All Culver City politicians over the age of 15 are growing increasingly concerned this afternoon.
Will they live long enough to witness the final form of Parcel B, the precious Downtown property across from the Culver Hotel?
As long as there is a Sacramento, prospects are iffy, a permanent condition ever since all of the state’s municipal Redevelopment Agencies were abruptly forced out of business 11 months ago – so the state could collect what used to belong to communities.
In the interim, development throughout California has plummeted from a flying pace to a barely discernible rate.
Building in hundreds of towns first must gain direct, complicated and lengthy approval from a historically remote agency in Sacramento, the Dept. of Finance.
Six weeks ago, City Manager John Nachbar led a delegation to the sanctuary of the Finance Dept. for a 45-minute audience. Their one-step mission: Pleading with a bank of bureaucrats to accelerate the tangled bureaucracy of crossed-wires that is supposed to be unscrambled before City Hall can close the property deal with the developer, Combined Properties.
This Won’t Take Long
How did the face-to-face go? How picky were they?
Mr. Nachbar’s expression was grave.
“They wanted to inspect every piece of lint in our pockets,” he said.
Death Knocks on the Door
When Gov. Brown took office two years ago this week, his first act was to decide he needed more revenue/taxes to instinctively increase state spending.
In his next breath, he gauged that the lucrative income from the 400 Redevelopment Agencies in 400 mostly small towns around California, would be happier in his pocket.
In his third breath, with the cooperation of an obedient state Legislature and an equally compliant state Supreme Court, he moved to outlaw the agencies so that the hundreds of millions in tax income would flow into his constantly empty trousers.
Once the state’s High Court ruled 13 months ago that the governor – with whom they share a political philosophy – had acted legally, Culver City and 399 other towns spun into a desperately swift mode, hovering over properties, closely guarding monies and plans they had been making for years.
Culver City has been through at least four city managers since Parcel B, on the doorstep of The Culver Studios’ historic mansion, seemed almost ready to bloom.
A year ago this month, the City Council began plotting and strategizing to cover the investments and blueprints of the Redevelopment Agency before the Agency was declared politically dead on Feb. 1.
(To be continued)
