Cocoposts

Jumbo Corporate Welfare

Dr. Housing Bubble comments on this news from the Washington Post about how it is Getting Easier to Get Big Loans.

In what is now becoming a bigger and bigger joke where financially responsible folks are the butt of ridicule, they are going to remove the safe guards of giving money to folks in declining markets without them putting more skin in the game.  Forget about the fact that the markets are declining because folks went into the housing game with no skin and lower standards to begin with!   

We are living in a Twilight Zone episode in which the “solution” to our problem is the problem. This is utterly stupid and virtually guarantees a taxpayer bailout whether we want it or not.

A Seasoned Slacker

 

Slate has a grouping of posts about procrastination called Just Don't Do It that inspires me to write my own such advice.  I'm putting that on my list for later.  Dog walking and compost-turning will inevitably delay today's substantive post on the critical disconnect between land use and water planning.

This is my neighbor's car in an impromptu Mother's Day parade last Sunday.  The quilts were at a Corrales quilt show and wine tasting we stumbled upon Saturday.  It only took me a week to download these!          

Racino Richardson

In a move that, IMHO,  will be the death knell for the State Fairgrounds and horse events within Albuquerque, the Governor's Racing Commission  prepares the public for a decision to make the Governor's good friend, Paul Blanchard, even richer.   

The Albuquerque Journal:

Paul Blanchard, Downs at Albuquerque president, is seeking state approval to move the racetrack and casino to a 500-acre parcel at the northeast corner of Interstate 40 and N.M. 41 in Moriarty. ...

Blanchard's architects touted a massive facility that would include a one-mile racetrack, 22 barns, 1,512 stalls, a travel center/truck stop, multistory hotel, RV park, indoor equestrian center, outdoor show ring, paddock/amphitheater, advanced veterinary clinic, private fourth-floor grandstand suites, steak house, food court and no fewer than five bars.  The facility also would allow Blanchard to more than double the number of the Downs' 330 slot machines to 715.

Blanchard— a high-dollar campaign contributor and political ally to Gov. Bill Richardson— said the new facility would nearly triple the taxes the Downs pays to the state, growing from $4,812,196 in 2006 to $12,552,898 in 2009.

Five bars?  Giddyup.    

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.   

Rocky Flats Editorial

Flats Secrecy Taken Too Far By The Denver Post

(...) The U.S. Department of Energy's recently announced plans to digitally copy — then destroy — 500 boxes of records pertaining to the plant will only make matters worse. Legitimate arguments can be made about how cutting-edge advances in software and hardware quickly become outdated, making it very possible that future access to the digitally copied records would be difficult.

More important, though, is how the public perceives the trustworthiness of the DOE.  (...)

The now-infamous Rocky Flats special grand jury is a 16-year-old wound that has never healed. The grand jury investigated environmental crimes at the plant for 2-1/2 years, sifting through hundreds of boxes of evidence and testimony from more than 100 witnesses. Grand jurors were discharged in 1992, days before federal prosecutors crafted a plea agreement with Rockwell International Corporation, one of the contractors that operated the plant.

The jurors have been struggling to be heard ever since, filing federal actions in an effort to get permission to release publicly their allegations and beliefs about what went on at the plant.  A decision last week by Senior U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch to keep much of the jury's contentions under wraps only deepens the air of mystery surrounding Rocky Flats.

The Strangelovian concept is:  the less information made public about what went on, the greater the public perception of trustworthiness.  I'd say that is still working pretty well for DOE.  After all, what could possibly go wrong with production at Los Alamos?   Trust them.   

Sprawl Sampler

This San Francisco Chronicle story from April 18, 2008, "Creeping Sprawl",  and the comments that follow it, nearly capture the complete sprawling picture of growth in California and elsewhere.

 "We're losing migration corridors for animals and compromising our watersheds and paving over productive farmland," said Amanda Brown-Stevens, field director for Greenbelt Alliance, a Bay Area land conservation and urban planning organization.

