I agree that our seniors deserve better, but so do our children and many of our hard working citizens. I applaud the City’s efforts at continuing to look forward at the future needs of this City and the well meaning volunteers that have put much effort into developing this plan. The downtown revitalization, despite some of the bumps in the road, was a tremendous feat in my opinion. However, I also hope that the expensive burden of building this center is just a pipe dream for the near-term and in all fairness no mention was made regarding a time frame to break ground.

My concerns are that given the budget crisis and many of our citizens feeling the pressures of this struggling economy, it is difficult for me to imagine that anyone wants to take on more debt or pay higher taxes anytime soon. At this stage of the project, it is too early to have a real plan on how to pay for the center, there is an ongoing study on every possible method for raising funds. Strategies include government grants, private-public partnerships, donations, bonds, special districts, etc. So, at this stage we really do not know what this project would cost our citizens, but I am troubled by the fact that we just recently voted down a measure that would allow a small increase in our parcel taxes in order to save our crumbling education system.  I don’t see a democratic way to saddle our citizen’s with more taxes in this economy anytime soon.  

Our Seniors and Veterans do deserve better and I hope our economy does turn around soon for all our sakes. However, until that day comes, I think we need to hunker down and run our City the same way many of our households have been run lately, redefining what are the ‘real’ necessities and desperately trying to live within our means. Then when things turn around, let’s still stick to that philosophy because while the economy will eventually get better, it will also regrettably sour again eventually. So, I would ask that that before committing to such an expensive project which will likely be paid for over several decades, we need to carefully ask whether we can bear the burden of the costs when the economy takes another downturn? I also think that we need to ponder the fact that our State is in awful fiscal trouble right now and that it’s likely they will be taxing all Californians more!

This is a big issue for us in the Bay Area because we are often in the higher tax brackets and for most of us it is not because we are rich, but because it takes allot of money to just get by in this region of the State. More taxes means, less disposal income, less disposable income means real estate prices may remain flat and guess where the City gets the majority of its revenue growth? That’s right increases in property taxes. This is a fragile time, we should be extremely cautious about our decisions.