LAFCO Commissioners and the CFA – September 18, 2008
When AIM petitioners were gathering signatures in 2007, many Alamo residents were assured that a successful petition drive would only initiate a preliminary feasibility study, and nothing more. Few were told that the petition procedure mandated the actual legal process leading to a possible Town of Alamo. Still, on September 18, 2008, at the Creekside Community Church LAFCO hearing, Alamo residents believed the process would stop if the CFA prepared by Winzler & Kelly was found uneconomical to incorporate. However, all but one Commissioner, turned a deaf ear toward well qualified speakers, presenting very credible evidence, proving the 06-07 audited data seriously understated real dollar costs to support a new town. The numbers in the CFA study were cooked; it was the only way to show economic feasibility to incorporate Alamo. Research of public documents has failed to uncover a single feasibility study commissioned in California that did not favor creation of a new city!

Furthermore, at the hearing, LAFCO Commissioners never addressed the unfunded mandates left out of the CFA. An unincorporated area does not have to worry about these mandates. Incorporated towns and cities are forced to provide affordable housing quotas, create ramps, bathrooms, etc. under the Americans With Disabilities Act, and the list goes on and on. One law firm in San Francisco made millions suing restaurants under ADA. The Commissioners were silent, as was the CFA, on these probable costs.

In addition, the town will need an attorney to advise and protect the town bureaucrats from unhappy citizens, whose only recourse to a dispute may be a lawsuit. Insurance is not a bottomless pit, and a long, drawn out lawsuit is expensive for both plaintiff and defendant. Then there is the liability when someone gets hurt on public property. Again, the CFA is silent on these possible costs.

Much of the land in unincorporated areas is grandfathered in and codes and ordinances do not click in until the property changes hands. If Alamo becomes incorporated, there will be a year’s honeymoon for the transition; after that, expect another layer of local bureaucrats in partnership with currant county bureaucrats. By that time you will have learned to “stifle yourself” or move to Alaska where the Governor still thinks of America as “the land of the free, and the home of the brave.”