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Update San Diego, 10/07/2010
San Diego Chamber of Commerce made a comment on the economy today by backing Proposition D. The Chamber feels it is better to have people pay more in sales taxes than it is to have city leaders actually discover all of the cubbyholes where city insiders and department heads have previously hidden city assets from previous fiscal years as bureaucratic budgetary turf protection. The civic leaders at the Chamber are OK with the potential loss of retail sales during the years of the tax increase because the benefits of supporting council members are far more lucrative in the long run.— October 7, 2010 12:52 p.m.
San Diego to House Homeless at World Trade Center
RE IBA office: Isn't this the same Independent Budget Analyst that promised earlier this year that she just might actually get around to using that very expensive new SAP city accounting system in her work monitoring city finances sometime this summer?— October 7, 2010 10:53 a.m.
San Diego to House Homeless at World Trade Center
RE "San Diego has hundreds of millions of dollars sitting in the bank, and not working for the public.": Despite claims that hiz honor and attendant council members have a good handle on the financial pulse of city business, there is a legion of city department heads who over the years and decades have had the City invest multi-millions in now-matured bonds and other financial instruments. Unfortunately, these department managers rarely communicate to their superiors the existence of those bonds, the fact that they have matured and are now due for spending or re-investment, and the more important fact that their total value is likely as much or greater than the alleged $70+ million shortfall in our current adopted city budget. It is interesting that our city leaders want us to vote for a half-cent sales tax increase to cover that alleged $70+ million budget gap, when nobody on the city council was willing to deal with or even talk about the $244 million loan and interest forgiveness package to the San Diego Redevelopment Agency earlier this year... and $144 million of that is in accumulated interest still not forgiven and thus still owed to San Diego taxpayers or the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development from improperly-allocated block grant funding. Of course, I could be dead wrong about this stuff not yet having been forgiven because that's the way our city council members roll when nobody's watching...— October 7, 2010 10:42 a.m.
Scoping Memo Issued in SDG&E PSW/PSW Rate Hike Proposal at CPUC
RE #1: CPUC could use some shaking up, but a big part of the problem is that CPUC has to run with the proposals and supporting arguments that are filed with it, and those mostly come from public utilities seeking permission to bill us for something we didn't ask for. Examples include the uninsured wildfire legal expense billings (WEBA) that SDG&E and other utilities have requested for the overhead power lines that not even fed-funded AIG will insure completely, SDG&E's Z-Factor insurance surprise application where those brightest people in the room simply had no clue that insurance rates would go up after their 2007 wildfire surprise for the rest of us, and of course there are PSW/PSH, Sunrise Powerlink, and the wildfire prevention plan that involves cutting power to county residents that includes water districts needing to pump water for firefighting. CPUC can be influenced by customers filing individual complaints and by commenting on or protesting against utilities' filed applications, but this works best if one is at least somewhat familiar with the issues and prior decisions found on the docket card at http://cpuc.ca.gov ... With SDG&E's current top executive having been a former CPUC commissioner, it's easy to predict that ordinary reasonable customer input will have a hard time penetrating into that relatively closed system of public utility execs and CPUC decisions-makers.— October 7, 2010 9:10 a.m.
Compared with Orange and L.A., San Diego Underspends on Firefighting
I'll take a 50% pay cut right now. Half of nothing is nothing. Wow. That was amazingly painless.— September 1, 2010 4:39 p.m.
Deflation Could Heat Up Pension War
RE "I suspect the only choice is for us humans to cooperate with each other directly, eschewing anything advertised (it HAS to be a lie), and opting out as completely as possible. Then the plutocrats could sell yachts to each other until they reach plutonomy nirvana": We practice this a lot in my neighborhood (and across the county with relatives & friends), doing things for each other without concern as to cost, knowing that each of us is part of a network that won't let us all go homeless. There's a lot of fresh fruit exchanged for baked goods, tree trimming for firewood, auto repair "internships" and all kinds of other zero-value, untaxed "commerce" going on in the local underground market. This allows me to keep my ethics: if the County does not inspect and approve fruit coming out of my yard, then I can't sell it, but I can gift it to my neighbor when I see her at the fence. Likewise, the health inspectors don't check out my neighbor's pies to approve them for sale, so she just sends them over for free. Later when I have enough solar panels, I'll just start giving away electricity to my neighbors because the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission isn't going to hear from me about becoming a Qualifying Facility so I can actually sell it... and I'd feel funny about taking money from my neighbors who aren't rich for something I'd be getting for free from the Sun anyways.— September 1, 2010 4:36 p.m.
