[this editorial may be reprinted, if done so in its entirety,
without further permission. All reprints must include the following
copyright information:
©Red Slider and www.ceav.us, 2010. ]
1/15/10 - Everybody's Gaga, But Is Anybody Thinking? -
Before we throw the baby out with the bathwater perhaps we'd all better take a look and see who's pulling the plug....
If you haven't read the 'gush and gosh' side of the story,
perhaps it's best have a look at all the promotional
hype about the deal - CEAV suggests you start with The
Sacramento Bee, then
google 'Cal Expo Land Swap' and check the cheerleading
from just about anybody - it's pretty much the same group of lemmings
following their leaders - rushing to the sea....
"It is nothing if not complex" - John Moag (NBA/Cal-Expo consultant)
"it has a lot of moving parts" - Ray Kerridge, (City Manager)
a "jigsaw puzzle" - David Taylor (developer)
Why, at the outset, are we being treated to how "complex" the deal is? Do any red flags
go up for you when someone says something is so complicated that you probably
won't understand it? Maybe it is that complicated. Or, maybe you're supposed to think
it is so that you won't insist the matter be put in plain language with all of its
elements exposed and explained in a way that ordinary folks can understand. Could it
be, perhaps, that the players in this deal don't want us to think beyond a little
basketball and some carefully orchestrated cheerleading for the home team? Could it be,
while our eyes are ooh-ahhing about a new arena, the real players in the deal
are over on their own court whooping it up over their own slam-dunk?
And, where is our media that should be asking the tough questions and following
the dollars? Hmm, I think I see them up in the cheerleading section as well.
Complicated? Yeah, that's what they said about the economic/banking collapse
(swindle), too. Sounds like we've got a new synomyn for 'swindle' folks.
Complicated? Yeah, right. Maybe, when we hear the word 'complicated',
we should all just run in the other direction?
"The land-swap plan has been in the works for nine months" - John Moag (again)
"But the real action happened later a few blocks away at the Citizen Hotel [outside of the
official presentation of the seven plans considered by the Mayor's Taskforce - ed.],
where Kamilos and NBA officials unveiled details of an ambitious land-swap concept
involving Cal Expo, Arco Arena and...the downtown railyard." - Sacramento Bee
"...it has what other proposals don't - private investors willing to put up money."
Now, how in the world did Cal-Expo wind up in the mix? The whole matter was to consider
ideas for siting a new Kings arena. The plans submitted to the taskforce
had to do with choosing one or more locations for a new Kings arena, of which Cal Expo
didn't turn out to be one of the popular choices (dead last, as far as we can tell).
The taskforce choices were officially presented to the public at City Hall.
Note that Cal Expo's part of the deal, its bid for a "swap", was announced by NBA reps at another location
(Citizen Hotel) which was not part of the official presentation. It was a side deal,
made with the NBA and out of view of the public until now, even as the taskforce
was doing its job to be as open and public as possible. This is pretty much the way
Cal Expo has operated its whole failed show on the NBA arena plan over the last
several years. It has worked hard to keep it out of public view, in backrooms and
with backroom deals in 'invisible committees' under rules that forbid consideration
of any public input which did not favor Cal Expo's own plan. That has been
our experience of Cal-Expo's way of doing the public's business.
John Moag's (NBA/Cal-Expo plan Consultant) announcement that they've been working
on this 'swap' maneuver for nine months comes as a surprise to us; and we've had numerous
communications with Cal-Expo officials; attended Board Meetings, made presentations and
read their documents. For the past year, they never mentioned anything about
this 'swap deal', not once. Not to us, not on their website and not in their
literature or press releases, as far as we know. We even invited John Moag to
read a copy of the CEAV proposal, almost a year ago. Didn't hear a peep from him
- not a 'yea', 'naye' or even 'thanx for the info'.) It doesn't surprise us, though.
This is how Cal Expo works. Are you getting the picture? Does something about
this deal strike you as a little bit strange? Maybe it should.
So what is this little sideshow of Cal Expo's? How does Cal Expo
and its problems muscle into an act specifically designed to select a
desirable site for a new Kings arena? How does Cal Expo attach itself to
this part of the public's business with the clear intent to deal away an important
and valuable part of the public commons - state land with which it
was entrusted on behalf of the People of California? How does slipping
its public holdings (much of it environmentally sensitive lands) into the hands of
private developers - lock, stock and barrel - figure into the fulfillment
of that trust? What, by putting a little rehab/face-lift money into what has
become it's own failing sideshow (the State Fair) over the past decade or so?
How does the wholesale forfeiture ("land swap") of its public assets,
and possibly the last and most valuable major parcel of urban public land left
in the enire state, suddenly appear on an agenda for privately
developing a new Kings arena somewhere else, and to which Cal Expo is not a party?
Well, we think we know. We think Cal Expo - its plight, its needs, its plans, its
backroom deals and hidden committees, over the past several years, hasn't been about
sports-arenas or basketball or even saving their out-of-date concept of a 'State Fair'.
Not at all. We think it has been about developers chomping at the bit to get their
hands on some very valuable public real estate and turn that property into
its limited visions of housing, sports-arenas, shopping malls and other "mixed-uses" - which
can be worthwhile projects when done in the right place, at the right time and in the
right way. The current 360 acres of the Cal Expo site is really nothing more than
a pot-of-gold being handed over by Cal Expo to the developer community.
