San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

You are here: Home / Archives for Jay Powell

San Diego Commons at the Crossroads: The Sell-Off of ‘Excess’ Properties

by

“Why didn’t you ask the neighbors and the community what they might think?”

This past week San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer announced as one of the key highlights of his State of the City that he is bringing forward “the first comprehensive vision for San Diego’s parks in more than 60 years” and promised that “ground would be broken on 50 new or upgraded parks during the next five years. “

Actual budgets are always a reality check on visionary pronouncements. By April we should know if and how this vision will be reflected in the upcoming Fiscal Year 2017 budget.

There is a need for yet another kind of reality check. The convergence of the promise of a new grand vision for parks by the Mayor while the city’s Real Estate Asset Department (READ) pushes ahead with the sale of city-owned properties brings us to an important crossroads for determining the future of the Commons for the City of San Diego.   [Read more…]

Hide and Seek on the Commons: Selling More San Diego

by

The public is left out of the decision making, the City Council is not fully engaged

Today, Wednesday February 10, the City Council Smart Growth and Land Use (SG&LU) Committee will be asked to recommend approval to the full City Council of the marketing for sale of six City-owned properties that the Real Estate Asset Department (READ) has declared surplus and excess to the needs of the City.

Prior SDFP articles on the topic called into question the efficacy, advisability and propriety of how these properties have been declared surplus and why. We published the list of properties that was brought forward last summer as an “informational” item by READ.

Here is an update and status report with some editorializing.   [Read more…]

Preserving the San Diego Commons: Public Land, Policy and Process

by

Who decides and who gets to participate in decisions to sell City properties

The previous article in the San Diego Commons at the Crossroads series keyed on the Mayor’s State of City promise to break ground on “50 new or upgraded parks during the next five years” counterpoised against examples of designated open space and other city-owned lands that are in jeopardy of being sold by the City as “surplus properties”.

The proposal to sell one of the now controversial properties labeled “Truax House” adjacent to the Maple Canyon Open Space system has been continued to the February 10 Smart Growth &Land Use (SG&LU) City Council Committee along with some additional properties, not all as yet specified.

And therein lies one serious problem. If you are glued to the City Council website each and every working day of every week you might find out about meeting agenda items related to property sales when they are posted as actions for sale or authorization for sale.   [Read more…]

ALEC and Sempra Energy: The Attack on Rooftop Solar in San Diego

by

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is lead on attacking rooftop solar by working to end “net energy metering” (NEM), where homeowners and businesses are paid for (net) energy they generate above their own use. Their role in states like Arizona is outlined in The New Yorker Article “Power to the People” (Why the rise of green energy makes utility companies nervous) by Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org.

NEM is now the subject of intense proceedings at the California PUC which so far this past year hasn’t seen a fossil power plant or utility rate restructuring scheme they don’t like. This is the same PUC which is under investigation by the State Attorney General for improper communications between regulators and the regulated utilities.   [Read more…]

Where there’s Smoke, Is there a Fire Sale? How San Diego Sells Our Surplus Properties

by

When citizen input is eliminated, are the “real” customers brokers and developers?

Best keep a look out the backdoor. The City is apparently in a mood to sell land. How much and to whom and when is not too clear, but they are already making lists and lining up brokers. A few citizens were on hand for a presentation to the June 10 meeting of the City Council Smart Growth and Land Use Committee on “Potential Sale of 14 Surplus Properties owned by the City of San Diego”.

The “For Information Only” power point was entitled “Excess Property Sales for Action Before City Council in 2015”. There were actually 16 on one list for “Excess Sales Using Brokers” and another 11 on a list titled “Exclusively Negotiated/Direct Sales”. And then there was another “Direct Sale” listed all by itself for the Villa Montezuma historical museum building. So maybe it was 28 excess properties. And every Council District has at least one listing on one or the other of the lists.
  [Read more…]

Community Blight or Benefit : Thoughts On the Civic San Diego Roadshow

by

By Jay Powell

Over the holidays, as I happened to be exploring the East Mesa of Balboa Park, I was surprised by a new feature on the horizon a few points west of due south. It seemed that a very tall structure had just popped out of the ground in the vicinity of the East Village neighborhood of downtown. I came to learn shortly thereafter that this could easily be only the beginning of a wall of tall buildings rising up from East Village in front of the southern vista of the Coronado Bay Bridge and the Coronado Islands as viewed from vantage points such as “Inspiration Point “ in Balboa Park.

