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Marco Li Mandri wants to get around Prop 13
I believe that this article raises disturbing questions: - Why is a business owner writing Municipal Code? - Why is the Mayor, the City Attorney, and what used to be City Planning (now Economic Growth) relying on, and seemingly beholden to, the business community, particularly a person who has been investigated for conflicts of interest, to write Municipal Code? - Why is State Senator Vargas willing to introduce a bill written by a local businessman? I can't think of any answers to these questions that make good sense. But something is really, really wrong in this town. Recent revelations about the lobby group ALEC, and how ALEC members have written entire bills for many State and Federal legislators, show that voters have no voice in government, unless they are part of powerful groups with money to give or withhold. San Diego has its powerful business groups and lobbyists - especially Southwest Strategies in the downtown and near-urban areas. To paraphrase one interpretation of this (http://www.keystonepolitics.com) > The problem with [this] isn’t that [businessmen and lobbyists] write ... legislation, or that legislators use that legislation, it’s that the legislation they write sucks and their ideas are generally bad for the public interest. ... journalists should continue to do a good job of being vigilant in monitoring whether proposed bills have ... ties, and whether legislators who propose them are being forthcoming about the fact that they’re introducing business lobby-written legislation. In San Diego, we've had sparse investigative journalism on this; only *The Reader* covered the following events: 1. Li Mandri co-writes Muni Code in 1998/2003, "allowing" the City Council "legally" to approve formation of MADs that assess residential properties for business services. 2. The last of these illegal MADs formed results in a lawsuit that the City loses. 3. Within a month of the court decision, Li Mandri goes before the Public Safety & Neighborhood Services Committee, "as a citizen," presenting the need for a new way to impose assessments, because of "problems with the municipal code" that he authored, which resulted in the lawsuit that the City lost. 4. At the same time, Li Mandri is being paid by the City to do solve their PBID and MAD "problem," including contacting the powerful commercial owners (and David Alvarez) in Barrio Logan and lining up their support for his CBD ordinance. 5. The PS&NS committee is ecstatic to receive Citizen Li Mandri's CBD Municipal Code, yet no action is taken locally. 6. Li Mandri's CBD Municipal Code appears in January 2012 as Senate Bill 949, with language modified only to make it a State law, rather than a local ordinance. When and if this mayor or council, or the next ones, and/or Vargas, or Hueso, Atkins, or Kehoe, try to subvert perfectly adequate State law embodied in the restrained, existing Property & Business Improvement District law, be ready to fight. I will.— April 29, 2012 6:11 p.m.
Marco Li Mandri wants to get around Prop 13
enjoyPB: What you describe sounds ideal: "only commercial retail/service business properties would be assessed" - but that is not the goal of Li Mandri or the City, and that is not what the proposed municipal code that Li Mandri wrote seeks. Or will ever seek. Good luck. Residential assessments are desired by Li Mandri and the City's Economic Development division. Without assessments on residential properties, the City and the business groups don't feel the amount they can collect is enough, nor is that much greater than is already collected by BID assessments. Also, the whole driving force for the latest scheme focuses on near-urban areas in conjunction with the community plan updates that have as a primary goal ***infill***. And infill means large mixed-use buildings and that means residential. That is why Barrio Logan is now targeted, with the mixed-use, high-density Mercado under construction. The Reader revealed the CBD scheme for Barrio Logan last January, when an under-the-radar pro-CBD "survey" created by Li Mandri (and paid for by someone...unknown) was circulated exclusively to the commercial power-players in BL, unbeknownst to the major grass-roots BL advocates who would oppose assessing residential property. Also, I disagree with your premise that the City doesn't have enough money to "clean up" our neighborhoods. I don't know what you mean by "clean up" but the City has annually contracted with Urban Corps for the past 5 years, at ~$0.5 million/year, for citywide graffiti removal. That's enough money. And that includes areas where property owners are being assessed via the illegal MADs and via the PBID for private graffiti removal. If by "clean up"you mean powerwashing sidewalks, really, that is a stupid wasteful process. It doesn't make concrete look noticeably better, doesn't remove gum...study after study has shown how ineffective powerwashing is. It is a luxury, a means of spending and justifying a way-too-large assessment.— April 29, 2012 5:06 p.m.
