Because of interest in the UCLA hotel/conference center discussion at the Regents meeting of 7-17-2012, here is a more accessible posting of the audio from that date, just on the hotel. It is easier to navigate than the earlier posting. Part 1 – Lawyer Statement Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7
This audio is a direct recording of the Regents’ afternoon session of July 28, 2012. At the end of the recording, it is announced that the governor is coming and that the Regents – who were going into closed session – would go back into open session when he arrived. However, the live-stream audio was shut off at that point. When we get the full audio from the Regents, if there are remarks from the governor on it, the audio will be posted. (Presumably, the governor wanted to talk about the Regents’ earlier endorsement of his tax initiative.) Otherwise, this…
Approval by the Regents of the UCLA hotel/conference center in its present iteration may have been inevitable but it does not change the underlying economic reality of the project. It either is a white elephant or it isn’t. And the underlying economic reality goes beyond this specific proposal. Whether the governor’s tax initiative passes or not, the long-term outlook for the state’s support for UC is not bright. In an earlier post, this blog reproduced a chart from the UCLA Anderson Forecast showing the growing California job gap between the pre-1990 trend line and the actual results. Moreover the chart…
The UCLA hotel/conference center was approved by the Regents Committee on Grounds and Buildings. That outcome was not unexpected, despite the many concerns that have been raised in the past. Among other items, and probably most important, was a letter UCLA solicited from the Luskins saying essentially that the proposal was what they wanted and anything else would be a breach. President Yudof was careful not to say that their original intent was so specific. He said it is now specific. It would be unusual, to say the least, for the Regents to walk away from $50 million. The recording…
Yesterday, we posted a listing of discussion behind-closed-doors of litigation that the full Board of Regents will be discussing. There will also be such a closed-door session of the Committee on Grounds and Building to discuss legal matters related to the proposed UCLA hotel/conference center – which, indeed, as this blog has noted – has “issues.” The closed-door agenda – listed as a “session added” on the Regents’ website – is below: ================= NOTICE OF MEETING The Regents of the University of California COMMITTEE ON GROUNDS AND BUILDINGS Date: July 17, 2012 Time: 2:25 p.m. Location: UCSF–Mission Bay Community Center…
In a TV interview dated 7/13/12, UC President Mark Yudof talked about donations to UC. He agrees with the interviewer, Conan Nolan of KNBC, that it is hard to explain to the public why in budgetary hard times, buildings are going up on campuses. But he offers various explanations, none of which justify the proposed UCLA hotel/conference center. One explanation is that the projects have been in the pipeline 5-10 years and the bonds have already been floated. That is not true for the proposed UCLA hotel/conference center. Bonds have not been floated. And although the planning timeline is fuzzy…
The news has been full of the Penn State University scandal in which a serial child abuser was protected by high university officials until suddenly the matter became public. A report by a former FBI director was commissioned and put the blame on all involved in running the university including the trustees (equivalents of the Regents) for not asking questions and not doing the right thing. Much ink was devoted to the scandal at Penn State in the LA Times and other newspapers. But the most compelling analysis came on July 12 from the Times sports columnist Bill Plaschke. Here…
In prior blog posts, we have noted that UCLA’s proposed hotel/conference center depends on filling its 250 rooms for financial success. But it can’t take commercial business and be tax-exempt or depend on tax-exempt financing. We also noted that other related UCLA facilities’ policies with regard to taking in guests tax-free could be at risk if there is scrutiny of what is planned for the hotel. LA Councilman Paul Koretz has notified the Regents of UCLA’s potential tax problems with the City and the issue of a public tax-free hotel competing with private tax-paying hotels. He points to what seems…
One of the routine things the Regents do when they meet is approval of the minutes. As they reconsider the UCLA hotel/conference center proposal, they will have the benefits of minutes from their March 28th meeting at which they refused to endorse the project. Of course, they could instead just listen to their meeting on this blog where the audio is preserved. But seeing it in print is also instructive. All of the doubts are there from the tax issues to the why-don’t-you-just-buy-a-hotel questions. Since the new proposal is much the same as the old (see our earlier blog post),…
UCLA’s Plan C for the hotel/conference center and the July Regents meetings has now been released. It’s basically Plan B – the version prepared for the March Regents meeting – with different text. Here’s the thing: As long as it’s a 250-room hotel (or whatever euphemism is used to avoid the word hotel), it has the same flaw. How are you going to fill up all those rooms without taking commercial business? And if you start taking questionable business, the local commercial hotel owners have every incentive to call the IRS. Of course, any occupancy rate can be assumed for…
