By Brittany Hanson/Garden Grove Journal
The future of a park in Stanton and the future of the redevelopment agency’s funds were the hot topics on Tuesday night at the Stanton City Council meeting.
Council members looked at a variety of ways to approach the administration of building a new park for the city, scheduled to be built at the Mary Perez Elementary School site at 10660 Western Ave.
Although members were given options for how they could change the way they approach the awarding and contracting process for building the park, they chose not to change.
The schedule that has been used, one of “Design, Bid, then Build,” was considered to be the best course of action. The city has come into 10 acres of land to use for a park, something that has not happened before and is likely to not happen again.
Council members cited that the process has been used very successfully in the past for parks that the city is very proud of.
“Why would we want to deviate from that process,” said Mayor Brian Donahue, “not sure that we want to throw the process away.”
Council member Carol Warren said that she wanted to be sure that there was research going for how to best use the space.
“Are we going to do a study of how other parks of this size . . . I’d really like to go out and see what is out there, so it’s not ‘Brian wants bicycles’ and ‘Ed wants a pool’ and ‘Carol wants tennis courts,” said Warren.
Councilman Al Ethans mentioned that having this kind of space to work with was unprecedented and that city should be very scrupulous of how the space used.
“I think that we should take a good look for what we want in there, what our citizens want . . . 10 acres, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. That’s my opinion on it,” said Ethans.
The second large dish on the city council menu was the consideration and approval of issuing tax allocation bonds by the redevelopment agency. What the bonds do is incur debt to continue funding the redevelopment agency’s housing and economic development programs.
California Governor Jerry Brown had been talking about dissolving city development agencies and using the money to right the lopsided economic status of the state.
The debt incurred would protect the agency’s tax increment revenue from such dissolution. What this essentially does is help the city maintain the funds needed in order to continue with its building and development projects.
As of right now, there is no certainty of to whether or not Brown will go through with this plan, as it is very unpopular with cities. For now, there is word from Sacramento that no action will be taken for six weeks.
By Brittany Hanson
Garden Grove Journal
The future of a park in Stanton and the future of the redevelopment agency’s funds were the hot topics on Tuesday night at the Stanton City Council meeting.
Council members looked at a variety of ways to approach the administration of building a new park for the city, scheduled to be built at the Mary Perez Elementary School site at 10660 Western Ave.
Although members were given options for how they could change the way they approach the awarding and contracting process for building the park, they chose not to change.
The schedule that has been used, one of “Design, Bid, then Build,” was considered to be the best course of action. The city has come into 10 acres of land to use for a park, something that has not happened before and is likely to not happen again.
Council members cited that the process has been used very successfully in the past for parks that the city is very proud of.
“Why would we want to deviate from that process,” said Mayor Brian Donahue, “not sure that we want to throw the process away.”
Council member Carol Warren said that she wanted to be sure that there was research going for how to best use the space.
“Are we going to do a study of how other parks of this size . . . I’d really like to go out and see what is out there, so it’s not ‘Brian wants bicycles’ and ‘Ed wants a pool’ and ‘Carol wants tennis courts,” said Warren.
Councilman Al Ethans mentioned that having this kind of space to work with was unprecedented and that city should be very scrupulous of how the space used.
“I think that we should take a good look for what we want in there, what our citizens want . . . 10 acres, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. That’s my opinion on it,” said Ethans.
The second large dish on the city council menu was the consideration and approval of issuing tax allocation bonds by the redevelopment agency. What the bonds do is incur debt to continue funding the redevelopment agency’s housing and economic development programs.
California Governor Jerry Brown had been talking about dissolving city development agencies and using the money to right the lopsided economic status of the state.
The debt incurred would protect the agency’s tax increment revenue from such dissolution. What this essentially does is help the city maintain the funds needed in order to continue with its building and development projects.
As of right now, there is no certainty of to whether or not Brown will go through with this plan, as it is very unpopular with cities. For now, there is word from Sacramento that no action will be taken for six weeks.
