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In Defying Anti-Tax Orthodoxy, California Voters and Schools Are Rewarded With Projected Budget Turnaround

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After years of devastating funding cuts, California schools begin to get much needed relief.

California’s newfound budget security was made possible because last November, in what must have come as a complete shock to Republicans, California voters approved a plan—Prop 30—to raise taxes slightly on the wealthiest Californians in addition to temporarily raising the state sales tax, effectively spreading the pain to all Californians. This was a slap in the face to Republican orthodoxy, since the only acceptable thing to do with taxes is to cut them, if not eliminate them altogether.

When Gov. Brown released his budget proposal last month, the state’s legislative analyst concluded that California would still run a deficit of $1.9 billion for FY 2013 instead of the $25 billion of just a couple of years ago, but that if things continued on the same trajectory the state could be running significant budget surpluses in the following five years.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Judge’s Ruling Against Balboa Park Remake Raises Lots of Questions

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Superior Court Judge Timothy Taylor made good yesterday on his earlier suggestions that the City of San Diego’s case for renovating the Plaza de Panama in Balboa Park wouldn’t pass a legal challenge.

San Diego City Attorney Jan Goldsmith appeared in court for oral arguments last Friday, arguing that the City was free to reject protections offered by the area’s historic status because of the additional benefits construction of a by-pass and parking lot would provide.

Taylor’s 15 page ruling rejected that argument saying, “Respectfully, this strikes the court as re-writing the Municipal Code. The City Council did not enact language permitting alteration if it determined that the proposed alteration would result in a more reasonable beneficial use; rather, it required that there be no reasonable beneficial use absent the alteration.”

UPDATE: Via KPBS MidDay Report- “I’ve told the committee that the project is over,” (Irwin) Jacobs says. They’re not taking part in additional plans, activities.   [Read more…]

New Schools CFO: SD Unified Will Afford Armed Guards, School Prayer with Pocket Change

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By Aaryn Belfer

“Poor guy, he doesn’t realize that being frank and open about our financial condition is discouraged around here. He will be taken to the wood shed.”
–Text message from San Diego Unified School District board member, Scott Barnett, predicting the fate of the new chief financial officer Stan Dobbs.

Only one weekend after “investigative journalist” Will Carless published his sycophantic Q&A with Stan “Data” Dobbs, school Superintendant Bill Kowba did damage control, issuing a relatively meek apology for Dobbs’ many erroneous statements. Data Dobbs was then quietly whisked away and fed into a wood chipper. Keeping with its pattern for sticking any warm body in the CFO position, San Diego Unified vetted and hired Dobbs’ replacement even before the blowhard’s left leg had been turned into mulch.

What follows is an exclusive interview with San Diego Unified’s newest Chief Financial Officer, Sarah Palin.   [Read more…]

Cosmic Collisions, Human Encounters

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Reuben H. Fleet’s digital show Cosmic Collisions, viewed from earth

by Karen Kenyon

“Collisions, whether they are infinitesimal or massive, drive the evolution of cosmic objects in much the same way as natural selection or the collision of energetic particles with DNA drives the evolution of species,” Michael M. Shara, curator of the Cosmic Collisions show.

We may want to avoid collisions, but they are part of evolving life, and actually may lead to something positive. The new IMax film, Cosmic Collisions, now showing in an open-ended engagement at the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center in Balboa Park, explores this theme with extraordinary art and beauty.

We hope to never experience these harsh encounters, fearing collisions in space, but also in our human encounters — soul collisions (too much emotional pain); auto collisions (trouble, inconvenience, waste of time, perhaps physical pain, or cost!). We even want to avoid conflicts, or arguments.

But if we look up at the message in the heavens we can see that collisions are not always so bad, and whether constructive or catastrophic, they are part of the workings of the universe, they are inevitable.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – San Diego Schools’ CFO Takes a Long Walk on Voice of San Diego’s Short Pier

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Since the voters spoke back in November and handed the proponents of darkness and austerity a resounding defeat, the forces of reaction throughout the State of California have been seeking to throw a monkey wrench into the process.

At San Diego’s UT, this process is blatant, with factually challenged front page articles suggesting that businesses are fleeing California followed by editorials citing the suppositions minted earlier as gospel truth.

With San Diego’s ‘independent’ news source, aka The Voice of San Diego, the propagation of the reactionary agenda is accomplished via mindless contrarianism. The need to push controversy overwhelms any need for fact checking; it’s okay to let public officials yell ‘fire’ in the schoolhouses of our city.

So it was with this sense of ‘newsworthiness’ that the VOSD published an interview on Friday with Stan “Data” Dobbs, the newly hired Chief Financial Officer for the San Diego School Unified School District.

After telling interviewer Will Carless that “I get bored quickly if I don’t have enough problems to solve”, Dobbs proceeds to create a whole lot of problems for the School District and, most likely, his future employment prospects.   [Read more…]

Grading Jerry Brown’s Education Agenda

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It’s the beginning of the new semester at San Diego City College where I work, so I thought this would be a good time to evaluate some of Jerry Brown’s bold moves on the educational front.

