Redevelopment, FPPC penalty, school lease

Let’s examine three topics this week:

--Since last year’s dissolution of the city’s Redevelopment Agency, more than a dozen local taxing agencies, including the Placentia-Yorba Linda school district, have shared what the state says are “excess funds” in the former agency’s accounts.

In a report heard at a Jan. 8 oversight meeting, a city-hired audit firm figured current “excess funds” at $832,633 for remittance to the county auditor for allocation. But a few days later, new data led to a statement that “no excess non-housing funds exist.”

Nearly $3.9 million was redistributed last July. Generally, funds are labeled “excess” if they weren’t committed for use before Feb. 1, 2012, and the state makes a final decision on whether or not “excess funds” exist.

Redistributed cash involves funds amassed under past state law allowing redevelopment agencies to retain increases in property taxes generated from project areas, including the 2,968 acres identified in this city in 1983 and 1990.

The local Redevelopment Agency’s total take was about $20 million annually for the past several years. At the beginning of the current fiscal year, the city had nearly $48.7 million in cash and assets from the former agency.

A Successor Agency to the Yorba Linda Redevelopment Agency--comprised of City Council members, as was the original agency--handles the assets, which include land parcels held for resale worth more than $11 million.

The auditors listed the former agency’s long-term debt as about $103 million on June 30, 2012. Just last year, a city official said it might take until 2040 to wind up agency affairs.

--The Yorba Linda Water District and elected director Mike Beverage, respondents in a complaint brought by the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission, settled a violation of the state’s Political Reform Act last month by paying a $2,000 penalty.

The violation involved the use of public funds to mail a newsletter to the district’s 22,271 customers that included a letter signed by Beverage and two pictures of the director. The newsletter, which cost $8,653 to produce, print and mail, was issued in June of 2011.

Beverage is one of the city’s longest-serving officials, as a water director first elected in 1992 and as a one-term City Council member, 1982-86. He also ran a developer-funded political action committee, Past and Present Elected Officials Representing Yorba Linda.

Maximum penalty for the violation is $5,000, but the FPPC and respondents stipulated to a lesser amount because only one newsletter was involved, cost to ratepayers was “relatively low,” no past infractions were noted and respondents cooperated in the investigation.

--Will the city recover more than $1 million in past-due lease payments from Yorba Linda Friends Church for the city’s 32-acre Bastanchury Road parcel proposed for a private Christian high school?

That question might be answered soon, perhaps as early as Feb. 19, when the latest default extension runs out and new, lower lease terms are expected to be viewed by the City Council. Last payment was made in September 2011.