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Santos, Lost and Found
This is a very cool place. North Park's hidden jewel! Love the patio, secluded and quiet, not on the street. The original Santos location in the Beech/30th property is still owned by Alan Uke, a 2006 candidate for US Congressional seat vacated by Duke Cunningham (Uke previously donated to Duke!). Bilbray won. There were Code issues with the wiring in the building, I think.— October 6, 2011 1:01 p.m.
Mad About Getting Rid of MAD
Amen! One of the GGH-DCD supporters owns at least nine big rental properties on Broadway, 20th, and 21st streets. He wrote a letter to the Council in support of the MAD in 2007, referring to people who objected to it as "bad apples" with "erroneous info, spreading fear and simplistic messages that are wrong" that "uninformed property owners want to believe." That man's assessments for his properties totaled $3900/year. But guess what? The GGH-CDC paid him, out of MAD funds, more than $2160/year to rent a couple of his garages to store the booty they bought with MAD money. Is that some kind of cool kickback? And, get this: he charged the MAD a $50 late fee every time the incompetent GGH-CDC was couldn't mange to get his check to him on time. I suggest that Mr. Big-MAD-supporter property owner write the GGH-CDC a big fat check and fund them privately, now that the MAD game is over.— October 6, 2011 10:48 a.m.
Mad About Getting Rid of MAD
The Golden Hill Development Corp thinks they can just do a re-do! I almost missed this story. The Corp held a meeting last Monday night to talk about spending the money they have left from last year's assessments (many tens of thousands of $$), and if you ever wanted to see the quality of people in private business groups that the city of San Diego allows to control public money, you should have been there. They mostly talked about how to keep on getting the money. One guy who is on this brilliant team actually believes that they can get a new vote and get it on the upcoming election ballot in 2012 "with a huge turnout!" Yes. He actually thinks it is something that is on a real statewide election ballot. Same character said that he knows "Marco Landrini" [sic] "from Little Italy, ...a big player on the inside with the city" and that Marco is handling this. I kid you not. Should we notify the FBI now, or later? Another confused lady seemed to think that Todd Gloria can and will just cut through the "red tape" and get a new MAD, "without having to spend anymore CDBG money on another survey or vote," or any other inconvenient stuff. Just write a new legal engineer's report, and that'd do it. Carry on! Yet another daffy lady said that all the things that the appellate court mentioned were moot [because the whole assessment is terminated] are OK, and that a new legal engineer's report could just "include all of those moot things." If you read the appellate ruling, you'll laugh at her confusion. Yes, the city signs contracts with people like this and gives them complete control of public money. Zero oversight. People of San Diego: Please join me the next time you are given a chance to vote on anything that will result in a generating real tax revenue, revenue that goes to the General Fund. Then you won't be faced with the foolishness of having ignorant, unqualified groups taking your money in the form of assessments. And you won't end up with a San Diego that has decorative banners hanging over cracked sidewalks in front of shuttered libraries on potholed streets. DeMaio has made it clear that he loves assessments and hates taxes. Nathan Fletcher too. Filner will try to generate real revenue for the General Fund. Please give him a chance and join in. And please disregard the slant presented in the story in VoSD about Erie's book "Paradise Plundered." What Erie is talking about is how San Diegans don't want to pay real taxes that go to the General Fund, not about people who fight unconstitutional, wasteful assessments. Please be willing to pay real taxes. The General Fund needs all of us to chip in. Libertarians and Republicans, give an inch or two, just once in a while. Please.— October 6, 2011 10:12 a.m.
Golden Hill Residents Aren't MAD Anymore
The Cost of Being Dishonest: From signonsandiego.com (City Pays $1.9M to Settle w/Axon): "Through July 12 [2011], the city spent $13.1 million handling claims and fighting lawsuits, compared to $13.2 million for the entire year in 2010. It spent $25.5 million on claims and lawsuits in 2009, the biggest year of the eight years analyzed."... "Donna Frye, who cast one of two votes against awarding the computer consulting contract to Axon in 2007,..." Anyone have data on $$ wins/losses/settlements? And Donna, you got it right more than once: From Council minutes: On approving the resolution to form the GH MAD (R-302887) that has now been ordered dissolved: Items 203a,b,c, July 30 2007: Approving Budget, Establishment, and the Assessment Engineer’s Report for Greater Golden Hill MAD, R-302887 Vote: District Councilpersons 12478-yea; [Frye] 6-nay; [Atkins the faint-of-heart] 3-recused; 5-not present Donna, have you started law school yet?— September 26, 2011 7:19 p.m.
