Last week, Sacramento Superior Court Judge Eugene Balonon issued a tentative ruling in the lawsuit targeting the arena deal orchestrated by Mayor Kevin Johnson, a former NBA star. It supported petitioners’ requests that they be allowed to depose Sacramento Councilman Kevin McCarty and Sacramento Economic Development Director Jim Rhinehart about undisclosed dealings between city officials and the new Kings ownership group to help it buy the team.

The Sacramento Investor Group, led by tech entrepreneur Vivek Ranadive, purchased Sacramento’s NBA franchise from the Maloof family in May.

Arena deal: Many key issues remain murky

The arena deal has prompted questions over the lack of public debate about key details, dubious financial numbers from the city and the public subsidy the project requires. Also, last-minute legislation by Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, would let the arena’s construction proceed without a credible environmental impact review.

Plaintiffs Issac Gonzalez, James Cathcart and Julian Camacho are members of Voters for a Fair Arena Deal. They hope to put the arena subsidy issue on the ballot in Sacramento.

Defendants, who include Johnson, City Manager John Shirey, Deputy City Manager John Dangberg and other city officials, have sought to keep the deal behind closed doors and off the ballot.

The lawsuit accuses city officials of making a secret deal to provide an extra $80 million of public money to help the investors’ group beef up its offer against a well-funded Seattle group that wanted to buy the Kings and move them to Seattle, which lost its NBA team to Oklahoma City in 2008. Plaintiffs’ attorney Patrick Soluri said city officials have committed fraud because they have not fully informed the City Council and the public about details of the deal.

The city subsidy, according to the lawsuit, is actually $338 million — not the $258 million the city claims.

In response, the defendants insist the information the petitioners seek is “undiscoverable, privileged information” and contend there was no secret deal. Defendants’ attorney Dawn McIntosh said in in a Thursday court hearing there is not even any formal agreement in place about building the arena in downtown Sacramento. McIntosh said the lawsuit was “a waste of everyone’s time.”

However, the City Council voted Tuesday of last week to begin eminent domain proceedings to acquire the property necessary in the development of the new sports arena.

The lawsuit’s plaintiffs want to depose McCarty and Rhinehart because they believe the city officials have evidence about the city’s undisclosed subsidies. While Judge Balonon indicated in his tentative ruling last week that he favored authorizing a deposition of McCarty and Rhinehart, he also said he would issue his final decision this week.

Councilman McCarty opposes the city arena deal, and thus far, has not responded to deposition requests. I contacted McCarty several times for previous stories about the arena deal, but he did not return phone calls or emails.

Stall tactics until the deal is done

Deposition notices were sent to city officials in September. But according to Soluri, the mayor and city officials have engaged in various avoidance tactics, including filing numerous objections to deposition notices, rolling demurrers, and refusing to comply with a court order directing them to reschedule a further hearing. Soluri said these were stall tactics was designed solely to delay the inevitable discovery until after the city’s expected formal approval of the arena in April.

Those behind the lawsuit are not the only ones who think that Mayor Johnson and other city officials aren’t being honest about the real size of the public subsidy. Public policy watchdog Eye on Sacramento says that when all of the publicly owned assets being thrown into the deal are accounted for, the public’s contribution is actually $375 million — far higher than the city’s $258 million claim.

The city also agreed to give the arena’s private development group the city’s empty 100-acre plot next to Sleep Train Arena in North Natomas and six other city properties, five of them adjacent to or near the downtown arena site. City officials are also giving away the city’s parking lot at the site, and the revenue from parking meters, after claiming the parking lots have no value.

Beyond the legal challenge to the city’s deal, there is also a ballot initiative petition to require a public vote on any public subsidy for a professional sports franchise.  The petition signatures are currently being counted.

However, it appears Mayor Johnson and the City Council will attempt to moot the result of that vote by pushing up their approvals of the arena prior to the June vote that would thereafter require voter approval.  Approval of the deal and related bond sales were previously scheduled for summer or fall 2014.

