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Old Horton Plaza Department Store Due For Wrecking Ball?
RE "Horton Plaza is one beautiful shopping center IMO!": I've enjoyed shopping there in the past, but some stores I used to shop at simply no longer exist post-Crash of 2008.— November 7, 2010 6:35 p.m.
Keeping Southwestern College Credits If Accreditation Is Lost
I am greatly concerned because the self-studies needing to be done by administration, faculty and students at Southwestern College are not multiple-guess or fill-in-the-blank pre-prepared form documents. The necessary responses to WASC recommendations must not only be written, published for constituent group review, assembled into a comprehensive whole, debated, revised and agreed upon -- paragraph by paragraph by all of the above groups working together in several subcommittees -- but must also be implemented in a convincing fashion by the March 2011 final WASC inspection visit. SWC is in overtime, the clock is winding down with SWC on its own ten yard line, and there are no time outs remaining. WASC probation for Southwestern College coming in late 2009, after nearly two decades of unmet WASC recommendations, means that there is no automatic extension of accreditation for ANY unmet recommendations for WASC Standards of Accreditation compliance but a loss of it on demand by US Dept. of Education to WASC.— November 7, 2010 6:22 p.m.
Proposition D Thumbed Down Overwhelmingly
RE "Blum has a lot of explaining to do. So do regents. Will anybody ask the questions?" and http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2010/oct/21/pu… : I've already made my comments on who needs to do the asking with respect to California community colleges in another thread following "Public Records Suggest Southwestern College Used Public Funds Frivolously". Historically, students in the UC system have been well known for their concern and activism for many international issues. Now they must turn their scrutiny upon the UC Regents and the governance of their own university system. The UC students may lack the motivation, as none of those campuses is as close to losing accreditation as is Southwestern College. Those of us who served on San Diego City College's Western Association of Schools and Colleges accreditation self-study committees since the 1990s are just watching our own local version of what happened in Compton College in 2006 in dumbfounded amazement. I include this link below in case any Reader readers still have earned units at Southwestern College that have not yet been applied to a degree or transfer. The clock is ticking, and if (or more likely when) that campus cannot remove itself from probation by its last scheduled WASC inspection in March 2011, then the US Department of Education will require WASC to end Southwestern's accreditation. http://www.sandiegoreader.com/weblogs/encanto-gas…— November 7, 2010 6:03 p.m.
SDG&E And UCSD Are Not PG&E And San Bruno, We Hope
RE "PG&E is now currently estimating the the total cost to itself may be over $1 billion": http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=12065…— November 7, 2010 4:38 p.m.
Old Horton Plaza Department Store Due For Wrecking Ball?
RE #3: The tax increment cap was not merely lifted to $9 billion from its previous $2.9 billion but rather eliminated entirely in legislation tied to the recent state budget talks, so that there is no legal limit to prevent that tax increment amount for redevelopment from surpassing $9 billion or more. The Westfield Group Horton Plaza site is completely within CCDC's project boundaries. http://www.ccdc.com/projects/interactive-map.html… Nathan Fletcher's earmark amendment to SB 863 contains no language restricting the use of tax increment funds, and does contain language that gives the earmark effect over all other statutory provisions in law as well as previous San Diego redevelopment agreements. http://www.sandiegoreader.com/weblogs/encanto-gas… With the cap eliminated, CCDC has no real limits on what it can draw from City tax revenues, and the state legislature has shown itself willing to change the laws on San Diego redevelopment as it pleases, when it pleases, as it has just recently to eliminate the cap. With that kind of draw on at least $6 billion and possibly more in future tax revenues, CCDC can easily write off the estimated $35 million from Horton Plaza retail and parking income that was to be paid until 2035 and give up land to City of San Diego for a park, in exchange for goodwill on the City Council AKA Redevelopment Agency to secure permission for future CCDC development to remove "blight." On the bright side, there is now no real reason why all overhead power lines in the CCDC project area can't be underground by 2012, unless the failure of Prop. D becomes a issuance ratings factor that reduces CCDC's ability to raise funds through debt offerings that are covered by future tax increment revenue to CCDC. If CCDC can't fund this "blight" improvement, then one wonders just how many local construction jobs were really anticipated from Fletcher's CCDC bailout earmark.— November 7, 2010 1:59 a.m.
Will Uptown Partnership Dissolve?
If the end of the current contract ends a $750,000 annual expense with very little to show for it in the public interest, and it is a sincere offer not to seek additional contracts, then LET'$ $AVE $OME!— November 6, 2010 7:35 p.m.
Public Records Suggest Southwestern College Used Public Funds Frivolously
I imagine that if there is a proof that I am a bigger idiot than any of the above, then they cannot be "absolute" idiots. I concur that, in a thread that has public policy implications such as this, references to any alleged idiocy made in a humorous vein can be misconstrued. Personally, I would instead offer a couple of hours of free tutoring in a subject of the idiot's choice. From all that I know, the Refried One is NOT an idiot... and he's pretty good in a phoblogger/sockpuppet hunt, especially so if his comment on not being re-elected hits the mark.— November 6, 2010 6:56 p.m.
Living an OBecian Life
Many sweet memories of OB, near the beach at the foot of Narragansett, when it was worth the walk from Old Town to OB for the company of my sisters from USD (for tutoring purposes only ;) I remember how one of them, both Dutch and Hindi in cultural heritage, could cause car accidents just by walking down the street...— November 6, 2010 3:26 p.m.
Mortgage Mess Could Hit Banks, Housing
RE "While Wall Street pigs feast in all this money the Fed is creating, no one looks at the danger: at some point, the dollar declines so much that the U.S. has difficulties selling its debt. Then interest rates have to go up to make our bonds marketable. And the party ends. Ignominiously. How many bubbles do we have to go through before our leaders learn that they are not healthy?": I still think it is the lack of analytical mathematical ability in those who are making the most consequential decisions on Wall Street (which includes other markets for both equity and debt) and in Washington. The prime example is the totality of subprimality combined with lack of capitalization that gave us the Crash of 2008, where credit default swaps were being used to insure events but those CDSs were never legally insurance. Wall Street may not be the tail wagging the dog, but each of the bailed-out insurance and financial firms is like the flea that stopped the dog's forward progress by forcing it to sit in one place and scratch. All together, that's a lot of scratching around without making any progress, accounting for much of the business world predictions of a lackluster 2011. We will continue to have bubbles as long as the people at the top are still in group-think mode and will chase any concept that promises high returns on little investment up front, no matter what the risk might be to themselves AND the rest of us. The trick will be to find the "bubble" that is actually beneficial for all of us, and where even after bursting, we will be in a much better position than we are in now, kind of like the German Army owning most of northern France even after losing the historically decisive Battle of the Marne. We may be old enough to remember the Marne.— November 6, 2010 8:29 a.m.
Who Runs Our Elections and How Safe Actually are They?
This whole thing has me holding my head in my hands in pain and disgust. If I had the cash, I'd be investing it in firearms and canned goods instead of solar panels, batteries and jumper cables.— November 5, 2010 9:07 p.m.