After saying again, and again, that Oakland did not have the economic development staff to understand how to implement tax increment financing as allowed under California Enhanced Infrastructure Financing District legislation, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf made the bold and exciting decision to revive the long-dormant, 41-year-old, ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION OF OAKLAND.
The original ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION OF OAKLAND was established on 21 August 1980 by Buzz Gibb and Zack Wasserman. That version of what was called “Ed Co” formed the first plan to build a downtown shopping center in what is now called Uptown Oakland. However, Oakland Citizen Committee for Urban Renewal Executive Director Paul Cobb (now Oakland Post Publisher) formed a giant set of community groups to oppose the project, and so it was terminated by the Oakland City Council in 1985 and the original firm folded in 1986. But the new ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION OF OAKLAND will have a much larger and more community-serving impact on Oakland.
Mayor Schaaf said “The ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION OF OAKLAND will take on an exciting initiative: to focus tax increment revenue collected from parts of Downtown Oakland, Chinatown, and West Oakland on the acquisition of housing via eminent domain under The Polanco Act, assistance to Pandemic-harmed small business with a priority on helping to establish black-owned small businesses based in homes, finishing environmental cleanup work abandoned when the original Oakland Redevelopment Agency was terminated by the State of California, providing reparations funds to West Oakland-based black families (with priority given to long-standing West-Oakland-based families), special grants to Oakland-based firms in the 3D Manufacturing – Additive Manufacturing, video-content-production, movie-making, movie-production support, music, fashion, security, and transportation industries, grants to West Oakland multifamily building owners to reduce rent levels by 20 percent to 40 percent per month, and a special program to provide some type of free housing to every truly homeless person identified in West Oakland and Downtown.”
Mayor Schaaf added that the objective is to revive West Oakland as a vibrant and active example of how we can re-create an American economic system so that it works for everyone. “My vision,” Mayor Schaaf said, “along with that of Oakland District Two Councilmember Nikki Bas and Three Councilmember Carroll Fife, is to dramatically improve the quality of life of everyone in in West Oakland, Chinatown, and Downtown, and use part of the TIF revenue for projects in East Oakland.”
To do this Mayor Schaaf said that she would focus on using legislation crafted last year, and called AB464 Mullen (https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB464). That form of California EIFD law was created to specifically allow tax increment financing revenue to be used to help small businesses negatively-impacted by the Pandemic. Here’s part of AB464 Mullen’s language:
AB 464, Mullin. Enhanced Infrastructure Financing Districts: allowable facilities and projects.
Existing law authorizes the legislative body of a city or a county to establish an enhanced infrastructure financing district to finance public capital facilities or other specified projects of communitywide significance that provide significant benefits to the district or the surrounding community, including, but not limited to, the acquisition, construction, or repair of industrial structures for private use.
This bill would include, in the list of facilities and projects the district may fund, the acquisition, construction, or repair of commercial structures by the small business, as defined, occupant of such structures, if certain conditions are met, and facilities in which nonprofit community organizations provide health, youth, homeless, and social services.
Mayor Schaaf’s staff will form a plan to create the ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION OF OAKLAND to be the “public financing authority” as called for in all forms of California Enhanced Infrastructure Financing Districts law and the City of Oakland will write the Infrastructure Financing Plan that the ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION OF OAKLAND will then be responsible for. The ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION OF OAKLAND organization will have seats for members of the community as well as the County of Alameda. The City of Oakland will establish planning meetings with the County of Alameda to determine how the boundaries of the West Oakland Enhanced Infrastructure Financing District will look, what the annual tif revenue will be, and what a planned bond issue to raise the proceeds to implement the ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION OF OAKLAND projects will look like. “The meeting time from start to finish will be one-month, “Libby said. “We will not waste time getting this started.”
Meanwhile, the Oakland City Council will be asked to identify a set of projects that are considered of community-wide significance, and a West Oakland special community group will be formed to lay out the community-development plan. It will be able to borrow from the projects listed in the Howard Terminal Community Plan, then, meeting as a sub-group in the ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION OF OAKLAND, adjust that plan as the years progress.
“The ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION OF OAKLAND task will call on the involvement of many in Oakland, but given the giant amount of money that it will work with on behalf of the public, that is necessary,” Mayor Schaaf said.
She continued “Oakland will see a new version of what we had: places to go to affordably enjoy good food, good company, good music, and creative works of art. That’s what we had, and we let it get away from us. With the ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION OF OAKLAND, we’ll get it back.
The next step is to introduce the enabling resolution to the Oakland City Council calling for and approving the creation of the ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION OF OAKLAND. Mayor Schaaf said the plan is to fund its administrative operation from a small percentage of the annual TIF revenue. The City of Oakland will create the ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION OF OAKLAND, use money to establish it, then get that expenditure back when the TIF revenue starts to be collected.
As to the expected size of the TIF revenue, Mayor Schaaf said that “Considering that the entire City of Oakland had an AV of $68.4 billion in 2019, and West Oakland represents a good chuck of our town, it will be at a level not seen before. We’re really going to make life better for everyone.”
Stay tuned and that’s a giant LIRPA SLOOF FOR 2022.
But you can’t say it’s not a good idea. We can do it.