Who Took Down Stockton?
Stockton, California boasts the most foreclosures in America and is the most bankrupt city in national history. This short documentary seeks to discover the cause behind the intended rise and subsequent fall of a city run into the ground by a combination of optimism, idealism, and greed.
The audience is given a brief history of Stockton's status as an impoverished neighborhood during the economic downturn of the 1970s and how, in the late 1990s, a new mayor and town manager aimed to turn things around through the development of a vast stadium and lavish downtown waterfront district. The area was experiencing a housing boom at the time, but although there was good tax revenue coming from the housing swell, the city council also sought another means to pay for the development project; they would sell $47M in municipal bonds.