Last June in Sacramento, both state Sen. Curren D. Price Jr. (D-Culver City) and Assemblymember Holly Mitchell (D-Culver City) voted for the spicy hot piece of legislation that would end Redevelopment Agencies and was upheld yesterday by the state’s highest court.
Sen. Price indicated this afternoon that a driving reason for narrowing the focus of any kind of reupholstered redevelopment agency that would emerge in the spring or later is to sharply cinch portions of the old agency document legislators deemed ripe for abuse.
“Looks as if we are going to have to go back to the drawing board,” Sen. Price told the newspaper.
To the question of whether Redevelopment Agencies should be revived, he said, resolutely, “they are not going to be revived in their present form. I think everyone realizes that.
The Main Reason
“But we have to create some form of tool for revitalization, especially in poor areas. In the legislature, we will have to figure out what that is going to be.”
Sen. Price said he does not have a vision of what the successor of Redevelopment Agencies will look like. “Low-income housing probably will be a major component of it,” he said.
“Otherwise, we will be tightening up requirements for blight and how it is defined. There also will be changes in the financial formulas they use.”
Although published reports this morning said Redevelopment Agencies would disintegrate within 30 days, by Feb. 1, Sen. Price pegged Closing Day as several months away.
The senator went on to explain why he voted for the vanquishment of agencies. “Everybody has been taking (financial) cuts,” he said. “We have been cutting education, cutting health, cutting social service programs.
“I have an idea that we can come up with a method that would supervise the kind of assistance that is important.”
In response to a question about the disposition of much heralded Parcel B — where only a developer has been chosen — Sen. Price said he did not know how authority would be divided, or if it would be shared.
“All I know is that it is going to be a different mix, a different formula,” he said. “My hunch is these projects still will get done. They just may take a little longer with a little more creative use of resources.
“Hopefully, the state will be able to provide some of those resources.”
Sen. Price expects “local control, local oversight” to be retained — but the degree is an amorphous mystery, “an influential amount.”
He appears to be committed to bringing back Redevelopment Agencies from the nearly-dead “in some revised format. I don’t know exactly what that is.”
