The economic decline facing many California Cities can seem daunting. City Officials are faced with decisions that can either uplift the City or cause more damage; sometimes making it feel like Russian Roulette. If you raise property taxes, some will sell, or not renew leases, and move to another City with lower property taxes increasing the flight of people and businesses out of your City. If you raise the sale tax people many will start shopping in a neighboring City with a lower sales tax, causing a decline in sales tax revenue and affecting the elderly and disabled living on fixed incomes and low-income families with limited transportation. If you raise permit fees, it might lead to a decline in home construction causing deeper issues with needed affordable housing and decrease the development of new businesses to the City. Now, I’m not suggesting raising taxes and permitting fees is not a possibility, what I’m suggesting is they should not be your “go to.” So, what can you do to halt, or slowdown the economic decline? Here os something a city can do to get the ball rolling:
Review the Regulatory Environment of the City:
How hard, and expensive, are the regulations making it to build affordable houses or open a new business? If so, and I bet they are, you limit the growth for new affordable homes, and new business start-ups. Some starting points are:
- Eliminate mandated parking restrictions in business districts.
- Eliminate minimum lot size requirement for businesses and homes.
- Create multi-zone areas for business and housing [you can even offer tax credits for business who add apartments units.]
- Allow two of three unit development to encourage affordable housing.
- Eliminate restrictions on multi-family homes.
- Allow, or expand, accessory dwelling units [ADU] to include residential neighborhoods.
- Review, and meaningfully change, all zoning laws.
- [Keep in mind, the CEQA’s are no longer an issue]
This is not a complete list, but it’s a good starting point. As the City Staff sits down with Council support, to review all regulations [I’ll bet many of them have not been reviewed since the 1990’s, with some not being reviewed since the late 1950’s]. How the City goes about reviewing the regulations is up to you, and I know this will take some time, and, the occasional nervous breakdowns, but it will be worth it in the end.
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