Politics & Government

File Under Awesome: Unincorporated Community Volunteers Find $72,000

After discovering that tax increments from a San Lorenzo McDonald's had been misallocated to Hayward, community members went searching for other misdirected cash. They found plenty.

Thanks to a few eagle-eyed  unincorporated residents, the Alameda County Redevelopment Agency has reclaimed some $72,000 in annual sales tax increments that were being syphoned off into San Leandro and Hayward. 

Those increments are the agency's bread basket, the cash it uses to fund projects like the San Lorenzo Library and the Ashland Youth Center. And the county might have spent years without realizing its neighbors were gleaning its fields, were it not for a McDonald's on Hesperian Boulevard. 

Though it falls within the San Lorenzo redevelopment district, tax increments from the restaurant were falling into deeper pockets in Hayward. 

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That got folks to thinking—what else are we missing?

So armed with maps from the agency, volunteers from Ashland, Cherryland and San Lorenzo fanned out across the unincorporated community, looking for businesses that weren't being counted. 

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They found plenty of them—auto-body shops in Cherryland, eateries in Ashland, a gas station and a transmission repair in San Lorenzo. (Castro Valley businesses had all apparently been accounted for). 

All told, eight Ashland businesses had been allocated to San Leandro. Twenty businesses in Cherryland and a grand total of two San Lorenzo concerns — which, between them, accounted for nearly half the haul — had been misdirected to Hayward.  

Though the communities won't get credit for more than a few months back, after some intense accounting, San Lorenzo alone can expect a cool million for its efforts over the next few years—and that's nothing to sneeze at. 


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