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Walnut Creek is considering fee breaks for developers and offering small business assistance loans as well as sharing new property or sales tax revenue generated by a project.
When cities and counties increase developer fees, logic suggests that new construction will decrease. Less homes and commercial property means fewer businesses and less tax revenues. Yet in some California areas the fee wars continue and in others, common sense is proving its worth.
California builders received encouragement on October 14, 2009 when the state Senate approved extension of the successful $10,000 tax credit that stimulated thousands of new-home sales this past spring and summer. The Senate voted 35-1 to reauthorize the use of $30 million in credits not awarded during the first program. That should allow the state to give tax credits to about 4,300 more buyers of new unoccupied homes.
Here's another example of a Washington D.C. council establishing one-size-fits-all rules that don't consider variations on the size of a new home construction project or remodels.
Benicia is receiving about $200,000 of the $93 million in Federal Neighborhood Stabilization Funding aimed at putting new life into communities hard hit by the foreclosure crisis. Vacaville will get about $1.1 million, Dixon around $289,000, Fairfield about $2.3 million and Solano County will receive about $340,000. Read more about it at The Vacaville Reporter.
