Steve Tate Answers to MH Times Candidate Questions

1) What are your feelings on the Morgan Hill Redevelopment Agency?
I support it and its extension. California's redevelopment laws give cities an opportunity to collect extra revenues from the enhanced property values within a specific geographical area. Morgan Hill has had a redevelopment agency since 1980 and it was extended once before in 1999. The agency is the vehicle we have used to fund previous downtown infrastructure upgrades, Butterfield Boulevard, the Community and Cultural Center, the Aquatics Center, the Centennial Recreation Center and the new Library.

The RDA extension in 1999 enabled the construction of many new facilities; we now need to switch the focus and emphasis for the upcoming RDA extension. California redevelopment law allows RDA funds to be used for capital costs, but not for operations and maintenance costs. Cultural and recreational facilities operated by municipalities rarely generate enough income to cover their operational costs, and we have found that Morgan Hill is not an exception. We are doing much better on cost recovery than most cities, but are not covering everything, causing our general fund to pick up the slack. We cannot continue to place additional burden on the general fund at this time - not until we can build up a budget surplus that demonstrates the general fund can support the extra burden. So the emphasis for the RDA extension needs to be continued removal of blight and economic development to foster increased general fund income through sales tax and other income generation, as well as an on-going commitment to affordable housing.

We plan to scale back the geographic redevelopment area when we extend the RDA, removing portions of the business parks to the north that have been redeveloped. This will help generate additional property tax income to our general fund.

2) What will you do to reduce the budget deficit?
We actually had a $48,000 budget surplus in 2005-2006! However, some of the monies reimbursed by the state last year cannot be counted on in future years. We are projecting to have a budget deficit of $400,000 again this year (2006-2007), but starting in 2007-2008, we now project surpluses exceeding $1,000,000 annually. These projections incorporate the new DiNapoli retail center coming on-line next spring/summer, and they also include added income from reducing the geographic redevelopment area.

When we projected continuing budget deficits, we created a sustainable budget strategy to resolve our deficit situation and understand what services our residents wanted and were willing to pay for so we could put long-term fixes in place. While we no longer need extra money to provide the current service levels, we still need to carry through on the strategy started with the Community Conversations and surveys we did early this year.

Continuing the Conversations will establish the services and service levels people will support. I believe we need an additional fire station and added police staffing, and I know we can't afford these with our current/projected revenues. The in-depth involvement of residents that is part of the Conversations process is needed to see if and how the community would support paying more for enhanced safety services.
A stronger economic base will keep us out of budget trouble in the future. Extension of the RDA will give us funds to help our economic growth. Getting the right mix of stores in the DiNapoli Center and downtown; and the addition of one or two more car dealers support our economic growth and are supported by what we learned in the Community Conversations.

3) What will you do to legislate more regionally, to include issues
affecting neighboring communities such as San Martin?
We have not had a real good relationship with our "big" neighbor to the north, San Jose. Dennis Kennedy has worked very hard to improve this relationship, but has been somewhat put off by the current mayor. I will continue to work on improving this relationship and have hopes that a new mayor up there will be more accessible and open to our overtures on issues that have a direct impact on Morgan Hill, like the development of Coyote Valley.

We should learn from our frustrations in dealing with San Jose and make sure we don't present that image to San Martin. We need to support them and can also provide some mentoring should their plans for incorporation go forward.

I will make stronger overtures to the Morgan Hill Unified School District to work more closely on issues of mutual interest.

We need to make the assignments of council members, including the mayor, to outside agencies very carefully to assure that our regional relationships and objectives are supported in the most optimal manner.

4) What are your views on downtown Morgan Hill housing and business
development controls?
The question seems to be aimed at the controls. Measure C controls all housing development in Morgan Hill. I chaired the committee that updated Measure P to C and we spent a great deal of effort trying to make it complementary to the Downtown Plan, which was developed through an effort for which I was vice chair.
Although at the time I thought Measure C did enough for downtown housing, the advocates for downtown thought it didn't go far enough, that we need 100 additional units soon, so now Measure F is on the ballot to enact that, and I support it.

I think this illustrates that the "controls" should not be the concern, we need to work together to define solutions, then make sure there is a way to implement them, as we are doing with Measure F on the ballot. We have many other codes and rules and regulations in place to govern business development, but we also have the Chamber's Economic Development Committee working with the city to define inhibitors to business development that the council is addressing through its committee structure.

So I am not saying that all our rules and regulations are perfect, but I do think we have a lot of flexibility and can adapt as needed in order to realize the goals and objectives of our Downtown Plan, which I fully support. And I am optimistic that the upcoming effort to more thoroughly flesh out that plan will help improve it.

5) What are the top three issues in your campaign platform?
At a very high level, they are being fiscally responsible, enhancing safety services and maintaining our community values. Let me explain them in reverse order.

Our values reflect our sense of place, that small town-feel we have, as well as the way we value and support our youth and seniors and how we support our downtown to make it more vigorous.

Our safety services, both police and fire, are stretched pretty thin right now, we need both an additional staffed fire station and additional police staffing. These are not minor items from a cost perspective, however, so we need a plan to pay for this added support.

And that brings us to fiscal responsibility. We can bolster ourselves financially by extending the redevelopment agency and using resulting funds in a way that does not put undo stress onto our general fund. We also need to do additional economic development to bring in more tax revenues to help pay for things like enhanced safety services.

We need to recognize that we probably cannot pay for the level of safety services we need by merely doing more economic development. So I favor doing more public outreach with techniques like the Community Conversations to determine what level of services, especially safety services, our citizens want and how they are willing to pay for those services, if they are willing. So I believe this is a critical element of being fiscally responsible.