The Land Grab

At a time when our City services are already stretched too thin, the Chula Vista Mayor and Council want to expand the City’s redevelopment areas to include residential properties. This proposed land grab will divert funding away from essential services, such as police and fire, and staff needed to run libraries. By law, redevelopment funds cannot be used to pay for ongoing city services. Instead of paying for city services, the money ends up in the pockets of developers in the form of subsidies, studies or redevelopment staff slush funds.

Can anyone name something positive that has been accomplished as a result of actions taken by this redevelopment agency? I can’t. The truth is that this agency, now comprised mainly of outsiders and people in the development industry, has done nothing but waste tens of millions of our tax dollars on failed projects, studies and redevelopment staff budgets. Now, the redevelopment staff has the gall to ask for even more money without being able to justify their current budget. 

Chula Vista simply cannot afford to sacrifice any more of our tax dollars on a wasteful redevelopment agency. I encourage everyone to speak up at the Dec 15th council meeting and oppose this senseless land grab, because if we don’t, I’ll bet you that our noble elected officials will surely slice off another piece of our pie and hand it over to their developer friends and those who provide campaign contributions. 

Robert Garcia
Chula Vista