Last month a comment was made in very much the same spirit. But it’s really the LDFA (Local Development Finance Authority), not the DDA, that is in a position to exercise some limited amount of oversight of Ann Arbor SPARK. The LDFA contracts with Ann Arbor SPARK to operate a “business accelerator,” and it’s via that relationship that the LDFA would be in a position to demand an accounting for the public money used to fund that relationship. (The DDA and the LDFA do have similar funding mechanisms – they both have a geographic district in which they “capture” taxes that would otherwise go to some other unit of government – a tax-increment finance (TIF) district. That pretty much where the similarity ends.) I don’t think the DDA is in any kind of position to provide oversight of Ann Arbor SPARK.

Oh, forgot, SPARK is sacred and can never be questioned and the DDA is just their lap dog.

Nice going DDA.

Predicting GDP growth is notoriously difficult but I think it’s premature to abandon the 2% figure. IMF forecast is 1.8% this year, then 2.2% next. The Fed’s Open Market Committee is projecting long range growth at 2.3 to 2.6%.

US GDP growth for the past 20 quarters is 0.64% on average. [link] (Note: that does NOT equate to 0.64% growth over the past 20 quarters.) Excluding the worst three quarters of 2008-09, the average is about 1.57%. The max was 3.9%, min was -8.9%, and median 1.7-1.8%. I wonder how 2% is (still? has it been used consistently over time?) deemed an appropriate value to use.

World oil production peaked about 4 years ago. US gasoline consumption peaked in 2007 [link] and is dropping, and it’s not due to increased efficiency (though that might play a small part [link]. However, the US car fleet is turning over more slowly [link].

Economic growth as we have known it is over. The lag between peak oil and peak parking is likely over as well. The real estate bubble hasn’t fully deflated. What were once conservative estimates are now unrealistic.

Good choice to “hedge” the revenue numbers.

One Chronicle reader reports spending $10, or 2.5 gallons, on gas to drive downtown Ann Arbor. If the structure gets 500 visits in a day (we know it’s at least 400, as the structures completely fill and empty every day) that’s 1250 gallons. So we’ve saved 2% of our energy consumption. Still worth doing but not terribly significant.

Sometimes you just can’t make this stuff up.

Much in the same way The Mayor’s price was an giant ugly puppet head of himself, that you can purchase a kitschy photo of him with online from AnnArbor.com. Too bad copyright law prevents printing the image on a t-shirt ala the Dope Capital of the Midwest shirts that honored our then Mayor in the 1970s.