Merced’s closer to making UC Merced part of the city. What are the benefits and drawbacks?
A longtime vision for the City of Merced and UC Merced’s entwined futures was catalyzed Feb. 16, as the City Council unanimously voted to initiate the first steps of annexing the university’s main campus into the city limits.
Although all on the council voted to support the item, it did not come without some discussion — as the positives of enhanced growth and sales tax revenues was weighed against the current housing shortage and other impacts.
“This is obviously a big decision,” said Mayor Matt Serratto prior to the 7-0 vote.
While the action taken on Feb. 16 by the City Council was a notable step in formally knitting UC Merced into the city proper, the plan has been in the works since the university’s inception more than 15 years ago. It’s also an explicit goal in Merced’s general city plan.
Plus, the main campus — which is on unincorporated county land near Lake Yosemite — has been formally linked to the city’s water and wastewater services since it first opened.
As part of that service agreement, UC concurred it would be annexed at a later time deemed appropriate by City Council. That appropriate time came to fruition with the approval of Assembly Bill 3312 in September.
Introduced by Assemblyman Adam Gray (D-Merced), the law permits just the campus to be annexed into the city via a connecting road strip — without also annexing any adjoining properties between the university and the city limits.
Bellevue and Lake roads can each serve as that connecting strip.
Other aspects of plan
Although no property other than the main campus is automatically merged with the city as a result of annexing the UC, properties directly bordering the campus may now request to be annexed as well.
That gives the city new options for annexations not previously available when discussions of possibly annexing nearly 8,000 north Merced acres began.
“These are decisions that will have long term consequences,” said Merced City Council member Bertha Perez.
A final north Merced annexation study will be presented publicly to City Council later in March.
Prior presentations have elicited both excitement and anxiety from property owners within the 7,600 acres of unincorporated Merced County land under consideration for possible annexation.
With City Council triggering the intent to annex the UC campus, the next step includes eight to 12 months of preparing the application and associated documents.
Weighing the impacts
The largely vacant area surrounding UC Merced is identified in the city’s general plan as a region ripe for growth.
The plan also has symbolic meaning, as the physical distance between the university’s rural main campus and the city’s downtown core is often seen as a metaphor for the local town-and-gown divide.
The city also stands to benefit financially from the annexation. Future development will undoubtedly lead to more dollars spent in the annexed regions — thus bringing in more valuable sales tax to the city.
The importance of sales tax to bolstering the city’s funds has been especially demonstrated during the COVID-19 pandemic, council members noted.
Sales tax revenues have helped the city weather the economic storm relatively well, city staff said, underscoring the importance of diverse sales tax sources during times of financial difficulty.
There’s no denying that having UC Merced within city limits will only help the city’s finances. Case in point, the campus’s inaugural economic impact report indicated a total of $514.6 million was contributed to Valley’s economy by the university in fiscal year 2018-19 alone, helping create 5,560 jobs.
And the campus’ importance to the region is only going to increase once the student population grows beyond 10,000 students in the years to come (its population last year was around 9,000).
But despite those fruitful benefits, the City Council emphasized the need to deliberately mitigate potential negative impacts of the plan before annexing the campus.
“We know that UC Merced has impacted the community, the people of Merced, in a negative way,” said City Council member Jesse Ornelas. “And those impacts weren’t intentional, they were unexpected.”
Ornelas noted Merced’s notorious housing difficulties, characterized by a burdensome low vacancy rate and higher housing prices than nearby Valley cities.
And UC Merced has played a role in increased housing prices over the year, some Merced realtors have said.
Going forward, Ornelas said, city leaders must do their due diligence to ensure focusing on the university doesn’t exacerbate these troubles for residents who are trying to make ends meet.
Serratto agreed, noting that the city must be intentional in its future planning around the UC and north Merced to avoid these — and other — possible problems.
“We have to develop in a way that doesn’t leave the rest of Merced forgotten,” Serratto told the Sun-Star.
The mayor explained that means continuing to prioritize south and central Merced, as well as focusing on infill throughout developed regions with vacancies. “We don’t want to encourage sprawl,” Serratto said.
Another component that’s key to consider is preserving farmland while more north Merced developments crops up.
Still, the mayor emphasized the importance of continuing to develop the area around UC Merced.
In many ways, the campus is void of the amenities enjoyed by residents living just a few miles away within the city limits, leaving students poorly served. “It’s a huge issue,” Serratto said. “The UC has been there for 15-plus years and there’s nothing out there, not even a gas station.”
The lack of amenities around the campus contrasts starkly with the fact that UC Merced is — and will continue to be — the primary economic driver for the City of Merced, Serratto said.
“The UC deserves, and needs, some sort of development to make their lives better and more convenient,” he said.
Campus students will be able to vote in city elections
Another element is annexation’s impact on City Council districts, which may need to be reevaluated.
But district boundaries already go through an automatic review after each census, thus aligning well with the 2020 census count.
Once the UC campus is part of the city, students living there will have the opportunity to cast their votes in city elections.
Some residents in the past have expressed concerns about handing over too strong of a voice to thousands of UC students in elections.
However, only UC students who are both registered to vote and choose their Merced address for registration would be eligible.
City staff said they didn’t have exact numbers readily available, but said that proportion of students is relatively low. Plus, many UC students already live off campus and are integrated within the City of Merced, staff said.
This story was originally published February 18, 2021 at 3:28 PM.
