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So silly to blame Kevin Johnson for crime, transit and the economy. Kevin is only one member of the city council , he has no more power than the other city council members.
If we had voted for the type of mayor-council organization where the mayor had stronger powers then you could apply some blame to the mayor, but in present form that is ludicrous.
However, Kevin has been the main council member to champion private investment in this city and spearhead projects to success despite great adversity like folks in this town who put up every possible roadblock and endless meetings so that any private development and job creation dies a slow death which really is these naysayers goal for anything.
I agree. I find it interesting that people view Kevin Johnson in terms of the arena and only the arena. With respect to the arena specifically, the anti-Johnson sentiment focuses solely on the $225 mil (or whatever the final number is) that the city spent but ignore the amounts spent by Ranadive alone, which far exceed what the city put up. This is how any business works - you spend money to make money. Or in this case, you spend money to bring money into the city. How that money is used afterwards (public safety, etc) is another debate entirely.
But Kevin Johnson has done a lot more than that even since I've lived in Sacramento. I am not even going to bother some of the redevelopment projects he's championed or visions he's shared with the city though, because a certain poster is going to claim every other mayor before him intended to do it and anything from the proposed I-ST bridge to the R District was already proposed and submitted by Fargo, Shwarzenhegger, or Ronald McDonald.
While I appreciate your adoption of our town and desire to see it thrive something about this post rubs me the wrong way. Sacramentans don't need Bay Areans to swoop in and save us from a boring stucco strip mall lifestyle, we have been dealing with and improving upon the realities of our city and metro for a while...you're not coming in on the ground floor here. Many Bay Areans (and other immigrants) came during and after the dot com boom and have for decades participated in the resurgence of the core...we welcome you to this wave and value your participation. Anti/slow-development mindsets exist here, certainly in the bay, and in much of California.
Los Rios does have campuses spread pretty well across the metro area. A private university in the Railyards would be cool.
Sacramento is in major need of TLC. I just envision a capital, with economic growth, housing and actually visited by citizens. Something people can be proud of, when I graduated from one of the highschool in the Stucco (my loving nickname for Sac county in which I spent all of my teen years after relocating from the Bay Area in my childhood) most of my class fled the region. When I returned after fleeing back to the Bay Area for 6 years, k street was not as lively I remembered and I know many places left when the economy crashed. I would like to see this place get turned around for the better because I consider both places my home so sorry, I just can't get into the "Sacramentan Turf or Bay Areans" thing.
Yes, I am coming in the ground floor, at the young age of 27, I thought I was the only person this century from the Bay Area to relocate to Sacramento . But thanks for the welcome. It's nice to see Sac again and I am very proud my city (yup this place is mine too) is now getting more transit routes and streetcars from downtown to connect the areas. Anyone know the projected finish date for that project? Transit is one thing that could be improved and I don't mind Uncle Sam taking a bit of my paycheck to help out. The Los Rios schools are spread out and I have a family member who commutes about 1 hour and 23 minutes a day on the transit from the Stucco (to Sac City College) along with many other students who would be glad if more housing opportunities arose closer by.
Last edited by FanofBlue; 01-10-2015 at 07:21 AM..
You call a $1 bio in investments "fluff". Let's repeat that:
You, WBurg, call $1 mil in investments "fluff".
No, I called the document you were quoting marketing fluff for a job position, which it was. There are plenty of documents and articles you can read about the overall state of downtown, and they all have this sort of cheery feel to them. My contention is that there has never been a point when that kind of marketing document was not optimistic about the future of Sacramento. Even during the Great Depression, even during the 2008 market crash. We have always been a city on the cusp of taking its place among the great cities of the world and crowing about the cool stuff we're going to do. You're misinterpreting what I am saying for some reason--Sacramentans having been optimistic about the future of our city in the past in no way diminishes the optimism that is occurring now.
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And I've never claimed you are not a native,
I'm not a native, of Sacramento or of California. I was not born here. I moved here by choice.
