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Two-for-One Special on Mediators
Your understanding is pretty flawed. Do your reseach, for goodness sake. You are really sadly misinformed, deluded, or confused, dude. There are no matching funds! This is a special assessment added to your property bill, to be used to provide "special and proportional benefit to each property" above and beyond what is provided by the city. As required by State Constitutional law. Dog poop bags provide no special benefit to any property. Garbage cans provide no special benefit. And the Economic Development department takes a 4% cut, right from your assessment, so I guess the mediation costs are being paid by you, me, and 3999 other property owners. And there are NO matching funds! Where on earth would you get such a propagandistic idea? Maybe the CDC?— August 25, 2008 7:24 p.m.
Two-for-One Special on Mediators
You are very wrong: the CDC has always consisted of money-hungry self-righteous people who run around claiming that they live to improve the quality of your life. They invite no input that conflicts with their goal of total control and secrecy. They know where to go to get their hands on public money. That's all they do. They pay themselves and their minions salaries and bennies out of the taxpayer money they get. Sure, some of them volunteered to do what it took to lasso in half a mill of taxpayer money for perpetuity. Boy, that took a lot of self-sacrifice. Their biggest expertise is getting money. Look at their newsletter: they hold fundraisers for themselves, not for the community. Were you one of the attendees of their summer-long S$125-per-meal dinners? Do your research and dig up all of their grant money applications and financial records, from every nook and corner of the federal, state, and local government. It has long been their dream to get their hands on money that they don't have to work for by writing grant propsals year after year; maybe you haven't been here long enough to know their history. It isn't pretty.— August 25, 2008 12:52 p.m.
Two-for-One Special on Mediators
"I sit here once a month for nothing,” responded MAD member Hilsdorf. “Yes, but you volunteered for this,” responded NCRC’s Barbara Filner. ________________________________________________________________ If that is the type of response that this mediator will continue to provide, what is the point? It is a ridiculous response: the complaint is not about having to "sit" there: it's about being prohibited from serving the purpose of "sitting" there. If the mediator can't even understand that simple and obvious element of complaint, she might as well drop out of this now. Or maybe because Atkins and the Economic Development department brought her in and are paying her, she isn't really neutral. Our elected committee is supposed to control every decision about how our assessment money is spent. Every taxpayer assessment dollar that is spent should be spent on something that the community asked the committee to spend it on, after polling on what the community wants. If we don't want garbage cans, we aren't forced to have garbage cans. Our committee is our community voice, and, yes, the committee members are volunteers. The CDC are paid flacks who instigated the assessment district formation, knowing that they could help themselves to 20% off the top. The CDC views the property owners' assessment money as as the CDC's personal honey pot, and neither consults the community nor allows the committeee any input on what it will be spent on. The big role that excites the CDC, like it did for their good friend Nancy Graham, ex-CCDC head, is to bestow taxpayer money on whomever the CDC chooses, for contracts; this power to hand out our assessment money cultivates the CDC empire and establishes leverage in the circles in which the CDC hopes to be a big player. CDC gets millions of other dollars, but moving into this little game of taking half a million from the property owners is something they don't have to work for year after year: they now automatically get access to our money, and can play contract maker and power broker, no matter how pitifully wasteful and unnecessary.— August 25, 2008 10:31 a.m.
From Trashy to Classy
The Urban Corps contract amount is actually $262,000, as reported in the North Park News. The NPN also reports that the reproduction clock, mamufactured in 1991, in front of the Big Kitchen, is a "landmark" clock. Not. It isn't historical. It's just a silly, cheap reproduction representing an era in which South Park didn't even exist. And the clock's cheap mechanism never works for long: for years it was stuck at 2 o'clock, until one of the CDC board members' husband was paid taxpayer money to repair it. Anyway, no one cares if it works. No one needs a clock in the middle of the sidewalk. It is only a landmark to the egos of a handful of self-serving people (CDC board members) who had it installed using government grants, and who promised in a Council hearing to pay for all related expenses forever. But they got a bit tired of it, so now property owners who have never even seen the clock and live far away from it get charged for "twice yearly maintenace'? That's rich.— August 25, 2008 10:03 a.m.
