Cocoposts

Spaceport Education

''This positive vote for the spaceport ballot initiative means America's new frontier begins in southern New Mexico,'' Gov. Bill Richardson said Thursday. ''I'm proud that the people of Dona Ana County chose a high-tech and high-wage future, with better math and science education, and expanded opportunities for young men and women right here in New Mexico.''  Santa Fe New Mexican 4/5/07

'The centerpiece of the whole project is the investment in math and science, education for our young people and the creation of new economic opportunities,'' Homans said. ''What we're doing is sending a message to the world that New Mexico embraces technology, innovation and new ideas and that we want to attract those kinds of companies and those kinds of entrepreneurs to our state.'' Santa Fe New Mexican 4/6/07

Interesting.  Which part of building an underfunded $198M runway in the desert  will go to education exactly? 

And about that high-tech and high-wage future?  I picture hard-hat work  in the heat of the Journada del Muerto - building buildings, setting concrete, laying asphalt and stringing fence to keep them cows and terrorists out.   

And hurry up with all that.  The increasing price of oil could make such development for promise of NASCAR rockets and spacerides seem wasteful.   

Shocked, Shocked

Denver Post has the story of developers lying in political ads aimed against homebuyer protection  legislation in Colorado.

Two state lawmakers filed ethics complaints Tuesday accusing lobbyists for Colorado homebuilders of falsely claiming the legislators were pushing a bill that would raise taxes and help trial lawyers.   The allegations come amid an aggressive campaign by builders against a measure that would restore the ability of some homeowners to sue over construction defects.

More-mart

From Grist Magazine, on the impossibility of a green Wal-Mart:

In January alone, Wal-Mart opened 70 U.S. stores.   At current growth rates, by 2015 Wal-Mart will have enlarged its domestic footprint by 20,000 acres, turning CO2-absorbing fields and forests into stores and parking lots.

Big-box stores make incredibly inefficient use of land. While 200,000 square feet of retail spread over several two-story downtown buildings with shared parking takes up about four acres, a single-story Superstore of this size, with its standard 1,000 parking spaces, consumes nearly 20 acres.

That's a lot of balloon-landing.

... It is not as though we need these stores. Between 1990 and 2005, the amount of store space per capita in this country doubled, while consumer spending grew at less than half that rate. The predictable result is that the U.S. is now home to thousands of dead malls and vacant-strip shopping centers. City planners are not the only ones alarmed.

"The most over-retailed country in the world hardly needs more shopping outlets of any kind," advised PricewaterhouseCoopers in a report to real-estate investors.

Flying Cars

Couldn't sleep worried about sprawl and peak oil so I got up and googled Tesla Motors.  This
Electric Drive Transportation Association intro to a press release caught my red eye. ...

Arizona Governor Richardson announced that Tesla Motors will build a new automobile assembly facility in Albuquerque, bringing 400 high wage jobs and a total capital investment of $35 million.

Economic development promises sound a tad hollow to me, but then so does the rhetoric about big-ass electric cars, little jets and spaceships. 

Procurement rules about anti-donation limits in the State Constitution have been wiggled around recently so government giveaways are OK if they are for economic development.  That's why you're hearing the term a lot more.  Not, you know, because we're doing more of it. 

Tucson Albuquerque Mayor Marty Chavez said in the same press release that the location will continue our policy of growing west side job opportunities to improve the jobs/housing balance, reduce the need for commuting, and further improve air quality. 

There is a lot of land between where workers live and where this plant is going at Paseo del Vulcan.  Look at a map.   It might as well be in Arizona.

The key to economic development in this case is $8 or $9 million more in tax dollars to pay for stretching services, past hundreds of acres of undeveloped land, even further out onto the mesa of unincorporated Bernalillo County.  New infrastructure (read: waterlines and roads) increases the value of land it touches.  Like taxpayer magic.    The primary and immediate beneficiaries of economic development schemes are land speculators.   

Who cares?  Well, if Kunstler is right, it is hard to watch the building of car-dependent  car factories way out on the West Mesa.  It isn't sustainable.  And who owns that land anyway?  ::shuffles papers and mumbles::   

I'm sure there are onerous things about car and mattress manufacturing that have made a distant site preferable - which makes it even sadder.   Any environmental control that might make the factory a more sensitive neighbor can no-doubt be dispensed with.    Regulation of much of anything is under the same sensitive jurisdictional hand that brought you those paragons of attractive industrial development areas:  North Edith and South Broadway.

Meet Bernalillo County's new western gateway to our City.

Good thing we are so like, this close to flying cars. 

Opening Day

Our government may be going to hell but hey, it's Opening Day!  How can you feel bad about much of anything on Opening Day?  The world is alive with positive potential. 

"There is no sports event like Opening Day of baseball, the sense of beating back the forces of darkness and the National Football League." -- George Vecsey  (Wiki)

Time begins, washed and fresh, Opening Day. 

Might wear Rockies pajamas to work today

and repeat the new shortstop's name - it's fun to say

Troy Tulowitzki, Troy Tulowitzki, Troy Tulowitzki. 

Civic Crumbles

Albuquerque Journal story this morning about UNM Hospital's state-of-the-art addition - where health care is apparently all about making babies - the somewhat cumbersomely named:  Barbara and Bill Richardson Pavilion.   

::light applause::

No mention of who the architect and construction manager were for the project.   No wonder.  We're pretty darn sure Marc Schiff, of recent fame, was working on this one.  He was jettisoned by his colleagues late last year.   (Kind of like how Manny Aragon was jettisoned by Highlands University.)  They also changed the name of the architecture firm and moved offices to Old Town.   

The courthouse construction stuff (I still can't decide what to call it)  has been coming down so long that most everyone in the know has been in damage-control mode.  They've been backing away for months.  Or bending over and bracing themselves.

I expected to feel more positive about the announcement.  But it is a let down.  It should feel like, as I reckoned before, a good housecleaning.  Like an end to Manny's reign.  Like a trigger for more honest and open government.  Instead, I just feel dirty.  Like the house can't get cleaned because the whole thing may have termites.  We're not sure yet.  This will drag on for months.  The uncertainty about other public projects before and since will build additional distrust in government -  and just how much lower can people's opinion of their leaders go before we all crumble to little civic bits?

Maybe it is better to affect innocence and wide-eyed shock.  Or to assume a calm stoic position that this changes little.  Afterall, Manny can always run for County Commission in a few years.  And Marc Schiff  was an extremely competent architect before all this started. ....   

Now when did this start exactly?