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Cunningham Says Local Economic Recovery Losing Momentum
Volunteer service to others has been tested in San Diego before, and we came off during the 2007 wildfire incident complex looking a lot better than New Orleans immediately after Katrina. Even so, there are areas in which we can improve. FEMA still reports problems with well-meaning but untrained "spontaneous" volunteers, somethimes so many that critical emergency response resources get tied up by handling those spontaneous volunteers rather than managing the initial incident by objects. The time to get emergency responder training is BEFORE the incident that requires our collective emergency response, especially when our current and mid-term projected economic weakness makes improvements in tax-funded paid professional responder resources unlikely. See Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) lessons in basic search-and-rescue training at: http://www.citizencorps.gov/cert/training_mat.shtm See CERT lessons at for getting your neighborhood organized at: http://www.citizencorps.gov/cert/start.shtm Also see "Developing and Managing Volunteers" (part of the FEMA Emergency Management Institute's Professional Development Series of free online courses) at: http://training.fema.gov/EMIWEB/is/is244.asp— July 18, 2010 12:31 p.m.
Luna’s lacuna
RE "SAP": I actually have natural persons as sources for this. My own experiences with the County's financial paperwork revealed to me how slow things can get, trying to get refunds of canceled patron County Law Library account $50 deposits back to the people they belonged to. Without putting anybody's City job in jeopardy, my limited experience as a systems analyst/designer and data processing educator tells me that the SAP software vendors were much more interested in making a big sale than in carefully customizing the accounting software for how City of San Diego departments actually work, especially when things have to be accounted for across department "boundaries" throughout the City. Anybody can wander downtown and ask a City employee behind any counter how much time SAP analysts spent documenting her or his workday to get a real idea of how that work all fits together (or if one showed up at all), and how the SAP software just might have needed to be adjusted to add 2 from this department and 2 from that department together. There is also the problem that SAP system integration took place in real time, without the original collection of City systems operating in parallel to prove that the entire SAP package was working properly. That's right, folks: anybody doing business with the City of San Diego has just entered a huge experiment in the Twilight Zone. And you thought things were bad back when all we were worried about was getting doubled-billed for parking tickets that were already marked "PAID IN FULL"... Since my blogging isn't able to be posted here right now, I am starting this alternative vanity news site at http://news.stickywebs.com and also planning on mirroring my posts there at http://blogs.myspace.com/a2zresource as well (anyone wandering through my myfarce blogs will see a lot of stuff that appeared here at http://sdreader.com first). As long as I can still post comments to others' blogs, I'm not gone... yet! I hope to be back blogging here Real Soon Now...— July 18, 2010 11:57 a.m.
great blogs to read
RE "Doggone 'puters." I hope I didn't start it all. I tried to add a new blog entry a couple of weeks ago (thought I could submit something for the neighborhood contest) and ended up creating a new blog. Since then, I get to see this amazingly long list of refriedgringo's posts, plus the two or three things I have saved but not yet published. Right now, the site seems to have forgotten the neighborhood groups I chose earlier. I tried to post a test thingie to "open forum", and I got an error message: "There were errors." "Groups: Select a valid choice. 234 is not one of the available choices." Also, it seems that there are no neighborhood groups for me to add. All I get at http://www.sandiegoreader.com/weblogs/groups/join/ is "page unavailable" Sometimes with older computers, you can threaten them with a screw driver and they'll behave for a little while...— July 18, 2010 1:53 a.m.
Gimme Shelter
The old World Trade Center building is a good pick because it is within walking distance of City College and the downtown Continuing Education center on Park - 12th Avenue and Russ. It's close enough that you'd have to go out of your way to catch the Trolley from Fifth Avenue to go to the City College stop. Maybe Bridgepoint is too elitist to educate homeless people trying to get ahead?— July 18, 2010 1:27 a.m.
Is San Diego Wise to Save Water?
Pretty soon, somebody who already has too much money to know what to do with will buy a gently-used freighter and start desalinating just over three miles off-shore, then bring a boat-load of that tasty aqua back into the harbor on a regular basis and make a killing selling it to people trying to get around the three-day-a-week lawn-watering restrictions...— July 17, 2010 5:10 p.m.
Ballpark Study Confesses: "We Hastened and Greatly Worsened the Glut"
I just realized what I wrote after looking at Burwell's comment again. That's a $9 billion stadium full of friends that can only be built inside CCDC's rather limited redevelopment zone, with nothing left over for firefighters, police patrols, emergency medical responders, libraries, parks, or anything else anywhere else in the City of San Diego. Maybe the only fix for this is to make CCDC the City Council of San Diego.— July 17, 2010 5:01 p.m.
Ballpark Study Confesses: "We Hastened and Greatly Worsened the Glut"
RE "East Coast Transplant's comments are based on sheer ignorance of the facts. The City transfers its share of the downtown property tax revenue to the Center City Development Corporation (CCDC) which uses the money to subsidize private development..." This may explain the recent Redevelopment Agency/CCDC action to push for a raised Tax Increment cap. I'm not sure of the numbers, but if I remember correctly the current cap of just under $3 billion is recommended to increase to about $9 billion. For all I know, even if it hasn't been formally approved, the TI cap raise is most likely a done deal. "Tax Increment" is the excess tax revenues, calculated as the difference from old blighted area tax revenues to new higher revenues after agency-sponsored redevelopment. California state law keeps the Tax Increment (overage compare to old tax revenues) inside the redevelopment area, kind of like the Sheriff of Nottingham's private treasure chest. Like the old sheriff, CCDC is a master at redistributing the wealth to the wealthy, namely the developers that CCDC is a cheerleader for. http://www.sandiego.gov/iba/pdf/10_54.pdf I could buy a lot of friends with $9 billion... a whole brand new stadium full of friends.— July 17, 2010 4:56 p.m.
great blogs to read
For a week or so, I've had some really strange things happen to my Reader blog management page, and things finally did me in for blogs today. Starting this morning, I can't post a blog entry. The site says I'm not in any blog group and won't let me add one. I can open old blog entries for editing, but the site won't let me publish the changes. I can start a new entry, but the site won't let me publish it, only save without publishing for later (then not letting me publish later). From now on, I'll be at http://news.stickywebs.com and doing my own amateurish news thang there, under my own name, John C. Gonzales. I think I have a niche to fill, as the traditional news services won't cover the topics I've been blogging about, as not "sexy" enough for 'em, probably. My accounts here (a2zresource and my brand spanking new JCGonzales) do allow me to post comments, and I'll probably stick around here for that (can't get enough of Mr. Bauder's writings) but I am enough of an egomaniac that I can be publisher, editor, reporter, and part-time model photographer at my own online news media outlet. No, I'm not calling it SmartAsAFox.com. Who knows? I might actually start making enough money doing this that I can start to pay down that $70,063 in court costs I owe SDG&E and Sempra Energy, not including the accumulating 10% annual interest since I lost my Prop. 65 case against them less than a year ago. It'll be better than just waiting around for that next heart attack!— July 16, 2010 8:30 p.m.
Revised WEBA Application by SDG&E Not Yet Available
"Does SDG&E's Sunrise Powerlink Really Make Sense?" now at http://blogs.myspace.com/a2zresource— July 16, 2010 8:15 a.m.
Revised WEBA Application by SDG&E Not Yet Available
"$288 Million Redevelopment Agency Loan/Interest Forgiveness Pulled from City Council Agenda" now at http://blogs.myspace.com/a2zresource— July 16, 2010 8:13 a.m.