We think it has been about developers, and only developers, from the outset.
Cal Expo, its Board of Directors and Management, are the chink in the 'public armor'
through which the developer community believes they will get their hands on that land.
Don't be fooled by all the 'bad economy makes it hard to sell...,' and other 'sweeten the
pot' smokescreens. The bad economy can be a developer's best friend, when manipulated
correctly. It's a buyer's market with all prices negotiable - downward. Yes, credit is
tough. But if the price is low enough, even a banker can count.
And, we're beginning to think that has been all Cal Expo's schemes have been about; that
and nothing else. Cal Expo's prattle about 'saving itself', 'hard economic times' and 'deferred
maintenance' are all beginning to smell like very thin disguises for another agenda -
one which only developers can access and in which the NBA trumps the public
and for what reasons somebody really ought to investigate, very thoroughly.
If this deal is really about the kings arena, then let it be about that. If a new
Kings arena is a venture in which private interests can see a profitable
investment for a product the consuming public wishes to buy - as private consumers -
then make it so. That is capitalism, that is how it works. It finds markets
and makes products that it feels it can sell. To add public lands, swaps,
interests or other holdings to somehow 'sweeten the deal' is not capitalism -
its socialism of the worst kind. That kind does not have any public interest
in mind at all. It is the kind of socialism that has some vague idea of
'economic advantage' or of prodding "private investors willing to put up money".
That kind of socialism does not qualify a project to use valuable public resources
(such as state land) to promote its deals.
If the Kings should be at the railyards (or somwhere else, besides Cal Expo) then,
by all means, let investors tell us they wish to do that, on their own, without
slick deals that shuffle public favors and money and pretend that isn't happening.
If Cal Expo thinks it advantageous to move its current State Fair activities
to the old Arco Arena, because they would be better off there, fine, let it do that;
and let them find the financial means to do that from their own resources. But, do
not let them turn public land into private property. Let them turn it back over to the
state for the benefit of all the people of California. CEAV is one such project that
would expand and transform the true mission of a "California Exposition & State Fair".
There may well be other very good ideas to the purpose of serving the public interest.
Private development (as important as that may be) is not one of them.
Unless the current public lands chartered to Cal Expo have no
continuing or future value for the people of this State - no public interest
whatsoever - there is no excuse for using them in some land-swap scheme that will
forever remove them from the public trust.
Clearly, CEAV has made the case that the current Cal Expo site not only has
such public value; but, that its value is a unique and unequalled one
of enormous public interest. There are plenty of legitimate infill places
in Sacramento for housing, Shopping malls and the like. There are, as the taskforce
made clear, good alternatives to the current Cal Expo site to build a new arena.
But, there is no alternative in the entire state that is as well positioned for
a CEAV-like project or other equally good 'best use' undertaking for all the people
of California.
So, before we go off into the vapors of gush & Go Kings! perhaps we
need to stop being diverted by cheerleaders and consider what this
fast shuffle is really about and whether it really serves the taxpayers of this
state or the generations of the future Californians who can only inherit what
we preserve and leave to them; intact and for their benefit.
The Mayor's task force recommendation, for siting a new King's arena
and for other uses will be fine with us, provided Cal Expo is not the site
chosen (for reasons which the CEAV Project has already made clear on this
website andhas also informed the Mayor's taskforce about). CEAV offers no further
opinion on the matter provided it is not sited on public lands that are
part of endowment and trust of the people of California; nor, that those lands
be lost as some kind of collateral damage in backroom deal making. If the deal
is to create a privately funded and developed sports-entertainment complex without
further impact on otherwise useful public assets and, the people of Sacramento
like it's location, good and well.
Our only other caution is that the people consider carefully if the project is really
going to be done exclusively with private money and entirely free of hidden costs
to the public inventory in money or land. If it's laced with tax concessions and other hidden
public goodies, then we recommend the people of Sacramento take a very hard and long
look at what's at stake. "Tax breaks" and other public concessions,
no matter what they are called or what excuses are given,
invariably represent a form of new taxes. Make no mistake about that. In the long term,
most of those deals have proven, time and time again, that it is us, the taxpayers,
that ultimately pay the price and who will be held hostage by developers who promise
anything to get their deals done only to take everything they can get their hands on
in the process.
Its a familiar pattern: Call it something else besides taxes, circumvent public
scrutiny and pretend its a good deal. Then wait
until you've got your pockets full, leave the scene and let the thing collapse.
(see our story on the Detroit Silverdome for example.). In any case, if it doesn't
involve swindling the people out of valuable public assets, CEAV offers no further
opinion on the matter; not that part of it.
But, if the deal is to side-step the public interest by pretending that the
current site of Cal-Expo can simply be swapped in some sleight-of-land deal as if
it never was an important part of the public legacy; if it can simply be 'disappeared'
by redefining it as 'private property' in the process; then, that is not ok.
The Cal Expo 'swap' is not in the public interest; it is not for the benefit
of the people of California or their children; it is not even to support
some other interest such as building a new sports-arena somewhere else.
It is just a side-deal for developers to get their hands on
more public land (probably at bargain basement prices) and for Cal Expo to keep
its current sideshow going. Not a good deal California, not a good deal at all.
- Red Slider, www.ceav.us; 01/15/10: