July 12, 2012 – Daily Brief

You would have done a great job for Santa Clarita too Al. I am looking forward to voting for you soon!

Al, finally something we agree on!

I am voting for Buck, but out of obligation and with no enthusiasm.

A foolish choice. I am not voting for Obama despite my obligation and with a lot of enthusiasm. My list of what Obama has done, to make his progressive supporters very angry, is long and detailed. I have the courage of my convictions, which those who “Will hold their note and vote for Buck” do not.

“Courage of Convictions” goes both ways. Although I do not enthusiastically endorse Buck, my convictions of believing in freedom and less government directs me to not contributing in anyway to democrats becoming the majority party in Congress. Simply too much is at stake.

Yeah, because Buck McKeon would never attempt to restrict our political speech.

#BAMSUCKA

It’s not so much a fascination with Rogers than it is a disgust with McKeon. The arrogance and entitlement Buck displays is shocking. I talked to someone who was at the parade on the 4th and said that Buck refused to acknowledge Cameron Smyth. Really? Can someone please get Buck his bottle and see if he needs a changing? McKeon represents everything that is wrong with politics today. We must be loyal to no political party in a situation like this if we ever expect this to change. A Rogers victory will send a loud message to current and future leaders that this nonsense will not be tolerated. I too am very skeptical about government getting involved in healthcare. Rogers is not embracing Obamacare as much as he is calling for a set of improvements to be made to it.

Have you ever had a one on one conversation with Buck?

He ignored me once when I rode right past him, slowly….and in uniform.

Even I would do that. My question was directed to LarMac.

You wouldn’t ignore me, very few can. I think the correct term is “hide from me”

schmoozer

I met him once, briefly. I never had any conversation of substance with him. I voted for him in every past election.

Atta boy, LarMac!

LarMcc said “It’s not so much a fascination with Rogers than it is a disgust with McKeon:. I missed the California Department of Toxic Substances (DTSC) Community Advisory Group (CAG) meeting yesterday, but heard about what happened from two determined Republicans today. Apparently Dr. Lee Rogers showed up in person, listened politely to what DTSC had to say, and then engaged in an intelligent conversation with DTSC’s representatives and the CAG members on three key topics: (1) The public health dangers the airborne dust generated by the Cemex mine which will cover Canyon Country; (2) The risk to Santa Clarita’s water supply which unchecked spreading of volatile organic chemicals continues to present, (3) The dissatisfaction of residents of Simi Valley with the U.S. Dept. of Energy’s management of the clean up of radioactive contamination at Santa Susana Field Lab aka Rocketdyne. Apparently the DTSC employees were really jazzed by Dr. Rogers interest in their work and the CAG members were dazzled that Dr. Rogers knew the issues. I don’t mean to be mean but can you imagine Buck carrying on an intelligent conversation with constituents, let alone state employees, about any of these issues?

Catch phrase overload… reboot

Obamacare has a foundation which is built on the quick sand of a massive federal deficit You have it backwards; actually, the GAO concluded that without Obamacare, the deficit will rise dramatically.

Obama’s GAO….

The 112th Congress’ GAO, acutally. The GAO is a legislative division, not an executive.

Isn’t it opposite? CBO is congress, GAO is executive.

GAO and CBO are Congress. OMB is Executive. ZOMG.

Shouldn’t you have placed #BAMSUCKA at the end? Or does that belong to Nate Reynolds

I’ve got no “need” to vote for Buck McKeon in November. Dr. Rogers has already said that ACA needs tuning and I tend to trust the guy with the medical degree verses the war-monger that thinks buying more weapons from his buddies in the defense industry is the answer to all of our problems. Take off the blinders buddy, McKeon is robbing us blind while ignoring the needs of his district. has been doing it for too many years. It is time to change our district’s diaper.

“He is at heart a Democrat and we cannot change or alter his desire to restrict individual liberty and grow the federal government.” Sorry, I’m throwing the b.s. flag on that one. You’ve mangaed to include two whoppers within one sentence: Fallacy #1 The U.S. Government added over 900,000 jobs when George W. Bush was President while during President Obama’s presidency it has shed over 600,000 jobs. http://www.salon.com/2012/05/04/bush_vs_obama_jobs/ Fallacy #2 I don’t suppose you’d like to explain which of your personal liberties Dr. Rogers will be targeting if he’s elected to Congress would you?

It isn’t he, it is the possibility of a switch in the majority party. This is what worries conservatives.

They should be worried. They’ve done nothing but fight the President for the past 18 months. Hopefully the voters will make the necessary changes to get things back on track in Washington because right now it isn’t working and the polls show that voters aren’t happy.

Petz: If the developers thought it had any value they would NOT sell it to the City.

ALL land has value TMS.

Are you referring to short term or long term economic impact?

The Haskell open space purchase wiped the site for 500 homes off the map. No consideration was given to the jobs and consumer purchasing power that could have been planted there. What about the future property tax revenue…gone. Yet on Tuesday night Bob Kellar flippantly grilled Lynne Plambeck asking whether there was ever a development she did not oppose.

