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Spread the Wealth
Another thought: the City owns over 90 parcels in the GGH assessment district; the way the City has set up the creation of MADs, they get to vote in the ballot to create the assessment district. The value that THEY determined for each assessment for each City parcel that THEY owned in GGH was over three times what it should have been. Yep. It was that blatantly rigged. The "yes" vote win is determined by the dollar amount of the "yes"-voting assessments. (That was part of the complaint in the lawsuit). And the way the City set it up some years ago, by Muni Ordinance, was that the City votes "yes" automatically. Oh. So, they supposedly transfer the inflated-assessment City money to the GGH MAD account, then take 4% of the GGH MAD account for admin costs. What a joke.— May 3, 2010 6:42 p.m.
Spread the Wealth
Didn't the City recently lose a court battle over the "fee" they had the audacity to charge to process business taxes on landlords? I'm thinking that the 4% that Economic Development takes out of our phony commercial MAD assessment, for the supposed onerous task of processing all of the Golden Hill Corporation's reimbursement requests, may constitute a legally challengeable fee. The City does NOT take any part of the BIDs' collected business taxes in the business improvement districts. Why not? Why do they take part of our money?— May 3, 2010 6:25 p.m.
Spread the Wealth
Good point, phineas. This happens to be one of the BAD MADs. It could ONLY be bad because it was created illegally, which required cheating and deception at each step. And participation between Hueso, Atkins, Atkins' spouse Jennifer LeSar at CCDC, the planning department heads and deputy directors, and their buddies at the Golden Hill Development Corporation, former and current, in a "let's create an assessment district" scam. And the infamous Marco Li Mandri was part of the plan from years back. See Bauder's great articles on Li Mandri. What I see happening in San Diego is that even the good MADs, the ones that are formed by requiring real engineers and real capital projects that real community members really desire to pay for and maintain, are being subverted. LoMedico, head of Park and Recreation - look and stop it while you can: Over in Kensington the "KMAD" meetings discuss using residential owner property taxes for creating newletters, powerwashing business strip sidewalks, cleaning and decorating...etc. That has been ruled invalid, illegal, unconstitutional. Go ahead, Kensington...join the city in their screwing of the system and disdain for the law. Why not? In SD, everyone can join in. Why be left out by being honest? And SurfPuppy, point taken. Unfortunately, in Golden Hill, the other 50% is wasted: On junk and meaningless gestures, such as having some tree company show up in force with ten huge trucks and power equipment and mulchers, to find two cuttable trees on a street, and then cut at a tree that was just trimmed by SDGE, or whack some tiny frond off of a 3-foot tall sapling. Or wasted on "decorating" using $1000 trash cans adjacent to sad-looking old buildings along cracked up sidewalks and pot-holed streets - sorta like the mentality of hanging flashing christmas lights on a hovel in some third-world country or wearing the gaudiest wal-mart polyester clothes, trying to look fancy. These aren't a special benefit! They're a stupid act benefitting no one. These private corporations collecting taxes are worse than any real government. They aren't subject to the public records act. They are invisible and subject to no oversight by the city. Zero. Zip.— May 2, 2010 4:45 p.m.
La Jolla Officials Get Advice from Li Mandri
Please use it, Mr Flannery. Pillaging is exactly what best describes the team that was installed starting with Susan Golding and has continued through the Sanders administration. It is shameful. I would like to emphasize: I am thrilled to pay taxes to an honest, functioning government. I would be thrilled to support a City and County government in any quest they might undertake to generate more tax revenue for the General Fund. I want to feel proud to live in the City of San Diego, which is NOT a frigging village. I live in a neighborhood in the City of San Diego, and do not want unelected private groups collecting and wasting my taxes in false little fiefdoms.— April 30, 2010 6:59 p.m.
Clean and Safe Program soaks downtown San Diego property owners
During Tuesday's vote on Item-106, Faulconer recused himself. Anyone know why? Did any of the people to whom CPCI owes money for the PBID overcharge attend and ask to be paid?— April 29, 2010 9:02 p.m.
Peeping Noises, Flies, Shuddering Tongues
MAlice: As my spouse usually says, "You are probably right!" Love your writing, ...have for so many years.— April 29, 2010 7:46 p.m.
La Jolla Officials Get Advice from Li Mandri
Apologies for being such a comment hog, but one more thing (and thank you, Reader and Bauder, for giving me a forum in which to write): Interesting that the La Jolla Light article refers to the Urban Land Institute's publication citing Li Mandri. It appears that ULI and Li Mandri have much in common. The San Diego ULI's current executive director, Mary McLellan Lydon, is a true Li Mandri soulmate. A 2006 San Diego Business Journal article, in its own right a nice trip down memory lane, http://www.allbusiness.com/government/government-… elaborates how Lydon favors special property assessments, ironically, "because City Hall cannot continue to make all the decisions." Given how closely tied Lydon and Li Mandri are to City Hall, its a little hard to take what she says with a straight face. The article also cites a wonderful array of past and still present players in the City Planning/developer circle of stars, including Jim Waring. ULI's San Diego board consists of several City Planning heads, such as Bill Anderson and Janice Weinrick, and Sudberry. City of Pillagers?.— April 29, 2010 7:13 p.m.