 The challenge, she said, is getting people to value long-term sustainability more than short-term profit. If they won't do it on their own, then land-use laws can be enacted to prevent landowners and builders from developing open space.

It may be a little too little and too late for more land-use laws.  Been there and done that.

What few note is that sprawl is built with borrowed money.   Most blame either developers, planners or government politicians for the last twenty-five years of bad development, we should be blaming Wall Street.   

Senator Scrum

The Albuquerque Journal covers Senator Shannon Robinson's use of tax money for his rugby obsession.

The quest for success hasn't come cheap for University of New Mexico rugby and its politically connected coach, who appears to have free reign over the program even though he isn't a university employee.     Sen. Shannon Robinson, D-Albuquerque, is the unpaid volunteer coach who also prides himself on being one of UNM's patron saints when it comes to legislative appropriations.

APS Building Spree

 Albuquerque Journal notes APS construction. 

The rapid-fire construction of West Side schools continued Wednesday as officials broke ground on a middle school next to Volcano Vista High.  "We're going clear to the Rio Puerco," Albuquerque School Board President Mary Lee Martin said, noting the western expansion of the district in the past several years....

In the next three years, APS plans to open 10 new schools...

Giddy-up for sprawl-enabling schools clear to the Puerco!   Catching up with the west side real estate growth just in time for a slow-down.

This is the Way Cities Die

American Airlines to pull out of Oakland International, headline San Francisco Chronicle. 

05-05) 21:07 PDT Oakland -- American Airlines, citing the high cost of fuel, will pull out of Oakland International Airport in September after six decades operating there, airport officials said Monday.

The airline has been running three daily non-stop flights out of the airport to Dallas-Ft. Worth and has been operating at Oakland since 1947.

Reading and republishing the comments of those with whom you agree saves the trouble of writing and leaves more time for lurking.  Commenter Pulpwood places this news in a much much larger context. 

This is the way that cities die. Incompetent corrupt politicians pandering to howling mobs of special interests with nothing to contribute but votes to reelect the politicians. Gary, Indiana. Cleveland, Ohio. Buffalo, New York. Oakland, California. 80 years ago flourishing downtowns, working electric transit systems, civic pride, beautiful carefully built ornate buildings, gardens, trees. Each generation never knows what preceded it. No one is aware of the decline. Like the environment collapsing. One by one, social customs fade, a species disappears. Another neighborhood goes, what propels it forward is a mere reworking of the past. It's not the place, it's the new people and the people that manipulate them and that profit from them that makes a city die.

Pulpwood sounds like a cynical city planner in need of a double Buckaroo Bonsai. 

And some rail service. 

Smart Grid May Reduce Peak Demand

Reducing peak electric power loads is critical to reducing the possibility that we'll rationalize using nuclear power to meet those demands. 

News from the Denver Post that consumers may get important feedback on home electricity use -  in Canada and Boulder anyway. 

MILTON, Ontario — The glowing amber dot on a light switch in the entryway of George Tsapoitis' house offers a clue about the future of electricity.  A few times this summer, when millions of air conditioners strain the Toronto region's power grid, that pencil-tip-size amber dot will blink. It will be asking Tsapoitis to turn the switch off — unless he's already programmed his house to make that move for him.

This is the beginning of a new way of thinking about electricity, and the biggest change in how we get power since wires began veining the landscape a century ago.  Smart-grid technologies have gotten small tests throughout North America, as utilities and regulators scout how to coax people to reduce their demand for power. But there's little doubt it's coming.

Xcel Energy plans to soon begin a $100 million smart-grid project reaching 100,000 homes in Boulder. The grid will create a two-way communication between Xcel and its customers, allowing them to determine peak usage hours and change rates and consumption habits accordingly.

For example, Xcel would be able to charge higher rates during peak hours and lower rates during off-peak hours. Consumers could lower their monthly bills by performing power-consuming tasks, such as running the dishwasher, during off-peak hours.