Merced leaders traveled to Sacramento this week. What challenges did they address?
Merced leaders traveled to Sacramento this week to share how the city is working with the community at large to overcome local challenges and foster a better Gateway to Yosemite.
The visit came after Merced Mayor Matthew Serratto and City Manager Stephanie Dietz were asked to speak at the League of California Cities’ City Leaders Summit Thursday at the state capital.
They discussed local strategies that are working to address emerging issues facing cities like Merced, Serratto told the Sun-Star. Key topics included the city’s community engagement process and its plan to alleviate the statewide housing crisis locally.
Serratto said it was exciting to be asked to share about Merced’s challenges and successes.
“We had a lot of positive feedback,” he said of the presentation.
The League of California Cities holds events throughout the year and advocates for cities through efforts with the Legislature, at the ballot box and in the courts, according to its website.
This week’s City Leaders Summit, held Wednesday through Friday, allowed city officials from throughout California to engage with legislators about key priorities, as well as attend seminars and discussions to learn more about how other city leaders are shaping their communities.
For example, the Merced officials shared with other city leaders how to better organize community priorities. They discussed how the city kicks off each year with a series of town halls with the community.
These more casual meetings allow deeper engagement with residents compared to formal City Council meetings. That feedback is then used to craft a list of goals and priorities for the year that are reflected in the city’s budget allocations.
The process creates a organized blueprint of priorities to follow, Serratto said.
“I think we’ve had a lot of success in that,” he said.
Community engagement in Merced has fostered a number of exciting partnerships between the city and the public, Serratto said. The mayor pointed to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce’s Mercado event and community cleanup days as a few recent successes.
Merced leaders discuss housing crisis
Summit attendees also gathered outside the Capitol Wednesday morning. They urged lawmakers to leverage some of the state’s estimated $68 billion budget surplus toward programs that achieve shared city and state goals, according to a league news release.
Among those top goals was a plea to allocate more funding for housing.
Although housing stock and affordability are two of the state’s most pressing issues, there is no dedicated state funding source to help stimulate housing production, the release said. Advocates urged Gov. Gavin Newsom and lawmakers to devote $500 million for a Housing and Economic Development Program.
The state-local partnership would help finance construction of housing, including affordable housing, and encourage development to achieve real progress toward housing production goals, the release said. Affordable homes have costs fixed so that lower-income occupants spend no more than 30% of their income on housing.
”Cities, including Merced, are all receptive to funding for affordable housing,” Serratto said.
During the Merced leaders’ summit presentation, Dietz and Serratto shared with attendees how the city has recently approached its housing issues.
The lack of housing supply and scarcity of affordable homes in Merced has been the city’s most publicly discussed issue over the last couple years. Merced leaders have adopted a number of new policies aimed at alleviating those woes, although some strategies have been criticized by elected officials and community members alike.
Serratto said he and Dietz on Thursday spoke about how Merced officials have considered a bevy of housing approaches, including encouraging homes to be affordable by design, increasing the flexibility of zoning and streamlining the entitlement process.
Most recently, the Merced City Council passed a resolution requiring housing developers to devote a minimum of 12.5% of units to affordable homes, with a few exemptions.
Although the policy passed, some officials expressed hesitancy on account of it representing inclusionary zoning — something that a majority of City Council members have consistently opposed.
Inclusionary zoning requires new market rate housing projects to allocate a certain percentage of units to affordable housing, thus integrating low-income homes within traditional market rate developments.
Rather than an inclusionary zoning approach, Merced leaders passed a broad plan last year that included several policy adjustments meant to tackle the housing crisis and lack of affordable options.
Those policy changes generally aligned with an “affordable by design” approach, meaning housing is built so that it is naturally brought to market at affordable prices without fixing costs.
“I think we all are sensitive to the fact that requiring developers to build something they’ll likely have no profit on, or even lose money, it’s a recipe for disaster,” Serratto said of the city’s housing approach. “But you need housing that’s affordable for all income levels.”
Some Merced officials and residents have criticized the city’s policy approach as not going far enough to provide affordable housing options. Critics have continued to advocate for stronger policies, including pleas for creating an affordable housing trust fund.
This story was originally published May 13, 2022 at 4:24 PM.
