Housing does not pay for itself!

Affordable, low-income or luxury. Thats a fact anybody who understands how cities run knows. The services required to support housing are subsidized by local business. It has been this way ever since prop 13. Which by the way was led by a group of voters who were fed up with bad decisions by lawmakers, sounds a bit like the SOAR effort.

SunCal and its agents seem to want to cloud the issues. I've seen most of the propaganda from both sides and have not seen

SOAR spooking residents with the spectre of slums and "unsavory people"

in any of the literature.

These comments freely come out of the mouths and keyboards of SunCal paid interests.

Mr. Pepper is right! Why should the City of Anaheim spend money to know that the resort zone is a success? What would it benefit the City? 25%, 30% or 50%? Does it matter? Anaheim is flush with cash thanks to businesses. Residents are reaping the rewards of Mayor Pringle's pro-business ethics. Thanks to previous councils especially former Mayor Tom Daly for the vision to make the Resort Zone a reality, Anaheim is a better place to live.

As for Lori Galloway, a fine councilwoman, but it was a poor decision to release numbers without a clear understanding of how they were compiled. Estimates by staffers need to be taken with a very large grain of salt. Staff should not be put in a position to defend WAG's. A single council member cannot and should not direct staff to produce expensive and time consuming financial reports. That is the job of the City Manager, if and when directed by a majority of the City Council. If Lori wanted this to be done right, she should have agendized this and faced the public discussion. When cost/benifit is weighed, all would see that this is a waste of time.

By the way, have the council members who are derideing Disney returned their "free" passes for them and their families? No more Club 33 for Lori, Bob and Lucille?

The facts are that Disneyland and the resort area are a tax burden on Anaheim residents. It is relatively inexpensive for the city to perform a cost/benefit analysis of the resort area.

In today's Register, an article details the requests for such a study to be performed.

Mayor Pringle will do everything in his power to prevent an analysis from being performed and the public from knowing the truth.

SunCal H.O.M.E.,

If the Resort Zone is such an abysmal failure. Then have your SunCal team of Lori, Bob and Lucille move to abolish it! A majority of the council can do this. Have future council candidates declare their goal of ridding the city of Disney, see how far that platform takes them.

As for financial reviews, the council if it sees value can and should call for the study. But they should make that decision with all the cost/benefit data including input from residents.

I hope the council does look into the cost of the election to overturn their previous vote. When you see the support for SOAR and the slim chances the City has of winning at the ballot box, they should save their money and reverse the decision.

Lucille is a sensible business woman, when faced with the inevitable ballot box loss, she might come around and save everybody's time and money.

Why should the City of Anaheim spend money to know that the resort zone is a success? What would it benefit the City? 25%, 30% or 50%? Does it matter?

Oh, I don't know -- maybe because it's a good idea to know where your revenues are coming from?

I've seen most of the propaganda from both sides and have not seen

SOAR spooking residents with the spectre of slums and "unsavory people"

in any of the literature.

Of course they don't put that in their literature. But I talked to a lot of Disney circulators, and that was their message to Anaheim voters they asked to sing their petitions.

If the Resort Zone is such an abysmal failure.

Who said it was a failure? Who said anything about abolishing Disney? Call for a study to see exactly how much the Resort District costs and how much it generates in revenue would be a valuable thing given the intense debate about whether or not to make any changes to it.

If we are going to have a study it needs to be done by an independent entity that understands the direct and indirect impact of the Anaheim Resort on Anaheim since the city manager acknowledged in his report to the council that the city can not conduct such a study and that an outside company/entity should be used. How about Chapman University? They are known for their economic forecasts and maybe they can be convinced to take on such a study. But no matter what the outcome is, it should be realized that family housing of any kind simply does not belong in the Resort Area and there is no residential infrastructure in place to support such residential housing. Lucille Kring, Lorri Galloway, and Bob Hernandez need to take off their blinders and take a look around to see for themselves that family housing does not belong in the Anaheim Resort, next to Angel Stadium, nor at the end of an aiport runway. We don't need to create another Buena Park which put housing directly across the street from Knotts Berry Farm and has regretted it ever since. We must preserve our resort for resort uses and encourage such use.

Admission Tax now!

Who said it was a failure?

Why, SunCal consultant Frank Elfend, who was quoted in the Register article on the city budget director's memo: "It's possible the Disney resort may turn out to be a tax burden to Anaheim residents."

