[quote=bearishgurl][quote=no_such_reality]BG, any place that isn’t building, is dying.
It’s either, build on new land, or tear down and rebuild bigger on old land.
Those CFDs you dislike were a major driver in CA’s economy. Without he CFDs, CA would look very different and maybe not the way you think. The population would still come maybe, the jobs would be there, maybe. Those restaurants and shopping most like, those trendy clubs and bars? Doubtful.
The CFDs were mismanaged and pork lined up all sides of the trough, but without development, CA would shrivel and die. I suppose you could move the valley of the dirt people into the downtown condos, but that’s a very different experience, and frankly, California isn’t ready for the NYC micro-apartments.[/quote]
nsr, think about this. Most of those “trendy clubs and bars” you speak of here are located in urban cores, NOT in CFD’s. CA’s urban cores don’t get the use of any CFD bond money.
Adjacent to CFD’s are the home of Big Box stores and franchises. Most of those “dirt people” you speak of (the ones who flocked to the distant CFD’s due to “cheap” new construction and ended up “flittering” their way back “home” after foreclosure?) are originally FROM CA’s “urban cores!” They’re used to living “in the city.”
My premise is that CA gov’ts (incl the state gov’t) wouldn’t be “broke” had it not been for the “boom and bust” nature of the CFD’s. The reason these govm’ts would all be better off had they never approved any CFDs is because they wouldn’t have hired near the amount of employees they did (mainly since 2000) and some jurisdictions wouldn’t have hired any more at all but just filled vacant openings as they arose.
It is all the *new* salaries (mainly since 2000) and attendant benefits (that go along with those salaries) which are eroding the fiscal condition of local and state govm’t.
IOW, CA govm’t at all levels would have been much smaller without the CFDs.
The bonds issued by CFDs don’t pay for those salaries to service the residents within them. They only pay for infrastructure and sometimes maintenance on that infrastructure.
In the absence of all its lizardland and farmland CFD’s, CA’s urban cores would still have been improved over the years as one has nothing to do with the other, EXCEPT in the cases of maintaining and policing the urban cores in large cities which approved several large CFD’s.
For instance, the municipal services of tree-trimming and fixing cracked sidewalks is now stretched much thinner in the urban core of Chula Vista than it used to be. Why? Because ChulaV approved enough CFD’s to add approx 180,000 residents to it since 2000 (it went from 97K pop in 2000 to 277K now). There are many more medium-sized and large cities in CA who have these same or similar problems, all due to rampant CFD approvals in the past.
Greed and p!ss poor planning on behalf of CA cities and counties’ PTB has had far reaching affects to ALL their residents, not just those who reside within the CFD’s.
The CA “CFD experiment” has had the effect of raping our open space, destroying our watershed, using up our water allotment faster and has had an overall disastrous fiscal effect on every jurisdiction in the state who bought into the concept (the most populous ones).
The “MR CFD Act” was a ridiculous idea from the get go and I have no idea how CA’s Legislature passed it other than being completely asleep at the switch when the bill was passed around :=0[/quote]
BG, you’re more informed than I on the intricacies of CFDs and the cozy relationships between developers and city leaders, but Prop 13 has at least as much of an effect as the new developments. As you know, I fully support the notion that long-time residents not be taxed out of their homes, but why are taxpayers (and public sector workers who are being blamed for the mess) having to subsidize the profits of landlords, commercial property owners (especially those who’ve skirted reassessments on new purchases via LLC loopholes), and mega developers/owners of large tracts of land — all of whom are not paying market rate property taxes. We are losing billions of dollars every year because of these taxpayer subsidies; it’s a much bigger problem than the “pension crisis,” though nobody is addressing it. If we ever intend to fix our state’s finances, repealing Prop 13 protections for these parasites should be job #1.
Additionally, the land owners/developers should be the ones to DIRECTLY pay for the infrastructure (no Mello-Roos/CFDs to push payment into the future). If that means they have to pay less for the land, or charge more for the houses, so be it. The property taxes from these new developments should be more than sufficient enough to pay for the ongoing maintenance and services required by these new areas. If not, then the finances are not being managed properly.
