[CPEO-BIF] Mountain View's Shoreline tax-increment financing

[Lenny Siegel <lennysiegel@gmail.com>]

Most of the people I know who work on brownfields reacted strongly 
against California Governor Jerry Brown's plan to cut back the state's 
redevelopment agencies. To be sure, in many instance tax-increment 
financing by those agencies enables valuable redevelopment projects that 
would otherwise be infeasible. However, there are other situations where 
I believe the costs of such diversions of local tax money outweigh their 
value.

One such instance is in my own community, Mountain View, California, 
where the redevelopment district containing Google's world headquarters 
is overfunded while local schools are scraping to maintain their 
programs. I haven't been involved in the campaign described in this 
article, but to me it illustrates the need to find balance between 
redevelopment funding and support for entities from which they "borrow" 
tax money.

Lenny



Parents seek larger slice of Shoreline taxes
Issue goes before City Council next Tuesday

by Daniel Debolt
Mountain View Voice (CA)
February 2, 2011

In one of its most challenging discussions in recent memory, the City 
Council on Tuesday will talk about the possibility of relinquishing to 
local schools a larger share of property taxes from North Bayshore 
companies, including Google.

A group of parents have organized a formidable campaign, called "Share 
Shoreline," to retrieve the funds, which they say are unfairly withheld 
in a 40-year-old tax district known as the Shoreline Community. City 
officials say they are sympathetic to the parent's concerns and are 
carefully considering a solution. Nevertheless, the City Council 
chambers is expected to be packed on Tuesday at 5 p.m. with school 
parents recruited by the campaign's Facebook page, the 
shareshoreline.org website and pitches to local Parent Teacher 
Associations and school site councils.

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.mv-voice.com/news/show_story.php?id=3894&e=y

--


Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org



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