1. Tom Tait’s Intuition
Anaheim Mayor Tom Tait has long had this feeling that something deeply wrong about the study submitted showing the economic impact of Angels Baseball on the City of Anaheim — the one claiming to show how much each adult and child spends in Anaheim outside the stadium while attending a game.
(We specify “outside the stadium” to see how much money is injected into the City’s economy; money spent inside the stadium, with some relatively small exceptions that don’t depend on spending beyond admission tickets and parking, belongs entirely to the baseball team — and doesn’t circulate through Anaheim’s economy. The profit primarily enhances the economy of where Arte Moreno lives, in Arizona.)
Tait hasn’t been shy about expressing this intuition from the dais. It doesn’t make sense to him that the average fan living in Anaheim spends about $11.50 outside the stadium but within Anaheim each time they attend a game. It doesn’t make sense to him that the average person coming to the stadium from outside of Anaheim spends about $14.25, nor that the rare average person coming from far enough away to make an overnight trip of it is spending about $103 outside the stadium but within Anaheim. But the results of the study are the results — and one has to respect them, right?
Not quite. It’s legitimate to explore and test those assumptions. People doing studies often can’t measure things directly; they have to do the best they can and argue that those assumptions make sense. And so, during Tuesday’s City Council meeting, Mayor Tait tried to get at exactly what sort of survey had been done to establish that fans were spending that much money outside of Angels Stadium but inside the city. And he finally got a cogent answer.
None. The researchers did no study of Anaheim itself before reaching this critical conclusion. It was based on studies of fans attending games in other cities.
That matters because Anaheim is not like other cities. I don’t mean that in some global and fuzzy “Anaheim has the bestest fans in the world” sense. I mean that, literally, it is not like other cities.
It’s a matter of simple geography! Just look at a map!
2. Anaheim is Long and Skinny and Its Stadium is on the Very Edge of Town
That section heading sort of gives away the game, but let’s literally look at a map anyway. Here — let’s use the one posted inside the City Council chamber itself.
If you go to a Dodgers game and eat outside of the stadium, you’re probably still in LA. If you go to an Angels game, where do you eat?
Let’s take a closer look at the “baseball stadium” portion of the map.
Angels Stadium is at the bottom right — the circle towards the right end of the darkish pink area, not in the purple part.
For the benefit of anyone who may be unfamiliar with Anaheim — such as, perhaps, the people paid big bucks out of the public treasury to do an economic study of the impact of Angels baseball on the city’s economy — that big diagonal freeway west of the stadium is I-5 and the vertical freeway just to the left is SR-57. Where they come together just outside the photo, you’d find a third freeway, SR-22, which is not in Anaheim.
Why does “not in Anaheim” matter? Because the sales tax, hotel (TOT) tax, etc. from that big white area does not go to Anaheim. It goes to someone in Orange County, sure — but not Anaheim. That’s important because Anaheim is the place being asked to foot the bill.
The small brown dot in the center of the gold circle is the stadium. The larger the periphery around it gets, the more of the land it covers is not in Anaheim — initially, Orange to the east and Garden Grove to the south.
Let’s take a bird’s eye look at the whole region:
The map of Anaheim imperfectly superimposed over the Google Map shows the Anaheim Police Department’s four districts. The black star is the stadium; the two yellow circles show a 5-mile and 10-mile radius around it.
So now you can ask yourself: how likely are those attending an Angels game to eat outside of the stadium but still in Anaheim? If they’re looking to eat within a five-mile radius of the stadium, not very likely. If they’re looking to eat within a ten-mile radius, far less so. And, of course, some people will eat further away than that. (Yes, there are potential expenses beyond eating, but except for street parking a similar analysis will apply.)
A scrupulous analysis would look at the range of restaurants, how many cars usually use each exit at this time of day, how many cars use the Gene Autry Way exist from which one passes pretty much nothing edible on the way into the stadium, etc. Or there’s another sneaky way to find out what people do: ASK THEM DIRECTLY. Create a questionnaire, publish a draft, post it to get feedback, and then assign a survey company blind to the desired result to interview maybe 50 people per game. Then you’d have a reasonably good idea of how much visiting fans stimulate the local economy.
But that’s not what our pricey consultants did! (More on what they did do below!)
The Angels Stadium deal may be very good for the people of Orange or Garden Grove or Placentia or my beloved Brea, where people might stop to buy gas en route to the game. (City motto: “come check out our Mall!”) It may be nice for the cities of Fullerton or Huntington Beach or Irvine or Brea — come check out our Mall! — where we may eat before we go to the game. But except for people driving to the stadium on surface streets from the north or northwest, there’s not much reason to expect that they’re going to stop and spend in Anaheim itself on the way to or from the game — especially because that area is crowded on game gays — unless they have a particular hankering to go to a particular restaurant.
