Sacramento promised to require community benefits from developers. Has the city followed through?

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In 2021, the city of Sacramento promised to require real estate developers pursing major construction projects to provide benefits to local neighborhoods.

More than two years after the draft law was initially reviewed by the city council, negotiations remain in limbo — with advocates having awaited next steps from the city for almost six months.

It started when the city settled a lawsuit with nonprofit Sacramento Investment Without Displacement over gentrification concerns surrounding the billion-dollar UC Davis Aggie Square development. Then, the city pledged to pass an ordinance requiring that every future major development funded with public money commit to a benefits agreement.

The original deadline for the city to bring this ordinance to the city council for consideration — January 2022 — has long since passed. Progress has stalled. Multiple rounds of feedback from the city council on the draft have further delayed the ordinance.

In February, the city council decided to hold a workshop on the ordinance but has yet to set a date.

Kim Williams, executive director of SIWD and hub manager of nonprofit Building Healthy Communities, is one of the community leaders negotiating the ordinance with city staff.

“We see how the city moves when they’re prioritizing something,” Williams said. “And so it’s clear to us that it’s not as high of a priority (for them) as it is for us.”

Community oversight

The work surrounding the ordinance follows a practice to demand institutions provide benefits for local neighborhoods as part of new development projects. Benefits may include funding for affordable housing construction, local hiring requirements and job training programs for residents.

Williams said a key sticking point in negotiations has been SIWD’s push for more tangible structures that allow local residents to directly oversee and enforce developer commitments.

In the Aggie Square benefits agreement, oversight involves a “meet and confer” process between the city and the developer if commitments are not being met. The city also holds open meetings every year for residents to discuss the progress on benefits.

City spokeswoman Jennifer Singer pointed to the language of the current draft ordinance, which states that the city will seek the “input of the community” when setting the terms and evaluating the implementation of the agreement.

But to SIWD, this is not enough.

“We want there to be a community board or oversight committee … consisting of residents from those communities to be a part of that work,” Williams said. “And that’s probably been one of the biggest pushbacks that we’ve had.”

Community leaders from Meadowview, Tahoe Park and Little Saigon similarly expressed the sentiment that developers and institutions should directly involve local communities more in their projects.

“It’s their lives and livelihoods at stake,” said Jesse Reese, president of the Meadowview Neighborhood Association.

A look back on Aggie Square

The desire for more direct neighborhood involvement in benefits agreements is exemplified in the case of the Aggie Square agreement, approved in 2021.

The Community Benefits Partnership Agreement, which secured more than $50 million in investment for communities near Aggie Square from UC Davis, the city of Sacramento and the University’s development partner, has long been set in stone. But some community leaders believe that the agreement lacked sufficient involvement from the affected neighborhoods — a question that becomes critical as the city’s work on the ordinance stalls.

“The city (and) UC Davis are like, ‘Look at us, we’re part of a community benefits agreement, we’re so great, this is a model,’” said Adrian Rehn, president of the Oak Park Neighborhood Association. “I roll my eyes when I see that.”

In 2020, SIWD sued UC Davis for its plans to construct Aggie Square, arguing that the project would exacerbate gentrification in the surrounding low-income communities of color. To settle the case, UC Davis signed a legal agreement with the city and its developer to provide benefits such as affordable housing and jobs reserved for local residents.

“SIWD supported the (agreement) even though it didn’t include them,” Rehn said. “They didn’t want it not to happen ... We’re a little bit less enthused. We think it’s not enough. We think it’s better than nothing, but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the need.”

Intended to protect neighborhoods from the burdens of development, community benefits agreements rely, in theory, on community input.

The OPNA first received a 92-page copy of the agreement draft on a Thursday night in April 2021, Rehn said, and the city council voted on it the following Tuesday.

City spokeswoman Gabby Miller said a draft of the agreement was made public for review a week before the council meeting. She also pointed to a Community Engagement Advisory Group established by the city and UC Davis to gather input.

Miller and UC Davis spokeswoman Erin García both cited more than 90 public meetings and forums as part of a strategy to collect neighborhood feedback during the development of the agreement.

But Rehn said these meetings were “mostly presentations” by the developing parties and “not particularly interactive” for residents who attended.

Williams also described these meetings as more of an “update” rather than opportunities for meaningful engagement. She said she believes local residents approached SIWD specifically due to the limited chances for direct involvement in these meetings.

And by and large, the primary form of neighborhood control over the funds promised in the agreement is the Aggie Square Community Partnership, which will allocate $150,000 annually to local businesses and community projects for the first three years following the launch of Aggie Square.

García said the fund will “continue to support community-identified priorities thereafter,” although the agreement includes no further details about the fund after these three years.

The ASCP fund will be overseen by a board consisting of 11 seats — six of which will be filled by community representatives from the neighborhood associations of Oak Park, South Oak Park, Tahoe Park, Elmhurst, and Colonial Heights. The board’s first meeting is slated for late August.

“It’s really the only example (of meaningful community oversight),” Rehn said. “And it’s several hundred grand for a $1 billion project, so it’s really not much.”

Moving forward

Williams said that through the ordinance, SIWD is working to give neighborhoods a larger role in overseeing future benefits agreements.

“Who better to do that than the people who actually live there?” Williams said. “That’s a big point for us that we continue to push for, but we haven’t gotten there yet.”

In contrast with the city council hearings on the draft ordinance, the unscheduled workshop will be led by a facilitator as SIWD and city staff continue to negotiate requirements.

The ordinance has also received pushback from some business leaders, who believe that the requirement of community benefits will deter development. One major point of contention has therefore been the threshold at which planned developments will fall under this law — in other words, which developments are “significant” enough to be required to provide benefits.

Williams said that benefits agreements should be seen as opportunities to strengthen connections with their neighbors, rather than obstacles to economic growth.

“If you (think about) a developer coming into a city, coming in feeling like of course their bottom line is to make some money, but also to be a good partner within the community … What that means to a city or neighborhood — to be able to say, ‘We’re in partnership with this group’ — I think could be an opportunity for developers to do responsible development in communities,” Williams said.