San Mateo County prepping for regional bond push

San Mateo County supervisors voted 3-1, with Dave Pine absent and Ray Mueller against, to move forward with a staff-recommended outreach schedule to help develop its expenditure plan. The staff schedule calls for a countywide kickoff event to take place this winter followed by engagement with city councilmembers and staff, and consultation with community housing partners through the summer of 2024 and more general public engagement occurring in the fall. The final adoption of the plan would occur in the spring of 2025.

The measure calls for 52% of jurisdictional allocations to go toward housing production, 15% to preservation and 5% to tenant protection measures. The remaining 28% of revenue would be for flexible funding for other housing initiatives. The county’s allocation, broken down by category, would include $517 million for production, $149 million for preservation, $50 million for protections, $278 million in flexible funding and $52 million for administration, though those figures would be doubled if the measure is $20 million.

“We have a lot of flexibility to do things that we think make the most sense locally in San Mateo County and that’s why we’re planning to begin our outreach right now. We really want to get into it as soon as we can across the 21 jurisdictions. We want to start to get the feedback from the cities and other stakeholders about how to prioritize those monies,” Department of Housing Director Ray Hodges said during Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting.

Asked about whether the county has the capacity to receive such a large influx of money and then spend it effectively, Hodges said staff would have no problem. The county and the cities within it are expected to build 47,687 homes within the next eight years under the state’s Regional Housing Needs Allocation cycle, more than 19,000 of those needing to be affordable for households at very-low- and low-income levels.

“The passage of this bond would be an incredible investment in our county and specifically for our most vulnerable communities and residents and I believe our board has clearly articulated multiple times our commitment to both equity and meeting the need of housing and these two are interwoven,” Supervisor Noelia Corzo, a county representative on ABAG, said. “This is an opportunity like we’ve never seen before to truly advance equity.”

If the bond were to pass, 5% of the total revenue would go toward supporting administrative work, Hodges said. The bond would need a supermajority of voter support, or two-thirds of ballots cast in favor of approval, for it to pass unless a separate measure, Assembly Constitutional Amendment 1, is approved, which would reduce the approval threshold for housing and infrastructure measures to 55% of the vote.

Mueller, the lone vote against the resolution, clarified his support for the plan as long as the community engagement portion of the plan was moved to after the election. As proposed by staff, engagement would take place around the time of the election which Mueller said could be perceived as illegally campaigning for the measure.

“I believe the BAHFA goals are laudable and the reasons for the bond are all deserving of voter consideration. The concerns I was raising were not against the bond,” Mueller said. “It really is a concern about how the community engagement portion relates to the law on campaigns.”

County Attorney John Nibbelin acknowledged Mueller’s concerns and asserted county staff would have to be careful with how it presented information. The county can legally provide unbiased educational material on a ballot measure, he said, noting the County Attorney’s Office would work closely with staff to ensure communication abides by the law.