This is very much unlike other cities — Los Angeles, San Diego, Oakland, San Francisco, etc. — hosting stadiums. If you were compared Angels Stadium to, say, Minute Maid Stadium in Houston, it would probably be fair to compare how much extra money is generated in Orange County overall to how much is generated in the City of Houston. But if you’re sitting on the Anaheim City Council — and if you’re trying to represent the people of Anaheim — then comparing Anaheim to Houston in terms of tax revenue generated for the City is puzzling.
Or — it’s not “puzzling” so much as absurd. Why?
The money spent outside of Anaheim does not go into Anaheim’s General Fund. Is that clear enough? IT DOES NOT BENEFIT ANAHEIM.
So what did the researchers do instead of the sort of survey of fans that I suggest?
If I understood correctly, they did not study Anaheim directly at all — but simply created a model for Anaheim based on data for a few places like Houston. (“Close enough for government work!”)
This is bad! What economic benefit baseball brings to the City of Houston is not a good guide of what will come to the City of Anaheim. Why is that? Take a look at this map — with the “A” pin representing Minute Maid Stadium, home of the Astros, and with the boundaries of the City of Houston superimposed:
Map of Houston showing baseball stadium (at pin “A”) and borders (in gold).
Do I need to spell this out? If you are going to a Houston Astros game and want to have dinner, you are pretty much going to have that dinner within the boundaries of the City of Houston! And that is not true Angels fans and dining in Anaheim. And when the promised economic benefits from an Angels deal don’t materialize — this will be one big reason why! (That’s OK from the Council’s perspective — the argument’s purpose is just to give the Council political cover, not to accurately predict the future.)
Of course, as stated above, there is an exception: maybe people just really want to go to a restaurant in Anaheim. And it’s true that there are some restaurants that people absolutely do target as their dining destination. Of course, if you want to predict how well Anaheim businesses will do overall from just one such restaurant, you should know that there is a catch!
3. There is Only One Catch …
One restaurant in particular that does do really well on game days is actually on the grounds of the stadium parking lot area itself — you know, the 155-acre parcel potentially being leased to Arte Moreno personally for $1/year — although as I read the proposed MOU all of the revenue from this restaurant would go to Arte Moreno rather than to the City!
That restaurant is called “The Catch” — sometimes known as “Curt Pringle’s second office,” he dines and does business there so often. And in fact, at the September 3 Council meeting — and at the September 24 Council meeting and at the tiny “Keep the Angels” rally at City Hall prior to the Sept. 24 Council meeting — the manager of this restaurant was trotted out to give speeches about how important the Angels were to his business. And, the example of The Catch was cited by members of the City Council Majority repeatedly to justify why keeping the Angels was so important to Anaheim’s business community.
There is only one catch to this argument: There Is Only One “Catch.”
OF COURSE the Angels baseball games are a great boon for The Catch — THEY ARE LOCATED INSIDE THE FREAKING PARKING LOT ITSELF! How many other restaurants have valet parking in a blocked off area within the Stadium Parking Lot? I think that it’s roughly “none.” There is only one “Catch” — and you can’t reasonably generalize from its experience to that of other restaurants!
If trying to estimate how much income baseball spending will bring to Anaheim restaurants based on what happens in Houston is a 7.5 on a scale of ten point scale of absurdity, trying to estimate that benefit based on the economic effect on The Catch itself has to be at least a 9.8. But look at the video, friends — that’s really what the Council Majority — everyone but Mayor Tait — was doing.
And, of course, the irony is that what money we get from The Catch won’t benefit the City either, just as if it were a restaurant located in Westminster. Here’s a proposal that I’d like to see written into the lease: the City gets to own all restaurants within the 155-acre parcel, paying Arte Moreno rent of $1 per year for the lot of them. THEN Anaheim taxpayers would at least be profiting from the deal. We can even keep the same restaurant manager — he seems like a nice guy — and the same employees. And the current owners can set up a new storefront around Magnolia and La Palma — freeway close — and presumably still benefit from the great boon Angels baseball offers to the City overall. (That’s the theory, right?)
By the way — Kris Murray said from the dais on Tuesday that Arte Moreno’s character was being assassinated in the local blogs. While the Murrbot doesn’t seem to have the sort of crush on me that Lucille Kring has apparently developed, I have a feeling that she may have been referring in part to the work of your humble author. So let me make this clear: I cast no aspersions on Arte Moreno or on the owner of the Catch. Each of them, so far as I know, are just good businessmen taking advantage of a Council that seems intent on serving the interests of Curt Pringle, Todd Ament, SOAR and a few others to the exclusion of everyone else.