Craig Powell, president of Eye on Sacramento, calls this “stealing the election.”

The files on the arena lawsuit are available on the Sacramento Superior Court website, case no. 34-2013-80001489.

Gov. Jerry Brown just signed SB 743, “easing environmental regulations for developments in California cities, including a new basketball arena in downtown Sacramento,” the Los Angeles Times said.

In March I predicted Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento would jam legislation through exempting the Sacramento Kings new arena plan from the restrictions of the  California Environmental Quality Act, in order to meet a dubious deadline imposed by the NBA.

March 30, after Steinberg’s office told me he did not plan on authoring legislation to streamline or bypass the required environmental process for the proposed Sacramento NBA arena, I predicted they weren’t being straight with me.

Steinberg’s office denied any plan to do this. But the reason I wrote the story and asked about this was I knew this was the next step in scamming the public with the publicly subsidized arena.

The need to bypass California’s absurdly strict environmental guidelines and restrictions prevent most large scale projects from ever taking place without legislative intervention. And Sacramento officials shoved the latest iteration of an arena deal through at breakneck speed for a reason.

But even Steinberg couldn’t get his original bill, SB 731 through the committee process. His colleagues weren’t comfortable with Steinberg’s intended claims of reforming the entire CEQA process, when really his bill was just a conduit for the Sacramento arena deal.

SB 731 was shelved and the new conduit became a gut-and-amend bill. SB 743 rose from the ashes like a Phoenix. (Poor choice of words for the Sacramento Kings…)

Steinberg’s latest bill was introduced at the very end the legislative session, without notice, public debate or any real scrutiny by media. Nearly all of the Sacramento local media — radio, television, newspapers and magazines — are backing the arena project, and providing the cheerleading.

Yet Steinberg’s bill is even worse than previous stadium legislation. It also would allow the City of Sacramento greater eminent domain powers to seize the downtown property currently in the way of building the project.

More shameful, is what media claims the bill will do, rather than highlight what abuses of power it will allow, and gifts of public property to the arena developers.

According to the LA Times provisions of SB 743 will (in bold):

–Remove parking and aesthetics standards as grounds for legal challenges against developments in urban infill areas near transit stops.

Among the assets being “gifted” to the arena deal are the city’s parking garages and meters, which currently generate about $9 million a year for the general fund. The city has proposed diverting all of the city parking revenues to pay the arena bond payments. This will blow a $9 million annual hole in the general fund.

City staff assigned zero value to the 3,700 parking garage spaces the city is giving to the developers, nearly 50 percent of all city-owned garage spaces. The garage spots actually have a fair market value of $58 million, based on the city’s own 2012 parking valuation study.

–Modernize the statewide measurements against which traffic impacts are assessed and resolved, allowing developers to offset the impacts by building near mass transit stations.

Not true. Steinberg’s CEQA exemption bill would allow arena construction to go ahead even with existing traffic backups in this part of downtown, and anticipated significant traffic impacts due to the arena. Then taxpayers will be on the hook when Caltrans decides to send a bill of $100 million-plus for freeway improvements — after arena construction is already underway.

–Expand an exemption from CEQA litigation for mixed residential/commercial projects located within transit priority areas where a full environmental impact review has already been completed.

For the Sacramento arena project, the bill prevents certain lawsuits stopping the project unless a judge finds a danger to public health and safety, and allows the government to force the sale of properties through eminent domain concurrently with the environmental review process.

Even if there are violations to the CEQA laws, mitigation doesn’t have to be addressed until the end of the first basketball season with an official NBA team actually playing in the arena.

“This bill sets a terrible precedent by eliminating any realistic chance of halting construction if the arena is approved illegally,” Kevin Bundy, Senior Attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a press statement, in a story I recently wrote. “This is a wink and a nod to public officials that they can ignore California’s most important environmental law with impunity.”

