The Rosenow Spevak Group has concluded that there are no significant conditions of physical and economic blight in Saratoga's downtown. While that may sound good, it's bad news when it comes to attempting to establish a redevelopment agency.

The Rosenow Spevak Group is an outside agency the city hired in 2004 to do a study on the Village area and report on the feasibility of establishing an RDA. However, for an RDA to be approved by the state, there must be significant physical and economic blight.

Assistant City Manager Lori Tinfow announced the results of the study at the meeting. "The village ad-hoc committee reluctantly accepted the conclusion,"
she said.

If an RDA had been approved, the city had a chance of making millions of dollars in property taxes. Instead of getting just a 4 percent return on the current property tax every year, Saratoga would get back a 100 percent return from the redevelopment area over the next 40 years.

"We're disappointed. This was a nice way of getting additional revenue," said Vice Mayor Norman Kline, who is also part of the Village ad-hoc committee.

He said that a change in the state law in 1993 had made it much more difficult to establish RDAs. "Many of our neighboring cities like Los Gatos and San Jose have redevelopment agencies. But they were all formed before 1993," Kline said.

The study found that business turnover rates in the Village to be around 10.25 percent. "The rate is better than the statewide failure rate of 13.7 percent, and comparable to the national failure rate of 9.8 percent," the study stated.

"Obviously the Village is not doing that badly. But we want it to do better," said Kline.

Mayor Kathleen King said that the city would have to look at new approaches to make the Village more attractive for businesses and customers.

"We're in the process of acquiring the Village sidewalks from Caltrans. We hope that when we do acquire the sidewalks, Caltrans will also give us some money to fix them," said King.

Kline indicated that the city might change the city parking ordinance and make it less strict.

"This will help existing businesses and make it more attractive for new businesses," said Kline.

If the ordinance is changed, existing businesses will have to provide a lesser number of parking spaces by law. "Businesses in the Village will spend less money buying up parking space. Additional parking spaces will be available for new businesses," Kline said.

The vice mayor said another option might be to help in the creation of a business improvement district. "This can be a group made up of existing business owners in the Village. They can tax themselves and then spend it on the redevelopment of the Village," said Kline.

The Saratoga City Council had first talked about the feasibility of establishing a redevelopment agency for business districts in the city in March 2004.