I’d love it if Arte Moreno responded to the overture by Charlie Black by saying that the deal was too generous to him and would smear his reputation if he accepted it, so it should be scaled back — but that would be too much to expect of most businessmen, especially when they don’t even live in the state and can tune their critics out. He’s one of the people who will profit — although probably not nearly as much as the entity (commonly suspected to involve Curt Pringle or others in the Pringle Ring as agents or part-owners) — and if he has made a deal with someone to sell the rights to them, then he is doing something bad. (So don’t do that Arte, not even tacitly.) But that doesn’t make him a bad person.
The bad people are the people making it easy for him to do it. Four of them are sitting on the Anaheim City Council — and a bunch of others are paid City staff, like City Attorney Michael Houston and his former mentor (can you BELIEVE that?) former San Diego Padres President Charlie Black.
I’m besmirching Murray’s reputation, nor Moreno’s — but I’m doing so only by writing honestly about what she’s doing.
4. Responses to the Big Reveal from the Podium
I truly thought that Tom Tait might fall over sideways when he learned that the study on which a major argument for the proposed MOUs were based — the beneficial economic income for the City of Anaheim’s General Fund — was derived from studying very dissimilar cities like Houston rather than Anaheim. Whether he’d fall over laughing or crying or both, I can’t say.
But the Mayor kept his composure. He pointed out that this pretty much bolstered his intuition that the judgment about how much money fans brought into Anaheim’s coffers was deeply flawed. The Murrbot had been attacking him relentlessly for raising his concerns about the proposed MOU in part by talking about the great economic benefits of the stadium proven by this solid scientific study — why, just consider the example of THE CATCH! — and for a moment I thought that she actually understood that her contention that this was a sound study of economic impact had a direct hit from a powerful truth missile.
I haven’t reviewed the video — I don’t really have time — but from my second-row venue it looked to me as if the Murrbot faltered for a moment. Did her programmer Pringle himself not know that the study was a bunch of bullflop? Did he know and for some reason just not prepare her for this sort of challenge? What we she supposed to do? THEY HADN’T EVEN STUDIED ANAHEIM AT ALL! HOW CAN THIS STILL BE CONSIDERED A STRONG AND RELIABLE SCIENTIFIC STUDY???
I thought that I saw the Murrbot wobble for a moment. It looked like the Murrbot couldn’t remember all of her programming — an even greater problem than her never having understood it in the first place. But then, during the course of a long and unpunctuated sentence, the programming finally kicked in. If Pringle had just neglected to tell her this little tidbit, it was obviously the right call. She had nothing to rely on other than the direct script that she had been given. And so — she recited from it.
The Murrbot assured us that this was an excellent study, very reliable, top-drawer, undeniable in its conclusions — soup sort of stew along those lines, the details of which I could not recall because I was inwardly weeping for Kris Murray’s robot essence. (Repairs to a CPU can be expensive.) She knows “good” and this study was “good” and shut up. The end.
Now, though, Murray’s going to have to explain — over and over again during the next 400 or so days before the next election — why she thinks that a study of Angels’ baseball’s economic benefit to Anaheim that is based on a model from cities like Los Angeles and Houston without reference to Anaheim itself makes any kind of sense.
And of course there’s the follow-up question — I’ll be sporting and put it right out front so that her programmers can get started on it — which is this: when she tells us other things about economic benefit to Anaheim, are they also based on nothing more than the ability to parrot Curt Pringle’s bullshit as directed? In other words, is this disaster for her credibility an aberration — or is really just business as usual?
Oddly, I’m starting to think that the woman among the majority who may be the first to figure this out is Gail Eastman — the one who stands the least to gain personally from being part of the Pringle Ring. If Eastman turns, what will Jordan Brandman do? He’s so rarely without the cover provided him.
And let’s just internalize one final lesson from last night. We only learned this incredibly important fact about the model being used to predict the economic benefits to Anaheim for one reason: because Tom Tait asked City Staff the right question. And that makes Jordan’s proposal to keep Tait from putting these sorts of concerns onto the agenda really, really, REALLY bad.
Would Jordan prefer that we didn’t know about this travesty? Because if he had already gotten his way and passed his Pringle-crafted proposal a month ago — we wouldn’t! WE WOULD NOT KNOW.
How’s a court going to feel about that?
tl;dr
Oh, it’ll catch up with you eventually, I’m sure. (Did you at least look at the pretty pictures?)
“It looked like the Murrbot couldn’t remember all of her programming — an even greater problem than her never having understood it in the first place.”
Gee, when I made a comment like that about Sharon Quirk I was sexist. Oh well.