The truth is the City of Sacramento is giving assets to the arena developers, which city officials say have a value of $46 million. However, Eye on Sacramento, a public policy watchdog group, estimated the real value of these assets is at least $139 million, making the total taxpayer subsidy $350 million — not the $257 million as represented by the city.

Another area of substantial discrepancy is between the subsidy numbers provided by the city and EOS’s subsidy calculations.

City staff also assigned zero value to the six digital billboard sites the city is giving away as part of the arena deal. But EOS found the sites are worth $18 million based on values established in a deal the city cut with Clear Channel Outboard just last year.

The remaining discrepancies are due to the city staff’s gross under-valuation of the six land parcels the city is also giving away to the developers. EOS found two of the six parcels to be worth four to six times the values assigned by staff.

Opposition

Because of the lack of public debate about the arena deal, as well as the highly dubious numbers put out by the city over the growing public subsidy, groups are joining efforts to oppose the arena in Sacramento for the Kings pro basketball team unless it is first put before voters for a vote.

A recent poll by the opposition group Sacramento Taxpayers Opposed to Pork found 78 percent of the respondents favor a public vote on taxpayer subsidies for the arena. Yet Steinberg and Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, a former NBA player, have forged ahead as if it’s already a done deal.

And despite the Steinberg fast-tracked legislation now signed by Gov. Jerry Brown, I suspect the effort to put an initiative on the ballot will heat up.

Rather than outsource the convention business, as most large cities are doing, Sacramento officials believe “If you build it, they will come.” But that only works in the movies, and usually through the hard work of folks in the private sector using their own money and sweat.

The Sacramento Bee has now joined the cheerleading squad for building a larger, staggeringly expensive convention center, despite the facts. The Bee has also blatantly joined the city supporting the use of additional public subsidies for a new NBA arena in downtown Sacramento.

Just the facts, m'am

The facts come from Eye on Sacramento, a public policy watchdog looking out for public interest in local government. EOS recently released a well-researched, scathing report of the finances of the Sacramento Convention Center. Eye on Sacramento found the annual $16 million convention center deficit is being funded by the city’s 12 percent hotel tax. “Fully four-fifths of the $20 million annually brought in by the hotel tax is consumed by losses at the convention center, while most California cities use their hotel tax revenue to fund an array of services, particularly support for the arts,” EOS reported.

“The 'backbone' of any financing plan for the entire project would be the city’s 12 percent hotel tax, which is still paying for the center’s last expansion – an $80 million project in 1995,” the Sacramento Bee editorial said. “Once that $8 million a year in debt service comes off the books in 2021, boosters want to use it again. They’re also looking into federal tax credits, plus possible private money.”

“There’s some time to sort all this out since the project would be constructed in phases, over seven to 10 years,” Bee editors opined. “The theater renovation probably wouldn’t start until spring 2015.”

The Sacramento Bee editorial board has had the Eye on Sacramento report for nearly three weeks, but refuses to do a news story about it. Instead, they barely mentioned the report in their editorial.

A recent poll by the opposition group Sacramento Taxpayers Opposed to Pork found 78 percent of the respondents favor a public vote on taxpayer subsidies for the arena. Yet Steinberg and Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, a former NBA player, are forging ahead as if it’s already a done deal.

But the deal is not done even though Steinberg is fast-tracking legislation to give the arena an exemption from the California Environmental Quality Act. The exemption is needed to meet an NBA-imposed deadline for quick construction.

Steinberg’s bill, a gut-and-amend job on another bill, will be introduced Friday. It will be similar to recent bills granting CEQA exemptions for a proposed stadium in downtown Los Angeles for a pro football team; and for a new stadium for the San Francisco 49ers in Santa Clara.

No debate

Steinberg’s latest bill is also being introduced at the very end the legislative session, without notice, public debate or any real scrutiny by media. Nearly all of the Sacramento local media — radio, television, newspapers and magazines — are backing the arena project.

