Last week\u2019s Beacon contained an editorial opinion piece promoting the new City Hall proposal still being pursued despite the city\u2019s finances.\u00a0 Inside the piece were descriptions of the current city spaces stating that “The existing buildings contain a great deal of asbestos (a known carcinogen),”\u00a0“dysfunctional and redundant work space environments,” and “Moreover, they don\u2019t meet many current fire and safety codes.”\u00a0 Wow.\u00a0 I immediately began to wonder who Sandra Simmons was and if she had alerted the city to these facts.\u00a0\u00a0Although\u00a0dysfunctional and redundant work space environments didn\u2019t sound serious, the asbestos and the fire and safety code violations did sound bad.\u00a0 So, I went to the Internet. \u00a0A little research on the Internet revealed that Ms. Simmons has resided in downtown San Diego for 17 years and\u00a0she has a downtown-based business, VivaCity.\u00a0\u00a0Naturally, any enhancements to downtown San Diego will benefit her business, so she had no qualms\u00a0making serious claims about the safety of the City\u2019s workers, claims that were not backed up with actual facts, in order to scare people into thinking we have to build this expensive venture that we can\u2019t afford.\u00a0 The Internet will expose a person\u2019s\u00a0true interest very quickly.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Recently, the Beacon ran a story about the Peninsula Community Planning Board (PCPB) sponsoring a Town Hall meeting to discuss the airport.\u00a0 The meeting was held at the Corky McMillin Cos. Events Center.\u00a0 Because one member of the PCPB works for McMillin \u2014 although\u00a0not admitting so publicly \u2014\u00a0several PCPB meetings have been held at the former NTC, courtesy of McMillin, even in the McMillin corporate headquarters conference room.\u00a0 So, I went to the Internet again and found out it costs about $3,000 to rent the McMillin Events Center. And, knowing the PCPB has no money, I asked a few questions.\u00a0 I attended the Town Hall meeting and the first speaker was a\u00a0gentleman from the NTC Foundation who\u00a0gave what sounded like a commercial for the\u00a0NTC Promenade that surprised me.\u00a0 My questions led me to Alan Ziter, who is \u00a0the executive director of the NTC Foundation.\u00a0 Mr. Ziter explained to me that they had “donated” the hall and that it really didn\u2019t cost them anything because they had staff on duty anyway.\u00a0 This was disingenuous at best\u00a0because the IRS would have looked at it as a $3,000\u00a0gift, regardless of what it cost that night. The value of the donation is what mattered.\u00a0 Who is the major supporter of all this? McMillin, of course. \u00a0So the\u00a0point of my story is to realize\u00a0that influence is everywhere and it is disguised, but the Internet can quickly unmask it.\u00a0 Don\u2019t take anything for face value, question\u00a0why things happen as they do.\u00a0 When you understand the real story behind comments like these of Ms. Simmons, or\u00a0propaganda\u00a0disguised as public\u00a0“Town Hall” meetings,\u00a0you will be better able to make reasoned\u00a0decisions.\u00a0 Here\u2019s one last Internet\u00a0fact for Ms. Simmons:\u00a0 the city of San Diego encompasses 72.7 square miles.\u00a0 A generous estimate of the downtown is 4 square miles or about 6 percent of the whole city.\u00a0 Perhaps Ms. Simmons\u00a0would better understand why the remaining 94 percent of the city might not see things as she does but do see why she sees things the way she does, thanks to the Internet.\u00a0\u00a0 \u2014 Geoff Page is a resident of Point Loma and former chair of the Peninsula Community Planning Board.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last week\u2019s Beacon contained an editorial opinion piece promoting the new City Hall proposal still being pursued despite the city\u2019s finances.\u00a0 Inside the piece were descriptions of the current city spaces stating that “The existing buildings contain a great deal of asbestos (a known carcinogen),”\u00a0“dysfunctional and redundant work space environments,” and “Moreover, they don\u2019t meet […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11561","_seopress_titles_title":"Internet a valuable tool to ferret out facts","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11593,11552,11561,11550],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-297683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-no-images","category-opinion","category-peninsula-beacon","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297683\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}