Of course the “study” was a piece of garbage. The author said as much. Its readers knew as much. Its content hardly matters anyway. It was used to paper over a giant swindle, a flimsy life raft to be sure, but some pretext to give away the store was necessary, no matter how vaporous it might be to a few discerning readers.
However, notwithstanding the documents flaws and alchemy, the real issue gets back to the City’s bargaining strength that they gave away and the deal that could have, and should have been made. We had the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Angels by the short and curlies; he knew it and Blackie knew it. And Pringle knew it, too. But he had is own fish to fry. If only there were some way to grab 155 acres in the name of economic development!
SQS isn’t a robot and isn’t programmed by Pringle (or anyone else.) If Jordan Brandman parroted talking points with an affectless monotone rather than squirming and flailing and grimacing and kvetching like an indignant seven-year-old, I’d say the same of him — and he’s male.
It’s nice if you think that the wrongness of the study entirely unpacks itself, rendering analytic pieces such as this unnecessary. Please understand that I’m not writing solely for the benefit of readers who are already highly informed Ubermenschen.
“SQS isn’t a robot and isn’t programmed by Pringle (or anyone else.)”
The issue wasn’t Murray’s “programming” but your suggestion that she lacks the perspicacity to grasp the enormity of the deal, which really is a lot less complicated than the VLF scenario. But I digress…
The Study could have been written on a cocktail napkin (maybe it was) and it would have sufficed for its purpose. Of course if you like, you can take the time to eviscerate it; to me it’s just a given that it was superficial, but more importantly IRRELEVANT.
Everybody keeps yakkin’ about what the Los Angeles Angels give to Anaheim; for some reason nobody talks about what Anaheim gives the Angels – a nice home that draws 3,000,000 fans a year.
It wasn’t a general comment about her perspicacity. Usually she understands quite well how she is supposed to dissemble and distract. In this case, though, she clearly didn’t get what the “top quality research study” (my paraphrase) was intended to do and how she’d be able to tell whether it succeeded. All she knew was that, whatever she heard from the panel, she was supposed to keep on calling it scientifically sound. If they had literally stood on their chairs and said “we made it up to deceive everyone because that’s what we’re PAAAAAAAAAID to do” — she’d have continued calling it scientifically sound because that’s what she had been instructed (or as I put it “programmed”) to do — and independent thinking is not on the menu.
Your third paragraph just suggests differences in our style of argument. I don’t presume that something can simply be dismissed as lunacy with the expectation that everyone will nod in agreement.
The Study could have been written in Egyptian hieroglyphics and served its purpose.
What I want to know is ho come nobody has done a study about what value Anaheim brings to the Angels. And this goes to my point. It was a given that a study had to show that there was a one-way benefit so as to justify the fire sale.
I would argue that the study should have included what Anaheim has given the Angels and their players – a major league venue with millions of annual fans (even when the team is crappy).
We just disagree about your first paragraph — but we agree on the rest.
Let’s go ask the now unemployed staff at what was the El Torito Grill at State College and Katella how many people stopped to eat outside the stadium.
In other circumstances, one might consider vetting the information provided prior to relying on it for a decision that could impact the City’s ability to pay for public safety and other city services for decades to come. I mean, if you are going to shove the vote through the sausage grinder with as little public review as possible, we might at least make sure the experts provided accurate research. Right? One might look for, oh, footnotes? Perhaps a list of sources showing research used? Really, even a grammar school student is expected to show their work. Since the City Council was clearly too busy to look into those mundane details (or perhaps are unable to scrutinize a report beyond the copy and paste function) then the public might have provided an extra set of eyes, helpfully pointing out the lack of source materials…but to do that the economic impact report would have to be released to the public prior to the City Council meeting. We know the City Council got the report just before the meeting (like within HOURS of the meeting) but we-the-people sure didn’t. Boy if only California had a law about that kind of thing.
“if only California had a law about that kind of thing.”
I’ll look and see if I can find anything on … HOLY MOLEY! Found it!
I think we might make Monday morning quite a bit more exciting for them than they anticipated.
I haven’t been tracking council/blog comments, and sadly can’t be there to add my two cents, but I would suggest FWIW that all of the excellent OJB articles / comments and even VOC comments be reviewed / condensed in a format that one (NO, probably several successive speakers x 3 min) can read INTO THE RECORD which would possibly(?) give them more future worth, then as blog posts alone? I will defer transcripting to assist if that will help?
I’d love to see someone do that. These last two have taken me four hours apiece (including work on graphics), and I just don’t have the time to edit. Would someone out there like to make a gift of their editing and boiling-down skills? Just post it!
I believe the intention is to make the Stadium District an interesting destination to attract those out of area tax dollars.
