Rowland Unified and Mt. SAC administrators join oversight board for Industry’s Redevelopment Agency

Michael Gregoryk, vice president of Mount San Antonio College, and Ruben Frutos, deputy superintendent of the Rowland Unified are serving on the newly formed seven-member oversight board of Industry’s Redevelopment Agency.

The new era in the history of one the most powerful redevelopment agencies in the state began Tuesday with a clash of the titans between county Supervisor Gloria Molina and former redevelopment heads with the city of Industry.

Though Industry’s redevelopment agency was dissolved Feb. 1, as required by a state law passed last year, the divvying up of the agency’s assets and the paying off of its obligations began in earnest when Molina appointed herself to a state-mandated board to oversee the agency’s dissolution.

The newly formed seven-member oversight board met for the first time Tuesday and began discussing the legality of millions of dollars in contracts that it must decide by May 4 whether or not to pay. Some ongoing costs listed by Industry include: $73,000 a month for one law firm; $15,000 a month for a company to write laws and lobby; $2,000 a month for a consultant and $40,000 for a civil engineering company, among other related expenses.

Molina said her job will be to play a kind of county cop, to decide which of the expenses are legal obligations that need to be paid and which ones are not. She said she will make sure Industry follows the law when returning the property tax increment – collected for years by the redevelopment agency – to school districts, college districts, the county coffers and the county fire district.

“I supported redevelopment law but it has been so misused,” said Molina after the meeting. “Like when they put the whole city into a redevelopment zone. I disagreed with that from the day they did it.”

Read more in Steve Scauzillo’s story INDUSTRY.

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