Infrastructure and Connected Budgeting

At 7:30 this morning, I attended my first committee meeting for the city of San Diego. It regarded Infrastructure, housing, and transportation. The elevator to the floor was packed with suits and ties, men in their 40's talking about Padres and vacations. They seemed like friends, and in the boardroom, only a few seats of the 50 were vacant. The coffee was astringent, but the members were warm and professional. I could get used to the atmosphere. I was obviously the only attendee under the age of 30. The verbiage, organization of the literature, and presenters' preparedness were all exceptional. No flaws in appearance (I even saw a few french cuffs) and the discussion was proactive.
A few things I learned:

• 2 more high rises were proposed recently to be constructed as affordable housing (Atmosphere on 4th and beech, and a Reconstruction of the Hotel Churchill)
• A total of 6 more (and growing) living communities will be installed within a year from today in Downtown alone
• Information on Linkage Fees
• Benefit underprivileged
• Inhibit new construction and new employment opportunities with adverse cost structures.
• Costs will be: $2.12/ft^2 for Medical and office space,
• $1.60/ft^2 for Education space
• $1.28/ft^2 for Mfg, retail, and Hotel space
• The money raised (projected at greater than $400M) is highly probable to be misappropriated into the city's budget
• These fees may increase 50% in a year, and may also apply to venue's change of use.
• An 11 mile extension of the trolley from Old Town to UTC will probably pass and cost the city $1.8B
• Clean Water Act and its ramifications
• The city of SD's official Infrastructure committee (Kersey)
• Created in Dec/2012 to create a 5 year plan
• Facility assessments of 1600 Buildings to prepare allocation of funds
• 5000 miles of sidewalk assessment to allocate funds 
• Primarily to mitigate lawsuits
• Plan to subsidize a percentage, and have owners pay the rest for improvements
• Take inventories of city park assets and City assets
• Appropriation of funding to committees 
• Staffing concerns to implement upgrades and fixes (most important factor of the budget)
• City wide workshops for citizen infrastructure education over the next 5 years.
• *75% of infrastructure budget is water and wastewater, which is against the law to allocate elsewhere
• Creating city-issued bonds of more than $1B to fund improvements (have $35M since Dec.)
• The boundaries of communities are being restructured (i.e. 'Uptown' includes Golden Hills, University Heights, and North Park
• Urban design is the least important issue for planners at this moment.

This committee meets once per month (next meeting July 16, 7:30am), but Sandag has meetings frequently (typically 3-5 times per week).