In terms of funding, the passage of Proposition 30 has stopped much of the bleeding in schools and colleges across the state, but it still does not do enough to restore all that has been cut in recent years.

Therefore, despite some very good news, challenges remain ahead.

Come inside to see Gov. Brown’s Report Card…   [Read more…]

A Good Day for an Implosion – End of Days for South Bay Power Plant

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Editor: Our friend JEC witnessed this event Saturday morning and sent us his pictures and thoughts…

The crowd was in the thousands, parking was a challenge.  The morning was beautiful – a good day for an implosion.  The crowd could feel the shock waves from the explosions and car alarms went off in mass.

Now the real battle begins – do something better with the land.  And what’s the bet the Port District will let Duke energy off the hook by leaving the spit of land that extends out from the plant into the middle of the bay.  That berm with the square island at the end was built for the plant to separate the cool intake water from the plant’s warm output.  Standard language in Port leases calls for tenants to return to land to it’s original condition.  Western Salt avoided paying millions to remove the industrial salt ponds because those berms have been declared historical structures, “celebrating San Diego’s industrial heritage.”

Come inside for the photo gallery…   [Read more…]

47th Annual Local Authors Exhibit – Last to be Held at the “Old” San Diego Library

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By Mic Porte

Friday evening, February 1, 2013, the San Diego Library hosted its 47th annual Local Authors exhibit and reception, one of the last events to be held at the “old” downtown library on E and 9th St.

Four hundred new titles published by San Diego County residents in 2012, both hard copy and e-books, were on display, as proud authors, new and confirmed, accepted their medals and photo ops, shared a delicious buffet, and networked. Many were nostalgic about these old library walls, and the changing era of reading and books, many excited about the future of digital publishing.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – The Sky is Falling! UT-San Diego Taxifornia Version

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Our local daily is featuring an article today hewing to its meme that the end is nigh for the Golden State in the wake of voter support for raising taxes in the last election. Here’s the lede:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry quietly came to San Diego last week to lure biotech companies seeking to escape from higher income taxes under Proposition 30 to the Lone Star State.

While I wouldn’t go so far as to say there are no negatives about California, at least we don’t have schools being required to use text books that whitewash the McCarthy era and fail to mention the slave trade. There’s another side of the story…

INSIDE: HEDGECOCK BOYCOTT ON, IMMIGRATION WARS, SOURING ON THE SUPERBOWL…   [Read more…]

The Inexact Cartography of the Heart: Going Home

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When neighbors in City Heights talk about going home, that home may be as close as Los Angeles or Tucson, or as far away as Vietnam, Eritrea or the Philippines. My neighbors have family in Mexico and make an annual December pilgrimage to Mexicali or Oaxaca so that their children can spend Christmas with their grandparents, their abuelos.

Distance, which translates into time and money, and unstable political circumstances in one’s home country are limiters on whether the wish to return home for a visit is ever realized. But beyond those considerations, can you go home if your home no longer exists?   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – San Diego: Have a (Great) Beer While You’re Waiting for the Marijuana Dispensary to Open

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Our fair city finally got national recognition for what it does well yesterday when a writer who actually drinks beer put San Diego at the top of a “Non Fiction” list of the best beer towns in America. And our new mayor got schooled yesterday in what it really takes to be a game changer when it comes to medical marijuana.

Columnist Steve Body, who pens The Pour Fool column for Seattlepi.com did a little research into the business of compiling best beer cities and was shocked to discover that even big time media outlets weren’t using any sources with backgrounds in the field.

In other news, Mayor Filner walked back an earlier promise to get the City of San Diego out of the business of prosecuting medical marijuana dispensary owners yesterday.

MORE Inside: Immigration Reform, ‘Yes We Cannibus’, DeVry University Sued…   [Read more…]

Digging Tunnels Under the 30 Foot Height Limit – Part 1

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Height Limit Critic Sparks Debate But Important Exemptions Need to Be Acknowledged

This is the first part in a two-part series on the latest debate about the 30 foot height limit.

New Year’s confetti and the champagne glasses used celebrating the end of 2012 – a year that marked the 40th anniversary of the 30 foot height limit in San Diego – had barely been cleaned up when the assault on that height limit began. It all started in a January 3rd Voice of San Diego article questioning any positive attributes of the 30 foot limit.

Not exactly like a “D-Day” type assault, but more like a tunnel being dug – a tunnel designed to undermine the coastal height limit of 1972, writer Andrew Keatts questions the basic character of the height limit, declares that its essential rigidity will be necessarily and periodically questioned by a city yearning to break free, and gives voice to its critics. The critics believe that because of the 30 foot height limits, all kinds of problems plague San Diego, with rents and property values at the coast being too high.
  [Read more…]

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