Promising Doubts
So back at the end of September, Renewed Hope released the much ballyhooed “Doubtful Promises” report. Upon reading it, I had some questions and reached out to Eve Bach and Bill Smith, the authors who graciously offered to answer them. Time availability being what it is (see:JKW:lack of blog posts), it took me a while to dash off a list of the things I was trying to understand.
The responses that I received were great, a lot of time and effort went into them and I wanted to post them in a way that respected that. However, I have not up to now, because honestly, I just couldn’t find the time. But I didn’t want Eve’s work to go to waste, and so I am posting the full responses, which include my sometimes awkwardly written questions. In a few cases, there are just declarative statements, which the preamble to my questions made clear I was just asking for clarification or back up on.
Since the responses are 13 pages long, I figure I’ll write about them individually over time, but for today I’ll just say this: I think that the title of the report, Doubtful Promises, sums up many of its findings. It was clearly written from a position of finding fault, rather than looking at solutions, where there is flexibility or non-specificity, the absolute worst case scenario is assumed. The last half of that sentence was confirmed by Eve, it’s not my supposition. In fact, the paper’s insistence on calling the initiative the SunCal/DE Shaw Hedge Fund initiative makes clear that this is a piece of campaign material, not a work to inform the broader discussion. (again, this doesn’t mean that what’s been written is not meaningful).
There’s nothing wrong with this, and in fact, I think that the debate is helped by understanding the possible pitfalls, etc. that may occur along the way.
However, the debate is also harmed by such analysis when the analysis is presented as scholarly, independent, neutral, etc. One of the co-authors of the report (Mr. Smith, who I like even when we disagree) had been railing about the project and SunCal for well over 6 months—months before the initiative existed—before this paper was produced.
An example of the tone and focus that jumps out immediately is the fact that the proposed initiative will both be “greater than the site can allow” and contains “a cap that [SunCal never] anticipate ever coming close to reaching.” It’s both too big but also refuses to guarantee that will ever be built that way. Dichotomies like this are frustrating.
The report highlights a lot of things that are not hammered out in full detail (phasing is a good example). These are things that are typically hammered out in a DDA, which the City and SunCal are currently talking about. Issues, like the phasing, will still be hammered out in this way. It’s unorthodox to say the least. But the premise that we can’t trust the city to work them out, while arguing that the entire process should be hammered out by the same people is awkward at best.
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