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The UCLA Academic Senate Committee on Planning and Budget (CPB) endorsed the hotel project on 3-22-12.  A link to the Committee’s report is below.  Pity it went that route, particularly the light of what went on at the Regents earlier this week.  Essentially, what went wrong began with the UCLA administration’s misdiagnosis of the problem during the past summer. When the original grand plan to build the hotel/conference center had to be halted in spring 2011, the administration apparently concluded that the problem was not the scale of the project but the process by which it was unveiled.  That is,…

With the subway supposed to arrive in Westwood (someday), apparently some planners and architects have been imagining the area with not many cars. The story is athttp://la.curbed.com/archives/2012/03/2_radical_plans_for_turning_westwood_village_around.php As for the subway, below is a sketch from the MTA of the proposed Westwood station: Source: http://www.metro.net/projects_studies/westside/images/final_eir-eis/49.%20Station%20Entrance%20Location%20Report%20and%20Recommendations.pdf

UCLA has now given the Faculty Association a version of the hotel/conference center business plan dated February 9, 2012.  The problem is that the Faculty Association had a public documents request pending since last November.  There is a long interval between February 9 and March 20 when the February 9 document was made available.  (It was made available to a neighborhood group on March 19.)  You can read the document below.  If you go to page 16 of the document (page 17 of the pdf), you will see that the notion of blending the hotel with the guest house and…

Following yesterday’s posting of the proposed UCLA hotel/ conference center, it may be useful to have a source of past documents that relate to the proposal.  If you have tracked this issue, you know that the original plan was to demolish the Faculty Center and replace it with a 280+ room hotel/conference center. After protests, the location was shifted to Parking Structure 6. Below is a set of documents that relate to the entire history of this project, or at least those documents that have come to light.

The Santa Monica Mirror carried a video about the new Santa Monica-UCLA Hospital that evidently was produced by UCLA, although I could not find the original source. It’s a PR piece but provides internal views of the new facility.  The Mirror article is athttp://www.smmirror.com/#mode=single&view=34267 That link could disappear so here is the video:

The governor apparently has negotiated a deal with groups pushing for an alternative to his tax initiative slated for this coming November.  A new initiative has been filed and signatures must now be gathered within a limited time frame since we are already in mid-March.  The chart above – which was apparently drawn up hastily for release – indicates that the sales tax increase proposed by the governor has been cut from a half cent to a quarter cent for four years.  The offset is more of an increase in the upper brackets of the state income tax with the…

Defined-benefit pension plans such as CalPERS and UCRP have to forecast what their earnings on their assets will be over extended periods of time.  A lower forecast will produce a higher estimate of their unfunded liability.  In turn, a higher estimate of the unfunded liability will likely trigger higher employer and/or employee contributions to the plan. It is important to note, however, that changing the forecast does not change the future in the sense that the earnings rate will be what it turns out to be.  If the forecast of the earnings rate over time seems to be too low…

Governor Brown has an initiative in circulation that would impose temporary taxes on the upper brackets of the income tax but also involves the more generally-paid sales tax.  As readers of this blog will know, his January budget plan assumes that voters will approve the initiative in November.  If it is not approved, his budget would impose large trigger cuts in spending that are focused on K-12 schools.  So the budget (which must be enacted by the legislature) and the initiative (which must be enacted by voters) are intertwined. The governor’s tax plan was designed in accordance with public opinion…

Inside Higher Ed today pointed me to the poll results from Pew showing the relative popularity of various institutions including colleges and universities. The Inside Higher Ed story is athttp://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2012/03/02/60-americans-have-positive-views-colleges The Pew results are athttp://www.people-press.org/2012/03/01/colleges-viewed-positively-but-conservatives-express-doubts/?src=prc-newsletter So we’re popular but maybe not very, very popular:[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7t5IvROMwLY&w=320&h=195]

Excerpt from calpensions.com 2-21-12 Under the new budget proposed by Gov. Brown, the annual state payment to CalPERS drops from $3.5 billion this year to $3.1 billion in the new fiscal year.  The payment falls, at a time most pension costs are rising, because a $404 million payment to CalPERS for California State University pensions is shifted from the state budget to CSU.  The change is part of a proposal that could freeze state support for CSU and UC pensions. The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office said CSU would be faced with a potential burden “out of proportion” to its limited…