Steven, IIRC, the Haskell Canyon development was killed by the County, and then the City bought the property after the County declined to rezone the land for development. Open Space didn’t kill the development. Reason, common sense and good judgement did.

Furthermore, we don’t need temporary, transient construction jobs in this city. We need permanent, wage sustaining jobs that the people of the Santa Clarita Valley can earn their living at, instead of commuting out of town to do so. So your argument about jobs and consumer purchasing power is moot.

Agreed!

Not to mention the already gridlocked roads and freeways. Do you ever drive through the Newhall Pass during rush hour or Friday afternoons in the summer?

Did she reply?

Jim is a sharp guy and I have full confidence he will do a great job for the SCV residents! Congrats Jim

Thanks Annette and Steve for your congrats! I am looking forward to serving the citizens (particularly the property owners paying the tax) to make sure their money is being spent properly.

Jim, in making sure the taxpayers get a good deal on land purchased with their money, remember the old saw that the letters M.A.I. after an appraiser’s name often means “Made As Instructed”. While a lot of regulations of appraisers’ conduct were adopted by the Federal and state governments after the Savings & Loan Crisis of the mid 1980′s to early 1990′s, as time has gone by commercial/land appraisers have gone out of the spotlight as people whose opinions can be manipulated. Learning about the reputations of the appraisers the City uses and the reputations of the appraisers various land sellers use will tell you a great deal about whose opinion you can have faith in.

Annette I agree. Although Jim and I have disagreed on issues including Open Space, I find him reasonable, intelligent, and willing to listen to the other side and discuss the issue (s). He did call me a communist once, and apologized later, so good thing I do not hold a grudge, lol. Seriously, congratulations Jim.

I find the use of the word “fallow” almost offensive. We have literally hundreds of species of plants, hundreds of species of birds, thousands of species of insects, etc… and they need “fallow” land to make a living. So much of California has already been lost to development, especially riparian woodlands, coastal sage scrub/soft chaparral, and native grasslands, all of which can be found in Santa Clarita. We’ve lost too much already (statewide, for example, less than 20% of historic riparian habitat extent remains), so I’m a fan of fallow.

Absent adequate infrastructure, I too am a “fallow fan”.

As much as I like to preserve Coastal Sage and the Spineflower, I find one long-winded and the other conspiracy-prone.

LOL!

Well done.

But as opposed to another well known WIndy poster, Coastal usually has something wothwhile to post.

Phil, if you speak his name, he may appear. Do you ‘realize’ just how lucky we are? (shhhhhhh)

Sorry.

Petz thought he saw the back of your head at the council meeting on Tuesday. Did you apply for a commission position?

To quote day from Storage Wars “YUUUUUUUP!”

Aside from the one issue. I agree wholeheartedly, nice work.

Wendy, if you know who, someone needs to update that map. There are roads in that park that are only identified as ‘trails.’ Sorry, its a pet-peeve.

You are technically correct, the roads are mislabeled as trails. But the good news is….they show you the way in…and out…

What was CalPERS estimated loss on their investment in Santa Clarita?

