Big donation price of business

Sometimes I wake up laughing. Other times, in the car on the way to work, I’ll wonder who that weirdo is laughing on the radio only to realize the radio isn’t on and no passengers are riding with me.

Life and people and politics and money can be absurdly entertaining and funny.

The Living Coast Discovery Center (née the Chula Vista Nature Center) and its supporters this week celebrated a $2 million donation from SDG&E.

In addition to the presumed kindness and generosity of the executives at the power company, the donation came about as a condition of a business deal.

In exchange for being allowed to move their substation from its old location along Chula Vista’s valuable bayfront, SDG&E told the California Coastal Commission they’d give money to a fund set aside to operate the wildlife center, which has come closer to shutting down more times than an antique furniture store having a liquidation sale in a Central American jungle.

This is the same power company that in 2004 had agreed to place transmission lines cluttering the air along the bayfront underground. And the same company that undergrounded most of the lines in the area but not all of them because to do so would have cost them too much money and, according to the company, they were not part of the original deal.

And it’s the same power company over which the former mayor and city officials fretted and wrung their hands in fear of upsetting when a lobbyist and an attorney wanted all of the lines put underground because their client’s bayfront property would be adversely affected by the remaining lines.

The concern was that if SDG&E were forced to pay millions to underground an additional 300 feet of cable, would they withdraw their promised support of $2 million to the nature center? The City Council at the time, led by former mayor Cheryl Cox, was opposed to possibly upsetting the apple cart and getting on the power company’s bad side for fear of slowing down bayfront development.

Over time the fears proved meritless, the state and local governing bodies approved the substation’s move and did not require additional undergrounding. SDG&E got its way.

And the Living Coast Discovery Center got its money.

News crews, the public and VIPs were on hand this week to celebrate the power company’s largesse. The birds and fish will have a place to call home at least for the next couple of years. Everyone is seemingly happy. (Well, everyone except for those who were hoping SDG&E would have stuck to the original deal.)

We celebrate the donation as if it were a gift made because of the kindness of executives’ hearts. Maybe some of it is.

But there’s no denying that it was also part of a bottom line deal — business as usual in these parts. To believe it was anything less is a joke. It was a laugh.