Yet Steinberg’s bill is even worse than previous stadium legislation. It also would allow the City of Sacramento greater eminent domain powers to seize the downtown property currently in the way of building the project.

“When it comes to infill projects, when it comes to high wage, big job-opportunity projects, we ought to do all that is reasonable to expedite the process,” Steinberg said in a press conference Aug. 30.

The “reasonable, high wage, big job-opportunities” he is referring to will fall under a Community Workforce and Training Agreement in Sacramento, which requires most of the constructions workers hired for the arena project to be unionized.

Flexing union muscle

“Labor unions and the firm signed to lead construction of a new Kings arena in Sacramento have come to an agreement over the use of unionized labor in the construction of the project, a move that assures peace with the unions but will likely trigger a new source of opposition to the proposed public subsidy for the arena,” the Sacramento Bee reported Wednesday.

But that only enraged and energized the Coalition for Fair Employment in Construction, a 15-year-old California-based organization dedicated to opposing Project Labor Agreements, which guarantee contracts to unionized firms. The CFEC called the arena PLA “a waste of taxpayer money and a payoff to unions to avoid baseless complaints and lawsuits under the California Environmental Quality Act.”

“Steinberg needs union lobbyists and Democrats to push through his special [California Environmental Quality Act] exemption bill,” said Eric Christen, CEFC Executive Director. “Requiring construction companies to sign a Project Labor Agreement with unions locks up majority support in the legislature for this special interest bill.”

Opposition to the arena deal process

“This is not a hospital, emergency response center, or even a school,” Abigail Okrent told me in an interview discussing Steinberg's gut-and-amend legislation; she's the legislative director for the Planning and Conservation League. “If this is such an urgent issue, why not for other issues? It’s a basketball stadium, not a hospital.”

The rushed bill will allow only a limited public comment period during the CEQA process, according to Okrent. Even more egregiously, she said that, even if there are violations to the CEQA laws, “mitigation doesn’t have to be addressed until the end of the first basketball season with an official NBA team actually playing in the arena. This is a contentious issue which requires more discussion.”

The Planning and Conservation League has taken no position on the arena, but is objecting to the rushed,  gut-and-amend bill, and to the lack of proper public vetting.

“This bill sets a terrible precedent by eliminating any realistic chance of halting construction if the arena is approved illegally,” Kevin Bundy, Senior Attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a press statement. “This is a wink and a nod to public officials that they can ignore California’s most important environmental law with impunity.”

Gifts of assets

The City of Sacramento is giving assets to the arena developers, which city officials say have a value of $46 million. However, Eye on Sacramento, a public policy watchdog group, estimated the real value of these assets is at least $139 million, making the total taxpayer subsidy $350 million — not the $257 million as represented by the city.

Among the assets being gifted to the arena deal are the city’s parking garages and meters, which currently generate about $9 million a year for the general fund. The city has proposed diverting all of the city parking revenues to pay the arena bond payments. But according to EOS, this will blow a $9 million annual hole in the general fund.

Sacramento is already running a $9 million deficit; another $9 million would double that to $18 million.

Another area of substantial discrepancy is between the subsidy numbers provided by the city and EOS's subsidy calculations.

According to EOS, a large portion of the discrepancy can be attributed to city staff assigning zero value to the 3,700 parking garage spaces the city is giving to the developers, nearly 50 percent of all city-owned garage spaces. EOS calculates the garage spots actually have a fair market value of $58 million, based on the city's own 2012 parking valuation study.

City staff also assigned zero value to the six digital billboard sites the city is giving away as part of the arena deal. But EOS found the sites are worth $18 million based on values established in a deal the city cut with Clear Channel Outboard just last year.

The remaining discrepancies are due to the city staff's gross under-valuation of the six land parcels the city is also giving away to the developers. EOS found two of the six parcels to be worth four to six times the values assigned by staff.

