The difference between the Gardenwalk project and other 50/50 TOT splits is one of degree, not kind. And that 20% doesn’t stay in the project. It goes to paying of resort district bonds, meaning the city can retire that debt obligation all the sooner.

And for the record, I don’t agree with the GW project. But I think a valid conservative case can be made for it as a business development tool in an economic environment in which Anaheim has few tools to work with in order to attract higher end hotels and keep the Resort District competitive. It sure isn’t a limtus test issue that determines whether you’re a conservative or not.

You used to argue how vital the Resort District is to Anaheim’s health, so vital in fact that you supporting restricting the rights of resort district property owners with a ballot-box zoning measure. That wasn’t conservative, and neither is the Take Back Anaheim initiative. You support both. Direct democracy is a progressive value, not a conservative one.

“Your definition of Conservative leadership seems flawed in a few areas, and I hope you will please consider rethinking your views on Mayor Tait…”

Quite the opposite. I think your understanding of conservatism is flawed annd inconsistent. For the record, I admire Tom Tait. I think he is a principled conservative. But I think his advocacy of the Take Back Anahem initiative is politically and philosophically unsound. Same with his support for rushing a council districts initiative onto the ballot with little input from the general public. This same coalition backing both Take Back Anaheim and council districts wll reward Mayor Tait by turning on him in 2014, when Lorri Galloway challenges him for re-election. That is their nature.

Speaking of the council districts issue, it is both a political and economic issue for its litigious advocates. Those aren’t mutually exclusive, Cynthia. The reason it has been successfully litigated around the state is because the targets have mostly been school districts. Lacking the resources, sophistication adn will to resist, they simply cave in and settle. And if the City of Anaheim adopts your defeatist mentality, that is what will happen here as well.

W.W. “A conservative could be on either side of the TOT rebate as a business development tool.”

Earlier TOT deals generated 50% of TOT back to the General Fund. Those made sense; the taxpayer saw a benefit in the partnership, and Tait was right to approve them. (Yes Vern, including the Lake Development deal, I can explain the numbers to you, it pencils.) But the GardenWalk deal is entirely different, 100% of the TOT is diverted in that agreement, 20% goes to bond repayment, the other 80% goes to the developer.

What part of that is conservative? The job creation? Creating service sector jobs below a livable wage means we next get to build subsidized “workforce housing” for those workers. (Oh my God, Vern is right, I do agree with Galloway about something! Check my neck for the scab!) We get zero TOT, the sales tax appears (possibly?) to be already compromised in some deal with the developer, and we get 10 cents on the dollar out of property tax, but building this means we now get to house the workers, pay for their kids school lunches, and repair roads from increased traffic workers generate to and from the site, while transportation money slated for those roads is now spent on ARTIC. Sounds like LOTS more government spending above and beyond the initial give-away, and there is nothing conservative about that.

I am tired of hearing Tait compromised his conservative principles in cahoots with Galloway and the unions. Tait was right to back Take Back Anaheim for the petition, which I also signed. He (naively) trusted Lorri to limit her activity to ONLY the TOT petition. But like a college freshman with Dad’s credit card, once Galloway had Tait’s endorsement and photo op, she just couldn’t stick to buying groceries and school books, she had to go on a binge. Without Tait’s permission or knowledge, Galloway perverted the stated purpose of Take Back Anaheim to also incite a riot by letting Joanne Sosa and Yesenia Rojas use the Take Back Anaheim name, facebook page, and email list, to protest Police violence in an extremely confrontational anti-Police manner. Trusting Galloway not to abuse his support was Tait’s sin, not backing something that every Conservative in the city should be backing.

W.W. “Council district’s are a ploy by your left-wing brethen to lock in City Council seats for Democrats, since liberals have a hard time winning city-wide.”

I do not think the ACLU is even that idealistic, since the voters in those “disadvantaged” neighborhoods already outnumber the voters in Anaheim Hills, and they simply fail to VOTE, or they vote for the same candidates that did win! There is no history of minority candidates (liberal or otherwise) getting votes in disenfranchised neighborhoods, only to lose to the votes of rich white people in the hills.

