This year she went to DC and fell in love with eminent domain. Last year she fell in love with nuclear non-proliferation.

Mayor Jennifer Hosterman, in her latest CTV30 mayor’s report, says that her trip to the U.S. Conference of Mayors produced for her a new love of eminent domain—a good land-use tool, she says, for redevelopment and other development projects. Her report, however, says much about the country’s mayors. Just when three dozen states are considering legislation to reign-in eminent domain the mayors are embracing the Marxist taking of private property for the presumed greater “public good.”

It is no wonder that the mayor has warmed-up to the concept. Eminent domain has been perverted by the Supreme Court (pre-Alito, pre-Roberts) so that cities and redevelopment agencies can take private property, through eminent domain, and transfer it to developers for development that will create jobs and contribute greater tax revenue. (It is not that “progressives” have fallen in love with developers, but it is that they have found new sources of revenue and a strong-arm method of securing it.) The New London, Connecticut ruling, that paved the way for the city to transfer historic property to developers, has so inflamed the people that many states are considering legislation to restrict the use of eminent domain to its original constitutional purpose only—to give just compensation for private property being condemned for sewers, roads, and schools, etc.

Does the mayor have her eye on the portion of downtown right across from City Hall (and the three acres of San Francisco land that fell through the cracks) for “redevelopment” using this good land-use tool? Right now this few blocks is in various states of disrepair—just right to be called blight, the principle mechanism by which cities condemn property for redevelopment.

The private sector seems to be handling downtown redevelopment quite nicely albeit slowly. But remember, “things move a little slowly in Pleasanton” so the mayor should not be too concerned about the rate at which the building is happening. But with her new embrace of eminent domain things could move a little more quickly. (Remember, if it suits the eco-extremists it can move more quickly than normal.)

There are more than 350 redevelopment authorities in California. These agencies (usually the city councils themselves) have an association (California Redevelopment Association) that lobbies for the eminent domain power to redevelop cities they feel are in distress and distress is usually blight or economic stagnation. Of course, they determine what is blight and what is an under-performing economy.

John Echeverria, executive director of the Georgetown Environmental Law and Policy Institute, feels that those who have reacted negatively to the New London decision are extremists and their position is a “…prescription for economic decline for many metropolitan areas.” More to the point, it is a prescription for economic decline for those in the redevelopment racket, including the institutes and associations, that feed out of the public trough.

News Opinion

Sue Rossi bids farewell after a job well done. Say hello to
Santa Cruz’s David Culver

David Culver has been hired to replace Pleasanton Finance Director Sue Rossi. We wish him well.

Mr. Culver had some pretty big shoes to fill. Pleasanton is in pretty good shape thanks to Ms. Rossi’s conservative approach to city finance. But the chore will not remain a walk in the park once development fees dry up. Mr. Culver, former Santa Cruz Finance Director, will need to exercise even greater fiscal restraint than Ms. Rossi has had to do. (She had to survive the money grab form the state.) Mr. Culver will face that issue as well if the state does not right its fiscal ship and that does not look too promising.

Mr. Culver would do well to encourage city fathers to retain the Hendrick Automotive Group, which must move to new quarters on Staples Ranch or move out of town. The auto dealer group contributes a million dollars in sales tax revenue. Having a sales tax producing development such as IKEA would give Mr. Culver the cushion he will need to weather the storms that are sure to blow in from Sacramento.

The “can’t say no” councils of late will be a challenge for Mr. Culver. Every pressure group in town has its hands out looking for a piece of the good-life pie. The councils have obliged. Consequently the city treasury is a moving target directed to this or that project as pressure is applied by this or that special interest group—some of which have an inordinate amount influence when it comes to establishing city priorities. Almost all of those priorities address special needs and do not address citywide needs such as traffic abatement, flood control, or mass transit.

Quick Opinion

You must be kidding

The Pleasanton Unified School District in its February/March newsletter Your Schools reports that California received an A for its science standards from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute who appraised the quality of each state’s K-12 science standards in a report entitled The State of Science Standards 2005. California was one of only seven states that received an A.

Typical of the education establishment, when there is no good news to report on achievement then they change the subject.

The front-page above the fold article and accompanying photo are supposed to impress us? While having high standards is admirable, achievement is what parents expect from their schools. To make this the lead article shows a disregard for what is the highest priority.

To make matters worse, the district has set a goal to “complete an Excellence Study to identify a vision for district-wide standards and the cost providing those standards.” Huh? That confusing sentence appeared in the article entitles: “What makes an ‘excellent school’ district?” at the bottom of page one. In the same article we are told that various people have been “tasked” to find out what makes an outstanding school district. That is eduspeak at its finest. Without even one committee meeting without one expert guest speaker we can offer this: graduate students who can read and write at grade level and who have a fighting chance to make it into college and/or also into the workplace. Get them educated enough to test at the highest percentiles throughout their school careers and pass the 10th grade level graduation exit exam in the 9th or 10th grade and not the 12th. What a vision.

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