By Jason Islas
Lookout Staff

December 16, 2011 -- The Santa Monica City Council approved moving more than one quarter billion dollars from the Redevelopment Agency to the city's General Fund Tuesday.

The $267,667,608, which is slated for a wide range of capital projects, isn't new money but is part of the Redevelopment Agency's five-year implementation plan, which was adopted in 2009. The $267 million comes entirely from redevelopment funds.

“This is basically a clean up action,” Gigi Decavalles-Hughes, acting director of finance told The Lookout Thursday.

If you think of funds, like the General Fund and redevelopment funds, as bank accounts, what the City approved was basically moving money from one bank account to another, Decavalles-Hughes said.

Almost half of the money – approximately $111 million – is scheduled to go to low-to-moderate income housing projects or housing acquisition and rehabilitation throughout the city.

The Palisades Garden Walk and Town Square projects will receive almost $48 million with another $47 million slated for Civic Center improvements.

More than $5 million will go to help fund the Expo light rail station improvements, which the city estimates could cost as much as $9.5 million.

Another $6.5 million will be set aside for improving traffic signals in Santa Monica and repairing or repaving streets.

Funding for the Pico Branch Library – $11 million of it – is included in the lump sum, as is money for a slew of other projects.

Santa Monica contracted with the Redevelopment Agency to handle these projects, Decavalles-Hughes said. Transferring the money to the General Fund was done for accounting purposes, she said.

Decavalles-Hughes said the move was not an effort to quickly tie-up redevelopment funds before the State tries to end redevelopment agencies as a way of finding revenue sources to bridge its budget shortfall.

“We started last September, way before the budget proposal by the governor,” she said.

Back in March, the State Assembly struck down a provision in Governor Jerry Brown's budget that would have eliminated redevelopment agencies throughout the state.

When the Council considered how to allocate $100 million of RDA money in May, City staff warned that the council should move quickly to allocate the RDA money, enter into contracts and issue bonds before the state legislature could pass Governor Jerry Brown's proposal to eliminate California's redevelopment agencies.

However, Decavalles-Hughes said, “We are not expediting any projects.”

When the state budget eventually passed in June, the City was required to pay $33 million of RDA funds to the state in order to keep the Santa Monica's Redevelopment Agency in operation.

Currently, the State is locked in a legal battle with the California Redevelopment Association and the California League of Cities.

The future of RDAs in the state remains uncertain while the case goes before the State Supreme Court.

Devacalles-Hughes said it is still unclear how far the State can go to get redevelopment funds from cities.