From: Eric Fraser
To: City Clerk; Alvarez, Eddie; Rogers, Natalie; Rogers, Chris; Okrepkie, Jeff; Stapp, Mark; MacDonald, Dianna; Fleming, Victoria
Subject: [EXTERNAL] 10/8/24 City Council, Agenda 4.2 Vacant Properties (vP7) Date: Monday, October 7, 2024 4:40:18 PM
Attachments: 100824 City Council, Agenda Item 4.2 .pdf
Hello Mayor, Council, and Clerk,
Please find our attached comments for Agenda Item 4.2, vacant properties.
Eric Fraser
Santa Rosa CA 95404
Date: October 7, 2024 To: Santa Rosa City Council From: Eric Fraser, [email protected] RE: 10/8/24 City Council Meeting, Agenda Item 4.2 Vacant Parcels Thank you for the opportunity to participate in the study session presented in agenda item 4.2, the purported purpose is to study ways to activate vacant or distressed parcels. We refer to this idea as vP7: the vacant Public-Private Parcel Pop-up Partnership Pilot Program. Our suggestion: quit wasting money on hairbrained ideas. Under the guise of helping small businesses, staff puts forward an idea that will increase government costs, demonstrates careless government spending in an age of restraint, will probably be mismanaged with insiders getting the deals – but truly this is a “solution” searching for a problem. However, a field trip to Santa Monica or San Diego sounds marvelous. Nowhere in the presentation does it show an actual demand from small businesses for this program, although now that we said that you probably muster the usual insiders and sycophants to claim this is the best thing since sliced bread. If you hear businesses clamoring, it’s probably protests about out-of-control government spending, taxes, waste, and corruption. Here, the author presents this theory that vacant areas will be “activated”, and businesses will surely want to transition to long-term leases. Sadly, this is emblematic of when an organization (in this case our city government) has too much money to spend, and somehow must defend budgeted positions. The small businesses we talk to are fed-up with government over-reach, taxation, entrenched politics, insider deals, regulations, permit fees, corruption, selective and defective enforcement, and more taxes, to name a few issues. You labor under the misimpression that government helps businesses, without an iota of understanding about negative impacts from government over-reach, taxation, entrenched politics, insider deals, regulations, permit fees, corruption, selective and defective enforcement and more taxes (that’s worth repeating). What does staff know about business? The author has had over 21+ years to see how the City “activates” things. We don’t believe somebody in a staff position budgeted at $250k/yr has any idea about people making $30 - $100 k/ year from their small business efforts. Thank you for your time.