Marco Li Mandri wants to get around Prop 13
The killed Vargas bill, which Li Mandri apparently wrote, was a modified PBID that eliminated the biggest hurdle in the existing state Property & Business Improvement District law, the requirement that 50% of **all** property owners in a proposed district sign a petition asking to go to a vote on forming a district. Li Mandri and the City Council evidently think the reduced percentage, 30%, will fly in San Diego as an ordinance, because the private business groups that would benefit will rally in support. In 2002, when Li Mandri and Vargas tried to push a similar bill, AB2561, it was vetoed by the governor, who wrote: > ...this bill offers no compelling reason why the assessment period should be extended so significantly, or for why the percentage of property owners signing a petition in support of such a [bill] is reduced from 50% to 30%. I am committed to the principles of smart growth and urban revitalization, but I do not believe that this bill provides the proper balance between these principles and those of fair and just taxation. Vlad Kogan is exactly right: the types of property assessments that Li Mandri is always involved in creating are terrible. They are terrible because Li Mandri's self-serving fiefdoms **do not** address financing local needs, but, instead, address only the financing of luxuries and private groups. Li Mandri-style assessment districts finance private business groups (who will be the 30% signing the petitions and asking to be appointed managers), whose members in turn use the money handed over to them by the City for empowerment, personal leverage, and to finance their rent, office supplies, phone and computers, salaries for staff, directors, and managers, parking, lunches, promotions, retreats, and decorative luxury items such as flower baskets, decorator trash cans, and banners, not infrastructure. At least half, if not much more, of all of the assessments, which are public (taxpayer) money, are wasted on overhead. At the same time, the City, as administrator, is also spending money overseeing the business group contractor, more overhead. Public-private partnerships are never economical, but are fiercely advocated by those who benefit financially from them and have come to expect them as a way of life in San Diego. The Downtown San Diego Partnership is a case in point: the board has no legal ground to allocate money to Li Mandri for the purpose of drafting state and local code. All of assessments are required to be spent on special and proportional benefits to the properties that are assessed.— April 25, 2012 2:53 p.m.
City Council Expected to Dissolve Golden Hill Maintenance Assessment District
What really pleases me is the official executive summary for this item in the City's docketed agenda. It states: **DESCRIPTIVE SUMMARY OF ITEM:** "On July 30, 2007, the **City Council adopted and approved** Resolution No. R-302887 forming the Greater Golden Hill Maintenance Assessment District (GGHMAD) and authorized the levy of special GGHMAD assessments. On September 22, 2011, the **Court of Appeal for the State of California**, Fourth Appellate District Division One (Fourth District) **found the formation of the GGHMAD was invalid under article XIIID of the constitution of the State of California**." Councilmembers, take note. You were presented, on and before July 30 2007, with all of the information you or any half-literate person needed to know that you were approving something that was unconstitutional. We begged, pleaded, wrote letters, and beseeched you to read the law and look at the evidence. Why did you go ahead and do it anyway? You closed your eyes. You shut us out. You insulted and dismissed us. So, now that the trouble you caused has been resolved, do us a favor: When you vote to rescind this, PLEASE spare us the drama and don't wring your hands and lament how tragic it is. You are the tragedy. You entice the populus to accept dishonest, corrupt government. How do you sleep at night?— April 6, 2012 1:44 p.m.
Meeting on Downtown Property and Business Improvement District Postponed...Again
In San Diego, with Sanders, Goldsmith, and the council, every day is April Fools'. Closed session is always for legal questions, such as "is the city responsible for this?" The answer from the city attorney's office is typically "only if someone sues and the court orders refunds." You see here exactly what happens when people don't sue, and instead sit back and wait politely. April Fools! Hey, here's a brilliant idea: some go-getter DCA should just write some city code that is so full of bureaucratic nonsense that no one can ever sue the city. The council will fall all over themselves approving that. Problem solved!— April 1, 2012 9:39 p.m.
