Will a crazy law kill Sacramento’s coveted Railyards stadium project? | Opinion
It’s an all-too-familiar story in California. Someone, in this case, a union with an ulterior motive, hijacks an otherwise popular development project by manipulating California’s screwy development processes.
The latest victim is Sacramento and its decades-long quest to redevelop the Railyards, whose financing plan now stands in jeopardy.
The few hundred residents who now live in the Railyards, along with their landowners, may have to vote on this financing plan because a sufficient number of them have filed protests with the city in recent weeks. And if more than half of them complain, a process that will take days to determine, this financing plan is dead, and another one cannot be considered for at least a year.
And who has been leading this protest?
A labor union that wants to represent workers in Elk Grove’s Sky River Casino, whose Wilton Rancheria tribe has purchased the Sacramento Republic soccer team and has planned to build a stadium in the Railyards.
The official spin is a concern about a lack of affordable housing in the Railyards, but the local city council representative, Phil Pluckebaum, isn’t buying it.
“This kind of self-defeating hardball labor negotiations has no place in our city,” Pluckebaum said.
It’s remarkable that any Railyards resident who truly understands this financing plan would oppose it. How could a downtown diehard oppose more property tax funds becoming available to bring the Railyards to life without raising overall tax rates a penny?
Yet in California, we always must have some process to slow down anything. ”This will only delay the Railyards for another decade and add significant additional costs, resulting in more expensive housing,” Pluckebaum said.
The legislative handiwork here is a 2019 bill that detailed how to protest these financing plans. Legislation a few years earlier had established a way for cities to devise districts that could use locally generated property taxes to help pay for the infrastructure backbone of redevelopment.
These so-called Enhanced Infrastructure Financing Districts are a new way for cities to decide to invest some of their money to grow their economy.
Yet in an overdose of democracy, the legislation allowed only those residents and landowners in this district to kill a financing plan, even if it doesn’t financially impact them, if enough file protests.
Wilton, this past November, announced it had purchased the Republic to become the first tribe in the nation to own a professional sports franchise. The creation of this financing district was a cornerstone of a financial strategy to build this facility along with a planned entertainment complex, plus offices and housing.
The financial engine for Wilton, its casino, is where the UNITE HERE Local 49 union is in the midst of a drive to represent its workers. Suddenly, it became interested in the Railyards and affordable housing in Sacramento.
All nine members of the Sacramento City Council, normally friends of labor, did not side with the union and supported this financing district. Sacramento was one vote away from historic progress in the Railyards.
But a campaign against this financing plan was targeted directly at the handful of Sacramentans who could kill it — The Wong Center and The A.J. Enough ended up complaining to City Hall, who knows based on what information.
Council members learned just minutes before Tuesday afternoon’s public meeting that their approval of this financing plan was essentially nullified.
“What UNITE HERE Local 49 is doing is a lose-lose proposition,” Pluckebaum said. “If successful, they lose affordable housing and jobs, and the community loses a regional amenity and much-needed revenue to provide services to residents.”
The final tally of complaints will reveal whether the Railyards will have an election in the coming months or some new financing plan, as if there’s another real alternative.
California’s overdose of process now threatens an urban renaissance in its very capital. A key financing tool designed to grow our economy now is poised to kill it.