There hasn’t been anything of note in either the City Council or Planning Commission agendas over the past few weeks. However, there are two items of interest in the agenda for next Monday’s meeting.  The first is a proposal Mayor Pringle first announced at the State of the City last month to refund half of all city sales tax on large purchases.  The second is a zoning code amendment to help minimize the opportunity for graffiti in Anaheim.

Item #10 – Providing a partial rebate of local sales tax to encourage and promote major purchases

If approved, this new program called the Anaheim Purchase Initiative (API), will provide a rebate on all purchases over $20,000 made in Anaheim. The City of Anaheim receives 2% of the price of goods bought in the city as its portion of sales tax. API will refund half of its share of the sales tax, 1% of the purchase price, back to the buyer. The net affect for buyers will be a 1% reduction in the cost of goods in the City of Anaheim.

This program is a bit of a gamble, even the staff report says there is an unknown impact on the City’s general fund. The logic behind API is that businesses will take advantage of this program and start spending money now instead of waiting until the economic recovery is more established. In other words, this will move spending up and hopefully jump start new growth for Anaheim businesses. The risk is that companies will take advantage of this program now instead of spending money later. If Orange County faces a double dip recession, API might not spur the medium-term growth and renewed economic vitality that is hoped for.

Even knowing that API is a gamble, this is a good proposal.  If we do suffer a double dip recession, and Anaheim doesn’t see the returns on investment that might be expected from this program, all that will be lost is a bit of tax revenue.  An amount that will be a drop in the bucket considering the entire size of Anaheim budget.  However, if we’re truly coming out of this recession and this program is successful, this will spur growth in Anaheim, buoy its employment base, and in the long run increase the desirability of Anaheim as a place to live and work.  This, in turn, will raise property values and property taxes, which will increase the City’s general fund many times over the cost of this program.  API has its risks, but they are risks worth taking.

Item #15 – Zoning amendments relating to various anti-graffiti measures

Over the past couple of years, Anaheim has been cracking down on the graffiti throughout the city.  The City itself has the Anaheim Community Anti-Graffiti Effort and residents have made Anaheim Beautiful much more active in combating graffiti.  Now, the City is working on finding ways to change our built environment to discourage graffiti.  While I’m a big proponent of using design to change behavior, this specific proposal is too narrow in scope.

First, there is this change:

.020 Landscape Maintenance. All landscaping, including parkway landscaping, shall be maintained in a neat, healthy and clean condition. A regular maintenance schedule shall be submitted as part of the landscape and irrigation plans. Any dead or diseased plant shall be immediately removed and appropriately replaced in accordance with the requirements of this chapter. All pruning or trimming of required trees and specimen trees shall be in compliance with the standards for street trees adopted by the International Society of Arboriculture, and consistent with Chapter 13.12 (Street Trees) of the Anaheim Municipal Code.

If I’m reading this correctly, if a plant next to a wall or fence dies, the property owner will be forced to replace that plan with a non-deciduous vines or shrubbery to cover the wall. It doesn’t matter if the vines or shrubbery fit in with the overall landscaping of the property, or if the wall has been a target for graffiti, the property owner will have to comply with this section of the zoning code or be at risk of being cited for being out of compliance with code.

I do understand designing new developments to address the problem of graffiti and even to work towards reducing the amount of graffiti on existing buildings.  But this proposal seem onerous and expensive for Anaheim’s property owners.  This code amendment imposes a one-size-fits-all approach to addressing Anaheim’s graffiti problem.  There are many ways of changing the existing built environment to reduce graffiti.  The City of Anaheim needs to explore other alternatives for property owners.  Additional vegetation on walls and fences is just one solution to this problem, it is not the only one.

Yesterday was the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce’s annual State of the City event.  There were a number of interesting initiatives that both the City and the Chamber are attempting that I hadn’t heard about before.  I’ll post more about these once I have a chance to do a bit more research, but from the event yesterday, here is a short list of developments that were of interest:

• The Chamber is trying to form an Enterprise Zone in Anaheim.  They didn’t mention where in the city the Enterprise Zone would be, but I would expect that The Canyon would be the most likely place.
• The Mayor announced an initiative that he is trying to get adopted by the City Council to refund one half of the City’s part of the sales tax on all large purchases of $20,000 or more.  He wants this program to run from February until June, in order to help spur the local economy and encourage large purchases from local businesses.
• The Anaheim Fixed-Guideway Transit Corridor has been renamed Anaheim Rapid Connection (ARC).  Additionally, Anaheim has launched a new website and branding campaign for all of the City’s transportation related projects called A Connext.  This is especially exciting because it shows the City’s understanding that all of our transportation amenities form an interdependent network for people to move around the city.
• Finally, Mayor Pringle talked about the successes of AC-NET over the past year and also mentioned that the City received a $5.8 million grant to help create a smart grid for the City and encouraging the creation of renewable energy for Anaheim.  This is particularly timely for Anaheim 2060 because there is a post on renewable energy scheduled to be posted later today.