The San Diego Chargers, still
Hmm. They’re still here.
The Chargers didn’t get the Carson deal they wanted from the NFL at Tuesday's meeting. Instead, they got the option of being the under-card to the Rams in Inglewood.
But wait, there's more.
The city of San Diego got more time to try to hang on to the team; the rest of us got more uncertainty; and Dean Spanos got more of a headache than he's had in awhile.
Multi-billionaire Rams owner Stan Kroenke is reportedly offering Spanos a 50-50 partnership on everything but design and management of the new stadium. So what could possibly be a problem?
Money, for openers. Staying put in San Diego in a new Mission Valley stadium could cost Spanos anywhere from $250 million to $450 million, depending. If the team moves to L.A., the Chargers owner would pay anything from $500 million to $1.1 billion, though there's more money to be made in L.A. in the long run.
And, as Mayor Kevin Faulconer pointed out this week, building a stadium downtown, Spanos' preference, would not only cost more, but would take eons to complete, a scenario we're all familiar with.
The city and the sinkhole
When Guy Lawyer noticed a sinkhole on his San Carlos property in November, he reported it to the correct agency: the city's Transportation and Storm Water Department.
He updated them as the hole grew larger, and he grew more worried.
The city flagged the complaint as an emergency on Nov. 25, then spent several days surveying, evaluating and discussing the problem.
You can guess what happened.
The January rains flooded out Lawyer and seven other families. Millions of gallons of storm run-off ruined flooring, furniture and dry-wall and made their homes uninhabitable.
This was not the first time this San Carlos area had come to the attention of the city. In 2014, a culvert in the same neighborhood was clogged and then cleaned and flagged as a problem again in September of 2015.
Caution: budget ahead
Gov. Jerry Brown wants to spend more money in the 2016-2017 fiscal year, but not all that much more, in the budgetary scheme of things.
Brown proposed a cautious budget last week, opening the state purse wider for one-time expenses than for on-going permanent outlays. He believes, with ample reason, that a recession is inevitable. He displayed charts showing deficits outnumbering surpluses since 2000, with 2009-2010 posting a whopping $40 billion deficit.
So he wants to avoid the deep cuts that will be inevitable because of the state’s heavy dependence on income tax. And, as he did last year, he wants to add more to the rainy day fund.
The city's state
Mayor Kevin Faulconer likes parks.
He wants new parks, including one in De Anza Cove on Mission Bay; upgrades to old parks; and more access to parks in the city, produced through a partnership with San Diego Unified. His ideas are, he says, "the first comprehensive vision for San Diego’s parks in more than 60 years."
In the State of the City address last night, Faulconer also announced a program called Housing Our Heroes, a $12 million effort to get homeless veterans off the streets.
Oh, yes, and he wants to keep the Chargers, expand the Convention Center and provide opportunities for young students to graduate into the middle class through a new initiative launched in cooperation with local biotech and tech companies.
