The fact that your car is like your office and you do this a lot makes it worse not better, and is a strong argument for police cars to be fitted with hands-free kits so that you don't need to use a hand to dial and hold the phone.

The John Hancock Tower in Boston had to have all of its glass replaced (and it's entirely clad in glass) because of falling panels. Here's a wiki image of the building during the period in which glass was being replaced temporarily with plywood: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Plylwood_palace.jpg

The fact that the public, through a government entity, owns a building does not make it accessible at all times to the public or preclude it being illegal to enter it or stay in it. Try camping in the Oval Office.

That's not what Sheedy is quoted as saying with regard to layoffs - her quoted concern has to do with fairness in the layoff process, not with minimizing layoffs.

I think this is an interesting question and not easily defined. Clearly there are decisions made on a regular basis that have enormous financial implications over decades, such as salary and benefits negotiations with employee unions - just as there are smaller and equally routine decisions having to do with one-time equipment purchases and short-term lease agreements. But I think the key characterization of what the City Council does on a regular basis is just that - the regularity of it. They are elected with every expectation from both the electors and the elected that decisions of this kind will have to be made - the normal and anticipated decisions that go with the normal and anticipated running of a City. But the counterpoint is the decision that is neither normal nor regular in nature. And I don't think anybody can reasonably suggest that the kind of decision that is involved with the possible leasing of City parking facilities for as many as 50 years is in any way normal or regular. And if Councilmember Sheedy believes that major decisions that are neither normal nor regular and that have multi-decade-long implications in revenue reduction for the City should be addressed in a non-normal and non-regular manner, then she should act on that belief. You may not agree with her, but it's not an especially unreasonable position for an elected official to take. I agree, there has to be a line somewhere. I'm not sure where that line might be but I'm not surprised or alarmed that a Councilmember thinks this is a decision that exists on the far side of it. I think it's actually quite reassuring that there isn't an assumption that anything goes once elected.

So would that be a $25.5m shortfall if we gave up $9m in parking revenue?

And we get these upbeat stories about the city suspending parking fees for a few days around the holidays to encourage downtown/midtown shopping - but a parking contractor doesn't have any great reason to do that. The city gains from the activity, a parking contractor doesn't.

Agreed - I think there's a good chance that ten years from now we could have a nice, shiny, empty arena and a parking contractor who's posting record profits from the highest parking rates Sacramento has ever seen. We're not going to get an arena that's at the top of the list of desirable venues for 50 years and we're not going to get a 50 contract from a sports team/league, so why would we give up something known for 50 years to get an unknown in return?

Also, what's the lifespan of an arena? The current one is apparently woefully inadequate after 23 years of operation. So even IF one wanted some kind of mortgaged financing, a 20-25 year outlook would seem to make more sense than 50. And the problem with increased parking rates isn't just for visitors and attendees - employees park downtown also. That's a double whammy for stores and venues if their customers are less inclined to visit and their staff need to be paid more so they can afford to come to work. And taxpayers are paying the salaries of city and state workers, for whom increased parking costs would become a bargaining issue. This isn't a simple problem.

That's great - if the downtown core's businesses and venues can be sustained exclusively by those within walking distance. They seem to be struggling on an ongoing basis even while doing business with people coming from further away - I simply worry about what might happen if that opportunity is compromised.

“It doesn’t affect us at all,” Trumm said. “We’re covered under contract with the city (for parking validation) until about 2055.” Note that they're not really saying that it doesn't affect them, just that they are covered by their pre-existing, long-term contract. But it also worth noting that what seems like a long contract isn't as long as the proposed lease. And I have no idea if smaller retailers and venues (smaller than an entire mall) have contracts that go that far out. I'm not anti-arena or anti-Kings, but I do think we need all the pieces of the puzzle on the table.

Sure - but the lightrail isn't. And for some people the lightrail is a far away as a downtown garage.

Thanks for this Melissa and SacPress - nobody else is even looking at this kind of detail.

Almost all of those would get an answer that started "it depends,..." and then yield a very long response. This probably isn't the venue for it.

