With Gov. Jerry Brown proposing to eliminate redevelopment agencies across the state, city officials have been touting what they built, who they employed and where millions of dollars went over the years.
Brown argues redevelopment agencies have strayed from their mission to eliminate blight and wants to use their funding to help pay for schools. To help you understand where the money goes now, I created an illustration of spending priorities at the downtown redevelopment agency, Centre City Development Corp. It receives more tax revenue than any other redevelopment agency in the county.
In the current budget year, CCDC expects to collect about $154.6 million in property taxes, which will be added to about $307.9 million in unused funding from previous years to pay for new downtown projects and other costs. The total pot of available money was estimated last summer to be around $462.5 million.
The bigger the circle in the illustration below, the more money CCDC has set aside for those costs.
For me, the illustration helped put CCDC’s share of the new downtown library in perspective. Its contribution is nearly twice the size of all the smaller neighborhood projects combined.
But what do you find most interesting? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below. If you want to see a similar illustration for another government agency, shoot me an email and explain why it merits further public inspection.
Correction: Because of a math error, a previous version of this graphic incorrectly labeled the scale. The third largest gray circle represents $25 million, not $20 million as we first said. We regret the error.
Please contact Keegan Kyle directly at keegan.kyle@voiceofsandiego.org or 619.550.5668 and follow him on Twitter: twitter.com/keegankyle.