And how does the City benefit from the spending in the Stadium District, given the MOU?
isn’t there a hooters around there
the angels are horrible, hockey is not a real sport
looks like its back to staples for the clippers
I have just ended a fist-on-the-table pounding 2 hours watching the 9/24 discussion on item 34. Council member Murray stated repeatedly that “All this information is on the City Website”. Well Can anyone help me find the ‘Stadium Economic Study’ whose ‘expertise’ she keeps deferring to? I have searched all the relevant windows and topics on the homepage, Agenda links, and even used the search window – any suggestions?
Abandon all hope?
“Never give up,Never give up, Never give up” -W. Churchill (?)
So I take it the study is not online, then. Gee, like I’m surprised.
Actually, it was Tim Allen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-VMTIPwk74
“Abandon all hope”….all ye who enter here? WAIT A MINUTE! The sign over the door I was expecting SHOULD say “Happiest place on earth!”(tm) Did I miss an exit on the 5 south?
The litany of “Well, this MOU is just a beginning and not in any way binding” is becoming tiresome, whatever its legal veracity. Apparently a more beneficial alternate to the City, will magically fall from the sky, even without a trace of it in the ‘framework’ SIGNED by BOTH PARTIES or questions and dissent raised by the Mayor or the “misinformed’ public. Oh, blessed Epiphany!
The Council and Staff have thrown the MOU onstage, without ANY schedule or structure announced to the public, and apparently would have us believe that (one-way)e-mail and a voice mail number would substitute for the PUBLICLY announced / conducted Scoping Meetings such as preceeded the LAST (Disney) Stadium deal. These high-tech sops are NOT public, have NO announced policy that they will be made part of any ‘official’ record of the process, or to the Council and Staff, and, lacking that, are LITTLE MORE than vents, for complaints to be ignored, or compliments to be cherry-picked for support. By charging ahead with the process before defining it, or a schedule to the public, they clearly expect a public who will not interfere with pesky questions about (shudder) NUMBERS, but accommodate them with quick,easy swallows of whatever fake hysteria and PR spin they are fed. I am sorry to disappoint.
It is frustrating and upsetting but we have to be patient, keep resisting their giveaways and getting ready to vote these people out. What is next in their “economic development” giveaway plan? Sell the power plant? Thanks for your research and sharing your findings.
Oh God! As if the Giveaway Crew needed MORE menu items! I guess “one fight at a time” is too much to expect?
BTW City Charter Sec 1200 “prohibits a sale without majority council vote and 2/3 electoral vote – hurdle, not a high one.
And that’s one reason that this isn’t a sale, but a lease. Leases have become the first refuge of scoundrels.
Are you referring to this?:
OC Register: Anaheim council majority could move to limit mayor
Mayor Tom Tait could be stripped of the ability to place items onto City Council meeting agendas whenever he pleases—a move that he called “retaliation” for wanting to publicly discuss ongoing negotiations aimed at keeping the Angels in Anaheim through 2057.
More on ” Anaheim Council to Strip Mayor of Agenda Power ”
http://www.voiceofoc.org/oc_north/article_f3debe38-2720-11e3-9016-001a4bcf887a.html
Waking this morning, I realized what had been bothering me all night – it was Council member Murray’s admonition to Mayor Tait that “We don’t negotiate in public – that’s done in private, and you don’t show all your deal points in public”. That would only make the least bit of SENSE if it was said BEFORE the MOUs were presented, and BEFORE the CC4 voted their approval. WHY? Arte Moreno has ALREADY showed HIS deal points in public- IN the MOU, which HE already signed! Any more – beneficial ‘alternative strategy’, should it exist, is ONLY ‘secret’ FROM the residents of Anaheim. This is not a ‘framework’ it is HALF a Frame, MORENO’s HALF, and there is scant expectation that the ‘other half’ will spontaneously originate from the ‘expert panel’ who reiterate, (EVEN AFTER THE EXTENSION WAS PASSED to supposedly dissuade Moreno from any ‘irrational activity’), that we ” have to keep him from leaving!”. When SO MANY of their responses to Mayor Tait’s slides fell back on ‘future thoughtful negotiation’, my question is begged, “Well, how thoughtful has the process been so far”? I agree with the Mayor’s musing about RESTARTING THE PROCESS (to the extent legally possible?) and this time with more PROCESS PLANNING and information, LIKE PERHAPS A FIRM GRASP ON THE VALUE OF WHAT IS BEING NEGOTIATED, to start, as I feel events thus far have been rushed and BADLY misfired, and need to demonstrate PROCESS improvements that justify public confidence.
Was that Murray or Kring? Sooooo much video to watch. Anyone up for a transcribing session?