MAD Gets Irate
sdclimbergal, Last word: it's "moot" not "mute." Mute is what the oligarchists prefer of their minions. Moot is a legal term referring to a motion or case, as practiced in a Democracy. Love, Love your new tone, glad you are so busy. But you aren't serious, are you? You think the assessment taxes can be spent on a private militia to protect you, because "To call the police every time we have a problem is difficult, expensive, and time consuming for the city, the police dept, and us."? Are you serious? Better buy a gun and build that fence with broken glass on top, because if you are too busy to work with the good police force we all support and admire, then you are on your own. When I first moved here in the 80s, there was a meth house nearby. I worked intensely with the police, spent huge amounts of my time collecting data and making reports, for at least a year, and the police knew just what to do to resolve the problem. And according to the rules of a Democracy. That's why we pool our tax dollars into the General Fund, so that we won't need militias and little mafias running around on behalf of private enterprises. If you want that kind of craziness, you should volunteer for duty in Baghdad, today. Might solve the unemployment problem for you and your spouse. Jeesh!— May 28, 2008 11:18 a.m.
MAD Gets Irate
It's hard work... From what quarter of sanity and reason have I heard that before...? The crazies, with all of their CAPS and !!! emerge from the tacky bars and clubs to spew out their brilliant ideas. Please note that the advisory committee consists of a majority of CDC rah-rahs and CDC Board members. You are way confused.— May 27, 2008 10:41 a.m.
MAD Gets Irate
Addendum for sdclimbergal: It is easy to appreciate that a key assumption underlying data assessments is that knowledge about past behavior can help us predict future behavior. Or, as Shakespeare so eloquently stated in the Tempest, "What's past is prologue." The CDC has been given opportunity after opportunity to do the right thing, to rectify past misdeeds by acting generously in the present. The behavior patterns are unmistakable, though you haven't observed long enough to appreciate it. But even the MAD enthusiasts on the Committee saw the writing on the wall: a hugely overpaid "program manager," hired in secrecy, without knowledge of and thus disenfranchising the oversight Committee, and whose past experience is with a developer devoted to "infill" projects, and who is connected to CCDC and the Urban Land Institute and all of the developer interests in the corrupt Sanders Planning Department. These are just data, irrefutable. Check them out. Cognitive philosophical niceties aside, who in their right mind would give Bush a third term, to right his wrongs!— May 26, 2008 8:35 p.m.
MAD Gets Irate
sdclimbergal, Where are you getting your "data"? I hope not where it appears you are getting it...so, please cite hard evidence of bias in the Committee. Facts: the Committee currently consists of 12 members, 7 of whom voted "yes" on the MAD ballot in June 2007. The 5 members who voted agaist the MAD in 2007 but who are now sincerely dedicated to at least spending the money legally and wisely have had no opportunity to show bias of any kind. Nothing has been thwarted; there has been no contract between CDC and the City. Several of the "yes" voters who are also CDC board members have no shame about being biased, on the other hand, and put forward propaganda about those who will not blindly support the CDC's less than honest dealings. And their bias is not in your best interest, rest assured, though apparently you pay attention to what they tell you, instead of doing your own independent research. You were not at the April 14 meeting in which the Committee voted 8-4 against supporting the FY08/09 budget. Obviously the 8 votes against the CDC's plan include those "yes" voters who supported the MAD concept, but now they have seen clearly how improperly the CDC proceeds. Read the published minutes of that meeting and read the statements provided by those who object to the way the CDC is trying to operate. Do your research.— May 26, 2008 6:51 p.m.
MAD Gets Irate
Love: When the smoke in your head clears, you might check the facts: the City did not sign the legal contract with the CDC, so that they could access our tax dollars, until April 2008, a full year after the 2007/2008 tax dollars were in the coffers. You should complain to the City, if you aren't happy. The MAD Oversight Committee, elected by the community, has no responsiblility for the failure of the City and the CDC to enter into a contract. Also: Our residential streets are swept twice monthly by the City; so, what are you talking about, dirty streets? The streets are cracked and potholed, of course, but the assessment dollars can never be legally spent on that sort of infrastructure repair. So, I guess you will be thrilled when some privvate company is handed our tax dollars to clean an already clean but very broken street or sidewalk. Totally crazy, but so is the tone of your crazy comment.— May 26, 2008 12:34 p.m.
MAD Gets Irate
sdclimbergal, One more thing: you might be interested in a really cool article by Sara Reistad-Long that appeared in the NY Times on May 20 2008 ("Older Brain Really May Be a Wiser Brain"), based on research and studies reported in Progress in Brain Research. For those older, longtime residents of South Park who have watched the CDC scheme and try the same things over many years, the propaganda and pied-piper smiley false reality that the CDC presented to achieve their goal of controlling a private tax honey pot are all too familiar. Those older and wiser property owners are not distracted by the propaganda, but absorb it and parse it for what it means. The fresh young faces that the old CDC people install to persuade young people like you are a transparent distraction. With age, if you are bright enough, you usually get interested enough in politics to know what you are really voting for.— May 25, 2008 8:31 a.m.