It’s not “pure politics” as you put it, it is pure economics. The ACLU runs up and down California, filing lawsuits like the bully picking fights for lunch money. They began with school districts, realized they had a winning case that also gave them not only settlements, but legal fees AND EXPERT FEES, which is unheard of elsewhere. This is a money maker for them. You think the ACLU gives a rip about those voters? Where are the voter registration drives? Where are the bilingual candidate forums in locations residents can get to with limited transportation options? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

This is the part that makes my brain explode. Go look at ALL other cases filed by the ACLU in California. They have never lost. Not once, and it has gone all the way through the appellate system to the Supremes. Districts are coming to Anaheim, whether they are done voluntarily or forced on us by the courts (after being ordered to write a healthy check to the ACLU!) If there was ANY hope of winning, I would scream FIGHT right alongside you Wilson. We cannot win, fighting only pumps up our fees, and the Mayor is right to try working this out to cost us the least for what is a foregone conclusion.

Council Districts will do nothing to help disenfranchised neighborhoods launch their candidates, because the special interests that already control Anaheim will simply blanket those smaller Districts in mail and drown out the efforts of some poor schmuck who thought he could cover the ‘hood in photocopied handouts with volunteers. If you think the establishment crowd cannot game this, think again. They will find a local in a District they need to control, someone stepping up with leadership qualities that locals clearly respect and follow. They will groom him/her. Invite them to sit at a Chamber table for a few luncheons, The Mouse scores them seats for Candlelight (or invites them to serve on the SOAR Advisory Board) someone has last minute tickets for the City’s box at the Honda Center, etc. This little blue collar worker has never had that level of attention in their life, and with very little time and investment they have someone dazzled at being part of the “in” crowd. Been there, done that, and am sadly watching others I care about being seduced with the same exact courtship. And when those who have been so good to you explain how this project is really great for the City, well you listen, because you trust them. Districts will not change that. It will just give us more leaders to influence.

In addition, we cannot get our leaders to quit sniping at each other as it is, may God help us when Districts give them little kingdoms to oversee.

Tom Tait did the right thing in opposing the recent union payoff. What those so-called “conservative Republican” leaders approved was obscene, and far more brazen than a real union candidate would ever have the nerve to try! Now back to Leos, who is so publicly tied to the unions that he will HAVE to show more balance and restraint than the current Council majority, lest we all point and scream “See, we TOLD you he would sell us all to Nick Berardino!” (Apparently that job is already taken by Todd Ament.)

W.W. Submitting what is and should be a council decision to the voters is the same as saying the issue is too important for the people’s elected representatives to decide.

This from a SOAR/Chamber press release, dated Monday March 19, 2007;

“Ultimately, SOAR members agree that it is the Anaheim voter who should decide the future of Anaheim Resort Area, an area so important to their future. Registered voters will be able to sign petitions at a number of locations in the next few weeks.” http://www.imakenews.com/anaheim/e_article000781148.cfm?x=0,w

Followed by this presser about a year later,

Anaheim’s Resort District Preserved!
S.O.A.R. Grassroots Army Succeeds
The Anaheim Resort District covers less than 5 percent of the city. Yet, it is an economic powerhouse that generates more than 50 percent of all Anaheim tax revenues.
A year ago, the Resort District, which was created in 1994, was in serious danger. The “Save Our Anaheim Resort” (SOAR) committee formed and began the long fight to preserve the Resort District.
Anaheim’s World Class Resort District is now preserved! The Anaheim City Council reversed its position and adopted the “Save Our Anaheim Resort” (SOAR) initiative on March 4, 2008.
SOAR thanks the many people who worked so hard for this great victory! YOU fought City Hall! And YOU Won! Grassroots democracy works. The Resort District is now preserved. Police and Fire services are now protected. Resort District Preserved – Essential City Services Protected

You say that “It creates a principle that if an issue is really important, then the people’s elected representatives can’t be trusted to decide it.”

