Counsel: City needs to decide fate of disbanded agency

There are a lot of questions out there about a recent state Supreme Court decision officially disbanding California’s redevelopment agencies, but at least now Costa Mesa has an idea of which question to ask.

At a redevelopment agency meeting Tuesday, Costa Mesa’s special counsel Celeste Brady said the city needs to figure out if it wants to create a housing agency to oversee the residential complexes its redevelopment agency used to handle, or hand the job over to the county.

“This is where cleanup is necessary,” Brady said. “They’re giving responsibilities and no money to carry it out.”

There are also financial incentives to keeping the project in-house, she said.

Brady told the agency members — who are also City Council members — that they should make a decision before the end of the month. City staff are also researching a $10-million-plus loan the city made to the agency years ago, to see if it’s eligible to be repaid under guidelines the supreme court laid out in its decision.

— Joseph Serna

Twitter: @JosephSerna