3A Public Hearing 2010 0503 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home

Public Hearing on the Kaiser Medical Center Project pg. 3 May 3, 2010 deliberation by the Planning Commission. Generally, these comments and questions focused on four key issues: 1) whether certain terms of the Development Agreement and its supporting fiscal analysis appropriately account for the costs that the City will bear in order to provide services to the project and to mitigate its impacts; 2) whether traffic impacts associated with the development have been fully and completely mitigated to the extent feasible, 3) whether the project's greenhouse gas emissions have been fully analyzed and addressed in the EIR; and 4) the potential that approval of the General Plan amendment and re -zoning of the northerly portion of the project site for mixed-use retail development might negatively impact existing retail centers and may result in such severe economic impacts at Bayfair Center and other existing San Leandro retail areas as to result in blight. Each of these topics is more fully addressed below. Development Agreement and Supporting Fiscal Analysis Public comments and Commission discussion was held as to whether certain terms of the Development Agreement and its supporting fiscal analysis appropriately account for the costs that the City will bear in order to provide services to the project and to mitigate its impacts (such as the costs for roadway maintenance). Staff Recommendation Because the Medical Center will be largely exempt from property taxes, the Development Agreement calls for Kaiser to contribute to a Community Impact Fund and to agree to the formation of an assessment district to off -set the costs for providing City services. The amount of this contribution ($3,100,000) is based, in part, on a fiscal impact analysis prepared by Keyser Marston Associates. The amount of the Community Impact Fund payment is also based on the results of a negotiation process and an acknowledgment that the Project will yield economic and community benefits that could not be captured in the fiscal analysis. That Keyser Marston fiscal analysis derives its estimate of the costs for providing City services (such as street maintenance) from the City's current budget. Staff believes that the methodology used by Keyser Marston in their fiscal analysis and as reflected in the terms of the Development Agreement represent an appropriate and defensible nexus between the revenue that the City could currently contemplate as being derived from development of this property should it not otherwise be exempt from payment of property taxes. In other words, a mitigation payment based on this approach would ensure that the City were made whole, and suffered no negative fiscal impact from the project. Requiring a mitigation payment based on an optimal expenditure level would, in effect, require Kaiser to pay its fair share of a level of service that it would never actually receive.