[I am writing this commentary from Santa Barbara, where today I will be on hand for a special ceremony at the Ronald Reagan Ranch Center here, to commemorate the 20th Anniversary of the "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" speech. I’ll be bringing you footage of the event, as well as coverage of a trip I took to "Rancho Del Cielo" — the Reagan Ranch — tomorrow morning! – Flash]
It’s been a little while since I have penned anything on the goings on in the City of Anaheim. FR readers may recall that I took the folks at Disney to task for pushing a city-wide ballot measure that would create ‘ballot box’ zoning in close proximity to Disneyland — but not IN Disneyland. In otherwords, other property owners would have onerous regulations placed on them, while the Disney Corporation would not. Anyways, you can read more about what they call the "SOAR" plan in my previous column.
All of the broo-haha has come about in Anaheim because of two things — the first was that long ago (before any current member of the City Council was in office) some deals were made with Disney that, frankly, disadvantaged other nearby property owners. Fast forward to now, where there is a property owner a few blocks from Disneyland who wants to build…condominiums (gasp!). To make a (very) long story short, the Anaheim City Council voted (prudently) to allow these condos to be built (though, I might add, with unfortunate compromises on the part of the applicant). Now the Walt Disney Corporation has decided to ‘appeal’ this decision to all Anaheim voters, through a referendum.
I decided to write this piece because I feel like the main stream media is misreading this issue at hand. I keep reading columns and editorials (like this one) that seem like there is some sort of ‘battle’ taking place between the Magic Kingdom and advocates of so-called ‘affordable housing’ – even Dana Parsons, a prolific columnist at the L.A. Times makes it sound like the issue is whether there should be government-fixed-rate cheap housing in the immediate proximity of Disneyland.
Care to read comments, or make your own about today’s Daily Commentary?
**There is more – click the link**
June 12th, 2007 at 12:00 am
“Going down the path of making land-use zoning decisions based on which uses generate more cash for local government is a terrible way to go.”
Right, Jon. It’s often called the “fiscalization of land use.” More and more local governments, although wrong-headed, are in a situation where land use is looked at from a sheer dollars standpoint. The more the state has raided local gov’t of “locally generated” property tax dollars and provided false give-backs like Prop 172, the more locals have relied on sales taxes, thus driving land use decisions away from housing and towards big boxes and other sales tax generators.
A sensible local official would, alternatively, look at a balanced approach. Instead of just looking at the short term sales tax, they would equally look at the long term benefit of providing housing opportunities because of the stability provided to a community in both new property taxes AND folks shopping locally.
If you live across the street from Downtown Disney, chances are you’ll go there more often than the typical tourist does!
June 12th, 2007 at 12:00 am
“If you live across the street from Downtown Disney, chances are you’ll go there more often than the typical tourist does!”
Exactly. As Jon said, the most likely people that will buy this condos will be people that love Disney. Consequently, they will make frequent trips to the resort area and generate quite a bit of revenue for the mouse.
Additionally, my suspicion is the value of these condos will be quite a bit more than the average simply because of the location and number of Disney lovers out there. So it seems like a win-win for everyone.