With a bit of hoopla, the city hired a consultant to help it figure out how to get a $800 million downtown football stadium off the ground. He was going to write a report, city leaders promised, that would guide them into a financially feasible future.
Eighteen months later, his work seems finished, at least for the moment, and there’s no report. Officials have declined to cough up whatever he did produce. There is a bill, though, for $160,000.
What happened? Events in Sacramento and in the football industry itself. “It’s clear that no major financing decisions will happen until the NFL’s labor situation and fate of statewide redevelopment is resolved,” Liam Dillon reports.
Also at City Hall, the City Council has dueling money-saving plans to head off library and recreation center cuts, the U-T reports.
Busing May Be Pushed Under Budget Bus
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The San Diego school board today will consider whether to cut busing to the bare minimum, providing it just for a few small groups like special education students. “Doing so would be a dramatic step that could reshuffle enrollment across the enormous school district, sending many students back to their neighborhood schools,” Emily Alpert reports. “Putting more emphasis on neighborhood schools has been a focus for this school board, but gutting the busing program would spark a political firestorm, upsetting parents who rely on buses to get their kids to different schools across town.”
Lawsuit Hinted over Balboa Park Plan
The head of a local preservation group hints that it may file suit against the proposed plan to remake Balboa Park and build a parking garage and road bypass. “He said any lawsuit would likely be aimed at whether or not the environmental review adequately analyzed alternatives,” the U-T reports.
Winter Shelter Gets an Early OK
The rest of the City Council gave a chilly reception to the councilman who represents San Diego’s southern neighborhoods: By a 6-1 vote, it agreed to one again house the winter homeless shelter in Barrio Logan as had been done in some years past, the U-T reports. (No, you’re not confused about the calendar: It is indeed the month of May, hence the gray. The council is just handling the winter issue early.)
“That city officials don’t care as much about complaints from the Barrio as they do complaints from wealthier neighborhoods,” Councilman David Alvarez complained. “That after all this time, the story is still the same: if you can’t put something anywhere else in the city you can put it in Barrio Logan.”
A permanent downtown shelter is in the works, and there will be a temporary one in the winter for veterans in the Sports Arena area.
Why Didn’t the DA Prosecute in Clandestine Bonus Case?
The district attorney’s office has a unit specifically set up to root out misuse of public funds and corruption by public and elected officials. So when a big case of alleged corruption came down the pike — the one involving secret bonuses at a redevelopment agency — you might expect the DA’s office to be all over it. But the state attorney general’s office is handling it instead. Why? The answer is elusive.
Arts Funding, Medicare and Secret Bonuses
San Diego Fact Check TV looks at claims regarding city arts funding and Medicare for city workers. Over at VOSD Radio, we’re talking about alleged corruption.
Love Hurts
There’s more to the story of the “Ho-Hum Bandit,” the unassuming bank robber who’s accused of robberies in San Diego and across the West: he’s said to have confessed to his girlfriend during an attempt to win back her affections. (Try to picture it: “Hey honey! I still love ya lots. And I knock over banks too!”)
That didn’t work: she turned him in, authorities say.
Meet the Zettabyte
The world’s computer servers devoted to business processed almost 10 zettabytes of information three years ago, a new report by UCSD researchers says. (That’s 9,570,000,000,000,000,000,000 if you’re scoring at home.)
The researchers figure that amounts to three terabytes of information per working person in the world. “Most of this information is incredibly transient: it is created, used and discarded in a few seconds without ever being seen by a person,” a researcher says.
Wow. So much information zips around the world instantly, yet certain specific details — like the fact that stretch pants are never in season — still pass people by.
Please contact Randy Dotinga directly at randydotinga@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter: twitter.com/rdotinga.