Isolate, Expose, Avoid
RE #48: Wow. You just issued a call for a war council to plan a campaign. Strategically and practically, students have a lot of leeway to be both creative and borderline in approaching how to gain leverage over a corrupt or inept district governing board. It helps to know the terrain: what things are in the California Codes that community colleges should be doing but aren't? How does a community college student government capitalize on district's lack of leadership in not complying with the law? Now, EVERYBODY who really knows me that I would not have written that unless I already had a plan in my back pocket for a righteous student takeover of campus... and it could start with something as innocent as an application to start an evening college student government, or as "sacred cow" as advocating for safety as top priority under the National Response Plan, including an all-hazard approach to the on-campus authority of a student president under California Education Code section 76060 and California Military & Veterans Code about topics that are better left sealed until the eve of battle. The best way to build esteem Is with a campus-wide winning team Go team!— August 19, 2010 3:33 p.m.
Isolate, Expose, Avoid
RE "Do your homework and actually make a difference in the community!" Exactly. Students at Southwestern College need to know the truth about just how many college committees there are on that campus, and that one or more students need to be regular contributing members of each one. Ultimately, there will be a number of executive and faculty search committees where students will not be working members, as that may interfere with faculty senate rights, but on everything related to campus spending of public money, curriculum approval, 5-year construction master plan, and all the rest, student participation in community college shared governance as required by law helps to insure compliance with the re-granting of accreditation some time in the future. If the campus journalism department is asleep on this, then any student who wants to make a name for herself or himself can fill the campus blog void here at the Reader. I know for a fact that smart students on those community college committees, the ones who not only point out problems but offer up effective solutions, are exactly the same people who deans and department heads find private tuition for at highly-competitive private universities on transfer. It does pay to be exceptional. Anyone who thinks none of this matters can keep believing in it, but as a former City College student president myself, I counted it as a good year if I could save California community college students a few million$ in avoided fee increases, even if I had to make trips to Sacramento to get something killed in an education subcommittee. It pays to speak up, even if 98% of us can't or won't take the time to do it. It's the definition of LEADERSHIP, and it does get rewarded, hopefully not to the point of being corrupted.— August 19, 2010 12:12 p.m.
City of San Diego Protests SDG&E PeakShift Rate Hike Proposal
RE #2: I think that the economics of home and small business off-grid power generation is going to become a permanent market feature mainly because of high rates and low mean times before failure (MTBF) in the grid, where there are typically several power outages reported in the local media each month. The state needs to recognize how ordinary citizens generating at least some of their own electricity is a continuity of government issue that goes directly to our quality of life during and after a disaster. People generating at least some of our own power enables communities to better deal with that crucial period of time when we are still waiting for state and federal first responders after a disaster... or even during the tax increase effects of PSW/PSH, as Sempra Energy would love to remind us at $118 million, every day.— August 19, 2010 11:45 a.m.
City of San Diego Protests SDG&E PeakShift Rate Hike Proposal
RE "Now if we could only get the City to file an initial protest against itself, for not conserving the City Budget's money, instead of spending it on huge projects that will also (like SDG&E's rate hike) generate huge profits for their Owners and shareholders...": Somehow I feel that the vote in November will be sending signals as well. There is the question is to whether our current model of municipal government has what it takes to manage and ride herd on the electricity franchise ordinance in its own jurisdiction. Maybe we need even more council members... just kidding. On the other hand, this speaks to the genuine civic need for a real City of San Diego ethics committee with real subpoena powers. The current Ethics Committee does get points for its penalty assessment RE CDCC executive interest conflicts in the past few days.— August 19, 2010 11:34 a.m.