Solar Eclipse on Mt Tam, Mill Valley, CA 8/21/2017 10:11 am

Solar Eclipse on Mt Tam, Mill Valley, CA 8/21/2017 10:11 am

Don McLean (American Pie)

LA coliving: PodShare's permeable intersection between social/privacy

Calling it “a social network with an address”, Los Angeles entrepreneur Elvina Beck created PodShare, a coliving experiment where dozens of “Podestrians”- travelers, mobile workers or new arrivals to the city- share a communal space filled with sleeping pods or “bunk beds for adults”.

How to Safely Watch the Solar Eclipse or CNN

Trump-led HUD is changing its tune about low-cost housing

Dick Spotswood: Trump-led HUD is changing its tune about low-cost housing

POSTED: 08/15/17, 11:52 AM PDT | UPDATED: 52 SECS AGO

3 COMMENTS

For years, the big threat from high-density housing activists was that Marin was going to be “the next Westchester.” With a change in administrations, that threat just evaporated.

During the Barack Obama administration, the Department of Housing and Urban Development decided to make an example of Westchester, a county that’s often described as New York City’s Marin.

HUD ruled that Westchester’s single-family zoning was an “impediment” to its staff-crafted “affirmatively furthering fair housing” doctrine. Like Marin, Westchester signed a “voluntary” compliance agreement that ultimately allowed federal courts to get involved when HUD decided that the county’s zoning violated that agreement.

Westchester is larger and more diverse than Marin, but many of its communities are likewise zoned for single-family homes owned by primarily white and Asian families. It’s also a reliable blue bastion, at least in national and state politics.

Hillary Clinton is a Westchester resident, in the Ross-like village of Chappaqua.

It’s little surprise that Westchester voters reacted just as one might expect Marinites would if they were targeted by an ideologically driven staff exhibiting a phobia about any neighborhood without high-density, low-income developments.

Voters dumped their Democratic county executive — Westchester’s directly elected county mayor — and replaced him with Rob Astorino, an aggressive moderate Republican. Astorino refused to back down on opposition to HUD’s contention that single-family zoning was inherently racist.

Westchester was continually in HUD crosshairs. The federal agency succeeded in pushing the county to approve more affordable units, even in its most upscale communities. This was the positive side of HUD’s effort and one Marin should emulate without heavy-handed federal intervention.

Westchester ultimately approved 790 affordable units with 100 more coming on-line.

The unresolved issue was whether the HUD-mandated “Analysis of Impediments” finding that Westchester was required to prepare under its settlement agreement would ever be deemed “acceptable.” The county submitted 10 versions and none was OK’d.

All Marin communities have neighborhoods zoned “single-family,” with “second units” usually compatible. Marin also is mandated to prepare regular “Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing,” which could someday be used as a cudgel toward eliminating single-family zoning here.

Elections have consequences. Astorino used his clout with new HUD secretary Ben Carson, who has a different take on what’s legally discriminatory. The upshot is that HUD has now, according to the New York Daily News, “accepted a county analysis of how local zoning codes can create barriers to fair-housing choices. The analysis didn’t find any exclusionary zoning in the county.”

Despite its left political leanings, HUD’s capitulation was perceived as long overdue by Westchester residents of all political persuasions. It also means that Marin’s beloved single-family zoning is safe … for now.

See full article HERE

Politicians give special favors to Campaign Donors.

California Gubernatorial Candidate Steered Low-Income Housing Funds To Campaign Contributors

California Treasurer John Chiang's conflicts of interest are not the first in the program's long and sordid history.

Christian Britschgi|Aug. 15, 2017 10:40 am

hEnDeRsOn, kY/Wikimedia CommonsThe federal government's Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program is supposedly "the most important resource for creating affordable housing in the United States today." But since its creation in 1986, the $8 billion program has been plagued by scandals and other problems.

The latest involves California treasurer and 2018 gubernatorial candidate John Chiang, who has helped funnel millions in LIHTC tax credits to developers who have given him some $100,000 in campaign donations.

The Sacramento Bee reports that Chiang, through his role on various committees charged with dispensing LIHTC money, was able to steer $60 million in federal tax credits to the developer Pacific West Communities, which has since donated $37,000 to his various campaign committees.

Another developer, Domus, has gotten Chiang's signoff on tax credits for three separate projects since 2013. The company has donated $40,000 to Chiang over the same period.

The problem, say LIHTC's critics, is that there is little accountability for how the program's credits get handed out.

"Really, there is no federal oversight of the process," says Daniel Diaz-Garcia of the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which has now published three reports on LIHTC.