There are a great many people who have expertise in this area who have been tackling this problem for years - with some interesting and innovative approaches being tried and developed along the way, including some significant success stories here in Sacramento. And while it is true that it's possible to distribute content with low overhead, the overhead is in the film production and that upfront outlay still needs to get recouped. Whatever your model is, however low your distribution overhead is, free distribution of this kind of content still undermines the ability to recoup production costs (without even getting as far as profit). Frankly, many/most are failing already from a business perspective and any extra hurdle (whether it be lost sales or time spent fighting against copyright infringement that precludes that time being spent in further production or promotion) will cause others to fail.

As a film festival director, I work with true indie filmmakers, people whose work is likely to only be seen on the festival circuit and through very limited forms of distribution, including self-distribution. These folks don't have any margin of error in their business models, they don't have broad distribution on multiple platforms, and their work isn't always easy to find by legitimate purchasers. They also don't have vast catalogs of work, across which to spread their risk. if you spend three years of your life writing and making a feature film, and then you see it being made more readily available online on free sites than it even is on the limited pay sites you have the means to coordinate with, it's rightfully alarming and threatens your livelihood. I'm engaged in another online discussion with somebody who fits this description exactly - and he would lock doors and throw away keys. He would make the equally strong claim that piracy hurts his income on a daily basis, that SOPA might save it, and that SOPA couldn't hurt your business in practice - you are on diametrically opposite sides of the same issue and you're almost certainly both wrong. He also has horror stories about enforcing his own rights with online outlets. He has had to fight with youtube, for example, to have a feature film removed, only to end up with a message that says (paraphrased) "content removed because person x complained" - which makes him look like an ass - and without any comment about the fact that the user who originally posted it had no right to do so. And that's a legitimate, US-based outlet that's relatively responsive to complaints. It's virtually impossible to do anything to sites overseas that make content available online. The MPAA and RIAA can bring in armies of lawyers but the small, independent content creators simply don't have those resources. Protecting your content aggressively can end up stopping you from creating it as you simply have no time to do so, which also destroys your business model as you end up without content to sell. Enforceable laws are needed to protect intellectual property rights and creative content of all kinds - but SOPA is appallingly broad and, in my opinion, you are right to both fear it and campaign against it. As a festival director, I would be concerned about simple acts like linking to a filmmaker's online film trailer for fear of simultaneously linking to illegal content that might be carried on the same site - or the almost impossible to police risk that the filmmaker themself has included material they don't have rights to in their own work. The downside risks are suddenly alarmingly high, as you have suggested - in that we agree completely.

I think the basic points about doing more harm than good are well made. But I don't think you serve your own ends well by questioning the costs associated with piracy. Piracy can put small businesses out of business just as easily as this legislation could put you out of business, and it's not especially beneficial to simply pit one set of businesses against another. I agree with you about SOPA being bad for assorted reasons, but the "...problem that possibly doesn't exist..." type of comments just leave me with spinning eyeballs. As you mention, there are far more fundamental problems with the legislation, including the stifling of permitted activity in the process of targeting the non-permitted activity - it's a baby with the bathwater approach that also happens to toss in the bathtub, the bathroom, the house, the street,.... Current copyright laws and protection don't work and content creators need protections that do work - but SOPA is like ordering a drone attack with cluster bombs to take out a shoplifter.

Two separate articles/columns in the Bee today make it sound more like unconditional support for the idea - without mention of this qualifying sentence.

"If Sacramento uses the resources of private enterprises such as the Sacramento Kings and other corporations along with some public funds that do not impact the city’s general fund, Baer said, it can get support." He's probably right - but we haven't seen a proposal that doesn't impact the city's general fund. The parking lease would impact the city's general fund for as long as 50 years by removing that revenue.

It's not the purpose of a disclosure statement to tell readers that the person who posted the article is also the author - that's the default assumption. It would make more sense to tell readers if that wasn't the case - although there's no need for anybody to be posting anybody else's work. The more relevant disclosure in this case would be to explain your position with HPI and your connection to the people involved in the interview. Also, in the body of the text, you shouldn't be throwing around acronyms without introducing what they stand for the first time they appear - you have no reason to expect anybody to know what they mean.