Will Golden Hill Residents Have to Pay for Their Now-Defunct Maintenance Assessment District?
Monta, You say "*The business owners paid a much higher annual assesment than the homeowners did*"...You are quite wrong. I assume you mean "commercial property owners." **Business** **owners** **do not pay** property-based assessments. Only if you own the property do you pay. You do not own the property housing your business, so the commercial property owner from whom you lease is the one who paid. You may have paid indirectly by higher rent, and I hope so. I'm sure your landlord would just as soon not pay (and voted "no," by the way") and would rather **you** incur the cost of enhancing your storefront. You want expensive, decorative, redundant trashcans, located right near the city trash can, to ornament your business? Then buy them yourself and empty them yourself. You want a colorful banner outside your business? Buy it. Pay for the permits and take care of it all. You want a bench? Buy it. You want to pick up the phone and have private tree care? Hire someone. There are plenty of people looking for work. All of the people on 32nd Street have gardeners or do their own gardening in the easement in front of their property. You said "*Once I had a tree branch that needed trimming. I called them up and they were there WITHIN THE HOUR pruning the branch.*" Really? It better not have been in your yard, because that would have been clearly illegal. MAD work is legal only in the PROW. And this MAD wasn't legal at all, period. The vast majority of assessed properties were residential, and on residential streets there are no trash cans, benches, planters, banners, etc. That means there is no *special* and proportional benefit to each residential property, which is what the law requires. Those PROW commercial-benefiting items cost residential property owners hundreds of thousands of dollars, but went only to benefit you and other business owners, who, again, need to remember that you did not get assessed for them as business owners. Very few of the area business owners own any property in GGH. They live elsewhere. I'm really tired of hearing all of the complaints from business people, who benefited greatly at the expense of others. You all conveniently forget that the reason the court ended this was because it was fraudulent and in violation of law. Does that not matter to you???? There's something really wrong with this casual attitude to law, process, justice, fairness. I would say it's a selfish, dangerous way to think.— April 1, 2012 3:37 p.m.
Nathan Fletcher Exits GOP Via YouTube
Well, this move will ease the conscience of local phony Democrats who have endorsed Fletcher: the only reason those redevelopment-money-grubbing backers were on the Republican's bandwagon was because of his promise to somehow continue to funnel redevelopment dollars to developers. Fletcher and supporters are "independent" only in the sense of being free of any real principles. San Diego has plenty of elected Democrats (Hueso, Atkins, Vargas, Kehoe; all of the SD Dem councilmembers) and Republicans (all of the local City, County and State Repubs) who are plotting every possible way, supporting and introducing every possible bill, to acquire public money for their developer-supporters' private enrichment. Filner is the only opportunity San Diego has had in a long time to rid itself of the dominance and scheming of these parasitic privatization schemers.— March 28, 2012 9:57 a.m.
Mitt Romney Lobbies for La Jolla Permit, Darwin Deason Lobbies City Planner
Hey Matt: you got cited in the March 27 Politico article on Romney's project: [link text][1] [1]: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0312/74518.h…— March 27, 2012 10:23 a.m.
Romney Extends Public Review Process for Mansion Expansion
Wow! The Reader story by Matt Potter is cited in Politico's March 27 story on Romney's renovation project: [link text][1] [1]: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0312/74518.h…— March 27, 2012 10:21 a.m.
County To Refund 2011 Assessments For Greater Golden Hill MAD
Thank you, Dorian! And thank you, County Treasurer-Tax collector's office. We certainly cannot thank anyone in the City - neither the two councilmen involved (Alvarez and Gloria), nor Sanders, nor the City Attorney's office, nor the Economic Development Dept staff (supposedly overseeing the assessment while ciphering off 4%). They would not tell us anything. And they've never apologized for the trouble and expense they caused us. The City and the Community Development Corporation owe all of us a **HUGE** apology, among other things they owe us.— March 26, 2012 9:15 p.m.