Cocoposts

Tesla's Waterline

Sean Olson in the Albuquerque Journal describes the fate of the taxpayer funded waterline that was to have served the new Tesla flying electric carpet plant.  Now that Tesla isn't coming, you'd think there wouldn't be a line.  Wrongo. 

See, the water line is more important to local fortunes than Tesla.  Just like the public infrastructure extended to the westside Eclipse site, that they will never occupy, was more important than Eclipse.   

Land values - its about the land values. 

Sean gets through the whole story without mentioning the elephant and the 800 pound gorilla in the room.  Dancing.    A lot of people in this little burg have their nut in speculative real estate and at least one of them is a County Commissioner (Hint: the one that drives a Bentley and owns the Tesla site).  I guess because he doesn't happen to sit on the Authority board right now, this doesn't need mentioning.  Except it really does need mentioning.

The leaders assure us that it is all a good thing.  Other companies will come along and policies will protect us from the sprawl development that will want to hook into the line.  Like that's worked before. 

I think they expect us not to notice we've been had. 

That means there will be no service to homes in a SunCal development beyond those zones until growth on the West Side catches up to or reaches the SunCal development.  Businesses, on the other hand, would have immediate access to the water if SunCal builds the water and sewer lines ....

What happens if neither one occurs? 

Oh, don't be so doomy gloomy!

Flying Cars

Albuquerque Journal notes that the flying electric carpet company, Tesla Motors, won't be coming to Albuquerque. 

Our city was a pawn in an "economic development" chess game.

Schwarzenegger, during Monday's news conference, said it drove him “absolutely insane” that Tesla planned to build the 4-door sedan in New Mexico.

Just crazy about New Mexico, Schwarzenegger is!

Nobody here is happy about the news - least of all Albuquerque's business boosters.  But Fred Mondragon, Marty's economic development guy, assured the New Mexico Independent that "Nobody is going to go out and shoot themselves because Tesla isn’t coming.” 

Someone may want to drive an electric WhiteStar sedan over a cliff, however.  Don't hold your breath for the day. 

The County Commissioner, at least, has vowed to get back his dime. 

But Tesla may not have heard the last from Albuquerque. Cummins said that he and his partners are talking over their options for recouping their $300,000 investment in the car company. “Now that they’re definitely not coming, we’re going to have some serious discussions,” he said.

Sprawl Snark South

A recent Duke City Fix post asks the interesting questions:   

1. Should Albuquerque spread south?
2. Should it stay moving west (sic)?

Does it really matter what we think?  Albuquerque grows in spite of such thoughtful questions.   Discussions of the broader public interest are easily co-opted and misdirect us from the specifics - like who owns the land, finances the projects and stands to profit. 

Snarkity snark snark snark.

Sprawl Schools

Last week's vainglorious announcement by the Albuquerque Public School Board that new school construction is  "going clear to the Rio Puerco"  is followed this week by the announcement of a budget shortfall.  Go figure.

In a transparent attempt to spread around responsibility, they're asking what we think.   

Like perhaps, don't build schools if you can't afford to run the ones you've already got.   From KOB

The Albuquerque Public School system is asking for public input into how the district can overcome a forecast $20 million budget shortfall.  The problem: The district'€™s growth in construction spending has overrun the district's growth in enrollment.  Five new schools will be opening in the 2008-2009 school year and each new school will add operating costs ranging from staffing and maintenance to utilities.

New school construction on raw land at the leading edge of the sprawl line is trumpeted as completely necessary to keep up with growth.  How to pay for staffing and operating them? ::sound of crickets::

APS construction responds to the sprawl industry's constant demand for supporting public infrastructure of all kinds.   Without these, their subdivisions (and dreams of big profits) are too far away.   

That little weanie building fee that APS bragged about "negotiating" with home builders a couple years ago was a token contribution in exchange for the much much bigger promise to build.  It doesn't come close to fair coverage of capital costs and, obviously, contributes nothing to staffing and operating the schools clear to the Rio Puerco.   

Blaming Smart Growth

In a mighty leap of logic and misdirection, not unusual for the Heritage Foundation, author Wendell Cox blames smart growth for the housing bubble, economic downturn and alopecia.       