La Jolla Officials Get Advice from Li Mandri
Oh, please. The LJTC is "looking toward a new arrangement"? Such as a property tax that would bring in a lot more money than does the special business license tax collected from merchants? And one that would turn the property tax over wholly to Promote La Jolla, the BID administrator? .... Such a "special" tax would be on all property owners within the largest geographical boundary that PLJ and the City Planning department could get away with defining. Then the special property tax would be used by PLJ to pay itself to decide how to spend the money, and of course the Economic Development division of City Planning would get a cut for approving all of the expenditures. That is what the City of San Diego/Li Mandri pass off as a "commercial MAD": the BID administrator collects property taxes from owners and spends the money in exactly the same way that the BID's business license taxes are spent (such as on sidewalk sweeping and powerwashing, or security services, performed by New City America). There is no way you can collect as much money from merchants as you can get from thousands of property owners. The flaw in this plan: imposing a property tax, and establishing it by the legal mechanism designed to create MADs, but spending it to promote and serve the business community, is illegal. Special MAD property taxes must specifically, directly, and proportionally benefit each specially assessed property. Claiming that sweeping the sidewalk on Prospect Street specially benefits Mr. Girard Avenue's parcel doesn't pass the legal smell test. The California Supreme Court said so in Silicon Valley Taxpayer's Assn v. Santa Clara County Open Space Authority. Our own Superior Court said it in Golden Hill Neighborhood Assn v. City of San Diego. But hey, that never stops the San Diego government from proceeding. The MAD law requires an Engineer's Report, to determine the assessment share cost of a capital project to each property. You don't need an engineer to calculate how much each property will be assessed if you simply want a million dollars to develop into a BID budget. You just need a calculator and the number of properties you can target, and you work backwards. Anyway, it looks like La Jolla property owners have already put the kibosh on Li Mandri and PLJ's pitch. The La Jolla Light article quotes the PLJ as saying "he [Wildman?] and others [Li Mandri and City Planning?] had suggested finding a way to 'help' both merchants and residents throughout La Jolla - such as a maintenance assessment district or new business district. But he said last week the focus has come back to just the Village merchants." The "focus has come back." What a quaint way of saying, no MAD.— April 29, 2010 6:16 p.m.
The "D" Word
The D Word and the P Word: They go together like fric and frak. Density and Parking. Parking and Density. Create more Density, create more Parking Problem. More Parking Problem = more Revenue. Make something scarce, its price goes up. Someone's gotta make some money on it, too. La Jolla dumped the Parking District and its obsession with no free parking, anywhere, and its plan to make residents buy permits to park in front of their own houses. So. Here we are again, getting the Parking District pitch from City Planning and the BID groups (e.g., Hillcrest BA, whose exec director used to be exec director of Discover PB; NP Mainstreet), but in the more vulnerable and less influential Uptown/NP/Golden Hill areas. Do Uptown/NP/GH residents and business owners have the clout that La Jollans had? Anti-Parking-District Pacific Beach residents and business owners had enough clout several years ago: Faulconer suspended the attempts to impose the Discover PB-BID-controlled Parking District on them. On the D2 website http://www.sandiego.gov/citycouncil/cd2/communiti… note "Pacific BeachParking District TEMPORARILY SUSPENDED" - and that was years ago. Check out the old PB Parking District website: http://www.pacificbeachparking.org/ And if you want to know who Donald Shoup is, click on the Meeting Minutes link: http://www.pacificbeachparking.org/?cat=4 Read the last posted minutes, for 8-10-2006. Shoup is a crazy old guy who has made a fortune being the disciple and godfather of the parking-revenue-collecting BIDs and the City-needs-more-revenue set. But, as if no one has any memory of everything that has happened previously, the Parking District pitch is baaaaaaaack, at the CPU. What are you going to do with a City that never stops playing the old game?— April 29, 2010 10:09 a.m.
Peeping Noises, Flies, Shuddering Tongues
"very loud peeping noise"??? HEY, Just One Dad, Carlsbad, with all due respect to Matthew: I'd hedge my bets on a towhee. Their peeping drives me crazy at this time of year. At any time of night or day, if you or any other critter are near a towhee nest, they will peep you crazy. They are medium-size brown birds with sort of rusty bottomsides. They are the brown birds you may see hopping about on the ground all over the park and everywhere. They are nervous and brazen, simultaneously.— April 28, 2010 7:50 p.m.