You may not want to discuss in public the city’s negotiation strategies and what it might actually settle for — if we pretend for a moment that this was an adversary rather than a collusive negotiation. But the overall “framework” of what one wants the negotiators to achieve in the negotiation — of which I’ve noted a possibility apiece from me, Zenger, and Tait? YES, that can be discussed in public. That’s where it’s SUPPOSED to be discussed!
I’ll try, but if only (and this is the biggest thing!) to save someone else the trouble who could be helping PACK CC Chambers at 8am Mon (?) for the ‘special’ meeting, since I can’t make it. With any size of a crowd, would starting Ed Snell’s old paperwork, communicate the point to the CC4 (or at least the voting 3, sans Eastman) or is that idea incompletely thought or premature?
It would be interesting to know how many other ‘special’ meetings have been called in the last few years, and if the reasons have had the comparative ‘urgency’ of this one!
(forehead slap) from the City Agenda Archives online, only 3 are designated as special meetings back to 2006 (records limit)-
1-25-13- 8 AM Closed Session – Legal Conference
8-8-12 4 PM Post-Riot Public Forum @ Cook HS Auditorium
8-2-12 1 pm Closed Session – 1)Legal Conference
2)Performance Appraisal
3) Potential Threat to Public Services
and Facilities – Conf w/ Police Chief
Are these comparable, esp in light of Brandman’s response to Tait’s similar inquiry, essentially “Because I want to and I can” (my paraphrase)?
I remember those early August ones. The Pringle majority (then three members) desperately wanted to call off the big public Council meeting called 8/8 for Anaheim High School. Their excuse was that they insisted there would be another riot there! In the highschool!
The real reason they didn’t want to have the 8/8 meeting was because they didn’t want to have to vote, in public, against the two popular measures of putting “Let the People Vote” on the ballot, and putting real district elections on the ballot.
Fortunately back then the mayor had LoGal on his side at least; but i think what really ruined their attempt to call off the 8/8 meeting was Chief Welter’s proud refusal to say he couldn’t keep Cook Auditorium safe from riots.
They think that people won’t show. I don’t know that we can get a crowd out there at 8 a.m. on a Monday — but I doubt that we’ll need a big crowd to make a point.
Did anyone else have a face-palming chuckle at the GARDEN WALK manager getting up to beat the drum for development in the STADIUM AREA? With that venue still on a path to recovery from default / foreclosure, why would he have ANY enthusiasm for placing MANY NEW COMPETITORS within WALKING DISTANCE to Stadium visitors, saving them a 3 mile drive to GW through post game traffic??
It’s almost if the same interests are profiting off of both developments! Hey, did you know that Bill O’Connell can sell the TOT-stream rights he gets off of Gardenwalk to the same person/entity to which Arte Moreno sells the development rights to the Stadium Lot parcel? Or even only to entities both represented by the same person?
New Facebook page in opposition to the astroturf Chamber of Commerce “Keep the Angels” one – go and like! I’ll have an advert up on the sidebar here soon….
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Keep-The-Los-Angeles-Angels-of-Anaheim/615807841803140
I’m not on FB, but Great Looking page! There are PLENTY in Anaheim who love Angels Baseball but DON’T want to give their city away! Also, In CC Public Comments, Mr Holguin (?) announced October kickoff of Anaheim Small Business Assoc. Is this a C of C alternate, or relative? or ???? (I dunnow).
C of C tends to be ALBA, where L stands for “Large.” Definitely not like Jessica Alba.
I am sure GD will want to kick my ass, criticize me, and otherwise belittle this comment for being “anonymous”, but here goes:
3,000 word post.
A Dozen Commenters (most of whom don’t live in Anaheim) Give or Take.
No Real Solution
What are “we/you” doing here?
Could it be that all that happens is a strengthening of the opponent? Perhaps a diversion from real issues of homelessness and starvation in the communities, more serious political corruption at other levels, in other communities?
What does all of this attention do, other than confirm what has been touted a million times before: Jordan Brandman sold out. It’s plain it’s simple.
Whoever suggested removing “party” from this was right. Jordan was never any more of a Democrat than the fools who promoted him and listened to his BS.
What I fail to understand is why OCDEMS are so afraid to say: “Yeah, well there was a guy who fucked us” or more pleasantly: “had us fooled”.
REMEMBER: He only fucked you because he can not explain his position. He might be right…We’ll he might. But as with so many other upward mobile political types, he’d never admit it, lest his handlers be upset.
No real solution? Tell me again what the problem was. I mean a problem not created by the Gang of 4 on September 3, 2013.
We had Arte locked in ’til 2029.
