Dear Editor,
Art College’s July 18 guest column in the Morgan Hill Times advocating the elimination of the RDA to erase the current deficit contained some misinformation.
First it is appropriate to know that Art was a very vocal member of an extreme local anti-tax group at the time of the RDA adoption/extension. Second he may have an axe to grind with the city.
Third he distorts and maligns a community visioning process which took place as part of the decision making on how to allocate funds from the RDA. Fourth he enlivens the lie that RDAs result in significant tax increases.
His paranoid vision of the process is characteristic for losers in any process. It couldn’t have been their weak and fatuous arguments that caused them to lose, it must have been a conspiracy by the winners. When it comes to the RDA, I regard our entire community as winners.
As one of the visioning project leaders, I can truthfully say that there was enormous and active participation by both sides at the time. It was an exhilarating demonstration of democratic decision making. Sadly for Art, his group was left in the dust when the votes were counted. I guess he can’t be blamed for a little sour grapes. It is embarrassing to be so far out of touch with the mainstream.
His attempt to claim that the many projects built by the RDA would have been possible without it are simply silly (community center, library, aquatics center, low income housing, etc). They wouldn’t have happened.
The July 19 Morgan Hill Times guest column by Morgan Hill City Councilman Steve Tate and Silicon Valley Leadership Group President and CEO Carl Guardino on the Santa Clara County Housing Trust discusses the fact that a mere $400,000 in Morgan Hill RDA funds was leveraged into $47 million for desperately needed lower income housing in Morgan Hill alone. That huge benefit is just the tip of the iceberg of benefits provided by the RDA, which does not raise taxes, but just keeps our local tax money here at home. Any tax increases resulting from RDAs keeping local money at home are more than offset by the increase in tax revenues resulting from the projects undertaken by RDAs.
I know that bad news has a bigger audience than good news, but the facts say that the RDA has been a huge benefit to our entire community. Let the good news prevail!
John N. Quick, Morgan Hill