Golden Hill Residents Aren't MAD Anymore
Well said! Yes, loving thought for Ty. He's smiling.— September 26, 2011 6:57 p.m.
Golden Hill Residents Aren't MAD Anymore
In the Appellate Court opinion, what is definitely clear, quoted verbatim: ..."mandamus proceeding by property owners [Golden Hill Neighborhood Association] challenging as constitutionally flawed the formation of an assessment district and subsequent levy of an assessment on the real property in the district... The City appears to interpret the judgment in favor of the Association on the mandamus cause of action of the 2007 complaint as invalidating the formation of the District and not as simply invalidating the assessments imposed for fiscal year 2007-2008." The term "mandamus" in this case means to "refrain from performing a particular act." Thank you, City. Refrain now!!!! Please remove the assessment from the property taxes of 3569 taxpayers. Now!! The County property tax bill is due no later than 12/12/2011, and if we are forced to pay the assessment again, we know you will NEVER reimburse us. Do not illegally take our money again. You are suing the so-called engineering company that produced the flawed document that you relied upon to tax us. We will not sit by while you hope that you win, years from now, a suit against the company that wrote the report, which you happily employed, because we already know that you were as happy as clams with the flawed report until it was proved to be a sham.— September 25, 2011 7:11 p.m.
Golden Hill Residents Aren't MAD Anymore
[cont]... The insufficiently supportive petition responses presented in 2007 were almost identical in number and percentage positive responses to the ones in 2000! Figure the odds of that, given the demographic changes in the Greater Golden Hill area over 6 years!!! A preserved 2000 petition shows it is slightly different in only one regard: it has Marco Li Mandri's name (and his company's name, "New City America") on the bottom. Li Mandri was paid to create and promote the 2000 MAD petition and effort. He and Kessler were amigos in the Adams Avenue business community, before they became enemies. The point of Atkins' staffer pretending MAD ignorance was to keep public information to a minimum. The U-T wouldn't touch the story about the pending district formation, nor would VoSD or CityBeat. There was a total shutdown on reporting what was happening, except for The Reader. Oh, there was one timely pro-MAD "opinion" piece in the U-T on June 14, 2007: it was about what a wonderful paradise Logan Heights had become since 2000, thanks to Hueso's creation, the Central Commercial assessment district. Previously, the U-T had only mentioned Hueso when they were calling him a slumlord. Right after the laudatory opinion piece, Hueso orchestrated a shouting mob against Aguirre. Get it? One note on the assessment formation petitions: by law, a minimum of 30% of all community property owners must express positive support for proceeding with assessment district formation. The best Kessler and the GH Corporation ever claimed (and not allowing public examination of the petitions to validate the truth of their claim) was ~15% overall response to the petitions; only a percentage of that was positive, so that at best, there was only ~7% overall positive response. A few GH Corporation members and their PR hire showed up only once at the GH Planning Committee in 2007, presenting their wish to form a MAD but admitting they needed 30% overall response and didn't have it. They never came back to the Committee, but just proceeded with formation anyway, thanks to Kessler's ability as a City employee to put the paperwork through to Council. At the first Council session seeking approval to proceed with formation, the GH Corporation members obfuscated the petition results, claiming they had over 75% approval. What they were reporting (and that was never validated) was the supposedly positive percentage of the ~15% of returned petitions. Community members objected to these false data; the Council ignored the community. Phony from beginning to end.— September 25, 2011 12:03 p.m.
