The Wealthy Truly Have It better!

Millionaire farmer and developer, Mike Sandhu, is one of Tracy’s wealthiest residents – a self-proclaimed One-Percenter – who is enjoying taxpayers subsidizing his development investments thanks to Council Member Veronica Vargas.

Millionaire Mike Sandhu is benefiting from the City Council’s 4-1 vote on March 2nd to spend an additional $499,942 of taxpayer dollars on preparing Vargas’ Downtown Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) Specific Plan, of which he is a major landowner. He is also benefiting from the preparation of the Westside Specific Plan (formerly known as Tracy Gateway) of which $500,000 of taxpayer money has also been allocated. Sandhu is one of the major landowners in that development. Read more about it here.

This stuff happens all the time, right?

No. But then not every developer has a City Council Member like Veronica Vargas in their corner. The common practice is for developers such as Sandhu to pay for the necessary studies required for their project. Environmental Impact Reports (EIRs) are expensive. It is because they are so expensive that developers pay for the studies on behalf of the cities in which they are trying to build. That is the normal process in planning departments throughout California. 

And as we have highlighted in previous posts, Millionaire Mike Sandhu already has concept site plans done for DeNovo to use as part of the TOD Specific Plan. The same goes for Westside. He understands that these Specific Plans are doing the dirty work for him saving him significant amounts of money. 

Millionaire Mike Sandhu’s $10-million 34,500 square foot 19-bathroom, 15-bedroom home (read more about it here).