A few weeks ago, Supervisor Reb Monaco spoke a fundamental
truth.
”
When it comes to government,
”
he said, quoting someone,
”
money is always the answer; now, what is the question?
”
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amp;#8194;
A few weeks ago, Supervisor Reb Monaco spoke a fundamental truth. “When it comes to government,” he said, quoting someone, “money is always the answer; now, what is the question?”
I’ve been studying the draft of rating scale that the Hollister hopes to use to score new growth proposals. The score will then determine the project’s priority.
First, I asked myself, why grow at all? Growth brings those things we hate: more people, traffic, noise and pollution, the reduction of open space and, eventually, bigger government. The only answer I could come up with was Reb’s – we do it for the money. We hope growth will translate into economic benefit and that will bring us a better life.
You may be wondering why we can’t just return to a rural, agrarian economy. The short answers are inside toilets, 300 million people, and triple-bypass operations, and for a deeper discussion you’ll have to wait for another column.
Growth is the worst way to develop. As one study pointed out, given a choice it is much better to develop by prospering than by growing. However, to support certain services and amenities a critical level of economic activity is required and growth can help us get to that point.
Since economic benefit is the only real justification for growth, it was puzzling to see that the rating scale hardly mentioned it. It’s critical to analyze a project’s ability to support itself and help us prosper, both directly and indirectly, over its projected lifespan. The failure to address economic benefit adequately is a major deficiency in the proposed system and it needs to be corrected.
It’s a good idea to have a rating scale. It serves as a guide for both developers and city officials; it ensures reasonable uniformity and helps proposals receive fair and equal treatment. It also sets priorities. Economic benefit should be one of the top priorities.
The draft scale had four Pass/Fail criteria and five major areas with point scores; Land Use and Infrastructure – 35 points; Transportation – 30 points; Green Development – 55 points; Density Mix – 30 points; and Design – 90 points; with a total of 240 points.
Unfortunately, economics was mentioned only once. A developer can get a maximum of 5 points for adding 10,000 feet of retail commercial space – that’s a mere 2 percent of the total points.
The developer pays impact fees to cover new capital requirements (new firehouses, police cars, etc.). Legally, we cannot charge developers operational fees (firefighter salaries or gas for the police cars, etc.). Someone has to pay for those never-ending operational costs. Property taxes, assessments, sales taxes, licenses, fees and the like are designed to generate money to pay for operations. However, taken together, they rarely cover all the expenses, but the ability of the city simply to raise taxes whenever it feels the need is somewhat limited – thank goodness for that much.
In a perfect world, the growth will add sufficient economic benefits (jobs, spending, taxes, etc.) to cover the shortage and even have some money left over. The leftover is the extra money we are after in the first place. We can use it to help make Hollister a better place to live; free money, it’s a politician’s dream!
Since economic benefit is the single most important function of growth, it must be in the equation. Projects are not equal in economic benefit. Low- and very low-income housing is necessary and fulfills a social need – and it earns a project extra points! However, it does not pay the bills. Typically, those projects require more expensive city and county services and contribute much less economically than well-balanced projects.
We should try to prosper first and only grow when necessary, but logically, economic benefit should be a rating category when growth is considered. Economic benefit over the life of the project, not just in up-front money, deserves a major scoring section.
No matter how much money the city gets to sweeten the pot, it will always run out, usually sooner rather than later.
Merely having growth does not ensure it will bring the desired economic benefit. You have to plan carefully for that just like everything else. A failure to plan well is going to result in serious problems. If you don’t believe me, just look around.
