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CCDC Paying For Convention Center Development A Wise Move? You Bet!
The writer of this commentary is 100% clueless as to how redevelopment tax increment financing works. If CCDC is saddled with the debt service for the Convention Center (something the general fund has been paying - which by the way, receives all the Tourist Tax dollars as a result of the Convention Center), there will be very little left over and CCDC will effectively be done. With CCDC going away, the General fund will have even more fiscal pressures upon it as it will have to cover many of the expenses now handled by CCDC. That is backward thinking. It simply does not make sense that anyone in San Diego would do anything but cheer for the cap being lifted. Caps for redevelopment areas went away in the mid-1990's - why should the most successful redevelopment area in the country (CCDC) have a cap on the tax increment that can remain in the redevelopment area? Do you understand how redevelopment financing works? Do you realize in a NON-redevelopment area, cities receive about 17% of the property taxes paid for that City? The rest is kept by the state - they use it for schools and their bloated bureaucracies, pensions, wasteful spending etc. In a redevelopment area, property owners pay the same property taxes as everywhere else, but in the case of a redevelopment area, upwards of 66% to 80% of the taxes they pay REMAIN in the redevelopment area for REINVESTMENT back into the area. That's how it works. These tax increment $$$ are used to help JUMP-START new development. How do you think Gaslamp was seeded or Horton Plaza? HELLO? If you KILL the goose that lays the golden eggs, then you will have NO MORE seed money to bring more reinvestment into the redevelopment area. Improvements to downtown did not happen by themselves. CCDC partnered with developers willing to take risks and used tax increment $$$ to help incentivize projects. CCDC used tax increment $$$ to pay for roads, pipes, parks, sidewalks, etc. This will not and cannot happen without new tax increment. Just because the cap is lifted DOES NOT mean that is $5 billion in new funds out there. Those $$$ will only flow from property taxes paid on things that HAVE NOT YET BEEN BUILT. If there is no seed money, no way to stimulate redevelopment of the area, there will be no projects. If no projects, no new taxes collected, if no new taxes collected, no $5 BILLION. HELLO - do you understand a bit more now? Do you see why it does not make sense to saddle CCDC with Convention Center Debt the City has been paying all along? Do you see why CCDC should not have to take on a debt for something already built??? It's probably against the law besides.— December 23, 2010 11:38 a.m.
Andrea Tevlin, San Diego's budget analyst, too busy to talk
Don - Agree the pension system is in the tank, however, even if the economy is in recession for the next 12 or even 18 months, on a 40-year pension earnings graph, isn't this really only a dip on the 40-year graph? And with all the talk about San Diego's pension, what gives with the State's pension system? Last time I checked, CALPERS uses the same stock markets as the San Diego Pension - what is their unfunded liability and what are they doing to correct it?— December 4, 2008 6:58 a.m.