While the latter point is a somewhat neglected part of the park, the view still managed to inspire me to find out how this structure was able to pop up in that picture.

At a “Community Benefits Consensus Project” workshop a few weeks later in January Civic San Diego presented storyboards of some projects that they thought best exemplified how a development can provide “community benefits.” The board that caught my attention featured “The Pinnacle,”a 480 foot tall luxury condominium project at the corner of 15th and Island Avenue. So now the beast had a name and a story.   [Read more…]

Drill Team (a paean, not to the war machine)

by

By Jay Powell

Surrender your free will to the machine.
That is the act performed,
when you enlist or accept a commission
and take the oath to obey,
without reservation.

They don’t tell you that,
when you are 16 or 17 or 18 or 19 years young.
Your brain, no matter how incredibly brilliant,
is not fully formed and hooked together (scientific fact).
You are still a babe,
whether you know it or not. …   [Read more…]

Poisoned Chalice Electric Rate “Fixing” Threatens Community Energy in San Diego

by

By Jay Powell

“… with the passage of AB 327, the thorny issue of Net Energy Metering and rate design has been given over to the CPUC. … recognize this is a poisoned chalice: the Commission will come under intense pressure to use this authority to protect the interest of the utilities over those of consumers and potential self-generators, all in the name of addressing exaggerated concerns about grid stability, cost and fairness. You—my fellow Commissioners—all must be bold and forthright in defending and strengthening our state’s commitment to clean and distributed energy generation.”

This was one of six parting observations offered by Public Utilities Commissioner Mark Ferron when he resigned from the PUC due to serious health issues in January of this year.

The “poisoned chalice” is what is on the table this next week. Those of you who are trying desperately to mind your “kwhrs” (kilowatt hours) this summer should be aware that you are about to be punished for your conservation, investments in energy efficiency and/or roof top solar.
  [Read more…]

American Football Fantasy

by

By Jay Powell

I enjoy American-style football because I enjoy the variety of plays, the effort, the amazing feats that occasionally occur during a game. The incredible runs. Completed forward passes. (I think the forward pass is one of the finest inventions of mankind) Intercepted passes and run backs from kickoffs. I only played dis- or intentionally un- organized football in various intramural and amateur leagues or just plain back lot, mud ball where we refereed ourselves. We sanctioned players who wanted to hurt people. We loved playing the game.

What can we do to incentivize that part of the game and dis-incentivize all the behavior that is really just sanctioned violence and no-holds-barred war that essentially rewards bad behavior (really on and off the field…)? Please, a fifteen yard penalty is nothing compared to breaking someone’s bones, back, brain doing something we ALL know is meant to harm.   [Read more…]

War Weary

by

By Jay Powell

Weary.
That’s what they say we are.

The chicken hawk sabre rattlers
Are yellin’ at Obama ‘cause
He won’t put real boots on the ground
But they won’t say exactly that cause they know we are

(war) weary.   [Read more…]

“Dunkirk” by HC Jay Powell

by

By HC Jay Powell

Dunkirk

Please do for our troops what
the British did for theirs
when they were
trapped:
get them out alive.

The only “surge” we
want now
is a rescue surge
for our brave men and women in service
with their lives on the line to their nation.

Send whoever you need to send
to bring them out   [Read more…]

Why Does Sierra Club Have Its Knickers All in a Knot?

by

By Jay Powell

The latest news coming out of the national Sierra Club office at a time when there are major climate change initiatives underway and the City is about to elect a new Mayor is just not funny.  San Diego and Imperial County members are receiving letters from the chairman of the national Sierra Club, David Scott informing them that they are considering a formal suspension of the Chapter Executive Committee due to “internal conflicts and divisions.”

In an update report, UT San Diego environmental reporter Deborah Sullivan Brennan outlines some of the recent history of changes in chapter leadership, notes cases of suspension of other chapters within the last several years, and refers to a lawsuit filed against the national organization by a former chapter chairman who was removed by the national organization in September 2012 over what are still undisclosed reasons.  (“Sierra Club Chapter Struggling with High Leadership Turnover”)   That former leader has filed a law suit is claiming defamation and seeking due process to include a disclosure of whatever claims were made that led to his removal.   [Read more…]

©2010-2017 SanDiegoFreePress.org

Code is Poetry