Letters: Reader sees good in RDA demise

“Ding dong the Witch is dead!” The witch in this case is the Hollister Redevelopment Agency. For example, imagine, if you will an agency which agreed to rent the entire Porter House for $4,000 per month to house a handful of employees; a $5 million downtown firehouse for a handful of firefighters; please. It becomes all too apparent that spending practices are grossly out of whack. The RDA is a spending engine! And the City of Hollister simply cannot afford an indulgent RDA.
I’m truly puzzled by the online commentary which appeared in Tuesday’s edition. What job loss? Loss of sales tax revenue? “Large income generating mechanism for Hollister”? I’m still puzzled by the sale of Fremont School to the county who then sold the school to the city who then sold the school to the RDA who then gave the school property to the State for the new courthouse. Do I believe that the RDA was responsible for all of Hollister’s woes? No, the RDA was able to accomplish some good, but there is not enough money to support the RDA’s voracious appetite.
Because of the tremendous drop in assessed values locally, property tax dollars have suffered a serious decline. And when the proverbial pipeline suffers such a reduction in cash-flow, there must be a corresponding reduction in spending, cash-outlay. This is a matter of common sense, period.
The RDA receives its share of property tax revenue by siphoning from the Property Tax that would otherwise be apportioned to the City of Hollister. The RDA skims the cream from the top. Those dollars would otherwise be used by the city to provide services to the very individuals paying those taxes, afford public safety staff rather than cutting back.  If the city administrators had simply shut down the RDA when it became so very apparent that the RDA was no longer affordable, the State of California would not be walking away with even more of Hollister tax dollars.
Hopefully the demise of the RDA as we know it will assure that the proverbial tail will cease to wag the dog.
Jane Dabo Cruz, Hollister