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Tuesday, November 25. 2008
The Canaries
News from San Diego!The flagging economy … flagging … as in “flagellation,” from the Latin “flagellum,” which means, “whip.” Yeah, we’re getting whipped all right. Normally, starting something out with flagellation would put a smile on my face … sorry, I’m having a Sabrina Fox moment … but getting whipped by the collapsing economy isn’t bringing any joy to my heart.
This recession started in California, as all things do, great and disastrous. It began to rear it’s spanky little self about three years ago when the real estate market started skyrocketing into a new dimension. Some might call it demented.
My brother and I once lived in 750 sq. ft. condo that was assessed at $360,000.00. That’s about $480.00 a square foot. Some people were shocked and then others were quite excited, but underneath it all most people knew, even spoke of, the inevitable crash. Well, that has come, has been here for over a year, jobs are going if not gone already and that big idea Arnold had when he won his race for governor — sell $15 billion in bonds to forestall the debt until better times arrive — has come home to roost.
Governor Schwarzenegger — even after five years that’s pretty funny — hasn’t been a bad governor, but he hasn’t been a real mover either. On the other hand, he thinks the California Supreme Court should overturn Proposition 8, the one that put discrimination into the California Constitution. Now that’s real Republican thinking! Keep government out of the private lives of the citizens!Still, California is deep in a recession, over 1.5 million people are now collecting unemployment and fully 40% of homes sold now are foreclosed. The state is spending $500 million a month more than it is bringing in and of course no one wants to raise taxes. It ain’t pretty. So, what do the politicians do? Slash spending.
San Diego is nearly the epicenter of this disaster, nearly. Orange County holds that title since that is where Countrywide, now a piece of Bank of America, began it’s lending practices that sent it into its own foreclosure. But we’re getting whipped pretty good too.
So far, 17 libraries and recreation centers have either been closed or will be soon. That means there will be thousands of kids who will not have after school programs, so expect crime among juveniles to go up and the libraries, I know the one in Scripps Ranch, where I live, always has many patrons, none of them homeless, although there are (probably) many Scripps Ranch residents who are contemplating homelessness right about now.No wonder. This is one of the priciest neighborhoods in San Diego with homes that were once assessed to be in the millions of dollars. That looked good to the owners three years ago, but now with the economy tanking and the bottom dropping out of the real estate business, the giddy intoxication of those home loans everyone was lapping up is now looking like one big millstone around the neck.
Along with the recreation centers and libraries that are getting shuttered, the city is going to remove all but a few if the remaining fire rings from the various city beaches. The rings aren’t actually round, they’re square and city doesn’t call them fire rings, they call them … let me look it up … fire pits.The fire pits get used nearly every night of the year, especially in the cooler months when the homeless need a way to keep warm and teenagers want to have their keg less keg parties that can accommodate a lot of people without waking the neighbors.
San Diego, for many residents, myself included, is one big beach and the fire pits are a big part of San Diego’s appeal. Tourists like the beach and all of its accoutrements, including the fire pits. Even during the “slow” season the beaches attract tourists and you can see them standing and sitting around the fire pits with the locals who got the bonfires started.
Fire pits seem like a small thing when you consider the thousands of San Diegans who are now out of work and the thousands more who are headed to the unemployment office. Thankfully, these days, that just means clicking on their web site! Don’t have to waste gas schlepping 30 miles to the unemployment office in Oceanside, 60 miles round trip, to pay homage to their useless service center.
Do I have resentment? Naah … not a big one anyway.Back to the fire rings, fire pits, whatever. They are part of San Diego’s heritage. When I moved here nearly 17 years ago, there were over 600. Now there are less than 200. The city cut them back because the cost of maintenance was too high and the city was hit by a mini-recession.
Back then, even before Bill Clinton won the election, the bottom was falling out of the defense industry. General Dynamics, which employed 20,000 San Diegans directly closed, sold their Tomahawk cruise missile business to Hughes, located in Arizona, sold their space division to Martin Marietta (Denver) and put all of their employees — and thousands of others who depended on GenDyn for business — out of work.
If you want to see the humor in that, the city of San Diego gave General Dynamics a bailout for them to bail out of San Diego. As you cruise north from Downtown San Diego up State Highway 163, as you pass Balboa Avenue, on the right is a big complex called “The Spectrum.” It’s huge, encompassing … actually, I don’t know how big it is, but it stretches from Balboa on its south end to Clairemont Mesa Boulevard on the North. That’s a full kilometer, two-thirds of a mile. Two hundred thirty-two acres, just Googled it.
The city developed a master plan for the property that stayed empty for years, until General Dynamics could sell it for $79.5 million dollars. Forty years earlier they bought it from the city for less than a million dollars. Talk about good fortune. The city got nothing. Well, the developer made some shopping areas, some housing and hotels and a bunch of new businesses. Well, a little something for the tax base, a few thousand jobs that pay less than subsistence wages for this area. And now the city, well the mayor, Jerry Sanders, wants to eliminate the rest of San Diego’s beloved fire pits. What’s next? Jeez, I haven’t even looked into budget cuts to the transit system. America is slowly grinding to a halt, literally, and we’ll feel the gears self-destruct here before the rest of the country. Just consider us the canaries.
Late Monday the city council rejected Mayor Sanders’ budget-cutting proposals.
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