Golden Hill Residents Aren't MAD Anymore
Atkins' office was contacted about the MAD in 2007; staffer Hill handled the questions when neighbors first heard rumors about forming the pending assessment district. Hill pretended to know nothing about the GH MAD formation, about MADs in general, or about laws on their formation. That wasn't true, which Hill later admitted. Doing research, neighbors found that District 3 already had some business-association-run MADs, and that Atkins (later, Gloria) were boosters of this City Planning/Economic Development scheme to fund business associations. They loved the idea of giving property taxes to their friends in the Adams Ave, College Heights, Hillcrest, and City Heights business groups. Not surprisingly, Ben Hueso started the first commercially oriented MAD (Central Commercial MAD), giving property assessments to Hueso's business friends to use; this was in D8 in Logan Heights in 2000. It's not a coincidence that Hueso soon landed a job in Economic Development (years before being elected to Council). That pattern repeated in 2006, when the new Economic Development deputy director, Kessler, was hired. He had been a boardmember and President of the GH Development Corporation and had tried but failed previously to form the GH MAD in 2000. [cont]....— September 25, 2011 11:59 a.m.
Golden Hill Residents Aren't MAD Anymore
Yes, there are attorneys in the area. They are of a variety of backgrounds, and either live here in their own homes, or live elsewhere and have their practice in leased low-cost office space here, or live elsewhere but own investment properties here. Some are retired, some practice real-estate-related or redevelopment law, and some practice progressive social or environmental justice law. SOHO and the SD Unified School District boardmembers have a presence here, too; some are attorneys, but none of them cared enough about civic honesty to join the fight against the City's and the GH Corporation's corruption. Some of them profited from their association with the City and the Corporation. SDUSD's Scott Barnett directly profited: at the time, as the face of the "Taxpayers' Advocate," he was paid by the GH Corporation in 2007 to produce the most incredibly ironic and fraudulent pro-MAD mailer, urging taxpayers to tax themselves. It was a big, full-color, two-sided, bullet-pointed joke, complete with a large photo of Barnett's face. Shame. The retired attorney who did all of the GHNA case research was a long-time local resident. He volunteered many hours of his time after retirement to help with environmental protection of Golden Hill. He did a fantastic amount of work on the GHNA case, despite failing health, and he never gave up. Not one of the practicing local resident attorneys or social activists stepped up to the bat to help GHNA out. In fact, several of them were or are boardmembers of the Golden Hill Development Corporation and stood to benefit from application of the assessment funds to their sideline projects (you know who you are). The GH Corporation also solicited, supported, and courted Felipe Hueso during his run for Council, blatantly hoping to continue benefiting from the Hueso fraudulent support at Council level. The Corporation was very unhappy with the Alvarez win. Another of the Hueso brothers lives here and voted against the MAD, one of the more amusing and weird things that occurred.— September 24, 2011 12:20 p.m.
Golden Hill Residents Aren't MAD Anymore
The assessed Golden Hill and South Park property owners have watched for 4 years as the City allowed the "nonprofit" (actually, bankrupt) boardmembers of the Greater Golden Hill Economic Development Corporation to steal and waste almost $500,000/year, taken from local property owners of one of the poorest areas of San Diego. Everything, from T-shirts to toilet seats to cell phones to fast-food lunches to Ace Parking charges to minimum payments on a revolving charge account at Office Depot, have been paid for by assessed property owners, to the benefit of only a few GGH Economic Development Corp Boardmembers and their business community cronies. The City, willfully blind, exercised zero oversight over the greedy, over-reaching people involved in "managing" this assessment district fund. The City did not care, no matter how badly the actual assessment laws, and the spirit of those laws, were violated. The group of folks who scraped enough money together to file a lawsuit over what was blatantly dishonest from the very beginning were dismissed, disrespected, ridiculed, thwarted, and humiliated at every turn. Particularly insulting and dismissive were Councilmembers Hueso, Atkins, Gloria, and Peters and their staffers, and Bill Anderson's staff at City Planning's Economic Development division (Scott Kessler, Beth Murray, Luis Ojeda), and several Deputy City Attorneys. Here is the appellate ruling: http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/opinions/documents/D0… The City will not be doing this again. If property owners want an assessment district to pay for something specific, the City will have to proceed honestly! Since honesty and transparency are not the current San Diego government's style, don't hold your breath. Shame on all of you who participated in this fraud. Shame. Go find something real to do with your lives.— September 22, 2011 9:39 p.m.