City redevelopment dead

Placerville City Council put the final nail in the redevelopment coffin at Tuesday’s meeting by repealing city ordinance 1641.

The city ordinance, establishing a redevelopment plan for the Placerville Redevelopment Agency, was adopted by the city council on May 10, 2011. Public protest in the form of a referendum and actions by the state legislature to abolish redevelopment agencies in California blocked the implementation of Ordinance #1641.

The city council waited out the California Supreme Court decision on a lawsuit brought by the California League of Cities and the California Redevelopment Agency over the legality of state assembly bills ABX1-26 and ABX1-27. ABX1-26 eliminated redevelopment agencies and ABX1-27 allowed them to continue if they voluntarily contributed additional tax increment funds to special districts.

When the court upheld the elimination of redevelopment agencies and denied the ability to continue with voluntary contributions in December, the city council began negotiations to continue the redevelopment process long enough to be able to recoup the $400,000 already spent to develop the redevelopment plan. This would have put the question of redevelopment before the voters during the November elections.

Members of the now defunct SHRED group (Save Hangtown from Redevelopment and Eminent Domain), who had collected the 1,087 signatures protesting redevelopment that resulted in a referendum to block it, were contacted by the City of Placerville asking them to retract the referendum.

On Tuesday, the city council approved the second reading of an ordinance repealing Ordinance #1641 with a 3-0 vote. Vice-Mayor Wendy Mattson recused herself from the vote and no replacement has yet been put into place for former Councilman Dave Machado.

“Keeping the ordinance alive would have allowed us the opportunity to possibly recoup the $400,000 under the redevelopment wind-down programs, but we still would have had to deal with the referendum and put redevelopment on the November ballot, ” said City Manager Cleve Morris. “We just didn’t feel it was cost-effective to do that. About the only way we could get the money back would be by special legislation by the state and that’s a longshot at this point.”

The repeal of Ordinance #1641 becomes effective in 30 days.

Contact Wendy Schultz at 530 344-5069 or wschultz@mtdemocrat.net. Follow @wschultzMtDemo on Twitter.

Wendy Schultz

Wendy Schultz has been a columnist for the Mountain Democrat since 2002 and a staff writer since 2005. She covers Placerville city events and City Council meetings, writes feature stories and reports on things of interest in El Dorado County.

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