Redevelopment Confusion

Here’s the need-to-know information regarding the letter and documents City Manager Dennis Wilberg sent to OC Supervisor Pat Bates.

1. The state dissolved Redevelopment Agencies effective Feb. 1, 2012.
2. Redevelopment Agencies were to suspend activities and preserve assets as of June 29, 2011.
3. Money in redevelopment accounts was to be paid to the state.

The directives were clear, but what did the Mission Viejo council majority do after redevelopment activities were to end? Among other things, with a vote of 4-1 (Councilwoman Cathy Schlicht dissenting), the council formed a new entity, the Mission Viejo Housing Authority. They gave the appearance they were extending redevelopment’s financial obligations regardless of what the state said, but they didn’t identify where the money would come from.

Redevelopment funds should have been held separately and preserved as the state demanded on 6-29-11.

Wilberg writes in his letter to Bates, “we do not have the funds to pay the amount demanded and still be able to pay our ongoing enforceable obligations including DOF [California Department of Finance] approved debt service on bonds.”

This isn’t the first time the council majority has challenged the state. In 2006, Councilman Frank Ury and then-councilman Lance MacLean threw away the work that had been done by the Planning Commission on the city’s affordable housing plan. The state’s mandate is that cities have to have a plan. As a result, the state fined the city $600,000, and a lawsuit stemming from a council majority decision with regard to affordable housing cost taxpayers approximately $1 million in legal fees.

As other need-to-know information, Ury is up for reelection in November.