Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Mayor Faulconer's folly
Budget analyst says "the city does not have enough resources"
Kevin Faulconer
In his state of the city address yesterday evening (January 14), mayor Kevin Faulconer said he wants to repair long-neglected infrastructure, take action on expansion of the convention center, and build a stadium for the Chargers that, he claims, will be fair to taxpayers.
It's not unusual for politicians to present ideas that economically can't happen: dealing with the infrastructure is all the city can afford — if that.
Los Angeles is talking about building a stadium without taxpayer money, but nothing similar will happen in San Diego, particularly since the Spanos family will only put in $200 million. Any stadium will cost $1 billion, and one with a retractable dome, which will supposedly serve as a convention-center expansion, would cost at least $1.5 billion.
Judith Grant Long
The Spanos family's $200 million will most likely include naming and advertising rights; the actual cash outlay could be less than $100 million. An exhaustive study by Judith Grant Long while she was at Harvard showed that the costs of land, infrastructure, operations, and lost property taxes normally add 25 percent to the taxpayers' bill. These costs are generally underestimated by the team and the city. On average, taxpayers pick up 78 percent of the cost, she calculated.
Andrea Tevlin
San Diego does not have that kind of money unless taxes are raised sharply or pension benefits of city workers are cut. Independent budget analyst Andrea Tevlin, studying the mayor's financial outlook for 2016–2020, said "the city does not have enough resources to meet all the needs of the community." And she was not assessing costs of a stadium or convention center expansion.
Faulconer said he favors building a stadium at the current Mission Valley site or building one downtown that would double as a convention-center expansion. But there are multiple problems with the Mission Valley site, including the current overcrowding of Mission Valley itself, as well as environmental questions. The hotel industry is split on whether a convention-center expansion should be distant from the current facility. Most hoteliers seem to prefer a structure contiguous to the current center.
Jerry Sanders
Also, both Tevlin (in her December report) and Faulconer are counting on an improving economy. However, this year's volatile stock market and the plunge of key commodity prices such as in oil and copper do not portend a robust American economy. Economists generally predict recessions for Europe, Japan, Russia, and oil-exporting nations.
Faulconer says he will name a group of civic leaders to develop a plan to build a stadium. If past is prologue, those leaders will almost unanimously come from the corporate-welfare crowd that dominated committees named by Faulconer's predecessor, Jerry Sanders.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Mayor Faulconer's folly
Budget analyst says "the city does not have enough resources"
Mayor Faulconer's folly
Budget analyst says "the city does not have enough resources"
Kevin Faulconer
In his state of the city address yesterday evening (January 14), mayor Kevin Faulconer said he wants to repair long-neglected infrastructure, take action on expansion of the convention center, and build a stadium for the Chargers that, he claims, will be fair to taxpayers.
It's not unusual for politicians to present ideas that economically can't happen: dealing with the infrastructure is all the city can afford — if that.
Los Angeles is talking about building a stadium without taxpayer money, but nothing similar will happen in San Diego, particularly since the Spanos family will only put in $200 million. Any stadium will cost $1 billion, and one with a retractable dome, which will supposedly serve as a convention-center expansion, would cost at least $1.5 billion.
Judith Grant Long
The Spanos family's $200 million will most likely include naming and advertising rights; the actual cash outlay could be less than $100 million. An exhaustive study by Judith Grant Long while she was at Harvard showed that the costs of land, infrastructure, operations, and lost property taxes normally add 25 percent to the taxpayers' bill. These costs are generally underestimated by the team and the city. On average, taxpayers pick up 78 percent of the cost, she calculated.
Andrea Tevlin
San Diego does not have that kind of money unless taxes are raised sharply or pension benefits of city workers are cut. Independent budget analyst Andrea Tevlin, studying the mayor's financial outlook for 2016–2020, said "the city does not have enough resources to meet all the needs of the community." And she was not assessing costs of a stadium or convention center expansion.
Faulconer said he favors building a stadium at the current Mission Valley site or building one downtown that would double as a convention-center expansion. But there are multiple problems with the Mission Valley site, including the current overcrowding of Mission Valley itself, as well as environmental questions. The hotel industry is split on whether a convention-center expansion should be distant from the current facility. Most hoteliers seem to prefer a structure contiguous to the current center.
Jerry Sanders
Also, both Tevlin (in her December report) and Faulconer are counting on an improving economy. However, this year's volatile stock market and the plunge of key commodity prices such as in oil and copper do not portend a robust American economy. Economists generally predict recessions for Europe, Japan, Russia, and oil-exporting nations.
Faulconer says he will name a group of civic leaders to develop a plan to build a stadium. If past is prologue, those leaders will almost unanimously come from the corporate-welfare crowd that dominated committees named by Faulconer's predecessor, Jerry Sanders.
Comments