The safety service personnel should be incensed about the transfer of funds to the Redevelopment Agency which currently has in excess of $2.4 million in cash. That transferred money is lost to them for use as wages, much less raises.
Portions of salaries for some members of the city staff have been transferred from the General Fund to the Redevelopment Agency payroll, and I am sure this trend will continue, but this option is not available for police and fire salaries. The money the City loans the Redevelopment Agency from the General Fund has to come from somewhere and a large part of it comes out of police and firemen’s paychecks. This type of drain from the General Fund is causing trouble for cities all over California, not just here in Downey. It reduces the amount of money available to run the city government, specifically the safety services. These employees should be very concerned over what is going on in this town with Redevelopment money.
Even if some project should miraculously pay off, the increase in property taxes would go to the Redevelopment Fund and not the General Fund. The Woodruff Industrial Redevelopment project makes a profit every year, but the General Fund still has to loan it money so the Project can stay in debt. The law states that when a redevelopment project area is out of debt and creating a profit, the project area must be shut down. To circumvent this the Redevelopment Agency artificially creates debt so the Woodruff Industrial area can stay in existance. This is typical Redevelopment logic.
The Woodruff project should be terminated. Abolished. The property taxes should go back to their normal path. The city portion should go into the General Fund, the school portion should go to the schools and the county portion should go there and stay there, not loaned back to the City to be repaid later.
The three pieces of property the city owns are a testament to the inappropriateness of a city trying to be a developer. Redevelopment has become a cancer corrupting everyone involved and convoluting the financial processes to a point where questions of impropriety are raised. We have lost our check and balances on appropriations. Redevelopment has removed the oversight that used to operate when there was only the General Fund. Now Redevelopment is all done behind closed doors. This does not bode well for our future.
Redevelopment is a shell game and we are being conned. The turkeys will come home to roost one day.