You have heard the slogan, “Many Hands make Light the Work”? Well Many brains and keyboard fingers do also. The MANY ideas generated, matter not so much where they are WRITTEN, but where they are READ. Public comment time at Council has proven that not EVERYONE that lives here in Anaheim, has lost their sense of SMELL! And just below those noses, they have MOUTHS to tell their friends and neighbors. That is how I found this space a year ago, and with so much more detail and dialog than the OCR and LAT (TRY and fight the crowds to get a letter published on THEIR editorial space!) I haven’t looked back! Any final vote is months away, and before MY white flag is ever hoisted, it WILL have a middle finger spray-painted on it! P.S. Being “Anonymous” is just fine with me-with all the WASTED name calling and back/forth volleys in blog space, isn’t it BETTER to let the ideas speak for THEMSELVES?
That was kind of my point guys (gals),
The problem exists WAY beyond the walls of the blogephere, and if the message can’t be delivered it’s just…..well it’s just an unheard opposing viewpoint.
As an aside, I read with amusement, the Irvine city council took “EMERGENCY” measures to regulate batting cages in residential areas, again proving that Dan C. knows more about baseball governance than all of us put together!
Did they call an emergency meeting to do it, though? If they didn’t, it’s just an “emergency,” not an “EMERGENCY”!
Point taken
I’d have to find your ass before kicking it! Anyway, this is pretty high quality concern trolling on your part — “why focus here when we might be able to find corruption in, um, Laguna Hills?” — so I will give it the respect it deserves: get your own blog if you want to write about something else. Moving on.
I’m writing the way I find congenial and natural to me; some people actually are stolid enough to read it. As for the rest of the audience out there — by all means, aspiring translators can summarize, paraphrase, shrink (but please don’t twist) what I’m saying as they wish! What am I doing here? I’m helping to create a record — maybe for prosecutors and courts, maybe for journalists, maybe just for historians. And hopefully I’m helping to put the fear of God into fundamentally non-evil-but-easily-flattered people like Gail Eastman, fundamentally self-interested people like Jordan Brandman, and fundamentally breeze-following people like Lucille Kring. This sort of thing only flourishes in the absence of observation — and they’re not going to get that anymore!
As for what comes next? Patience, anonymous grasshopper, patience.
TROLL???
I suppose BOX OF WHINE and Skalleywag/Junior are considered “trolls” too?
Don’t misunderstand my love for community activism, from Chino Hills to Honolulu, I have watched this year with great interest people work to fix wrongs and stand up against the kind of thing you guys are rallying on about, bit generally, I have found it to be a grassroots uprising from people who actually live in those places.
It’s your fingers getting the exercise, so go right on, I was just sayin’…
Yeah I am certain Matt Cunningham doesn’t live there. I am reasonably sure Cynthia does and most of the others post with the sincerity of a resident.
MOST of Anaheim either doesn’t know what’s going on or doesn’t give a shit (my money’s on the latter) when I say most I mean 99.9%.
This is as much bullshit as Santa Ana’s (my town) community meetings where there is absolutely NO representation of the people for the people because they simply don’t care. Given an opening we now have Julio Perez and the unions positioning to make their move.
The reality is, most of Anaheim’s residents could give a shit about this. they are busy dodging other things: Bills, government, PTA Meetings, Food Drives, and generally anything that requires “skin in the game”.
What you are talking about is noble, righteous and everything else good. But a HUGE PERCENTAGE of kids take free food everyday in Anaheim.
Let’s work on that,
“A Dozen Commenters (most of whom don’t live in Anaheim) Give or Take.”
Sounding like Kring or Cunningham there….
Not from Anaheim, but friendly neighbors who care: me, Greg, Ryan.
Very much from Anaheim: Cynthia. Zenger. BigBoxofRedWhine. Ricardo. Jason Young. Biff.
Thanks for your input, you sure cleared THAT up. Say “hi” next time you stop thru the neighborhood! Glad we could amuse you. Enjoy the weekend.
If that was directed at me whine. I don’t visit much. Disney, Ducks and Angels are too expensive. Maybe these businesses should offer a “free” night for the economically challenged in exchange for a new stadium or trolley car!
How do avoid being called a TROLL? Oh wait walk lock step with Professor Diamond. I get it.
Uh, we have lots of commenters here whom I don’t consider trolls, from all over the place ideologically, and few if any of them “walk lock step” with me.
You seem trollish when you attack people and otherwise try to stir the pot under a cloak of anonymity. Most here, except for the series of single-use-only-ISP-based Matt-like Creatures, don’t.
I was referring to the BLOGGING neighborhood, but if THAT missed you, you probably also missed my puzzlement that the situation we are neck deep in at the moment seems to you trivial and mis-directed vs your ‘greater’ goals of social justice and ‘whirled peas’.