And EOS warns Steinberg's CEQA exemption bill would allow arena construction to go ahead even with anticipated traffic impacts. Then taxpayers will be on the hook when Caltrans decides to send a bill of $100 million-plus for freeway improvements — after arena construction is already underway.

By Katy Grimes

This unnatural and inexplicable push by Sacramento city officials for a downtown arena is suspicious. Without any explanation, all discussion of the proposed arena at the adjacent old rail yard stopped. Then the local media shifted right along with the city, and never asked why. Instead they started repeating the new mantra for a downtown arena.

The city of Sacramento is the biggest slumlord downtown, through years and years of downtown eminent domain and lowball building purchases. This new downtown arena would serve to conveniently improve the property values of the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency-owned properties downtown.

Not only did the local newspaper, television and radio media never ask why the city changed its push for the downtown location instead of the present location outside of the city or the rail yard, now city officials have the local media talking about how much the property value would improve. It’s just gross.

I am not opposed to a sports arena in downtown Sacramento. But I am opposed to the nearly 75 percent public subsidy by the taxpayers of Sacramento. If the developers involved in the arena deal can make a go of a new arena in Sacramento, they should. But it appears this deal can’t stand up to any financial scrutiny without the city of Sacramento bringing the bulk of the money to the table.

What kind of “development” is that? It’s a scam.

“The mayor, himself a former NBA All-Star, has scrambled to assemble a group to buy the team, convince commissioner David Stern to consider a counter offer, and get approval for the financial deal that would build a $448 million arena on the site of a shopping mall — a development many say will revitalize a problem area in its bustling city core,” ESPN said.

The problem area in downtown Sacramento is entirely the fault of the city and their lousy property management. The city is responsible for driving the downtown K Street Mall area from a once-bustling pedestrian mall filled with independently owned shops and department stores, to a crime laden, blighted area replete with abandoned buildings and crazy homeless people. It sounds ripe for another publicly-funded re-do.

“How do you transfer $250 million from taxpayers to billionaires?” my friend Stephen Frank recently commented on one of my arena stories on his website. “How do you become a billionaire?  One way is to have others pay for your play toys.  Is it the role of government to pay for arenas, in Stockton they paid for a parking lot for a movie theater, LA and San Fran have the Coliseum and Cow palace—while all of California is being inundated with criminals and fewer cops.”

Frank is so right.

“Arenas are nothing more that fields of schemes, and the joke is on taxpayers. And Sacramento is hardly a bastion of economic splendor,” I wrote in March in Sacramento arena: ‘Field of Schemes.’

“Despite some of the highest unemployment in the country, escalating business closures, widespread home foreclosures and short sales, and declining tax revenue, arena talks are all the rage in Sacramento.”

According to Eye on Sacramento, a Sacramento-based public policy watchdog group, Sacramento’s “city staff has grossly understated the total public contribution to the arena. Instead of contributing $258 million, EOS estimates that city taxpayers will be contributing $334 million to the project, representing not 58 percent of the project cost, as claimed by staff, but 75 percent of the project’s cost (not counting subsidies provided by county government or future undetermined traffic infrastructure costs.)”

Katy Grimes: Most of us recognize that California government is out-of-control. The state Legislature has just passed another 700 new bills, many of which add new regulations, restrictions on individual liberties, and “fees” on taxpayers and business.

Closer to home, local governments regularly ignore the will of the citizens, and push through projects on behalf of special interest groups.

In Sacramento, one example of this has been an ongoing battle in my own downtown neighborhood.

The City of Sacramento, run by mostly arrogant liberals, has been trying to ram through approval of more bicycle lanes on very busy streets and major arteries of auto travel.

In Sacramento, Freeport Blvd. is a north-south artery going all the way from tthe most soutthern point of Sacramento County into downtown. It is also the old Highway 160, which was one of the only main arteries throughout the county.

21,000 autos traveling on it dail, according to the city.

