ART shuttles Duplicate $319 Million Streetcar route

From The OC Politics Blog:

Once again, the OC Register’s failed its own Affliction Test and missed easily researched facts that the proposed end points of Anaheim’s $319 million streetcar debacle are already served by the 11 year-old Anaheim Resort Transit (ART) system, a public-private partnership operating shuttle buses between Disneyland’s Main Gate and dozens of hotels and other tourists stops throughout the Anaheim Resort District.  ART also serves attractions and shopping areas in Orange, Buena Park, Santa Ana and the Garden Grove hotels which focus on Disney guests and conventioneers.

Kris Murray

Register writer Marroquin might have discovered this for his 3/27 story via some simple research on this Blog or by sticking his head out a window.  ART operates 18 routes daily with over 60 buses of different capacities to match their varying passenger loads (they also operated small electric buses a few years ago, and still may).  ART’s been successful and grown rapidly, per this 2012 Register story, by adding stops at non-Disney attractions like Knott’s Berry Farm, Discovery Science Center, MainPlace and GardenWalk.

A simple shuttle bus system like ART does not operate on a “fixed guideway” like the steel rails embedded in the roadway a streetcar uses.   Buses don’t need a dedicated overhead high-voltage power supply infrastructure as discussed below.  This means buses are far less expensive to operate and much more flexible as they’re easily rerouted when new requirements emerge or usage patterns change (temporarily or permanently), AND there’s little infrastructure costs other than bus stops, signage, seating and perhaps shelters.  Buses are less expensive to buy than streetcars and far easier to maintain by ordinary mechanics.

Read the full story here:

http://ocpoliticsblog.com/register-misses-the-bus-again/

Pringle's Folly

From The OC Politics Blog:

About five years ago when he was the Mayor of Anaheim, Curt Pringle dreamed of a regional transportation center for his city — a place they named ARTIC which would be the Orange County station for the equally dreamy California High-Speed Rail system which would be zipping through town on its way to San Diego, or charging northward to LA’s Union Station (over, under or through some of the densest urban residential housing in California) and onto San Francisco and Sacramento.

Curt Pringle

The Mayor-for-hire, as he was known at Friends for Fullerton Future, or Master of the Universe as he was tagged last year at the union-funded Voice of OC, didn’t stop with just a $184 million train stationthat would partly be paid for by OCTA’s Measure M where Board Member Pringle sat for years.  From concocted ridership projections, he fantasized that Disney patrons would be coming to ARTIC by the millions, but still needed to be transported to the Mouse’s cash registers, miles away from the bullet train, and on the wrong side of the 5 Freeway.  Since Walt Disney already had a world-famous one, Pringle announced in 2007 that he needed aMONORAIL for the Disney visitors.

Read the full story here:

http://ocpoliticsblog.com/pringles-folly/#more-10591

Anaheim Releases Questionable Emails

Anaheim officials Monday released an email chain that has raised questions at City Hall over whether local officials planned to misrepresent information to a federal agency in order to obtain transportation grant funding.

The emails were released following a Voice of OC article published last Friday that quoted Mayor Tom Tait and other City Hall sources saying that on its face the email was “very disturbing.”

Natalie Meeks on the left with Kris Murray

The Feb. 2008 email chain shows Anaheim Public Works Director Natalie Meeks planning to ask for funds for one phase of the then planned monorail project but actually use the money for something else. The project has since been changed to a proposal for a less expensive streetcar system.

According to Tait, who has questioned the cost of the proposed streetcar system, there were two explanations for the email chain. One explanation has it being little more than confused wording, but another indicates a plan to deceive federal officials, Tait said.

City spokeswoman Ruth Ruiz said Monday that it is the former.

Read the full story here:

http://www.voiceofoc.org/oc_north/article_16bd092e-6f5b-11e2-846b-001a4bcf887a.html

Scandals could STOP Disney

From the OC Politics Blog:

“Anaheim city officials are weighing whether to release a politically explosive email that raises troubling questions about whether local officials knowingly misrepresented facts to the federal government in order to obtain transportation grant funding,” according to the Voice of OC.

The Voice of OC also reported that “City Hall sources who have seen the email, including Mayor Tom Tait, say that on its face the correspondence shows that Natalie Meeks, the city’s public works director, and Darrell Johnson, deputy CEO of the Orange County Transportation Authority, may have colluded to misrepresent information on an application for Federal Transit Authority funds for the $319-million streetcar project that would connect Disneyland to the city’s planned public transit depot.”

