Comments by a2zresource | San Diego Reader

a2zresource

San Diego City Council Stalls Vote on New Energy-Saving Streetlights

OK, I got ambitious. http://sdreader.stickywebs.com A the top of that web page, there are permanent links to my copies of the Fitch Ratings supporting documents to the City Council training in debt servicing from October 11, 2010. The most in-depth document is "Fitch - U.S. Local Govt Tax - Supported Rating Criteria Dec 2009" but the PowerPoint presentations generally make for a faster read. I am also making these docs available to the people on the Southwestern College threads, as it may help faculty and staff in asserting their rights to open shared SWCCD decision-making processes. I'll be expanding that because we all have to live with government, and government means bonds are being issued, typically secured with our future tax payments in mind for covering the debt. What we don't about government debt is why government debt is drowning us.
— October 24, 2010 10:15 p.m.

Public Records Suggest Southwestern College Used Public Funds Frivolously

OK Kiddies: As part of an unrelated request RE Fitch Ratings training of San Diego City Council on debt servicing, I now have the four supporting City Clerk's documents located at: http://sdreader.stickywebs.com Interested members of the Southwestern College academic community should feel free to download any and all of those documents, especially "Fitch - U.S. Local Govt Tax - Supported Rating Criteria Dec 2009" as it may help you to understand how SWCCD bonds are rated and why they got rated that way. Southwestern College's accreditation probation and possible loss of accreditation may be significant factors in lowering the individual ratings of SWCCD-issued general obligation debt in the form of construction and other bonds, as it goes to the credibility of the District with respect to investors wanting to be repaid eventually. This information may be significant for student and faculty participation in meeting accreditation Recommendation 8 as to open shared college and district decision-making processes. Faculty and students may have to take the initiative in acquiring and using this information in those processes for lifting probation and keeping accreditation in the absence of an effective SWCCD response to Recommendation 8 on implementing such open shared decision-making processes. Be an activist, intelligently.
— October 24, 2010 9:26 p.m.

San Diego City Council Stalls Vote on New Energy-Saving Streetlights

RE #3: From experience, there are 3 ways for me to do that. (1) try to link directly to the City Clerk's agenda supporting documents. Unfortunately, past experience shows that if there is something with details that are not supposed to be known, the file names and directory names are changed rather frequently... it's on the web site, but only the City internal links can find it. No outside linking is allowed, apparently. (2) search the City Clerk's agendas for council meetings and use the Clerk's web pages to locate the OCTOBER 11 MONDAY DOCKET link for "ITEM 200 - Financial Training for the City Council: Debt Issuance and Administration and an Overview of Credit Ratings." (3) me downloading the supporting documents and throwing them up on my own website. I guess I could have them uploaded to sdreader.com if I knew what I was doing/requesting. Anybody who wants the docs can go to the City Clerk's webpages and get it themselves. By Monday morning (hopefully), I'll have my own permanent web links up that won't change like the City Clerk's do.
— October 24, 2010 8:36 p.m.

Encinitas City Council Candidate Tony Kranz Accused of “Attack”

RE the stringer article at "Ogden says that he asked police to file assault charges against Kranz but they declined": SENSATIONAL. Ogden appears to have tried to get Kranz arrested. IF Kranz had been arrested, THEN maybe he could have turned himself into a sympathetic political prisoner, with the pre-existing youtube video not made by him for proof. I figured somebody was serious about suing once I saw the comment that a video and two witnesses was "enough to convi[n]ce a jury" as it was stated in comments above. Fortunately, this apparent anticipation of being in front of a jury appears to be just hot air. I made my comments about evidence inadmissibility of fabricated prejudicial material AFTER viewing the video. Since the video of the incident was made by anti-Obama protesters at a Bob Filner event, it seems Ogden (who's apparent fighting words have yet to be reported) found the turf-war trouble he was looking for. I more or less expected some wild and wacky things to happen in the last week or so before the election... whatever the intelligent message was about political points of view of both Kranz and Ogden, it all appears lost to the sensationalism stemming from a minor shoving match that I might have seen elsewhere if I really had the time to watch professional wrestling. It's enough to make me glad I don't spend much time in Encinitas, just like I really try to limit my visits to Iran and North Korea as an ex-Republican independent who once worked in DC financial regulation for Bush 41.
— October 24, 2010 5:57 p.m.

Not in My Backyard: City Council Agrees on Civic Center Concourse for Winter Shelter

RE #1: Even better: offer some of the Golden Hall homeless positions as council member interns as a way of reducing the City budget gap. The ones who qualify could take the first semester evening classes for legal assistants at very little cost at City College, only blocks away. Golden Hall may have been a last-ditch compromise for a temporary homeless shelter, but it gives our city council staffs the ability to show their human side and help others out while keeping city administrative costs down.
— October 24, 2010 2:34 p.m.

Public Records Suggest Southwestern College Used Public Funds Frivolously

RE "It would be good if a SWC blogger could tell us where they are in the accreditation process.": See the WASC Action Letter of 1/2010 at http://www.swccd.edu/Pdfs/WASC_Action_Letter.pdf Compare with the public statement of October 14, 2010: http://www.swccd.edu/Pdfs/20101014accreditation.p… Administrators, faculty, and student representatives turned in the first part of their homework due on October 15, 2010, but according to the mailers received by SWCCD residents, only one set of deficiencies out of the five demanded by WASC was found acceptable. Best to get a copy of that OCTOBER 15 FIRST FOLLOW-UP REPORT to WASC's award of accreditation probation status to see if the other four deficiencies were either minimally addressed not to WASC's satisfaction or simply avoided. IF ALL had been satisfactorily addressed, THEN it is important news for administrators, faculty, students, and the voting taxpayers in SWCCD's jurisdiction, but these additional requirements received no detailed description in the WASC-demanded actions listed in SWC's statement PDF except to say that "progress has been made" with no word what was reported to WASC. IF SWC had looked at the accreditation self-studies done by City, Mesa, Miramar, Grossmont, and all of the other regional community colleges that are NOT on probation for uncorrected deficiencies dating back to the mid-1990s, THEN SWC could have gotten it right over a decade ago, but I now suspect that making REAL progress in getting the job done somehow interferes with long-standing practices in SWCCD, including an unacceptable level of WASC-cited micromanagement by the governing board over campus administrators. Without details, and in light of the shared governance deficiencies noted in Recomendation 8 on open shared decision-making processes, this is merely another symptom of why SWC's 2009 INSTITUTIONAL SELF-STUDY resulted in probation after WASC representatives first arrived on campus to inspect. The SWC statements include "Some of the recommendations we must address date from 1996 and 2003, and we are left with the challenge of resolving them. These recommendations were attended to with the seriousness and vigor needed to set our ship right. We know that challenges remain but are looking forward to the same participation and cooperation in the next phase" but without specific details, this is relatively meaningless on how those WASC-identified deficiencies were and will be addressed. Note the usage of "we must address" and "we are left with" in the SWC public statement PDF, indicating that things haven't been appropriately addressed YET, over a decade since first being made known to SWCCD. The SECOND FOLLOWUP REPORT is due on March 15, 2011, with its own WASC inspection. Overall, I concur that the mailer (if the same as or similar to the above public relations PDF) is merely election advertising with an implicit endorsement of incumbents and no opposition statements allowed.
— October 24, 2010 6:42 a.m.