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I do not need to attack you to attack your position on the downtown ventures.
You don't seem to know my position on a lot of downtown ventures, because if you did, you wouldn't be attacking me.
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Anyhow, we'll see what happens in the coming years here. I am extremely excited, and it another 7 or 8 years in midtown is in my future (or it lies somewhere else) I'll still love what is going on here.
Plenty of great stuff going on here, and whether or not you acknowledge it, I'm excited about it, which is why I also do events (performing and attending) and write about what a great place Sacramento is, and has been in the past, which is what other cities do when talking up their own advantages. Don't get me wrong, there is a role for visitors and commuters in the economy. But what really makes the difference is residents, not visitors. That's why I'm the one pushing for another 30,000 people in the central city--to reach the downtown population we had in 1950. But we can get that 30,000 without losing what makes the central city so special in the first place--and that's where I differ with folks like Majin. He looks at downtown and doesn't see anything special, anything useful, anything worth saving or using--just a place to bulldoze to build supertalls and boulevards. I think we can have our city and grow it too.
I agree. I find it interesting that people view Kevin Johnson in terms of the arena and only the arena. With respect to the arena specifically, the anti-Johnson sentiment focuses solely on the $225 mil (or whatever the final number is) that the city spent but ignore the amounts spent by Ranadive alone, which far exceed what the city put up. This is how any business works - you spend money to make money. Or in this case, you spend money to bring money into the city. How that money is used afterwards (public safety, etc) is another debate entirely.
Including interest, the city portion of the arena plan adds up to $800 million in future parking revenue to repay a loan of $225 million. The private-sector investment in the arena is $222 million. The rest of the nearby projects are separate from the arena plan--the city isn't paying into them, but doesn't receive revenue from them other than regular city taxes and fees.
Aphorisms like "it takes money to make money" are based on the rather cheery assumption that no investment ever goes bad. Plenty of investments lose money, especially ones that are overcapitalized or whose revenue projections are too optimistic. That's my main concern about the arena plan--the long-term financing and the city's ability to pay it back over the course of decades, and whether the resulting money coming into city coffers is sufficient to replace the amount of money going out.
There are certainly some users here who try to make the arena project all about Kevin Johnson. I'm not among them.
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But Kevin Johnson has done a lot more than that even since I've lived in Sacramento. I am not even going to bother some of the redevelopment projects he's championed or visions he's shared with the city though, because a certain poster is going to claim every other mayor before him intended to do it and anything from the proposed I-ST bridge to the R District was already proposed and submitted by Fargo, Shwarzenhegger, or Ronald McDonald.
The initial plans for the R Street Corridor were initially the result of neighborhood activists who opposed proposals to build high-rise office buildings on R Street back in the late 1980s/early 1990s, and actively lobbied the city to create a mixed-use neighborhood, using some of the historic R Street buildings for housing and commercial buildings, instead. The city and development community kind of had to be dragged kicking and screaming into that discussion. We're seeing the end result of a 20-25 year process now. The main credit to Johnson in this effort is that he supports the changes to R Street that Sacramentans advocated for back then--it has taken a generation for the business community and city government to catch up with the neighborhood, but they're arriving. For the most part.
The I Street bridge replacement (which really needs a better name, because it isn't actually replacing the I Street bridge, it's a new bridge farther north) is starting out on Johnson's watch, but I am not sure how personally involved he is in the project--and it's a collaborative plan with West Sacramento and other agencies.