And yep, that is PRECISELY what SOAR/Disney/Chamber said back in 07-08.. We had three Councilmembers who voted as a majority block against the wishes of the then-Mayor with Galloway as the other dissenting vote, over the very vocal objections of residents. The deal at the time changed the development deal for a parcel of land in the Resort District, which would have diverted TOT income (instead of giving it away it would not have existed, as a residential development rather than hotel, but the net loss to the General Fund was the same) and the deal was shoved through hurriedly without discussion, in what appeared to greatly benefit the developer who had monetarily helped those who voted in favor. Now WHAT exactly is different today? Back then when Mayor Pringle led residents in a protest movement against special interests he was called a “visionary.” Mayor Tait led residents in a protest movement against special interests and those same people turned on him, accusing him of being petty for not accepting what he saw as a raw deal for Anaheim. The hypocrisy makes me sick.

Of course back then we stood together in the name of, “Protect Vital City Services.” I guess “Subsidize private developers with taxpayer dollars desperately needed for vital city services that are instead being given away with little to no benefit to taxpayers in exchange for their investment” just doesn’t fit onto a t-shirt, or a snappy orange helium balloon.

Your definition of Conservative leadership seems flawed in a few areas, and I hope you will please consider rethinking your views on Mayor Tait, who is a good man trying to fight back against those who would give away our financial stability as a city.

CW

“…the most hated politician right now is moderate Republican Mayor Tom Tait.”

http://www.orangejuiceblog.com/2012/07/mike-galloway-jumps-into-council-race-what-is-craig-hunters-role-in-apds-abuses-and-other-dispatches-from-the-happeningest-place-on-earth/

And here you call Kring a moderate:

“Let’s take a look now at moderate, independent Republican Lucille Kring…”

Neither Tait nor Kring are moderates. Tait isn’t even close. But today, you call them real conservatives.

Do you see why it is hard to take you seriously as a political blogger, Vern? I’ve never seen anyone who writes so much while knowing so little.

- A conservative could be on either side of the TOT rebate as a business development tool. It’s not a litmus test as to whether you’;re a conservative. Tait had voted for 50-50 TOT splits for years. So had Lorri Galloway (who has no problem with the city forcing developers to set-aside a certain percentage of their property as “affordable housing” but is horrified at a time-limited rebating of TOT revenue). Tait’s opposition wasn’t in principle, but he he thought the 80-20 split was too high.

- Council district’s are a ploy by your left-wing brethen to lock in City Council seats for Democrats, since liberals have a hard time winning city-wide. It’s pure politics, not high-ideals. Guys like super-liberal Jose Moreno can’t get elected at-large, so the ACLU sues to try to win thru litigation what they can’t win at the ballot box. A majority of Anaheim voters don’t want libs on their council Vern — deal with it.

- Fighting the ACLU’s lawsuit isn’t fruitless. Your just repeating the plaintiff’s talking points. The city can and should fight it on principle, rather tan be cowed by a bunch of lefty legal thugs. Fighting to do the right thing isn’t a waste of money. It’s Moreno, the absurd Ain David and the ACLU who are wasting the taxpayers money.

- I agree the June agreement with the AMEA was a bad deal, and Tom Tait cast the right vote. But I saw one of your other comments in which you wrongly claim there won’t be any more labor issues coming before the council for a few years as a result. The LOU you refer to is for little more than a year — if you don’t even know the basic facts of issues you yammer on about, it’s hard to take you seriously.

-Futhermore, requiring voter approval of any TOT deal with a hotel is NOT conservative. It is a Progressive position. Submitting what is and shoulkd be a council decision to the voters is the same as saying the issue is too important for the people’s elected representatives to decide. It creates a principle that if an issue is really important, then the people’s elected representatives can’t be trusted to decide it. That is not conservative thinking. That is capital “P” Progressive, direct-democracy thinking.

Now go back to an area in which you actually have some competence, deciding what and what isn’t liberal.