Community Organizers called for increased oversight of the spending of national stimulus funds in Sacramento this Wednesday at the Green Living Center in Sacramento's Boulevard Park neighborhood. The organizers were a small group of real estate developers, members of nonprofit organizations, and others who had gathered to discuss the formation of the Economic Opportunity Commission, a group devoted to using funds provided by the stimulus to develop Sacramento's poorer neighborhoods.

Jim Knapp, a longtime community organizer and Director of Development at the nonprofit organization Build America, said that such an organization was necessary to combat corruption in the city's handling of stimulus funds. Knapp inveighed against the close connections large developers have with city government, saying that it allowed graft and criminal circumvention of regulation on a large scale. He said that a small group of developers, including David Taylor and Angelo Tsakopoulos, had become billionaires over the past two decades by exploiting their connections to city government.

Knapp called a recent city council decision to give David Taylor $10 million dollars for the construction of three bars on K street "obscene." He went on to say, "We can't get them (the city council) to allocate money for homeless services, for transitional housing, for neighborhood job programs, for youth, but they will give $10 million dollars of redevelopment money away for bars."

Cline Moore, a local businessman and Executive Director of Build America, also commented on this decision, saying that it "takes normal market forces out of the picture and says, this person gets a hand up, a favor, because he's the city's golden boy." He described the city council as a "rubber stamp" that ignored the opposition from local business owners to the subsidy of Taylor's developments.

Both Knapp and Moore stressed the importance of keeping political pressure on the city government, saying that the EOC would be committed to "keeping their feet to the fire," to prevent further abuse of power by the council and others.

Moore said that the EOC would be an inclusionary group that would include green building firms, youth groups, homeless programs, elder care, and other interests. By combining these interests to lobby together, Moore says said they would be more effective at creating sustainable urban development guided by "a policy-driven, research-based plan."

According to Moore, "Sacramento is one of the regions hardest -hit by the housing crisis." He cited the hundreds of foreclosed and vacant properties in the Oak Park, Del Paso Heights, and South Natomas neighborhoods and went on to say, "These areas have been targeted for rehabilitation by SHRA." However, Moore then said that the SHRA plan neglected several vital issues related to what he called "neighborhood stabilization," a key phrase at the meeting.

Moore said "Neighborhood stabilization is not just about building houses, not just about putting up frames and selling them to speculators. Neighborhood stabilization is about lowering crime rates, increasing property values," and creating a close-knit business friendly community with a solid infrastructure.

The meeting was also addressed by former California Secretary of Health and Human Development Grantland Johnson. Johnson cautioned against focusing too much on one issue, saying, "if you're focused on one issue, that's OK, but it's hard to sustain, it's hard to make other people see what your common, underlying interests are." He also said that the overriding issue in Sacramento politics today was "a lack of transparency and forthrightness when it comes to public policy," an opinion shared by many of the meeting's other attendants.

At the meeting's conclusion, Moore reiterated the importance of quick action, saying "We are never going to get an opportunity like this again. We are never going to get these gifts from the government again, free money to do the right thing, and if we let these developers come in and build another martini bar, we'll just be scraping by with whatever crumbs are left."

Responses were solicited from the offices of Angelo Tsakopoulos and David Taylor, however as of press time no comments have been received. Maurice Chaney, Public Information Officer for the City, did release a response to the comments made by Moore and Knapp about Taylor's K street developments, saying "It’s important to remember that the City of Sacramento did its due diligence as part of this project proposal. It met with many stakeholders and other interested parties, including the midtown businesses, over several months to ensure that full participation and outreach was conducted to understand the issues and concerns." The full text of Chaney's response can be found here.