Amid a contentious Stockton City Council meeting that didn’t wrap until after midnight Tuesday, the council decided how to distribute millions in loans to affordable housing developers — and narrowly voted to lend roughly $5 million to two developers against the advice of city economic development staff.
The decision on the agenda Tuesday night focused on how to distribute millions the city has available in state and federal affordable housing money among multiple developers pitching projects that would, if completed, house Stockton’s lower-income residents.
After receiving applications from developers proposing to build new apartment complexes across the city — and judging each application according to the same standards — Stockton’s Economic Development Department recommended City Council lend $5 million to Visionary Home Builders to construct a 108-unit project, and about $4.2 million to the Delta Community Development Corporation to build a 66-unit complex.
But the council voted 4-3 to award a roughly $4.4 million loan to development group Brix to build a different project downtown, and about $1 million to yet another project — a veterans’ housing proposal to be located in south Stockton.
Delta Community Development would receive the remaining money, and the Visionary project wouldn’t receive any of the $5 million city staff had recommended, according to action the council ultimately took Tuesday.
Mayor Christina Fugazi and Councilmembers Mariela Ponce, Michele Padilla and Brando Villapudua voted “yes,” while Vice Mayor Jason Lee and Councilmembers Michael Blower and Mario Enriquez voted “no.”
Some councilmembers who voted “no” expressed puzzlement about why their colleagues were rejecting city staff’s conclusions about which developers should receive loans — conclusions staff reached following a vetting process the council had designed and approved.
“If you don’t do the work of following your own design, it will fail,” said Lee, who voted against lending to developers that hadn’t received city staff’s recommendation.
“We’re not rubber-stampers,” said Fugazi, who voted in favor of funding some of the non-recommended developers. “We make the final decision.”
Another hotly debated issue Tuesday included a vote on how to distribute roughly $6.6 million in surpluses from certain city accounts — and whether a police substation in south Stockton’s District 6 should be among those expenses.
The council voted unanimously to immediately cover certain time-sensitive costs — including $475,000 in legal expenses and costs associated with the Sousa Park Pool — while postponing a vote on the substation money and other proposed purchases.
Before the council adjourned in the early hours Wednesday, it barely had time to hear members of the public who’d waited since the meeting began to weigh in on an agenda item on whether city facilities bearing Cesar Chavez’ name should be renamed in the wake of an investigative report into multiple allegations that Chavez had sexually abused women in the farmworkers’ movement.
City Council will hold its portion of the discussion at a future meeting, councilmembers decided.