Freeport Blvd. is a heavily traveled street and frequently backs up in the downtown areas. The city, in its infinite wisdom, has tried several times to close one of the auto traffic lanes in order to add bicycle lanes to either side.

Commuters, neighbors and businesses on Freeport Blvd. have fought this nutty idea. Except  for a small group of bicycle zealots, this project has a tremendous amount of opposition. But it keeps springing back to life.

The irony is that the old neighborhood that Freeport Blvd. runs through has other perfectly safe streets for cyclists and bicycle commuters. But the zealots and city politburo want to turn Freeport Blvd. into something that it is not. There is no real need for this, other than too keep a bunch of unnecessary city planners busy with a new project.

Bicycling on this street is not safe, and never will be. There are too many businesses and too many cars. When I am on my bike, because I have a stong sense of survival, I avoid riding on Freeport Blvd.

Reality

Neighbors have participated in the city-sponsored surveys, and voted down the bike lane expansion on two different occasions. So the City of Sacramento has tried a new tactic — they now claim that as part of the resurfacing project for Freeport Blvd., they are proposing adding bicycle lanes.

The utopian bicyclists, who unabashadly state that there should not be autos on the roads, keep finding ways to keep this project alive. The only thing keeping the city from doing this hhas been the budget. Sacramento has a wicked budget deficit, and cannot justify this spending.

But the reality is that most bicyclists are not commuters–bicyclists are mostly pleasure or recreation riders. Sacramento is not Europe, but the utopian nuts keep comparing California cities to European cities, where tiny cars and bicycles are a necessity.

The City of Sacramento acknowledges that traffic patterns will change should the bike lanes become a reality, but they don’t care. Ressidents in the area are concerned that with one less auto lane, many of the 21,000 daily cars will be forced onto the residential streets. And in this old, established neighborhood with houses from the 1920’s and 1930’s, the streets are not boulevards and cannot handle thousands of additional cars.

But the zealots do not care. The bored city planners do not care. The city “leaders” do not care — they have an agenda, and are determined to win at any cost.

By Katy Grimes

As if fear, doom and gloom aren’t enough for government officials, they’ve turned to nosy neighbors for help in fulfilling extremist agendas.

The City of Sacramento sent out a notice today encouraging residents to attend a water conservation training session. It seems innocuous enough, and maybe even a good idea.

Some of my city neighbors don’t monitor their sprinkler systems very well. They run them until the gutters flow like the Sacramento River, and water sprays sidewalks, and cars. My dog loves it, but city water officials don’t.

However, deeper into the notice, neighbors are encouraged to educate and even subtly spy on neighbors. “Learn about the City’s free water conservation services, cool new ways to save water and how to help your neighbor’s save water by becoming a Water Conservation Ambassador,” the notice says.

Apparently by attending a water conservation workshop, attendees can be certified “City of Sacramento Water Conservation Ambassadors.” Does a badge come with the title?

“Water Conservation Ambassadors will help spread the word about water conservation and protection of our water sources,” the city’s website states. “Ambassadors will help educate neighbors, friends, family and community organizations about conservation through attending community events, conducting knock and talks, and presenting at community meetings!”

Are neighbors being encouraged to educate, or re-educate? This is a recurring theme with the City of Sacramento.

Residents who water the lawn on the wrong day, use the fireplace without approval from the county, have fat children, drive a gas guzzler, ride a bicycle without a helmet, eat shark fin soup, or violate the Babysitter’s Bill of Rights, are all subjected to steep fines, or even arrest.

In the Soviet Union, citizens were encouraged to rat out neighbors for hiding food or other necessary goods. In Nazi Germany, people were encouraged to rat out neighbors for protecting or hiding Jews.

In the U.S., the government has steadily increased the use of this tactic and encourages citizens to rat out neighbors for operating a business without a permit, growing anything illegally, and selling anything illegally, among other offenses. The entrepreneurial spirit has been quashed by the government.