These policies, often referred to as "smart growth," create a scarcity of land, artificially raise the price of housing, and, again, have increased the exposure of the market to risky mortgage debt. When more liberal loan policies were implemented, metropolitan areas that had adopted these more restrictive policies lacked the resilient land markets that would have allowed the greater demand to be accommodated without inordinate increases in house prices.

This is simultaneously ridiculous and boring - other typifying traits of  HF material.

There is a glut of housing tied directly to those  liberal loan policies, not a shortage of land caused by excessive land use regulation.  And we should be so lucky.  The sprawl pattern paradigm of the last twenty-five years was constrained by very little and the least of these was "smart growth" regulation.   The term itself was only more recently popularized to describe the largely ineffective and pathetic attempts to rein in the juggernaut - like Albuquerque's Planned Growth Strategy in 1996 - the potential of which was nipped in the bud by sprawlmeisters.   

Albuquerque's most obvious development constraint is land ownership, not regulation.  The edges of our ubiquitous suburbia are defined by federal, Indian or old land grant boundaries, not smart growth boundaries.  The entire idea of effective growth boundaries was kneecapped by the very developer friendly Legislature early in the decade.

Blaming planning or local government regulation seems popular with those who made record breaking profits in the housing boom and on the way down they are grasping at straws. 

TIDD Hugs and Understanding

The vote to amend the City of Albuquerque's ordinance regarding tax increment financing failed 5-4 last night.    Proponents for the changes were clear.   In short they said, you should understand consequences before you embrace something wholeheartedly. 

Councilor Cadigan spoke of baseball, failed promises of the railroad builders and the meaning of the  anti-donation clause in the New Mexico Constitution.  Councilor O'Malley described life, planning and TIDDs in all their fractal animal-print complexity.  Along with Benton and Garduno, they demonstrated understanding of the risks and rewards of  TIDD financing.

Opponents didn't say anything that even registered on the common-sense o-meter.  They have unquestioningly embraced the whole idea.  Curiously, Councilor Sally Mayer talked about her intelligence getting insulted and  Councilor Trudy Jones picked up this.  Ken Sanchez talked about how the City might get sued.   Chamber of Commerce, Homebuilders and NAIOP spoke against the bill and evoked the magic word -  jobs. 

A great piece from Planning and Environmental Law by Greg LeRoy about TIF is here.  New Mexico Voices for Children has good stuff here. 

From the LeRoy article:

How much is enough?  The U.S. is arguably well overbuilt in retail space, some of it subsidized by TIF.  The National Trust for Historic Preservation estimates the nation has 38 square feet of store space per capita, compared to other industrialized nations with between 1.5 and eight square feet (and eight square feet in the U.S. 30 years ago).

A 2001 study by the Congress for the New Urbanism and PriceWaterhouseCoopers about "grayfields"--the euphemism for dead malls--found that 7 percent of regional malls were already grayfields and another 12 percent were "potentially moving towards grayfield status in the next five years"; that would be 389 dead malls.

   

Water Rules Repealed

Albuquerque Journal says the Water Authority repealed the new water conservation rules.   

Cadigan linked the ordinance's repeal to one "special interest group"— builders— complaining about costs.  "They are not entitled to a special process because they are home building lobbyists," he said.

Oh, but they do so believe they are entitled.

(Bernalillo County Commissioner) Cummins stressed at the meeting that the board and builders believe in conservation, but the changes were not passed in the "traditional" way, with builders giving comment before the bill was drafted.  "I think the tenor of compromise is different than the tenor of starting with a clean slate," Cummins said of the repeal.

Tenor of compromise and the traditional way? 

I'm picturing a tradition of grandfathering -  exempting entire subdivisions from new requirements and calling it compromise. 

Fragmenting resource and land use regulation, in this case through multiple agencies with overlapping jurisdictions, maximizes short term real estate market and builder profits and hinders true community building.   Some tradition.      

Another Authority

From the Albuquerque Journal - an idea for a city-county redevelopment authority to which my gut reaction is so negative that I struggle to read the entire story as I was shaking my head so hard.  Can we please call it something else?   I'm so wary of authority.