In theory, the Internal Revenue Service provides oversight for LIHTC. But the agency isn't very well-suited to oversee such a complex program. "The IRS is a tax collection agency," says Diaz-Garcia. "It's not involved in housing policy. It's not involved in administering programs on the part of the federal government."

Each year, the IRS gives each state a pool of LIHTC dollars. (The amount each state gets is based on its population.) The states then—through what are known as Housing Finance Authorities, or HFAs—award these tax credits to developers of affordable housing projects. Those companies then sell the tax credits to investors in their developments.

Throughout the program's 30-year history, according to those GAO reports, the IRS has audited only seven of the now 58 HFAs.

In California, the tax credits are awarded by the California Tax Credit Allocation Committee (CTCAC). As treasurer, Chiang is one of three voting members of CTCAC, which gives him enormous influence over where the state's $94.9 million in federal LIHTC money goes.

Potential conflicts of interest—or in Chiang's case, actual conflicts of interest—in awarding the tax credits highlight the need for internal safeguards and regular reviews of the program. But thanks to the IRS's "minimal" oversight, the GAO has found that the agency "cannot determine the extent of noncompliance and other issues at HFAs."

This is not the only high-profile scandal related to the program. In Florida, developers fraudulently inflated construction costs in order to squeeze some $34 million out of 14 separate LIHTC-funded projects. The head of Florida's HFA—who was supposed to be monitoring these projects for this kind of fraud—resigned in 2016 after an audit found he had spent $50,000 on a single steak and lobster dinner for those same affordable housing lenders he was supposed to be monitoring.

Another problem with LIHTC is its system of "boosts." Not only can developers reclaim up to 70 percent of a project's initial costs through tax credits, but states can also give out a "boost" of extra tax credits should a developer demonstrate this is necessary to make their project financially viable. A 2016 GAO report found that states often failed to determine those additional credits' financial necessity before doling them out.

Virginia awarded boosts to all LIHTC projects that received certain green building certifications, including in one case a developer who didn't even ask for the bonus credits. Arizona just gives the boosts to all LIHTC projects, no questions asked.

All this has led to a situation where LIHTC recipients are spending more money on a decreasing number of projects. A recent investigation by NPR and Frontline found that 70,220 units were constructed with LIHTC funds in 1998 at the cost of $4.1 billion in tax credits. In 2014, LIHTC handed out $6.8 billion to build just 58,735 units.

California's data show a similar trend at the state level, with the tax credit allocations per unit (including state tax credits) rising from $195,764 in 2010 to $219,946 in 2016.

These mounting costs and diminishing returns are a natural consequence of the program's complex design, says Vanessa Brown Calder, an urban policy analyst with the Cato Institute.

"You lose a lot of value along the way from the IRS to the developer to the tenant," Calder tells Reason. Academic research has found that only about 35 percent of the value of the credits provided to developers shows up as rent savings for tenants.

Calder says the only real way to increase affordable housing is to reform the state and local zoning regulations that drive up the costs of home construction (and, as a result, raise rents). "All these federal subsidies coming in are just band-aid solutions," she comments. "They're just kind of like the federal government chasing its tail."

At $8 billion a year, LIHTC is a pretty expensive band-aid.

Marinwood CSD objects to planning its future.

The Marinwood CSD has steadfastly objected to the assembly of citizens for the discussion of the future of Marinwood and design review.  Marinwood is the subject of intensive urban development.  Prior Supervisor Susan Adams quietly submitted Marinwood for a Priority Development Area and to take up to 80% of all low income subsidized housing for unincorporated Marin.  The previous three boards have quashed all public discussion of these plans despite the radical transformation of the community that development will bring.  It is indeed curious why a citizen's committee would be so threatening.  I believe that it is seen as dangerous to the established CSD power structure.  Why shouldn't the community have discussions about its future?   The CSD beileves its only role is to spend money and disavows civic involvement in important affairs that will affect our taxes, schools, roads and even our local government

Small Town Employee Embezzles $53 Million Dollars (A warning about sloppy business practices )

Editor's Note: When an employee of a small Illinois town (pop 15,000) found out that their long time trusted employee stole $53 million dollars over 20 years, everyone was shocked.  I am actually NOT SURPRISED given what I know of the business practices of small towns like the Marinwood CSD.   Thousands of dollars of cash goes through its coffers with little oversight. Given that neither our staff or the CSD board has any interest in the "details" of business operations, Marinwood CSD is RIPE for similar financial fraud.  

Recently, Leah Kleinman Green refused to discuss the issue because "events are not supposed to make money".

Who is watching our business interests for the Marinwood CSD?

