An LAObserved report yesterday suggested that getting home from UCLA this coming Monday (Oct. 24) may be complicated by an “Obamajam.” (Excerpt)
President Barack Obama is scheduled to arrive at LAX on board Air Force One between 4:30 and 5 p.m. on Monday, the White House just announced. This means that however he moves to the Hancock Park area for Democratic campaign fundraisers … his travel will fall during the peak time for cross-town traffic. Yeah, we're talking Obamajam again…
How big would a 282 room hotel be? That is the size of the old proposal for a hotel/conference center that was originally slated to replace the Faculty Center. To give you an idea of its size, a new hotel has just opened in Santa Monica with only 164 rooms. 164/282 = 58%. The picture above shows that the Santa Monica hotel is quite large despite the much smaller number of rooms. As prior posts have noted, none of the private hotels in the Westwood area are as big as 282 rooms.
Faculty and staff could be paying more toward retirement within two years in a proposal to be discussed by the UC Board of Regents in November.
Under the proposal, employee contributions to the University of California Retirement Plan would rise to 6.5 percent of covered salary starting July 1, 2013. The UC, meanwhile, would pay 12 percent.
Right now, faculty and staff contribute 3.5 percent and the UC pays 7 percent.
This is the second time in about a year that the regents will vote to raise employee and UC contributions. Last September, increases were set to begin in July 2011 and July 2012...
The proposed increase to 6.5 percent would cover the yearly cost of the retirement plan for the first time in years, said Steve Montiel, a spokesperson with the UC Office of the President. Every year, the plan’s costs total about 17 percent of annual pay...
Wilshire Boulevard Closure Postponed Until Monday As Part Of 405 Construction Work
The contractor is anticipated to begin erecting bridge false-work at the Wilshire under-crossing on Monday, Oct. 24 through Thursday, Oct. 28, 2011 from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. The 405 construction contractor has postponed the full closure of Wilshire Boulevard until Monday, Oct. 24, 2011. This activity will require the full closure of Wilshire Blvd., from Veteran to Federal.
False-work is a temporary structure used to support structures in order to hold the component in place until construction is sufficiently advanced to support itself. Sepulveda Blvd. will be reduced to one lane in each direction from Ohio to Constitution and the Northbound 405 off-ramp to Westbound Wilshire will be closed.
As readers of this blog will know, UC’s budget is still threatened by a possible pulling of a budget “trigger” if forecast revenues do not arrive as anticipated.What the legislature did when it enacted this fiscal year’s budget was to assume incremental revenue – but not raise taxes (or prevent the end of temporary taxes) to generate that additional revenue.Having made the assumption, it could then pass the budget by simple majority vote, i.e., without the 2/3 vote that a tax increase or extension would have required which would have entailed Republican votes.
All budgets are based on revenue forecasts and the forecasts are made on a tax-by-tax basis, i.e., so much for income tax, so much for sales tax, etc.In this go-round, however, the legislature kept its forecast on a tax-by-tax basis and then just added an “unallocated revenue increase.”Effectively, the legislature said there will be more revenue, but we don’t know exactly in which pot it will appear.
Above you see a table from the Dept. of Finance of actual and forecast revenue for the first quarter of the current fiscal year (July-Sept.).$775 million in extra incremental revenue was supposed to appear from we-know-not-where.(Look at the line for unallocated revenue increase towards the bottom.)However, in total actual revenue fell short of forecast total revenue by $654 million.Given the vagaries of forecasting, there is not much difference between what actually came in and what was anticipated to come in, absent the we-know-not-where money.In short, the old budget forecast – based on the May revise before the assumption was added - was about right.If things continue on the current track, there is a definite likelihood that the trigger will be pulled – unless, of course, the governor and legislature decide not to let it be pulled.
Are we about to repeat - and repeat? Supposedly, we are going to be receiving (soon?) a revised (?) plan for the hotel/conference center. Yet on the UCLA Newsroom website - screenshot taken today - we find an entry about the hotel/conference center which includes:
Q: What is the UCLA residential conference center project?
