The 241 Toll Road Extension vs. The Anti-Toll Road Movement PART II

PART II

The 241 Extension vs. The Anti-Toll Road Movement

Is The SS TCA Finally On Its Way To A Well-Deserved Grave?

In my first column, I tried to give a general overview of the battlefield that pits the TCA against the growing tide of opposition it faces:

https://patch.com/california/sanclemente/241-toll-road-not-one-more-inch-fee-based-pavement-south-orange-county

It’s worth noting at this juncture that regarding the quicksand that is the 241 Extension, over the past 15 years, the TCA has unequivocally lost all of its major battles. Dressed in Escada and Armani yet born losers, only one thought in mind: MORE. More concrete, more asphalt, more bridges, more rate increases, more campaign contributions, more dominion.

“The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action." Frank Herbert

They laugh without a care and take lunch at trendy restaurants, but WE'RE the ones paying for those loser's mistakes because the TCA has no E & O indemnification, just high paid personnel, rife with dictatorial, crypto-fascist board members enamored with long term fiscal over-draft obligations, furtively clutching desperately to their 30-year old revenue models.

Defying logic, the more debt they have us in, the more they over-reach, the more important and irreplaceable they feel. Worser still (thank you Shakespeare), they never admit fault or mistakes.

They just throw more of our money at the problem as they seek bottom, bail the sinking Titanic (SS TCA) faster, instruct the band (media flacks) to play the party line message louder: “Damn those SOC faction torpedoes, full speed ahead!”

One consideration is the TCA's increasing senility, borderline dementia: An old school, monolithic and aging, elitist oligarchy, founded upon and implementing archaic mobility and anachronistic financing/liquidity principles, the TCA had a clearly defined doctrine and purpose, arguably had value, probably was a necessity up to around 2000. After that, has-beens, superfluous.

As in past tense, rear view mirror images. So yesterday. Presently, it’s in an entropic state, chaotic, the denizens that inhabit its hallways and offices, those that lap at its humungous trough, just don’t want to admit it. They rue the day that this perpetual motion machine, proverbial cash cow closes its doors.

The Earth won’t last forever. The TCA’s briefer life span may not last intact, unscathed past 2020, its demise schedule is being ramped up due to yet more self-inflicted, poor choices.

If they stopped the 241 Extension at Cow Camp Road and Los Patrones, giving San Juan Creek an eternal, proper biotic buffer, they might have a snowball’s chance, whistle through the graveyard that WAS part of their original objective: Get those commuters north of San Juan Creek in, out and around more efficiently.

Unfortunately, they’re zero sum (all or nothing) gamers, and the proffered Options are foolish ruses aimed at suckers. The TCA has already chosen to be deaf, dumb and blind to reason or petition. Asphalt addicts.

Today, they seem to excel at one thing: Bleeding money profusely in their old age, blowing their own and the next generation’s inheritance.

The TCA’s exceeded its shelf life, and there’s a fair argument that it should be dismantled as a separate OC entity, the JPA dissolved, absorbed/taken over by or folded into the OC Transportation Authority. Some believe that the State is moving towards an intervention, but don't hold your breath. Right now, the court system is the only recourse.

A bloated, infected, useless appendage that is no longer needed, nothing a greater reflection of the impending Twilight of the Gods than its pitiful, lapsed hegemonic track record in the 21st century.

DUMB: After several years of confrontations, the California Coastal Commission inevitably handed them their collective heads in 2008 over their planned invasion of Trestles and San Onofre State Beach.

DUMBER: They lost their legal disputes with a coalition of enviro-protectionists several years later as a function of that CCC denial and attendant litigation. That alone carries a $35 million price tag.

REALLY DUMBER: Contemporaneous with the NGO settlement came their latest defeat: They were summarily (unanimously) rebuffed by the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board (Cal/EPA) in 2015. That decision was specific to the same location where NOMI draws the mission creep line: Tesoro High School, adjacent to Oso Parkway.