O'Malley has introduced legislation to organize a "work group" to study the issue and report on the viability of creating an authority.  If the idea proves to be sound, the same group would offer recommendations on how the authority should be set up, who would be involved and how much autonomy it should have.  O'Malley said the city's redevelopment office was not efficient enough to ensure continuous progress on larger redevelopments and that it is vulnerable to political pressures. ...

A new board is no less vulnerable to political pressure, IMHO.    

 

Mayor Martin Chávez said he would take a look at the idea but won't take a position until there's more information.  He said he would not support "anything that circumscribes the authority of those that are accountable to the public."

That's an interesting comment.  More likely, a new board circumscribes accountability, while the authority of the individual who sits on such a board may actually increase.  His accountability to the public is generally reduced by new decision-making machinations and another set of poorly attended meetings.  New boards are less transparent to public scrutiny,  and certainly no less vulnerable to politics. 

Here's a link to Denver's redevelopment authority.  Not too exciting but apparently functional. 

 

Flat Tires on Economy

From a Denver Post story yesterday came news about jet manufacturing entitled "All the Air Taken Out"  in which they mention Eclipse Aviation's challenges:

The very-light-jet industry, which just recently seemed a promising economic-development niche for Colorado, has nearly fizzled out in the state. Within the past 3 1/2 months, Adam Aircraft and Aviation Technology Group, both based at Centennial Airport, have gone from up-and-comers in a potentially lucrative new business to shells of their former selves.

Even Eclipse was challenged   Even the most successful startup in the VLJ market, Eclipse Aviation in Albuquerque, has run into challenges.  ...

This morning the Albuquerque Journal's Sean Olson gives us the news about a defaulting developer  who insists this doesn't mean a thing for 57,000 acres in Albuquerque.   

California-based SunCal, developer of Albuquerque's massive Westland project, has had a rough year with some of its California and Nevada ventures— but insists that will have no bearing on its plans here. 

SunCal Companies defaulted on $184 million in loans— losing five properties in foreclosure.  At least nine lawsuits are pending in those states.

Moody's last month removed a bond rating on one SunCal company responsible for four developments in Southern California.  About $17.5 million in liens have been filed in two of its California projects.

But SunCal, which bought 57,000 acres from the heirs of the Atrisco Land Grant on the West Side last year for $250 million, insists none of its struggles to the west will affect the Westland project here.

KKOB and Republicans

The Albuquerque Journal tells only parts of the story.  They tell about Republicans complaining to KKOB and a news anchor quitting.   

Laura MacCallum, afternoon drive-time news anchor for KKOB (770-AM) radio, abruptly quit last week after station management pulled a story she produced concerning the Republican Party delegate nominating convention in Bernalillo County.    The story was broadcast three times last Wednesday, prompting complaints from the state Republican Party and one of its campaigns.

The end - thus illustrating the point of who calls the shots in our little town.      

::Stares at empty lawn where afternoon daily once rested.  Heaves huge sigh::.

Dennis Domrzalski's blog coverage is complete.  Sometimes completely over the top, but complete.   

By the week’s end, Wilson’s campaign admitted that it had paid the convention entrance fees for five people. But it was too late. They had already shot themselves in the head.  The would-be empire and Wilson’s campaign behaved like the power-obsessed elitists they are, and it backfired. The blogosphere hit back. The gatekeepers in the traditional media were blown away.

It isn’t all bad, though, for the non-answering Cheshire and the GOP smear-job operatives. With their abusive, sleazy and self-destructive tactics they’ve proven themselves worthy.  Worthy of jobs in Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Blogger-on-fire but his misogyny wafts through to my monitor like strong cheese.    

Here is Dennis with Nicole in the Eye on New Mexico part two segment  in which Republican Pat Rogers puts on a pathetic display attempting to insult and discredit former Governor Dave Cargo.  Cargo first dared to made noise about Heather Wilson's campaign tactics.  Pat attempts to administer party punishment and Cargo is having none of it. 

Does Pat not remind you of the other "Mr. Rogers" in a weird-scary way?