Anaheim City Attorney Cristina Talley was forced to resign, by the Council majority, because she advised that the records requested by activists and the media had to be turned over for review.

But in the end this scandal may well return Talley to her post – and could end up not only derailing the multi-million dollar street car system that Disney wants taxpayers to pay for, it could also result in the ouster of the Council majority.

In related news, the Voice of OC also reported that “Two planned four-star hotels near Anaheim’s GardenWalk mall could be built without taxpayer subsidies in one to two years, according to hotel financing experts, calling into question subsidy supporters’ central argument that the hotels can’t be built without the controversial incentives.”

You might recall that Disney, with their friends at the SOAR PAC, pushed hard over the past few years to spend hundreds of millions of hotel tax dollars on subsidizing the GardenWalk hotels.

Why Disney is so hot to burn through taxpayer money on unneeded street cars and hotels that should be financed privately is a very good question.  Remember that Disney spent a fortune this past year to elect former Anaheim Mayor Tom Daly to represent the 68th Assembly District.  Well they better enjoy it for now because Daly will surely lose in 2014 when area Latino activists run one good candidate against him.  But for now he will be doing his best to push tax dollars into Disney’s corner – Mickey Mouse welfare if you will.

We should not tolerate Disney’s meddling in local politics and their desire to waste hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.

Read more at:

http://ocpoliticsblog.com/scandals-could-stop-disney-from-wasting-tax-money-on-streetcars-hotels/

Did Natalie Meeks & OCTA lie to the Federal Government?

From The Voice of OC:

Anaheim city officials are weighing whether to release a politically explosive email that raises troubling questions about whether local officials knowingly misrepresented facts to the federal government in order to obtain transportation grant funding.

The email has been requested by a local activist under the California Public Records Act. The issue comes just as council members abruptly fired their city attorney, who had advised them that the sensitive email is a public document.

City Hall sources who have seen the email, including Mayor Tom Tait, say that on its face the correspondence shows that Natalie Meeks, the city's public works director, and the deputy CEO of the Orange County Transportation Authority, may have colluded to misrepresent information on an application for Federal Transit Authority funds for the $319-million streetcar project that would connects Disneyland to the city’s planned public transit depot.

Natalie Meeks

Johnson was recently appointed CEO of the billion-dollar OCTA, a position he will assume at the end of this month. OCTA spokesman Joel Zlotnick said Johnson wouldn't comment on an email he hasn't seen. Meeks could not be immediately reached for comment.

Darrell Johnson OCTA

Yet Tait is talking, and he said he's not happy about what he’s seen.

“I've asked [City Manager] Bob Wingenroth to look into it … because I'm disturbed by what it says on the face of it,” Tait said.

 The explanation he's been given so far is that the email could be interpreted in different ways, Tait said. Under one interpretation, it's a problem of semantics. Under another, it's a plan to misrepresent facts to a federal agency.

Officials planned to apply for a grant to finance an early phase of the project known as an alternatives analysis but then use the funds for preliminary engineering, according to sources who have seen the email.

“The initial explanation was it had to do with semantics on preliminary engineering,” said Tait, who voted against advancing the project in October 2012.  He said that among other reasons, he questioned whether alternatives to the project, such as buses or a monorail, had been fully explored.

The proposal is to have streetcars, essentially 10 fixed-track buses, transporting riders from the future Anaheim Intermodal Transportation Center westward to the Disneyland resort, with stops at the Platinum Triangle and Convention Center.

The email turned up after City Hall activist Cynthia Ward requested records from personal email accounts related to the streetcar project, according to City Hall sources.

The email in question came from a city official’s personal email account, and City Attorney Cristina Talley advised that such records had to be turned over for review.

Revelations about the email come on the heels of Talley's resignation this week, but sources have not indicated any connection between the two incidents.

The council majority told Talley at Tuesday night's council meeting to resign or face being fired.

Ward says she received a tip from a City Hall source that the email showed the supposed misrepresentation.

“I had a piece of information passed along to me from an anonymous source that indicated that,” Ward said. “But I was never given any proof I could go to anybody with to force the issue, so I've been forced to just sit and wait and see if that piece of information turns up when they finally released the documents.”

Ward requested on Dec. 13 a slew of records related to the streetcar project, including emails and other communications between OCTA and city officials from 2007 to 2012.

