Is the City’s ‘Build Better SD’ a Bridge Too Far for Todd Gloria?

Screen grab from Build Better SD video.

Mayor Could Become Fall Guy as Tide of Opposition Rises Against Circulate San Diego Playbook

By Mat Wahlstrom

What is it about our electeds’ obsession with cringe-making videos?

Last week, eyeballs and intellects were assaulted with the most cynically messaged and slickly produced video to date, in order to bludgeon acceptance of “Build Better SD.”

Announced in the ‘State of the City’ address in January, but details not released until a few weeks ago, Build Better SD is a root-and-branch overhaul of the linkage between development impact fees (DIFs) and capital improvement projects (CIPs), spanning three of the ten General Plan elements and dozens of municipal code changes, allegedly in the name of equity.

Suddenly, just two days after first being presented to the Community Planners Committee last Tuesday, March 22 (with obviously no chance for input by any of their 42 community planning groups), it was put for a vote by the Planning Commission to recommend to the city council next month.

Although once again the bum’s rush has become the city’s standard operating procedure, with arbitrary timelines to meet artificial deadlines, what’s flagrant is they used all this time to produce an ad campaign rather than engage in genuine public outreach.

Which should tell you all you need to know about Build Better SD, if you read nothing else.

But for the curious: Development impact fees are collected as new developments are built within a community planning area, and deposited in a lockbox for capital improvement projects within it and lawful requirements on expenditures tied to the community plan and community planning group input that electeds can’t alter otherwise.

This input is codified in impact fee studies. Impact fee studies determine what percentage of monies collected must go toward which class of projects based on need. For instance, of the $11,241 DIF for a residential unit in Uptown in 2016, 88% was earmarked for parks, 9% for mobility, 2% for libraries, and 1% for fire-rescue. (DIFs from non-residential development for parks or libraries aren’t collected at all.)

Community planning groups establish a list of priority projects based on these proportions; and the fees collected from development in a community planning area must be spent in that area.

Build Better SD would eliminate both this local control and offsets for local development, putting all DIFs into the General Fund for spending as the mayor sees fit.

It would also change the assessment of residential DIFs from a per-dwelling unit basis to a square footage basis — as is currently done with non-residential development — which would lower construction costs. But without requirements to pass along this savings to ensure affordable housing, it will simply put more money in developers’ pockets.

It’s usually a given that the appointed members of the city’s boards and commissions — who serve at the pleasure of the mayor — rubber stamp whatever he puts in front of them. The Planning Commission, most of whose members are chosen from the development industry, is the most notorious example.

But last Thursday, they balked, voting for an extension to be provided more time and, most importantly, the actual fee studies — which the city still hasn’t completed in the mad rush to push this through — before they’d sign their names to it.

This absence of these fee studies was also a no-go for building interest representatives making public comment, as the city has said that this initiative would raise DIFs ‘slightly’ but hasn’t provided specifics.

The Planning Commission actually agreed with the Community Planners Committee’s concerns about the status on in-process projects and the fate of communities’ legacy funds, and that this is all too much, too fast.

In short, buried under all the rubric of equity, Build Better SD appears nothing more than an attempt by the mayor to get his hands on the pot of $222 million in existing DIFs and all new DIFs going forward to spend at his discretion to reward or punish councilmembers and pay for his personal agenda.

Also still unanswered is how this plan will negatively affect areas most impacted by current development, that is, neglected neighborhoods that are being gentrified, by no longer tying new DIF revenue to be spent in the communities of concern where density is now being increased — which is the opposite of the intention to provide equity.

There is a real concern that Build Better SD will treat public facilities and parks as fungible with bike lanes and public spaces for infrastructure. It would undermine providing for more libraries and public safety and parks that more density will require that have no other dedicated funding.

But transportation projects have several streams, with money for them coming from the city and SANDAG and the federal government. It would raid the lockbox for both the most affluent as well as our most vulnerable communities in order to underwrite mobility mandates by special interests that remain unfunded.

But what’s most distasteful about the video is the city’s paying an “engagement partner” to use “community members and high school students” as surrogates to preemptively endorse a plan even the mayor’s own Planning Commission balked for lack of specifics. It’s the equivalent of a fireplace video: all glow but no warmth.

Far from being a check or balance on our ‘strong mayor’ form of government, the city council repeatedly shows its belly, most appallingly by approving ‘Parks for All of Us.’ So it will be most interesting to see how it reacts once this finally reaches them.

And there’s a caution here for the mayor as well. Everything he’s been doing has followed the playbook and goals laid out by Circulate San Diego executive director and La Mesa city councilmember, Colin Parent. As the tide of dissatisfaction at the results rises against him, Todd Gloria may well find that — rather than being a man for all seasons — he’s really only a fall guy.