Somebody (Churchill?) once said something like “Fight the battles you have with the tools that you have in the place that you are” or something like that, but if not your cup of tea, fine, enjoy the weekend.
Troll- naming (or qualification) bothers me not as I am in the middle of 5 hours of transcription right now on something that MATTERS to me. After this situation is resolved (or not) maybe we’ll read YOUR blog (?)to see what work YOU have been doing (?)on YOUR favorite issues, and if YOUR ideas(?) and YOUR info (?). captivate us, who knows. Otherwise, your happier online experience is just a few keystrokes away, elsewhere. Enjoy. I got stuff to finish.
As an Anaheim resident, I thank you for providing information and suggesting solutions to the problems we face in our city.
More than 29000 “fools” voted for Brandman. I am sure that nameless knows the power of campaign finance. Could it be that this is a major reason, among others, why Brandam was elected? I’d like to think that nameless is playing the devil’s advocate, but this approach sometimes loses sight of the barriers we encounter to affect change .
Nameless: I would respectfully beg to differ with you. I believe that Anaheim residents Do give a damn, the problem with Anaheim is getting information to the citizens. When I speak with people, no matter what area of the city, they become very interested in knowing what is going on, they do care. They do not have a central point to gather information they feel is reliable. Many do not trust political blogs (gasp!) finding them partisan and wondering who is behind the information they are getting. That is a valid complaint. While the Register is doing a MUCH better job of late in covering Anaheim, not all residents subscribe, TV news is covering SOME but miss one broadcast for your kids’ Back to School night on Tuesday and you miss the story. The hardest part about activism right now in Anaheim is NOT finding people who care, it is reaching them.
This is part of the reason why I shifted my view on District Elections. I was initially in favor although I knew little of the process. Keith Olesen explained to me the whole idea of “you want to give these selfish assholes their own kingdoms to rule?” and the proposition that there is nothing to prevent the majority from ganging up on the one little guy who refuses to go along, and putting the toxic waste dump in his District. We see that idea played out constantly with the way they shove Mayor Tait into a corner.
In the end, I had to admit that the need to break Anaheim into smaller, more manageable pieces in order to reach voters with information about our leaders far outweighs the downside of what District Elections bring to us. Our city is simply too large to cover in a grass roots campaign, and we see that with the lack of information that gets to residents on any subject. In making the city easier to reach by District, hopefully we can also get more residents engaged in a process that will be less overwhelming.
I do believe Anaheim cares, and I think if we offer them a less overwhelming system to be involved with, the level of information will increase as well. (Hell SOMETHING has to change, i will try anything.)
I’l put in a plug for www. HandsOffOurVotingRights.com – After watching the Citizens Panel meeting Videos,(which I recommend to EVERY Anaheim voter!) I lean toward ranked-choice or cumulative voting, because LOW COST to implement, NO perpetual boundary WARS and COSTLY remaps, and Still allows local wins with EFFORT, maintains FULL citizen voting power and FULL accountability.
The Commission basically, having no impartial evaluation process set up, and thus no rating against it ,basicly (not completely)voted the opinions that they came in with, and that they were in many cases selected for having. Not to blame them, because they came in working under an insufficient schedule to do a thorough job. We’ll see how it works out, but that’s MY take on it.
Expectations are already overinflated and unrealistic (“We don’t have stop signs and Districts will change that!”, and We are ALREADY hiring demographers TO DRAW DISTRICTS, when it has YET to be on the ballot! )
Ranked choice works when you have a race among individuals from several different parties. It doesn’t work well with, in effect, slates.
I wonder if ANY system would have immunity to ‘slate’ action? Googling (I forget what exactly-‘CA municipal election methods’?) brought up articles how about, in SF(?) some northern CA city, secret alliances were used to game either choice or cumulative(?) when one candidate purposely dropped out either during/after the vote.
What is stopping separate ditrict candidates from running as a slate? No one will care @ voting since they only vote for ‘THEIR’ guy? My difficulty with districts (besides the above) is that it seems to assume within-district solidity(?) of positions on issues, which I don’t think Anaheim is proven to have (vs social / economic concentration).
Let’s reframe the current situation into a ‘district’ world. If its fair to assume momentarily that Brandman and Tait are polar opposites, and you lived in the “Tait” district, unhappy with 4-1 votes – what alternatives do you have electorally? (Right now ALL 5 can be voted in/out with cross-city support)
In districts, what choice? everyone is presumably locally ‘happy’. If not, aren’t the odds less of 4 separate replacement votes, vs a single citywide vote? To my view, ‘neighborhood familiarity’ may not be the sole saving criteria it is assumed to be? Those other 4 votes seem to me, to be a very high price to trade away. JMHO, but I think much more needs public discussion before Yes/No voting.
Anyway, back to our regular program……