Cocoposts

Go Big TIDD Go

New Mexico has no shortage of opportunities for reckless public finance.  Our history is riddled with huge boondoggley infrastructure projects and sour investments.  But even by those standards,  TIDDs are a big one. 

Denver Post -Politics West noted NM Senate passage of the SunCal bill for TIDDs.   NMFBIHOP sums it up and gives good tweet from Gwyneth:

SunCal got $408 million of your tax money today, thanks to a vote of 29-9.

Despite the efforts of Sen. Eric Griego, who argued passionately against the TIDDs to help expand urban sprawl in Albuquerque, the bill passed. SunCal has been throwing money around to all sorts of Representatives and Senators in Santa Fe. And, despite the dire economic situation we find ourselves in, too many Senators decided to give the money to this corporation.

Gwyneth Doland had some excellent tweets from her Twitter account today. My favorite was this:

Sen. Eric Griego has got his knee on the neck of the Winrock TIDD and he is punching it in the face repeatedly.

To no avail. 

Money sure does funny things to people.  Even funnier is what the mere promise of money will do to people.  The NM Senate doesn't get the joke.

Marty's Airport

From KRQE comes news of a dust-up over the contract for the west side airport - Double Eagle II - over there t'other side of the volcanoes.  

Above is a photo of the Mayor and others burying Eclipse breaking ground for  something out there.

Double Eagle II and the would-a-been site of Eclipse Aviation were centerpieces for the west side economic development initiative.  Public paid infrastructure would-a-brought high-tech jobs in aviation.  and not-coincidentally helped the sprawl speculators.

Something For Nothing About TIDDs

More on TIDDs - Tax Increment Development Districts in New Mexico, lifted from Anne Stauffer's piece in The New Mexico Independent.  My bolding of bits.

You’re not creating money, you’re devoting money ... .

Bonds are issued to finance the infrastructure ... TIDDs take on debt.  

TIDDs create "gated tax communities" in which the majority of new gross receipts taxes are used only to benefit the new development.

TIDDs circumvent the planning and budgeting process  tying up a great deal of money for a very long time.

Creating a development credit card. 

So-called free money can be very expensive when the bill comes due.

Devoting more money to more debt in an over-leveraged real estate economy. What could possibly go wrong? 

National Sacrifice Areas - Appalachia Edition

From Feministing:

... Appalachians are a strong, diverse, proud people. We are not a throw-away culture. Appalachia should not serve as a national sacrificial area. These beautiful mountains are the second most bio-diverse region in the world, second only behind the tropical rainforest. Why is our nation destroying them at the expense of so-called cheap energy, a source of energy that's emitting the most C02 of anything in the world and the greatest cause of climate change? It just doesn't make sense. And it pisses me off.

                                                                                                          Theresa L. Burriss, Radford University

Deep Salty Coal-fired Water Road

Well well drilling is OK as long as they do it with somebody else's money.  Not mine or yours.  Because baby, desal has boondoggle written all over it.  Or White Elephant.  Or Trojan Horse.  I can't tell which yet exactly.

Sean Olson adds news in the Albuquerque Journal about companies formed to make claim to recently rediscovered deep salty water under the Rio Puerco and elsewhere.  Can you believe the names of some of them on that list?  Grounded and Polite, LLC?  Somebody was tipsy.  Or it's in code.  I know I am.

All these anonymously owned companies got formed and filed under the regulatory wire -  well before the the well-meaning figured-out ramifications and regulations for all those wells.  

The first biggest mostest and bestest impact of the drilling is land access.  The top thing needed for new development,  including well development,  is a road.  That holds true anywhere unless we get that flying car thing going.  And that loopy road will cost a lot. 

Taxpayers could  be on the hook for that unless the land and water speculators build their own damn roads. 

Governing Bareback

It isn't enough just to elect and vote for leaders.  They need policies and direction from a broad base of citizens.  A well-built policy saddle for their ride, if you will.   Planning is about not going riding bareback because that's just plain crazy.  But it is a lot harder to saddle the horse once he's out of the barn running loose.

Water Workshop Saturday Same Song?

In the Albuquerque Journal, John Fleck notes the upcoming forum about the deep wells on the Puerco. 

Developers say they have found vast untapped reservoirs of brackish water beneath open land west of Albuquerque and Rio Rancho.  Is its development a good idea? Should it be used to support new cities, or as a drought reserve for the cities already here?

And, more importantly, can we direct that outcome either way? 

Don't count on using New Mexico's planning, zoning or subdivision laws to do it.  So no worries if you hate the sound of that idea in the first place.  Noise about development from Sandoval County and elsewhere has  drowned-out that song and the piano is sooo out of tune.  Missing a few keys too.

In the spirit of a grumpy cynic with a headache from beating her head against the wall mixing the grain with the grape, a lyric from the booster cacophony is repeated herein below.  

...policies to try to rein that in, but they don’t work. Everyone has the right to use their land as they please — we can’t prevent development.

Managing water by planning land?  Hum a few bars because we don't know the melody.

And we'll have to sing loud.

Kirk Douglas on Stage at 92

 Favorite actor in favorite films:  Lonely Are the Brave and Ace in the Hole, both filmed in Albuquerque. 

The LA Times says,   the 92-year-old actor will take the stage of his namesake theater next month for the first time, performing in a one-man show, “Before I Forget.” Directed by Jeff Kanew, the show will feature the star of such films as “Lust for Life,”  “The Bad and the Beautiful” and, of course, “Spartacus,” sharing stories about his life and career.

Real Estate Lender Plagued by Fairies

Fractal bits of how speculative real estate works, or doesn't, can be found all over the news - much of it from  California. 

From the Los Angeles Times Business section comes a tale of an Orange County real estate lender named Dan Harkey, who has a  taste for Bentleys and bilking investors by exaggerating property values.

NW Loop Road: Just Planners Talking

Marjorie Childress captures the essential facts and characteristic rhetoric about the loop road in the New Mexico Independent story. 

Gayland Bryant, a spokesperson for Sandoval County, said the road has been in the planning stages for over 20 years with the idea that it’ll serve as a major economic development corridor. It’ll also relieve transportation pressures in the metropolitan core, he said.