If the TCA were a ball team, the school’s athletic director would have fired the coach and entire staff years ago. New blood, new thinking, recalibrate, reboot. Under-performing is one thing, blatant incompetence a symptom of more systemic issues.

If it were a business, the CEO and staff would have been fired by the investors and board of directors long ago. A thorough house cleaning, considering the cost overruns, missed ridership goals, and excessive, fiscally irresponsible spending. The TCA has a credit card mentality: Charge it. Awash in red ink, sinking into greater, deeper gradations of ruby rouge, putting off paying debts via refinancing that only delays the inevitable: Bankruptcy.

If it were a family pet, sorry kids but we need to show compassion, old toothless Fido’s gotta be put down. For his own good.

If elderly Inuit Eskimos years ago, they’d either be put to death (senilicide), be offered assisted suicide or voluntarily leave and give themselves to a polar bear.

If the Mafia, which the TCA resembles in many uncomfortably similar instances, they’d get a coup de grace at the end of some filthy metropolis alley, that being seen as a fitting, merciful termination.

The TCA won’t abolish or disband itself: One reason is that it’s become such a huge industry in its own right that there’s just too many cushy, well-paid staff jobs, too many of the OC’s classic ticks and leeches (lobbyists and consultants), too many mouths to feed, influence peddling, profiting special interests to cater to and political campaign pockets to stuff.

And power. Power galore. Power in abundance. Power unbalanced, heady, without conscience. Power to frighten schools, parents and homeowners with imminent domain. Power over every community character category, whether breaching pristine creeks and canyons, destroying neighborhoods, bifurcating cities, obliterating open space habitat or all of the aforementioned.

If the TCA loses the present litigation filed against it by both the City of San Clemente and The Reserve HOA in the SC highlands, how much longer can or will it survive? How far up that RIVER DENIAL without a paddle does an agency have to be before it puts itself and its customers out of their mutual pain?

The NOMI movement deserves attention because between the two SC legal filings, the TCA’s probable inability to deliver a certified, industry standard Programmatic EIR, combined with its fiscal malfeasance and mismanagement, a perfect tsunami is brewing. The Extension dispute has the potential to accelerate the fatal unravelling end of times.

“When you discover you’re riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.” Dakota Tribal wisdom

When you’re digging a hole and see that you’re over your head, stop digging. Throwing increasing amounts of your customer’s money, more after bad, on the funeral pyre just makes you look even more desperate and wasteful.

I admit, I’ve never had such a high stakes, complex client like the TCA…..but if they were in my portfolio, I’d suggest investigating terms and conditions of a BK, try to find mechanisms to pay down or off-load (discharge/transfer) as much debt as possible, begin a negotiated withdrawal (surrender), start winding down by laying off extraneous staff, hold open public hearings with the OCTA, begging them to assume your responsibilities.

Let the TCA morph into an OCTA division or department by 2020, with 10% of the present staff and budget intact to transition professionally.

The OCTA and BOS must listen to the will of the people: This JPA was intended to facilitate construction funding, within its supporter’s lifetimes become free arterials, so place a 5-year moratorium/expiration date on the TCA as a distinct entity within the OCTA, instigate as a good faith gesture a weaning or cycling down period that gradually reduces rate charges, no more fees period when in 2025 we play TAPS.

Stop the madness, and duplicity: Not One More Inch of pavement is needed.

“The welfare of the people is the ultimate law.” Cicero

Oh, and you gods and goddesses of the TCA? At your final hearing, do something you’ve never done before: Exhibit shame, publically apologize for that ever-deepening chasm of debt, that heritage legacy you’re going to force others to remedy, for those exorbitant rates over the years imposed to compensate for your abject, total failure as a fiduciary body. OC might forgive you if you show remorse, reflect contrition. I won’t.

Unfortunately, like the NRA ads, wrenching control from the TCA is not going to happen until We, the People, take that smoking hot asphalt machine from the TCA’s cold, metaphorically dead hands.