As an Anaheim homeowner, I definitely object to having my tax money wasted on a study that has absolutely no purpose beyond possibly providing more ammunition to the SunCal side of this scuffle. Lots of wild claims are made in political advertising; are you calling for a taxpayer-financed commission to research the validity of each one?

I've always regarded the specificity of the fifty-percent number as dubious, but for SunCal mouthpieces to attempt to seriously downplay the Resort District's budgetary contribution to the point where they're claiming the resort is a net expense is pure lunacy.

And if we want to get nitpicky about numbers and percentages, how about SunCal and its allies claiming that this is an 'affordable housing' issue? Heck, to hear Galloway talk, you'd almost think that this is a 100% affordable project that SunCal is building pro bono because of their commitment to social justice. But of course, only a small fraction of the development -- 225 units out of a total 1,525 -- is 'affordable'. I hope that you'll immediately begin calling on SunCal and its friends to frame this as a '14.75% affordable housing' issue. Because to imply otherwise would be dishonesty with numbers, and I know you can't stand that.

The cost-benefit analysis of the Resort should have been done back when this issue first reared its ugly head. In fact, I am horrified that City Council made this change in zoning without doing their homework. But since Lorri Galloway obviously did not think to order it then, the fact that she is ordering it now makes it inappropriate. At this point, the Councilwoman is trying to play CYA, and I do not like it being done with my tax dollars. She also took a very basic, surface level staff report, and released it to the press as the Holy Grail of Resort information, in an attempt to take the heat off her own misguided decision. Lorri is up for re-election, in a City that has come to despise her. Rather than back off of a bad decision, she has decided to “spin” the few numbers she has, in an attempt to discredit SOAR. Makes those of us who are paying attention even more determined to fight her in the re-election. Galloway is history. I just hope Lucille Kring comes to her senses and regains her support base by backing off of this decision, or her political career will be as dead as Lorri’s.

As far as anything being a drain on our budget, where does SunCal think those schools and parks for the residents of their new project will come from? Because those services are not in that neighborhood now! Our general fund is supposed to take a hit for services to underwrite a developer’s profit in an inappropriate location, and they have the nerve to say Disney is a drain on our budget? Wow. You know they have run out of ammo when they start throwing that kind of nonsense into the argument!

I'm ok with housing going up next to the proposed third park, or any other part of the resort under one condition: The residents cannot dictate what Disney does with their property! If residents choose to move in next to or near a potential Disney theme park or other resort project, then they get to live with the consequences of their decision. That includes whatever traffic, late night music, or fireworks that come their way.

I was a member of WESTCOT 2000 back in the proposal days of the Disneyland and Anaheim Resorts, and I couldn't believe the stink that area residents were making about Disney wanting to expand. They would have preferred the prostitutes, broken barbed wire fencing around vacated fields, and the mish-mash of signs along Harbor Blvd, it seemed.

The Disneyland Resort has done wonders for the city of Anaheim. Without it, the city could have easily become another Garden Grove, Santa Ana, or Stanton - just another LA suburb with little of interest to add. There is no reason why Disney should not be able to continue expanding their vision for the area. Their plans will certainly bring more to the city than a group of low-rent housing.

Anaheim deserves to know the complete cost of the Resort Area. Zoning changes, third gates or housing projects notwithstanding, SOAR tossed Anaheim residents a gauntlet and now its time to quantify their claim.

The push against the study suggests to me that the Resort District is much more costly than they want us to know. Perhaps the data will explain why response times are so dismal, or why 24% of our public service budget ($14.7 for Fire, $44.2 for Police) is dedicated to the Resort District; or why our school resource officers had to be redeployed away from our high schools and back into the police force, or why we have the same police staffing levels as Santa Ana and Riverside, communities who don't even have theme parks or stadiums or thousands of tourists.

As our own Chief Welter stated in his January 30, 2007 report, page seven, "it may be argued that the sworn strength of the Police Department is effectively reduced by the nine officers currently assigned full-time to the Disney contract".

The City has a fiduciary responsibility to report revenues and expenses to the public. We need to know not only how much the Resort Area contributes to the general fund, but also how much it costs the rest of Anaheim in lost and reduced services and its the City's job to give us this information.

The fact that certain City leaders are arguing against doing this study suggests that they don't want the public to know the truth about the cost of the Resort District. This is irresponsible and a violation of the public trust.