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Politics & Government

Pay $1.84 Million, Keep Redevelopment Agency, Staff Advises Council

City staff recommends in a report for Monday night's El Cerrito City Council meeting that the city make the "ransom payment" required to keep the city's Redevelopment Agency.

El Cerrito should opt in to the pending state Voluntary Redevelopment Program — allowing the city in essence to keep its Redevelopment Agency — at a cost of $1.84 million this year and nearly half a million dollars annually in subsequent years, city staff recommends.

That advice was spelled out in a staff report that the City Council, acting as Redevelopment Agency board, will review publicly at 7:30 p.m. Monday night at City Hall.

City Manager Scott Hanin planned the council/agency meeting primarily to deal with impending deadlines for an historic and controversial part of California’s budget deficit plan: Dismantling redevelopment agency programs many cities have used to fight blight since 1947. The state's action also included an option for cities to retain their redevelopment agencies at a price.

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“Staff believes the best option at this time would be to opt-in to the Voluntary Redevelopment Program (to) generate greater financial resources, maintain redevelopment authority and control real estate,” the report concludes.

However, even though the council should take certain steps Monday night to keep its options option, it does not need to decide then whether to commit to retaining its Redevelopment Ageny and making the required payment, which a city news release referred to as "ransom payment."

Find out what's happening in El Cerritowith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The staff report — from Redevelopment Manager Lori Treviño and Senior Project Manager Hilde Myall and Dwayne Dalman — says the city needs to take two actions Monday: naming the city a successor to the agency in case the city decides to let its Redevelopment Agency be dismantled and adopting an Enforceable Obligations Payment Schedule that will allow the city to continue to make necessary payments.

The decision to opt in would be made at the Sept. 19 meeting, with a second reading Oct. 9. Agencies that don’t “pay to stay” cease to exist on Oct. 1, at which point the successor agencies take over their business of going out of business.

Planned projects at stake in the decision include a new senior center, library and police station, along with transit-oriented development on several city-owned parcels along San Pablo Avenue — not to mention the threat of being forced to sell the Cerrito Theater building.

However, those actions may be moot, depending on the outcome of a lawsuit by the California Redevelopment Association, the League of California Cities and other plaintiffs seeking to declare the state action on redevelopment agencies unconstitutional. The state Supreme Court Thursday suspended both the state agency-dismantling plan and any redevelopment agency actions until it rules on the suit.

El Cerrito’s redevelopment plan extends to 2025, and the payment schedule lists its total obligations at $192 million plus $23.5 million in pass-through payments to the county, the city and other taxing entities. The fiscal obligations for this fiscal year total just over $7 million.

At the beginning of the year, the city transferred control of city-owned, non-affordable-housing properties to its Municipal Services Corp. in an attempt to avoid being forced to dispose of them — a strategy other agencies also followed that the state could seek to negate.

Homing in on nine properties, the staff has scheduled a 6:30 p.m. closed negotiating session of the Municipal Services Corp. Board of Directors (the council members, City Manager Scott Hanin and Assistant City Manager Karen Pinkos) and other staff members to negotiate with potential buyers.

The agenda lists the meeting as a conference to discuss price and terms of sale of properties at 1066-72 San Pablo Ave., 11690 San Pablo Ave., 11600 San Pablo Ave., 1925 Kearney Street, 10940 San Pablo Ave., 10930 San Pablo Ave., 11335-41 San Pablo Ave., 6111 Potrero Ave. and 1718 Eastshore Blvd.

Also listed for discussion is an .87-acre parcel at Hill Street and San Pablo Ave. that Safeway Corp. has contracted to deed to El Cerrito as part of its development of the six-acre former Target store property. The store opened Thursday, and the acreage is part of its parking lot.

The obligation makes it essentially a city asset, but Treviño told Patch Thursday, “We don’t want them to deed it to us (at this point), because we might lose it. We’ve asked them to keep it. We don’t know what is going to happen.”

The council had been scheduled to consider a proposed ordinance on keeping backyard farm animals, but that issue was postponed because of the urgency of dealing the Redevelopment Agency question.

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