Council May Vote to Spare Redevelopment Agency

The Loma Linda City Council may vote to save its redevelopment agency as it returns from a month-long hiatus to a busy agenda Tuesday night.

The city is proposing to comply with the measures laid out by two bills signed into law earlier this year by Governor Jerry Brown that elminates the agencies as they exist now, and replaces them with a program that requires cities pay millions into a separate fund.

Loma Linda is one of many agencies backing a lawsuit filed by the League of California Cities and California Redevelopment Association that challenges the constitutionality of bills. The state Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case.

The two bills -- AB 1x26, which eliminates the agencies in their current form, and AB 1x27, which allows cities to keep their agencies as long as the city pays into a fund that would used for the state’s educational system -- violate Proposition 22, the constitutional amendment passed by California voters in November 2010, according to the petition.

Councilman Stan Brauer will ask city officials about the future of drive-through businesses in the city.

This comes on the heels of a June discussion over a proposed McDonald's restaurant on the corner of Barton Road and Mountain View Avenue. The McDonald's would be one of several businesses to be added to the location.

Several concerned citizens expressed their concerns about the restaurant to both the City Council and Planning Commission at separate meetings in June.