Speaking of collaborative plans, the streetcar plan is another one that has been brewing for a long time--the current plan's genesis was back around 2005, if you don't count the original streetcar loop plan folks were pitching for back in the 1970s that ended up as Light Rail. The main opposition to a streetcar line was from the business community, who will have to pay a small property tax increase to cover about 20% of the cost, but now that some of the big names behind the arena are getting behind the idea, others are following suit. And I do give the arena project credit for that--as I have said time and time again, large public expenditures like an arena "squeeze the balloon" in the direction of its construction, and the balloon was squeezed in Natomas' direction for a long, long time. If we're taking advantage of that "squeeze" to build transit infrastructure and get that downtown housing under construction, that's a point in favor of the plan--and the sort of thing that may be necessary to make the arena project viable, given that it will make far-off parking spots easier to use for arena parking. And it's the beginning of getting back a streetcar network we had in the 1940s, when a lot more people lived downtown.
No, I called the document you were quoting marketing fluff for a job position, which it was. There are plenty of documents and articles you can read about the overall state of downtown, and they all have this sort of cheery feel to them. My contention is that there has never been a point when that kind of marketing document was not optimistic about the future of Sacramento. Even during the Great Depression, even during the 2008 market crash. We have always been a city on the cusp of taking its place among the great cities of the world and crowing about the cool stuff we're going to do. You're misinterpreting what I am saying for some reason--Sacramentans having been optimistic about the future of our city in the past in no way diminishes the optimism that is occurring now.
I'm not a native, of Sacramento or of California. I was not born here. I moved here by choice.
You don't seem to know my position on a lot of downtown ventures, because if you did, you wouldn't be attacking me.
Plenty of great stuff going on here, and whether or not you acknowledge it, I'm excited about it, which is why I also do events (performing and attending) and write about what a great place Sacramento is, and has been in the past, which is what other cities do when talking up their own advantages. Don't get me wrong, there is a role for visitors and commuters in the economy. But what really makes the difference is residents, not visitors. That's why I'm the one pushing for another 30,000 people in the central city--to reach the downtown population we had in 1950. But we can get that 30,000 without losing what makes the central city so special in the first place--and that's where I differ with folks like Majin. He looks at downtown and doesn't see anything special, anything useful, anything worth saving or using--just a place to bulldoze to build supertalls and boulevards. I think we can have our city and grow it too.
I did acknowledge that you are excited about it. As I said, it's clear you are involved in the community and very knowledgable about it.
Also, as you said, it's kinda hard not to describe $1 bil investments in anything but glowing terms. Which is kinda my point. As I said before, I don't really care who wrote the "fluff" piece or what terms they used to describe the investments. I only posted it because it neatly summed up everything that is going on here, and it showed that the city did in fact make these investments a point of emphasis is their plans. Whether they turn out to be a boon for the city or not is debatable, I guess, but it's not fluff.
Sounds like we actually agree on most points. No need to make it personal either way.
Including interest, the city portion of the arena plan adds up to $800 million in future parking revenue to repay a loan of $225 million.
The arena bonds are not backed by parking revenue. There is no way that the 3,500 garage spaces that the city owns can generate enough to cover the $800 million in payments. Parking was the source in the original term sheet but that was modified for the final documents. Parking is one of six General Fund revenue sources identified as possibly being used to service the bonds - none of which are guaranteed as sources. Ultimately, the money will be coming out of the General Fund - the official backing of the payments as identified in the bond documents.
Including interest, the city portion of the arena plan adds up to $800 million in future parking revenue to repay a loan of $225 million. The private-sector investment in the arena is $222 million. The rest of the nearby projects are separate from the arena plan--the city isn't paying into them, but doesn't receive revenue from them other than regular city taxes and fees.
Aphorisms like "it takes money to make money" are based on the rather cheery assumption that no investment ever goes bad. Plenty of investments lose money, especially ones that are overcapitalized or whose revenue projections are too optimistic. That's my main concern about the arena plan--the long-term financing and the city's ability to pay it back over the course of decades, and whether the resulting money coming into city coffers is sufficient to replace the amount of money going out.
There are certainly some users here who try to make the arena project all about Kevin Johnson. I'm not among them.