And now, cities are encouraging citizens to turn on one another and call the water police for overwatering a lawn… and the water police are apparently responding. What’s next – will my neighbors be encouraged to turn me in for using plastic bags, driving a big car, or for giving illegal vegetables from my garden to unsuspecting neighbors?

I have received sneers from a few neighbors over the U.S. Navy flag flying from my house, and am waiting to be told to remove it. Offending anyone today is now a punishable offense. But I’ll bet that my neighbor with the peace sign front door wreath doesn’t offend anyone… or the other neighbor who hangs a flag upside down on July 4th.

There already are weirdos in my neighborhood who fish through our recycle bins to make sure that we are not putting garbage in them. What do they do when they find a neighbor who throws trash into the recycle bin? I gasp at the thought.

But there is a bright side to the workshop notice; for neighbors who have already been ratted out by other neighbors and received a fine for violating the City’s Watering Ordinance, attending these workshops earns one a fine waiver for the second notice of violation.

Who says the government doesn’t have a heart?

By Katy Grimes

Just last week, the news that the arena deal in Sacramento was dead was all the rage. The Maloof family, owners of the NBA Sacramento Kings, backed out of a handshake deal with the City of Sacramento and the NBA, citing questionable financing and revenue projections.

That was a smart decision. Now it’s time to create something on the ugly old rail yard land to benefit the region, as well as draw visitors to the tourism-deprived Capitol city.

Since taking office in 2009, Mayor Kevin Johnson has made no secret of his desire to see Sacramento grow into a “world class city.” While I’ve been a critic of relying on the Sacramento Kings to do this, transforming Sacramento into a destination city is not out-of line. But using basketball to achieve this is dumb and short-sited. And there’s mountains of evidence proving why arenas are money pits.

I’ve also been critical of the “if you build it, they will come” mentality, which public officials seem to love, while spending other people’s money. It doesn’t work.

Sacramento’s Great Park Plan

However, developing city spaces which benefit lots of different people does work. Sacramento’s unsightly 240 acre rail yard could be transformed into a huge, multi-faceted regional park, with an amphitheater, farmers market, agricultural displays, rose garden, soccer fields, ball diamonds, tennis courts, a running track, and playground and exercise equipment.

The Sacramento Zoo, which wants to expand from its current 14-acre home, could be moved to a great rail yard park, or an additional, larger zoo could be built in addition to the small zoo in William Land Park. The Sacramento Zoological Society apparently has the funds for an expansion, but city residents don’t want to give up Fairytale Town, the Land Park Golf Course, the Land Park Pony Rides, or Funderland Amusement Park for a zoo expansion in its current location. William Land Park is 160 acres, and works beautifully with many different venues.

Many residents have recommended that the zoo move out to Sutter’s Landing, but they’d be all alone. As park of a great regional park in the rail yard, the zoo would enjoy a similar situation to what they already have with many different nearby venues, but could expand greatly.

An aquarium would be wonderful – all world class cities have aquariums.

UC Davis could create beautiful botanical and wine grape gardens.

Eventually, an entertainment facility could be added. Or not.

Light rail could run to the park, and downtown trolly cars could make regular stops from nearby hotels.

Sacramento officials have been so obsessed with a “world class arena” deal, that they have wasted precious years and resources with classic small town thinking. This is what happens with trying to play in the big leagues–it’s a big hat, no cattle problem.

Arenas don’t bring in more tourist dollars; they just move around existing money. And, arenas usually require heavy subsidies. In Sacramento, taxpayers want nothing to do with subsidizing an arena, which should be an entirely private-sector deal anyway.

Building a great regional park however, could be done through a non-profit organization, and benefit the region’s residents and draw tourists. Sacramento isn’t ever going to be able to compete with coastal cities however we are located in a beautiful region, are on two rivers and the Delta, we have great weather and are able to live outdoors most of the year.

