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Luna’s lacuna
RE SAP's OneSD City accounting/business system: In the supporting documents for the 2011 City Appropritations Ordinance that was on City Council's agenda yesterday, the City's Independent Budget Analyst disclosed that although SAP's OneSD system has been in place since last year, the IBA and the City's chief financial officer had yet to sit down and go through City finances for that necessary broad overview that an appropriations ordinance just might require, but that could happen Real Soon Now during the summer. In other words, that rather expensive SAP OneSD system really does not have anything to do with what the City Council has been doing or may do in the next year (once the app. ord. is cast in stone) regarding pension shortfalls, cuts to services, the new library, the new city hall, the new stadium, forgiving a quarter of a billion in loans and interest to the Redevelopment Agency, or raising the CCDC Tax Increment cap from $2.9 billion to $9 billion. Has anyone been reading L. J. Peter's THE PETER PRINCIPLE lately on bureaucrats ultimately being promoted to their respective levels of incompetence?— July 27, 2010 10:36 a.m.
Uptown Apartnership
I heard that those Uptown Partnership people are getting a raw deal by not offering their services to the City of Bell. Bell Chief Admin Officer: $800,000 ?!? Now, why does Bell pay that much to do pretty much nothing when that's only worth maybe $75,000 south of LA?— July 26, 2010 6:51 p.m.
San Diego City Council to Adopt 2011 Fiscal Appropriations Ordinance
RE #3: I'm not planning to introduce anything to the City Council unless it's a filed copy of a ballot initiative with a whole lotta signatures. Besides, nobody sitting up there wants to hear me about things they don't want to hear about in the first place. If they were all that interested, then they'd have already done a whole lot more than has gone on about things you or I have written about in the Reader.— July 26, 2010 3:07 p.m.
Lest We Forget: Pension Woes Worse Than Ever
I'm still trying to figure out how a $288 million loan-and-interest forgiveness by the San Diego City Council to itself while not wearing its Redevelopment Agency Hat was supposed to improve the pension situation. Unfortunately, I have to agree with your earlier blog comment assessment elsewhere that while it is off the agenda for now, the City Council loan forgiveness move will probably resurface later.— July 26, 2010 10:40 a.m.
San Diego City Council to Adopt 2011 Fiscal Appropriations Ordinance
RE #1: I'd still like to see the City Council take up the matter of the 3% electricity franchise fee on SDG&E's annual gross receipts, especially with the WEBA and PDW/PDH rate increase proposals still out there on the CPUC docket card. Until that electricity franchise fee review happens complete with public comments, it's kind of hard to swallow the City press releases that City Council has done everything it could before coming up with a sales tax increase for the November ballot.— July 26, 2010 10:34 a.m.
The big steal
I hope this is the last theft of public tax money you report, but somehow I suspect it won't be. In 2000-2001, Cal/OSHA failed to exercise any control over activities at the Lemon Grove SDG&E site known as the Encanto Gas Holder (EGH) facility as it was being decommissioned. In 2007, the US Attorney's Ofice here obtained criminal convictions in USA V. SDG&E where bulk sample analysis testing showed EGH friable asbestos levels as high as 50%+ in materials that were later scattered as one investigator reported like "shaved white chocolate" in the air at the site. The case was dismissed on retrial*, showing that SDG&E shareholders are getting their money's worth from Sempra Energy's Office of General Counsel. Hopefully, the resigned Cal/OSHA inspector had nothing to do with the Lemon Grove area at any time in this millennium. *A blog exists on the potentially unconstitutional exclusion of asbestos testing evidence despite federal law requiring its admission in a National Emission Standards of Hazardous Air Pollutants criminal matter as indicted in 2006.— July 26, 2010 10:28 a.m.
Be prepared for second recession in Calif.
