Every so often I’m asked why some cities are able to avoid huge public subsidies for their sports teams while most others pay through the nose, and I point out an important geographic distinction: Most of the “smart” cities are on the West Coast, where for various historical reasons, it’s way easier to get voter referendums on the ballot to constrain the actions of local legislators. That turns out to be pretty huge, as winning over an entire voting populace, while by no means impossible, is a lot trickier than winning over a handful of elected officials — so you get scenarios where team owners have to put up a lot more of their venue costs themselves, as we’ve seen with the San Francisco Giants and Golden State Warriors and Los Angeles Rams and Seattle Kraken.
And now we have one more data point in the “it’s the referendums, stupid” theory, as the $92 million in tax money that the Sacramento city council approved for a new stadium for Sacramento Republic F.C. owners Kevin Nagle and the Wilton Rancheria tribe is now at risk of blowing up thanks to an obscure California law that lets local residents object to special tax districts:
There are currently only two residential buildings in the Railyards: The A.J. Apartments and the Wong Senior Center. Both include affordable housing.
Of the roughly 250 people who live in them, state law requires that if half protest the formation of the railyards’ proposed special tax district, the district can not be created for at least a year.
Residents of the proposed tax-kickback district showed up in force at a city council hearing yesterday, along with representatives of the hotel and food service workers union Unite Here Local 39, to demand more affordable housing as part of any stadium deal. City officials are currently counting and verifying signatures on the objection, a process they say will take up to a week — it doesn’t seem like it should take that long to count to 126, but sure, that’s fine.
Direct democracy laws like these are a bit of a double-edged sword: They give residents a way to override elected officials who aren’t interested in the opinions of their constituents, but they also make it easier for NIMBY types to block things they don’t like, or at least make demands in exchange for not blocking them. (There was a huge battle recently in the Bay Area over the BART transit system wanting to build new housing in its parking lots, which ended with the state legislature giving BART the power to override local zoning on its own property, which was a whole kerfuffle.) How this one plays out remains to be seen, but it’s certainly a stumbling block that doesn’t appear to have been anticipated when the council greenlit the Republic stadium two weeks ago — and one that would be unimaginable in much of the rest of the country.
Kerfuffle, perhaps….but the reality of the BART parking lots AKA local want lists for cool stuff, comes down to patiently waiting for the next major natural disaster and possible (in the age of Trump) deluge of FEMA fun bux
So, c’mon Team Great Quake Shake ‘n Bake!
I don’t think there is anything wrong with affected citizens having the ability to vote on things which concern them (in this case, something that may affect their living situation and something many of them, as tax payers, may have to pay for).
I have been on the short end of the NIMBY thing before and, frankly, it hurts (especially if you are trying to build something FOR the public rather than taking something away from the public… and get old that ‘this’ is not the right location for low cost rental units…), but affected residents can and should have a say in what gets built.
The key thing is that the residents must have an opportunity to show and be able to show how they will be negatively affected by the proposed development. After that, it is up to the planning/development authority to determine whether their concerns are both legitimate and serious enough to torpedo the project.
Delays can cost developers money, certainly, but it doesn’t have to take two or three years to resolve matters.
In districts/regions where these laws exist, it behooves the elected officials and project proponents to get people on side first… not wait until a backroom deal is done and then complain that ‘people are interfering’ in their plans.
Seldom, however, does the former happen…