More Parklet Considerations

There are important issues Bob [Hazard] doesn’t address in his article about creative solutions to CVR parking. The first is equity. Why does the wealthiest business owner on CVR get parklets adding 150+ seats to Lucky’s and Tre Lune, for free, for years, and not K. Frank? Angel? All the galleries? Every business would benefit from free outdoor pavilion space, and unless the City is willing to work on an equitable solution for all businesses, it really isn’t a solution that the community should support. At a minimum the city should auction off parking spaces for private use on an annual lease basis – and we would quickly see just how much those parking spaces are worth. The City would raise significant revenue and it could choose how many spaces to auction, and where they were located.

Also unmentioned is the Coastal Commission requirement that every new restaurant ensure sufficient availability of parking per prospective diners, currently one parking space per three diners. On that basis, the parklets create a mandate for almost 100 additional parking spaces – meaning the deficit created is 28 lost + 100 not added = 128, not the 28 lost parking spaces alone – and this is the deficit felt by surrounding business owners.

Lower Village Business Owner
Name Withheld Upon Request

Connie, the Cougar, Returns!

Connie the Cougar returned to my abode above Summerland a few weeks ago. The video was taken much further away than the last one and therefore is not quite as clear – but you can see where the camera was placed for the last video – and I sent it to you for some fun, as you might not be able to print it clearly. That said, it looks like a good time to write another Carlos, The Bear and send it in, seeing as how Connie is out and about, and we are heading into another heat wave!!

Take a look and let me know what you think!

Michael Edwards

Double Parking Coast Village

None of us are perfect but can we try to avoid double parking on Coast Village? We all love the laid-back vibe here and double parking not so SB style.

Thanks!

Kit Cooper

How About Them Apples?

Here is a business proposition for you. A friend comes to you and says he wants to devote his future energies on a hope to make gold from apples. He wants you to loan him $10,000 at a low interest rate, all of which will go directly to the apple supplier. There is no business plan. There is no limit on the quality or price he may pay for the apples. There is no requirement that he actually has to work on the project. There is no limitation on how he can spend his own money while he is indebted to you.

You would have to be a fool to make your friend the loan unless of course someone with unlimited funds (and no brain) would unconditionally guarantee it.

This, of course, is the Federal Student Loan program in a nutshell. The only winner in the apples-to-gold hypothetical when the hoped-for result/pipedream isn’t achieved is the apple supplier (university) who can charge whatever it wants knowing that it will be paid up front by the lender… no questions asked. And the only loser is the guarantor (Federal Government) who will eventually be forced to pay the lender and write off the loan.

Recently, President Biden announced that he intends, with no constitutional authority and no vote of Congress, to give close to a trillion dollars, which the Government doesn’t have to students who borrowed money to pay college expenses. It doesn’t matter if the loans are in default or not; it doesn’t matter if the long-term prospects of the borrower show that he or she can repay the loan; it doesn’t even matter if the borrower earned a million dollars in 2022 so long as he or she earned less than $125,000 in 2020 or 2021. Anyone who paid their own way through college or who repaid their student loans is out of luck… they get nothing but the obligation to participate as taxpayers in the bailout of those that didn’t. They look like fools.

Some things about the proposed student loan forgiveness proposal must be clarified and emphasized:

1) This not a plan to eliminate any student debt… it is a plan to transfer that debt to those taxpayers who don’t owe it. 

2) There is nothing in the proposed plan that will change the Federal Student Loan Program. Lenders will continue to loan money without any underwriting criteria (quality or cost of education; likelihood of success; down-stream income potential). If nothing changes, we will be back to the current student loan debt totals in just a few years. 

3) The program will do nothing to reduce the high cost of college education which, thanks primarily to the federally guaranteed student loan program, has escalated geometrically compared to the rest of the economy. Colleges will continue to expand their resort-rivaling campuses, overpay their tenured professors, create even more administrative positions, and not have to touch their ample endowments. Anyone with an ounce of common sense can see that college tuition will only continue to increase so long as the Federal Government guarantees that their students can pay any price.

What we have here like the Sub-Prime Mortgage bail-out 15 years ago is the Federal Government spending taxpayer money to solve a crisis that that same Federal Government created by injecting itself into a societal role that it was never intended to enter.

Lawrence W. Dam