RE "Cunningham keeps track of what’s called the gross regional product, or the total annual output of goods and services, in San Diego County. 'In 2009, there was an actual decline in gross regional product,' he says. 'We will see some growth in 2010, but it will be weak growth, and if you take out inflation, it will be just 1 percent. In 2011, it will probably be a little stronger,' unless, of course, there is that double dip in the state": Right now, I see the SDG&E proposals for Wildfire Expense Balancing Account (WEBA) billing authority and its brand new PeakShift at Work/PeakShift at Home (PSW/PSH) business day rate increases on small businesses and residential customers to be a fairly significant tax on both small businesses and residential consumers in San Diego County. CPUC's Division of Ratepayer Advocates opposes WEBA statewide as an open-ended unlimited consumer liability for current industry standards that declare utility-caused wildfires are just the cost of doing business. Locally, Michael Aguirre has intervened and is preparing a protest to the joint WEBA application by SDG&E, PG&E, and Southern California Edison components because utility shareholders and not customers should be liable for negligently-caused wildfires stemming from overhead utility equipment. As for PSW/PSH, these proposals are specifically designed to drive small business and residential customers away from peak business hour electricity consumption on the argument that doing so will reduce the need for SDG&E peaker plant construction. And I thought that was what the Sunrise Powerlink project was for. In any case, SDG&E attorneys in their application to CPUC stated that peak rates may be as high as ten times the off-peak evening and weekend rates. While residential PSH customers may bend with the wind and start doing laundry after the bars close, PSW is plainly anti-competitive as SDG&E tries to reserve peak daytime power for the Sempra-owned utility's larger, industrial-strength customers. I'm predicting a further decrease in San Diego gross regional product if these proposals now before California's Public Utilities Commission are approved as SDG&E and Sempra Energy now hope. The only rational solution for remaining small businesses in San Diego is to generate increasing amounts of their own electricity for daytime usage through off-grid solutions such as free-standing solar panels. This is a much less expensive option than having SDG&E turn one's business into a paid on-grid power producer, still with all of the FERQ Qualifying Facility hoops to jump through before getting paid for one's excess electricity delivered into the grid for later SDG&E sale to others.— July 26, 2010 7:38 a.m.
Defending Small Businesses and Residents from SDG&E
RE #8: I honestly recommend that you subscribe to the California Public Utilities Commission subscription service, so that you can read the filings of the major investor owned utilities and see for yourself that statewide policies are being set solely for the purpose of preserving corporate profits and shareholder dividends. It wouldn't hurt to examine the utility attorney statements contained in the above links, either. Personally, I don't care if any person is installing solar panels just to save money, but here's food for all Reader reader thoughts: if anyone is OPPOSED to saving money, them let them pay our utility bills. You can't pay MY SDG&E utility bill, as I am now off the grid completely, and I am pretty sure the utility and its holding company will refuse anyone's donation to any court costs I still owe from my last courtroom tango with Sempra Energy/SDG&E. It just so happens that people who save money by installing off-grid solar generation at home or at a small business are also doing their part to decrease the need for SDG&E to build more peaker plants, something the utility might have claimed was the reason for the Sunrise Powerlink project, but now it's the reason for PSW/PSH rate hikes. How's that for food for thought?— July 25, 2010 9:16 p.m.
Streetlights in the dark
Hmmm... I wonder what it would take for SDG&E to insist that IT has the electricity franchise that covers street lighting... or IT at least makes money "for transmitting and distributing electricity suitable for lighting"... Can't imagine that Sempra Energy's Office of General Councel isn't already drawing up paperwork to "intervene" in any backroom deal here. Gotta protect them shareholders...— July 25, 2010 8:40 p.m.
Journal Puts Floatopia on Page One
A Floatopia ban may have an adverse impact on beverage producers, bottlers, transports, plastics manufacturers, and plastic surgeons. If there is no such impact, then I imagine all that trash that gets dumped during Floatopia consists of all used stuff, not new. Ewwwww...— July 25, 2010 8:21 p.m.