COUNTY OF SAN MATEO

Inter-Departmental Correspondence

County Manager's Office

DATE:

September 4, 2002

BOARD MEETING DATE:

September 17, 2002

TO:

Honorable Board of Supervisors

FROM:

John L. Maltbie, County Manager

SUBJECT:

Status Report - 2001-2002 Grand Jury Responses

Recommendation

Accept this response to the 2001-2002 Grand Jury report and recommendations concerning the following: Redevelopment Agencies and Their Role in Affordable Housing and Consolidation of San Mateo County Transportation Agencies.

Discussion

The 2001-2002 Grand Jury issued 21 reports during the course of the fiscal year. The County is mandated to respond to the Grand Jury within 90 days from the date that reports are filed with the County Clerk and Elected Officials are mandated to respond within 60 days. Since these reports were issued at different intervals during the year, County departments, Elected Officials and other public agencies will respond to items under separate cover within the mandated time frames.

Vision Alignment

This response to the Grand Jury's findings and recommendations keeps the commitment of responsive, effective and collaborative government through goal number 20: Government decisions are based on careful consideration of future impact, rather than temporary relief or immediate gain.

Redevelopment Agencies and Their Role in Affordable Housing

Recommendation:

2.13 The Board of Supervisors should monitor and publicize annually the accumulation and expenditures of the 20% legislatively mandated set-aside funds, with sufficient detail about the types and sizes of housing units created so the public can assess the quality, benefits, and effect of the expenditures.

Response: Concur with the Findings and Recommendation. While the Board of Supervisors has no legislative oversight of the expenditures of a Redevelopment Agency's set-aside revenues, the issue of affordable workforce housing is a countywide priority. The Grand Jury's recommendation to monitor and publicize the use of these funds can serve as a catalyst in the promotion of housing within the County. In addition, state law does allow a Redevelopment Agency to contribute "excess uncommitted housing set-aside revenues" to the County's Housing Authority or designated Housing Agency. The County Human Services Agency, Office of Housing, could become a beneficiary of these revenues. This possibility serves as an incentive to track the expenditure of housing set-aside funds with the desire to work collaboratively with Redevelopment in their expenditure of "excess funds."

The County has no existing monitoring program, but the Office of Housing will work with the various city Redevelopment Agencies, the state Housing and Community Development Agency and the County Controller's office to facilitate the collection of information annually on the production of housing both long-term and on actual units completed. This report would in turn be submitted to the Board of Supervisors and circulated widely.

Over the next 60 days, the Office of Housing will meet with key staff from the County Controller's Office and with as many Executive Directors of Redevelopment Agencies as possible. The purpose of the meetings will be to get agreement on a plan for collecting information on the status of set-aside funds and on specific housing developments in the various stages of planning, construction and on developments completed.

The status of the County's efforts to collect this information will be provided quarterly to the Board of Supervisors.

Consolidation of San Mateo County Transportation Agencies

Findings: The Board of Supervisors agrees in part, and disagrees in part, with the Grand Jury findings. The Board agrees there could be some benefits from the consolidation of local transit agencies and commends the Grand Jury for its comments and suggestions in that regard. However, the Board doesn't agree that a consolidated agency would necessarily provide more streamlined transportation policy and save money.

The Board agrees that the current transportation system provides satisfactory services and programs. However, the notion of inefficiency or duplication of effort may be more an impression rather than an operational reality. The Board agrees that one or more of the transportation agencies may be petitioned to provide funds for a project and may all be involved separately in the same project. On the other hand, the Board notes that petitions for funds are often to different sources and agency reviews are not identical in content or purpose. That is, each agency has access to unique funding sources and information in areas in which its expertise lies. The agency is then asked to review projects utilizing those areas of expertise. Rather than delaying or increasing the costs of projects without compensating benefit, this review process arguably allows each agency to focus and provide input on what it knows and does best.

Recommendations:

6.1 The County Board of Supervisors should study the savings in time and money if the three transportation agencies were consolidated.

Response: The recommendation is a useful one, but there are numerous impediments that should be addressed before any such study is undertaken. There are significant operational, legal and legislative obstacles that would have to be overcome before any consolidation could even be considered. Such obstacles include the reconciliation of the purposes, authority, financing and governance of the Transportation Authority, Sam Trans and C/CAG. That is, the differences in qualifications of the governing board members, statutory and stated powers and purposes, and funding and sources of funds, require significant and careful analysis before any benefits can be properly identified or evaluated. State legislation would be required to accomplish consolidation and the likelihood of such legislation would have to be explored.

6.2 If the study demonstrates that consolidation would be beneficial, the Supervisors should initiate the process.

Response: The Supervisors agree that if a study is undertaken and it shows that consolidation will provide a significant benefit to the public and such benefit outweighs the costs and risks of such a consolidation, then the Supervisors should explore initiating the process.