“We’re considering it gone,” Huntington Beach city spokeswoman Laurie Payne said. “What we don’t want to do is impact services to the city. We’re going to do our best to continue our high level of service.”
The state also will borrow $5.4 million of the city’s property tax funds. The claimed property taxes, which represent about 3% of the general fund, are used for public safety, road maintenance and “all of the things that people really get touched by,” Payne said.
But Payne said the city was relieved that the legislature opted to cancel a plan to take gasoline tax revenues from local governments, following a flurry of opposition statewide to the possibility.
Redevelopment Agency funds are used to get blighted areas back to being economically viable, assisting new businesses and other companies by subsidizing infrastructure and other needs.
Such areas can be found all over the city, but take up less than 5% of the city’s total land.
Huntington Beach’s Redevelopment Agency was established in 1969, and its first five project areas were named in the early 1980s: Main-Pier, Huntington Center, Talbert-Beach, Oakview and Yorktown-Lake. Since then, the Main-Pier area expanded to more than 336 acres, and all five areas merged to create the 619-acre Huntington Beach Project Area.
The 160-acre Huntington Center area includes the area that is now Bella Terra. The downtown area includes the resorts on Pacific Coast Highway. Oakview includes a 68-acre area near the corner of Beach Boulevard and Warner Avenue, and housing rehabilitation in that area. Talbert-Beach’s 25-acre redevelopment area focuses on industrial and housing zones, and the major project in Yorktown-Lake’s 30 acres is its senior housing areas.