Ward has yet to receive the requested records because city officials are still processing the request, according to city correspondence to Ward.

Whether the email, which Voice of OC has also requested, will be made public remains unclear.

Anaheim officials have in the past ordered records purges.

In late 2011, Planning Department officials ordered employees to destroy "old" or "unnecessary" emails because they could be used to embarrass public officials. Employees were threatened with disciplinary action if they didn't comply with the directive.

Shortly after the records purge orders, a Planning Department manager reportedly went on a records shredding spree. City officials said that the destroyed records were business license forms, but other City Hall sources dispute that contention.

Why do we need a $92 million underpass?

The OC Register is reporting that five business near the train crossing at Katella and State College are in danger of being taken via imminent domain to build an underpass. For those of us who travel over those train tracks frequently, the questions is why the hell do we need an underpass?. Traffic flows well without it. Apparently projections show that by 2030 about 95 trains will pass thru. Wonder what type of crystal ball they use to come up these numbers.

Anaheim's public works director Natalie Meeks states that "With the development anticipated in the Platinum Triangle, it will become more important." What development in Curt Pringle's massive failure entitled the Platinum Triangle. The Platinum Triangle used to be the home to thriving businesses and now it is made up of empty dirt lots. Dirt lots that generate no revenue for the city.

I'm sure f we dug a little deeper we'd find that Pringle and Assoc. is representing folks connected to this waste of public funds. But that is only speculation.

The Great Streetcar

By Cynthia Ward

The Anaheim Resort’s millions of guests drive our local economy, but those visitors also create significant traffic congestion. Over the objections of Mayor Tom Tait, the Anaheim City Council approved a $318,000,000.00 publicly-funded streetcar system to transport Resort visitors and employees. Although Disney uses buses almost exclusively at their Florida property, and the price tag of $53,000,000.00 made buses comparatively more affordable, enhanced bus service was astonishingly dismissed as undesirable-read “not sexy enough.”

Natlie Meeks and Kris Murray

A recent study by transportation expert Randall O’Toole, debunks the arguments used by City Council, and a staff promoting their own obvious agenda.

Streetcars are more expensive to purchase and operate than buses. Their fixed track and power systems are costly and disruptive to existing traffic, and especially problematic for pedestrians. Buses offer greater flexibility, enabling the addition of vehicles for peak hours-critical to address the unique traffic patterns of Anaheim, with crunch time not driven by conventional issues like rush hour so much as variable influences like closing time at Disneyland, last innings at the Stadium, or events at the Honda Center. Buses are easily removed or replaced for service, while a disabled streetcar renders the system unusable, and leaving traffic clogged around a stalled streetcar.

City Council claims economic development follows streetcar projects, but Council’s cited examples in other cities show heavily subsidized projects designed by central planners trying to socially engineer us out of our vehicles. Perhaps the next step from Council is a proposal for subsidized projects similar to Portland, after all the Platinum Triangle has been an abject failure so far. Even if we wanted to underwrite the development of that area, where are we to find the money? With Redevelopment dead, bed taxes are the only remaining funding source for development subsidies. The last time we tapped into TOT for private development incentives was at the Gardenwalk, with an agreement so controversial that nearly a year later Councilmember Murray is still buying ads and working a massive PR program using campaign money to justify her decision to voters.

Meanwhile, traffic impacts, and funding sources for operating and maintenance costs have still not been determined, despite the Mayor’s requests, and a $6,000,000.00 report that taxpayers covered! While the money we have already spent failed to address traffic impacts and other vital questions, we are expected to trust those numbers in moving forward. Now $9,000,000 for yet another study has been awarded to Hill International, the employer of candidate Steve Lodge, who stands to pull in 1% of that contract as a finder’s fee. This “objective” decision to award the project to Hill was made by Public Works Director Natalie Meeks, who is understood to have close personal friendships with Lodge and his wife, who also works as an Executive at Hill. Council member Murray is also a member of the “powerful woman in government funded projects” club with Meeks and the new Mrs. Lodge. But I am sure it is all above board.

Anaheim’s contentious Council majority would have us believe that in demanding answers Mayor Tait is obstructing progress. But the Mayor’s caution in spending our tax money is a refreshing contrast to the irresponsible and reckless speed with which our leaders and City staff have forced this issue. It seems they cannot spend that “free” tax money fast enough.