 coments on this issue, at 2 minutes each), then rubber-stamp whatever they were going to do anyway. In the end, only one councilman had the backbone to vote ``nay''; the rest preceeded their vote by remarks to the effect of ``I know that eminent domain is easily abused; you'll just have to trust us to do the right thing'' (over the 30-year life of the RDA -- sure).
For those who don't know, eminent domain is the power of a government to appropriate private property for some public purpose -- building a school or a park are common examples. Redevelopment agencies are different: they can use eminent domain to take your home and give the land to a private developer for some project they think will benefit the city. Of course, they have to pay ``fair market value'' for your property, but if your neighborhood is in a redevelopment area it is by definition ``blighted,'' so property values are lower. There are ``blighted'' neighborhoods in this plan with homes ranging in value from $600K to over $1M.
Now observe how redevelopment projects are financed: property tax increments! That means that, after the RDA goes into effect, any increases in property tax go to the RDA to fund its projects, and not to the city or county. What's the best way to increase property taxes in an area? Right: condemn a bunch of homes and turn them over to a developer for some big, expensive project that will generate lots of tax revenue.
My own comment ended ``I ask you to prove in the only way possible that you actually care about our neighborhood and are not after our homes simply for the money.'' Needless to say, they didn't.
I hate to be cynical, but...
Date: 2002-06-12 08:43 am (UTC)Re: I hate to be cynical, but...
So I can't vote against them, just make cynical comments.
Yeah, good t-shirt