The simple answer is more than $1Billion lost by CALPERS, based on what we saw in the LandSource bankruptcy file. CALPERS first invested in a limited partnership called MW Housing Partners II. A Weyerhaeuser entity and an entity managed by a Mr. Victor MacFarlane were the general partners, contributing skill but little money to the limited partnership. CALPERS contributed approximately $700 Million to MW Housing Partners II. MW Housing Partners II’s assets were unmortgaged lots in California, Nevada and Texas, which they hoped to sell to Lennar, in what was called a land banking transaction, which in layman’s terms was an option for Lennar to purchase the lots, one by one, as needed to build houses.. By mid 2006, MW Housing Partners II realized that Lennar was not going to buy their lots because of the slow down of the market for purchases of new homes. As a result, MW Housing Partners II used its title to $700 Million in lots as an equity contribution, plus $300 Million in cash, to buy a 1/3rd ownership an Delaware LLC called “LandSource”. That purchase of the 1/3 LLC interest in LandSource closed escrow at the end of February 2007. As a result, MW Housing Partners II’s equity account in LandSource was approximately $1 Billion. LandSource had been a pre-existing entity, a Delaware LLC. The other two LLC members of LandSource were Lennar and LNR, owned by Cerberus Capital. LandSource owned the stock in Newhall Land and its important subsidiary Valencia Water Company, the undeveloped land in Stevenson Ranch, Mare Island, partial ownership of a housing tract in Fairbanks Ranch (San Diego Co.), an office building in Venice, CA which was being converted to condos, and other less interesting real estate. When MW Housing Partners II bought in to LandSource, LandSource obtained ownership of the $700 Million worth of lots previously owned by MW Housing Partners II. Immediately after the CALPERS investment in LandSource/Newhall Land deal closed, the parties graciously gave an interview to Big Builder magazine describing their deal: http://www.builderonline.com/big-builder/feature–a-place-like-no-other.aspx (The information in the story matched the information in LandSource’s later bankruptcy court filings.) What was not publicized was that Lennar and LNR did not simply sell 1/3 interest in LandSource for $300 Million plus the MW Housing Partners II lots. Instead, Lennar and LNR wanted a distribution of cash out of LandSource. Since LandSource had little cash other than CALPERS’ $300 Million, the 3 LLC members agreed to go out and mortgage all of LandSource’s real estate, so that each of Lennar and LNR could take approximately $450 Million in cash out of the company. That meant that all of Newhall Land’s real estate was to be mortgaged, and all of the lots contributed by MW Housing Partners II / CALPERS were to be mortgaged to obtain the $900 Million to make the cash distributions to Lennar and LNR. As a result, concurrently with the closing of MW Housing Partners II’s purchase of its 1/3 ownership interest in LandSource, all of LandSource’s real estate was mortgaged to obtain $1.2 Billion in loans from Barclays Capital, a subsidiary of Barclays Bank (that same British bank which was fined hundreds of millions this year for fraudulently “fixing” the interest rate called LIBOR.). Approximately $900 Million of those mortgage loan proceeds were distributed to Lennar and LNR, as a loan some people call a bullet, with a less than 5 years maturity date. The rest of the loan was to be used as an operating line of credit for LandSource. Barclays had an appraisal of all of LandSource’s real estate which valued it, as of late 2006, at approximately $3 Billion, i.e. a 40% loan to value ratio. The LandSource LLC operating agreement and the management agreement LandSource and Lennar, (where Lennar worked as LandSource’s LLC Manager,) required LandSource LLC to pay “monthly management fees” to Lennar, and to cover the costs of Lennar’s overhead in running LandSource.. If LandSource didn’t have the cash to pay the management fees or the cash to reimburse Lennar for its costs, all 3 of the LLC members were supposed to contribute more money to pay those operating expenses. CALPERS public accounting showed that MW Housing Partners II paid, at the very least, several hundred thousand dollars in management fees to LandSource (for Lennar) and to Weyerhaeuser and McFarlane. Those management fees pushed CALPERS investment in LandSource to something closer to $1.5 Billion. The voting structure of the LandSource LLC was that Lennar made day to day operating decisions and each of the 3 LLC members had to approve big decisions. If one LLC member would not approve an action, it was treated as a veto, and the 3 LLC members would have to come up with another course of action to keep LandSource operating. CALPERs also funded the attorneys fees of MW Housing Partners II to set up the LandSource deal. The amount of those attorneys fees were never disclosed. The lawyers MW Housing Partners II used was a very sophisticated law firm in San Francisco, which billed more than $500 per hour for its lead lawyer’s work on the case. Apparently Mr. MacFarlane was the “business decision maker” for the closing of the purchase of the 1/3 interest in LandSource and the acceptance of the terms of the Barclays Capital mortgage loans by LandSource. By the end of 2007, Barclays re-appraised the real estate collateral owned by LandSource, and its value was down to $1.2 Billion or less. The realistic impact of that appraisal was to completely wipe out MW Housing Partners II / CALPERS equity ownership in LandSource and its assets. As shown in the Bankruptcy Court files, Barclays made a demand to LandSource LLC under the loan documents, that LandSource re-balance the loan to value ratio by paying down the mortgage loan so that it was no more than 40% of $1.2 Billion. According to Bankruptcy Court documents filed by LandSource, at least one of the LLC members refused to contribute to that pay-down of the mortgage loan. It has always looked to us like CALPERS was the LLC member who refused to contribute more money to LandSource LLC. As a result, Barclays declared the $1.2 Billion mortgage loan in default. Lennar went out and hired the most famous bankruptcy lawyers in NY, Weil Gotschal & Manges, who filed a Chapter 11 bankruptcy for LandSource in Delaware. By and large CALPERS and MW Housing Partners II did not publicly participate in any of the LandSource bankruptcy court proceedings, which was consistent with their walking away from their $1.5 Billion investment in LandSource. Essentially, Lennar employees were the “client” for the purpose of giving the LandSource bankruptcy lawyers direction and approval of what they were doing. Barclays lent more money to LandSource, to allow it to continue operating for a year. However, at the end of the year Barclays did not see the 3 LandSource LLC members contributing more cash to LandSource, or paying off the loan balance which had reached approximately $1.6 Billion, and the value of the LandSource real estate had declined further. As a result, the mortgage lender, Barclays, filed a lender oriented Chapter 11 Plan with the court, essentially saying they wanted to take ownership all of LandSource’s entities (like Newhall Land) and all of the real estate on which it had mortgages. Barclays plan was that LandSource’s unsecured creditors, including Santa Clarita construction professionals and contractors, would get nothing. Neither CALPERS nor LNR objected to that Chapter 11 Plan. As the Chapter 11 Plan went forward towards approval, Barclays began to arrange the sale of “pieces” of its mortgage loan to hedge funds, who, after the effective date of the Chapter 11 Plan would become the co-owners of LandSource. Lennar saw an economic opportunity, so it “bought a piece of the Barclays loan” for a fixed sum, paid to Barclay

Yes. Trautman was originally a McLean appointee but she got removed in 2010 when Trautman supported Gauny for City Council against the incumbents.

Favoring Trautman this go-round will NOT save Miss Marsha’s gig.

From your lips to God’s ears.