See this summary (pdf) by city legal staff. The memorandum identifies several Mueller financial incentives threatened by the proposed charter amendment:
- Project costs (including infrastructure) partially funded by City sales tax revenue collected from project retail development;
- Sales tax committed to repay long term bonds ($12 million to date);
- Reinvestment of land sale proceeds into project finance fund;
- City must make annual payment for park maintenance;
- City must make annual payment for pond maintenance;
- City to grant up to $25 million in "account credits" to pay for fiscal postings (subdivision improvement guaranties);
- Other incentives include developer use of city owned facilities, city funded storage, environmental clean-up, and future public financing commitment.
And the conclusion:
Subject to potential legal defenses, including constitutional issues, some of the city's commitments under the MDA [master development agreement] seem to meet the charter amendment's definition of a prohibited "Financial Incentive."
While staff suggests the MDA "possibly" can be amended to avoid charter amendment problems, Catellus must agree to any amendment. It's unclear why it would agree, though, unless it receives the compensation it was promised. And since the point of the charter amendment is to prohibit financial incentives in any form, it is unclear, at least to me, how the city could provide Catellus the bargained-for compensation simply by restructuring the financial incentives.
More on SDS:
- Stop the Charter Amendment! (Aug. 23, 2008)
- A little hypocritical, no? (Aug. 23, 2008)
- An unintended consequence of the SDS charter amendment? (Aug. 26, 2008)
- More on the unintended consequences of the SDS charter amendment (Sept. 18, 2008)
- The City's really worried about SDS's impact on Mueller (Sept. 24, 2008)
- Prescient (Sept. 25, 2008)
