Exploratory discussion of a county wide EIFD ~ AI#9
City manager and council,
Regarding your initial discussion at this meeting exploring an ‘Enhanced Infrastructure Financing District’ (EIFD), as proposed by councillors Rich, Zollman and supervisor Hopkins, my initial thoughts are that this funding approach is more suited to district five than specifically to the city of Sebastopol.
The confusing and long winded document presented for discussion, which has projected numbers that are illogical and that don’t add up is also overly broad and shallow in both scope and specific goals.
Fundamentally, what is advantageous in a city specific EIFD to the city of Sebastopol?
There is a real danger that the pet mental health, homeless outreach and increased size city library/town hall projects Hopkins, Rich and Zollman have previously made clear they find attractive and consider city responsibilities are far more suited to a distributed scale county wide approach, sharing the burden of caring for transients, the mentally ill and destitute.
EIFD’s are designed to be executed by much larger cities and are still immature and unproven, having only been invented in 2015. We have no idea how this funding model will play out over time, or indeed who will be councillors in the future.
I strongly recommend council focus efforts on business development to raise sales taxes and ToT rather than looking for more ways to tax citizens and try to exploit existing tax streams. The next couple of years are going to see our state, county and city experiencing serious financial deficits and belt tightening. The stated goals of the city are to increase tourism as our prime revenue generator.
The era of local people in our district five sphere of influence visiting the city for banking and shopping is largely over (aside from food shopping) due to digital shopping and currencies. Library books are arguably partially obsolete due to the internet. The city and county has to plan for the future, not the past, as an attractive destination for people to stay as the gateway to our beautiful coastline and countryside.
Once this is generating revenue we can contribute more to to the county in order to help them triage the homeless, addicted and mentally ill in appropriate new county locations that have a low impact on surrounding businesses and residents. This could in turn lower stress levels on our police and emergency services.
A district 5 EIFD could be organized in such a way to spread our current social burdens more evenly across the county, relieving pressures on our downtown while also providing an appropriate portion of incoming revenue to our city.
California Forward Q&A On Enhanced Infrastructure Financing Districts Oliver Marks
Downtown Sebastopol