Why wouldn’t Sacramento officials capitalize on our outdoor assets and maximize the expansive region? Fortunately, we don’t have the California Coastal Commission to deal with.

Bad Arena deal

Even with no backup plan, Sacramento officials and interested parties have continued to push putting $255 public revenues into building an arena, even while suffering under what many say is a $60 million city deficit, cuts to public safety, city services, and an economically devastated downtown, and blighted K Street Mall.

If a great regional park was developed on the edge of downtown, businesses would have many different reasons to move downtown. Residents would have a reason to go downtown again, instead of avoiding it because of the roving bands of crazy homeless people, aggressive parking enforcement, crime, and spotty businesses and restaurants.

City leaders can help

There are so many things which the city could do for downtown if officials would just get the short-sighted, bad arena out of their heads, and start building Sacramento back up by getting out of the way of real job creators:

*cut taxes and get rid of putative business licenses and permits in order to encourage businesses come downtown;

*quit relying on parking enforcement for revenues. If businesses were welcomed instead of penalized for being downtown, revenues would be abundant;

*leave the Maloofs alone and let them run their own business–government involvement is usually the kiss of death anyway;

*open up to ideas about developing the land along the rivers, as well as the rail yard. Again, keep the city out of the way, except only to help businesses and developers navigate the permitting, licensing, land use, planning and compliance issues.

Government is at its best when there is less of it. The only thing the City of Sacramento can do right at this point, is to stay out of the way of those who have vision. The government’s vision is always about controlling, and not about the private sector thriving. Real world class city leaders will do everything in their power to boost the local economy by allowing the free market to do what it does best.

RT plans on charging a dollar a day for the privilege of parking and riding the crime-laden light rail trains. Or, riders can buy a $15 monthly parking pass.

It’s like a $15-$20 monthly tax on light rail users. Why didn’t RT just increase fares on everyone?

“The idea is to make some additional revenue in areas where we won’t lose riders,” said agency facilities chief Mike Mattos, the Sacramento Bee reported.

Ah, it’s a revenue thing.

The riders who have cars are the folks making a socially conscious effort to use public transit, while trying to save a little money each month on downtown parking. Chances are that some will undoubtedly find the system no longer worth the effort. Particularly since auto break ins at the RT station parking lots are a regular occurrence.

The 22 reviews of Sacramento Regional Transit on yelp would be hilarious, if they weren’t so horrible. Most reviewers complained about the cost of $6 a day to ride anywhere, the habitually late buses,  angry, nasty bus and light rail operators, safety and security issues, filth, overcrowding on buses, worthless security guards, no late night operation, train breakdowns, and buses full of “people you only see in your nightmares.”

My favorite comment was, “I couldn’t take their shit anymore. I now pay to park downtown by my work even though I only live 20 blocks from my building. THAT is how much I hate RT.”

There is no mention in the story about how many of the riders are subsidized. Welfare recipients are provided bus and light rail passes by the county. State, city and county employees receive a highly subsidized light rail pass.

A regular, full price monthly pass costs $100. State employees receive a $35 pass.

The hoodlums and thugs that ride the trains everyday for free, terrorizing other riders, are allowed to roam the system largely unchecked. Ask any regular light rail rider about the security and safety of the system, and they’ll snort out a laugh.

There have been numerous stories about the inefficiencies of Sacramento’s transit system. But probably the most eye-popping revelation was that on average, RT bus drivers and light rail operators work just 206 days a year. Regular, full-time employees work 260 days a year. That is 11 weeks off every year for the average transit driver.

I’d like to see a calculation for the cost of this excessive time-off in just this one agency, as well as an explanation why. Vacations, workers compensation claims, sick days, paid leave, disability – California has created a nightmare employment situation.

The bureaucrats working at Regional transit should be required to take a basic economics class in order to understand that they are the ones killing the transit system. This decision to whittle more money from only one class of transit users is a classic example of the heedless California bureaucrat.

JAN. 6, 2012