Rita Crundwell and the Dixon Embezzlement

THE $53 MILLION BAMBOOZLE: How the trusted comptroller of a small Illinois town became the biggest municipal embezzler in U.S. history, according to the feds—and no one noticed


BY BRYAN SMITH

PUBLISHED SEPT. 24, 2012

UPDATE (11.14.12):Rita Crundwell pleaded guilty to fraud on November 14 in federal court in Rockford.


It was time. The three men, in standard-issue FBI suits and ties, arrived at Dixon City Hall just after nine on the morning of Tuesday, April 17.They chatted breezily with Jim Burke, the mild-mannered, silver-haired mayor, who smiled and nodded from behind a cluttered desk in his office on the second floor. But for the badges tucked into the men’s wallets and the guns holstered on their belts, the gathering might have looked like a few insurance salesmen debating weekend tee times.
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Photos: Rita Crundwell and the Dixon embezzlement

As the small talk petered out, however, a chill settled over the room. Burke looked up at the men. “Are we ready?” he asked.

The lead agent, Patrick Garry, nodded. “Yes. Let’s bring her in.”

Burke reached for the phone and punched in the number for the comptroller. “Rita, would you mind stepping into my office for a minute?”

“Sure,” Rita Crundwell answered brightly.

For five long months—ever since Dixon’s city clerk, Kathe Swanson, had stumbled upon a curious bank statement from an even more curious bank account—Burke had been helping the feds unravel an embezzlement scheme so vast and so brazen it seemed almost inconceivable. Tens of millions of dollars had been siphoned from the tiny rural city’s operating budget. The money was being dumped into a mysterious account and allegedly spent on everything but city business: jewelry, fancy clothes, a custom motor coach, boats, property in Florida, luxury cars, hundreds of the finest horses this side of Amarillo. And that was only what the feds had found in their cursory first look at the city’s cooked books.

Most stunning of all was the identity of the person suspected of masterminding the scheme: Rita Crundwell, a woman whose parents were the kind of humble, hardworking community pillars upon which Dixon’s reputation was built, a woman who had been the town’s comptroller for more than three decades, as trusted and efficient as a church tithe collector.

It was Burke who had taken the dubious bank statement to the FBI office in Rockford back in October 2011. Agents instructed him to hold his tongue while they investigated. As the months passed, he woke often in the night. Was this really happening?

The mayor’s thoughts turned to Crundwell’s hobby. Everyone in town knew that Crundwell, 59, who is divorced and has no children, owned and showed horses. The local paper reported on various championships she won, honors that bestowed a measure of pride on the city.

But very few in Dixon had the faintest idea of the operation Crundwell was running or of the magnitude of the double life she was leading. By day, she was a modest municipal worker with a high-school education; by night, she was a diamond-bedazzled high roller, the doyenne of a world that was a million miles in glamour and several million dollars in wealth from the cornfields and cattle farms of Illinois.

Week after week, Burke would pass Crundwell in the upstairs offices—a warren of cubicles with pile carpeting and cheap wood paneling—and pretend that nothing was wrong, trading “good mornings” with the woman he’d been told was robbing the city blind and smiling as she did. Week after week, Swanson, the city clerk who had flagged the telltale bank statement, swallowed her disgust as she watched the coworker she had once considered a friend breezing around the building.

Now the day of reckoning was at hand.

“Hi,” Crundwell chirped, sticking her head through the door.

“Morning,” Burke said. “Would you mind coming in?”

Garry wasted no time. “I’m with the FBI,” he said, displaying his badge. “We’d like to ask you some questions.”

From his desk, Burke studied Crundwell. If she has an ounce of shame, he thought, it will show on her face. When he saw her expression, the unwavering calm smile, he was stunned. “I was looking right at her,” Burke recalls. “And the look on her face never changed. Absolutely never changed.”  See Article

"Just read what I wrote!"

Citizen asks for a report on the Park and Recreation minutes and the general manager refuses the request. The citizen did not have reading glasses. Why did the general manager, Eric Dreikosen refuse?

Marinwood Fire Chief discusses post retirement options

Marinwood CSD Fire Chief Tom Roach urges the board to assemble a citizens commission of insiders to discuss his post retirement plans and restructuring of the fire department.

Marinwood CSD makes a $7000 "accounting mistake"

The yearly audit of Marinwood CSD revealed a significant error of $7000 and bad management practice from previous years.  The auditor was the same one employed by the district for at least ten years and one wonders why this wasn't identified earlier.   Eric Dreikosen, Marinwood CSD manager promises to "get to the bottom of it" and blames the error on switching accounting systems.  Has the cash management at the Marinwood CSD improved in 2017?  See related videos for the answer.

Why so many petty cash reimbursements for $300?

Citizen questions the petty cash reimbursements without detailed records. There are quite a few that get posted each month without explanation.