Prediction on ground breaking
(Written by kencraw)
‘The Duke’ asks in the comment section for my prediction on when the University will be able to break ground now that the ruling has come down and been analyzed. I could just do the Oregon game thing and say ’31-24 Bears’ relying on my keen instinct and prediction skills. (Of course the appropriate response would be ‘Cal 24, UCLA 13’, but I digress.) But in this case my crystal ball is pretty murky so instead I’ll give a more nuanced answer.
In the end it all comes down to three things:
- How quickly judge Miller rules on the Writ
- Whether the Writ includes a recirculation or re-approval of the EIR
- Whether the injunction is maintained upon appeal
Judge Miller will have all of the paperwork she need to rule on the Writ before the end of the month. That’s the best news there is. Unfortunately, she gets up to 60 days to actually finalize and publish the Writ. Now, I don’t know about you, but it’s going to take a LOT for me to fall for the “Oh, but we expect the judge to rule far more quickly than the deadline” mantra again. Somehow releasing the ruling at 6:30 PM on the day of the deadline doesn’t feel ‘early’ to me… but that’s just me.
So I’d say the path that allows for the earliest ground breaking is the end of August. That assumes that judge Miller rules in Cal’s favor so that no recirculation or re-approval of the EIR is necessary and the judge who hears the appeal that is an absolute certainty refuses to re-institute the injunction.
In mid-April I wrote about the likelihood that the injuction will be lifted. I believe that logic to still be accurate. However, I believe the likelihood that the judge rules in a way that causes a significant delay is much lower now, say 25%, bringing the likelihood of the project being further delayed beyond August down to 38.75%.
So, the best way to say this is:
“When football season starts we will have either just broke ground (62.25%) or we will have found out that we’ll be spending the off-season in the spring of 2009 discussing how long this appeal is going to take (38.75%).”
And since I’m making predictions… Cal 41, Michigan State 27. (More of that to come later this week.)
June 23rd, 2008 at 5:19 pm
I’m looking forward to your predictions. Of course, I’m wondering if that 41-27 prediction you just gave is based off of both of our QBs playing or only one of them – and if only one of them, which one?… Although, I suppose that prediction can be regardless of who is QB – which would be an interesting statement to make.
June 23rd, 2008 at 9:45 pm
Hydro, you’ve found the big catch in making predictions of this specific a nature this early. I’ll leave you in suspense as to how I’ve resolved those question marks in my predictions until I post…
June 24th, 2008 at 9:35 am
I like how you have precise odds (including significant digits past the decimal point) based on numbers you came up with in your head. 🙂
Of course, you did kick my butt in the pick ’em game last year, so if these are your odds, that’s what I’m going with too!
June 24th, 2008 at 9:47 am
Yeah, if I had pulled that in my 2nd year physics classes in college, the professor would have hung me from the overhead projector (do they still use those at Cal?) and left me there as an example for all future students warning them to properly calculate the margin of error.
OK… really it’s just 5/8ths and 3/8ths.
June 24th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
This isn’t really related to your predictions, but I found the new Cal uniforms on Eastbay.
Go to this address:
http://www.eastbay.com/catalog/productdetail/module–unknown/action–view/supercat–fangear/model_nbr–51680/sku–15300813/cm–35001331/
(Kevin Riley!)
August 30th, 2012 at 8:46 pm
[…] (The City of Berkeley (COB), the PHA and the COF). And much to my credit I for the first time had an accurate assessment of how long it would take to wrap up the remaining legal wrangling: The end of August […]