In its dual role as City Council and Redevelopment Agency, El Cerrito’s governing body took four pre-emptive actions Monday night to retain its option to keep the agency alive.

The council passed a non-binding statement of intent to pay an Alternate Voluntary Payment Plan the state mandated to keep redevelopment agencies from being terminated; many municipal officials throughout California deem it “ransom.”

The plan amounts to divvying up incremental property tax revenues traditionally earmarked for—and generated by—redevelopment within the city with neighboring property tax-supported entities: the city, Contra Costa County, and school and special districts.

The council then created a conditional ordinance to participate in the Alternate Voluntary Payment Program, which will cost it $1.8 million the first year and $400,000 annually thereafter, just in case a pending legal challenge to the RDA shutdown as unconstitutional fails. The money would be repaid to the city by tax increments collected by the Redevelopment Agency.

In two final resolutions, the panel set up a redevelopment transfer payment agreement between the city and the agency, approving it first as council and then as agency board.

The actions met an October 1 state deadline for cities to declare whether they would pay to keep redevelopment agencies going.

During the approval process, Councilman Greg Lyman declared, “I want to read a portion of the resolution” to emphasize the city’s opposition to the plan.

"…The City Council does not endorse the Redevelopment Restructuring Acts and is taking actions required by those Acts in protest," Lyman read.

“The Acts constitute another misguided and illegal State budget raid of local government funds that voters have repeatedly sought to end, most recently in November 2010 when an overwhelming 61 percent of voters supported Proposition 22, electing to stop State raids of local government funds, including redevelopment funds, which are generated and intended to be spent locally.

“The Acts will destroy economic development, affordable housing, and revitalization efforts in El Cerrito."

“If there’s any humor to this,” Mayor Pro Tem Bill Jones observed, “it's in the title of the Assembly bill: 'Voluntary Payment Plan.' Any plan that says pay, or we will shut you down … is truly not voluntary.”

Jones also spotlighted a clause in the legislation that “requires us to pay the (West Contra Costa Unified) School District an additional 35 percent” beyond a current 22 percent pass-through for new projects.
“If we do the calculation, what's left for everybody (else)?” he asked. “Why would we even do any project?”

“Many agencies are concerned they would not be able to do that,” replied Redevelopment Manager Lori Treviño. “This will make it much more difficult.”

The city will not have to take any action to dissolve the agency later if it opts in and then opts out of the payment plan, Treviño assured the board. The city only needs to fail to make required payments.

“I see this action we're taking today as keeping us in the running,” said redevelopment agency Chair Janet Abelson. “We will await the (California Supreme) Court decision” on the plan’s constitutionality, promised by January. “Hopefully that will turn out well, and we will go on with business as usual.”