The initial plans for the R Street Corridor were initially the result of neighborhood activists who opposed proposals to build high-rise office buildings on R Street back in the late 1980s/early 1990s, and actively lobbied the city to create a mixed-use neighborhood, using some of the historic R Street buildings for housing and commercial buildings, instead. The city and development community kind of had to be dragged kicking and screaming into that discussion. We're seeing the end result of a 20-25 year process now. The main credit to Johnson in this effort is that he supports the changes to R Street that Sacramentans advocated for back then--it has taken a generation for the business community and city government to catch up with the neighborhood, but they're arriving. For the most part.
The I Street bridge replacement (which really needs a better name, because it isn't actually replacing the I Street bridge, it's a new bridge farther north) is starting out on Johnson's watch, but I am not sure how personally involved he is in the project--and it's a collaborative plan with West Sacramento and other agencies.
Speaking of collaborative plans, the streetcar plan is another one that has been brewing for a long time--the current plan's genesis was back around 2005, if you don't count the original streetcar loop plan folks were pitching for back in the 1970s that ended up as Light Rail. The main opposition to a streetcar line was from the business community, who will have to pay a small property tax increase to cover about 20% of the cost, but now that some of the big names behind the arena are getting behind the idea, others are following suit. And I do give the arena project credit for that--as I have said time and time again, large public expenditures like an arena "squeeze the balloon" in the direction of its construction, and the balloon was squeezed in Natomas' direction for a long, long time. If we're taking advantage of that "squeeze" to build transit infrastructure and get that downtown housing under construction, that's a point in favor of the plan--and the sort of thing that may be necessary to make the arena project viable, given that it will make far-off parking spots easier to use for arena parking. And it's the beginning of getting back a streetcar network we had in the 1940s, when a lot more people lived downtown.
You are making a fool of yourself. You may know history but you don't know anything about business, and that's becoming more and more apparent with each post. Ranadive's investment $$ is a lot more than the city's and I guarantee you he (or his entities) are on the hook for 100's of millions in recourse loans. He has the same interest expense or lost interest on money invested into the ventures, so just stop with your stupid nonsense. It DOES take money to invest and make money. This is why businesses BORROW tens and sometimes 100's of millions - because they believe they can earn a greater rate of return than the cost of borrowing. This is in fact the same theory our whole damn economy is based on. An Econ 101 clasd will teach you this within the first month.
"Cheery" statement. "Fluff". Just quit while you're behind.
You are making a fool of yourself. You may know history but you don't know anything about business, and that's becoming more and more apparent with each post. Ranadive's investment $$ is a lot more than the city's and I guarantee you he (or his entities) are on the hook for 100's of millions in recourse loans. He has the same interest expense or lost interest on money invested into the ventures, so just stop with your stupid nonsense. It DOES take money to invest and make money. This is why businesses BORROW tens and sometimes 100's of millions - because they believe they can earn a greater rate of return than the cost of borrowing. This is in fact the same theory our whole damn economy is based on. An Econ 101 clasd will teach you this within the first month.
"Cheery" statement. "Fluff". Just quit while you're behind.
There's no point in engaging this conversation. Anybody that has even the slightest clue about this subject understands that he doesn't know what he's talking about.
I mean you're arguing finance and business with a self-described historian that has proven for years now that he is much less interested in discussing facts than he is in furthering his own agenda.
You're never going to get him to admit that he's wrong, he will simply keep changing the subject and arguing semantics until you give up.
CeJeH: Actually, you're the one describing me as a historian. And what is it that you do for a living again?
Hey look we're arguing semantics again. Thanks for proving my point.
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. But thanks for the welcome. It's nice to see Sac again and I am very proud my city (yup this place is mine too) is now getting more transit routes and streetcars from downtown to connect the areas. Anyone know the projected finish date for that project? Transit is one thing that could be improved and I don't mind Uncle Sam taking a bit of my paycheck to help out. The Los Rios schools are spread out and I have a family member who commutes about 1 hour and 23 minutes a day on the transit from the Stucco (to Sac City College) along with many other students who would be glad if more housing opportunities arose closer by.
