The Redondo Beach City Council unanimously and unenthusiastically voted to cut six positions from the Recreation and Community Services Department at last Tuesday’s City Council meeting.
Council members even vetoed seeing the presentation on the matter, and instead lamented the tragedy of the situation and the swiftness with which the financial decisions had to be made.
“This has to be done so there’s no point in sorting through a bunch of stuff,” Councilman Steve Aspel said.
The agency, which was created in the early 50s, was formed as a mechanism to help cities get funding from local property taxes to help cities create projects and redevelop blighted parts of towns.
After the announcement from the state to abolish over 400 Redevelopment Agencies across California earlier in the month, the City has been frantically trying to sort through the situation and has been forced to come to decisions regarding RDA programs before the agency is dissolved on Feb. 1. Additionally, no guidelines as to the procedures regarding the deconstruction of the agency were posted until a week before the deadline, only reinforcing the miscommunication and confusion surrounding the issue.
“The Department of Finance hasn’t given us time to understand any of this,” said Councilman Steve Diels. “[There is] no way people are going to get treated fairly and litigation will certainly ensue. When you do something this drastic and only give cities a week to do this — I’m speechless. It’s not possible that it will get done properly.”
Because of the loss of redevelopment funds, three significant funding sources relied upon to provide support for community services and housing programs have been diminished.
“With redevelopment going away, over $1,000,000 goes away,” said City Manager Bill Workman. “We have to make adjustments now.”
The sudden loss of funding forced the city to restructure the Recreation and Community Service Department and programs. The six positions, including an analyst, a rehab inspector/estimator, a housing manager, and housing coordinators have been notified by city officials; the city is working closely with them to figure out their futures. Workman is hopeful that with restructuring they will be able to bring back four of the individuals. This decision is expected to save the city $126,718.
“We’ll try to do best by the employees,” said Workman. “It’s nothing that the employees did or management or council. This is something that’s out of our control…. [This] story’s being told over and over again across 400 cities…[It is] very, very disappointing to be talking about this tonight. We have great employees in the housing department; to do this is emotional and very painful. We live by revenues first, expenditure second, and revenue side of equation has been whacked really hard by state and federal govt.”
There is currently legislation going forward to attempt to reconstitute the RDA, but the outcome is uncertain. “The only reality we know is that RDA is most likely going to go away,” said Mayor Mike Gin. “There’s hope about some legislation that may be pending but we can’t plan by that from a fiscal standpoint.”
According to Councilman Diels, Governor Jerry Brown has no intention of fixing the problem, and legislation will not go forward. “The consequences of abolishment are certain and forthcoming,” Diels said.
Throughout the city, programs are being analyzed and because of the loss of federal money, many will have to be reorganized. “We’re not going to have anybody in the housing department to help people anymore,” said Councilman Steve Diels. “The consequences are [that] something will get cut… There’s no two ways about that.”
Since the announcement of the cut a little less than a month ago, the City Council has been working frantically to come to conclusions as to what to do without redevelopment funds. Many previous obligations will have to be broken, and new projects will be forced to be put on hold indefinitely.
“All this over nothing and it is to nobody’s benefit,” said Diels. “[The] schools don’t benefit, the State economy doesn’t benefit. The problem here is the state’s inability to properly fund its obligations.”
