San Diego's dance fetish

 

Did you know that San Diego has a dance fetish?  Our obsessive routine goes something like this: We take one step forward, then two steps back… one step forward, two steps back...  one forward, two back…. 

Year in and year out, the city makes a bit of progress toward the common good and then pulls back--undermining and diminishing the quality of life in our communities.  To jog your memory, here are some random past examples of how we step on our own toes:

 

Once (circa 1980s), the city had a deal with SDG&E: we permitted them to exact surcharges on customer bills.  In exchange, they were to bury the overhead power lines that crisscross our city.

 

Somehow, millions of dollars of customer fees mysteriously evaporated.  Nevertheless, former Mayor Susan Golding (and her City Council cohorts) did a switchback step: SDG&E handed over a one-time $3.4 million cash payment to the city…a bandaid on the profligate mayor's overburdened city budget.  In exchange, the city freed SDG&E from its previous undergrounding obligations.

 

Once (ante 2000), we had a stable pension system and a functioning, well-staffed city government.  Then (following the lead of City Manager Jack McGrory) our elected officials took backward steps that crippled the city’s pension system, tripped up San Diego’s financial stability, and hollowed out City Hall.  Today, around 2,000 essential city positions are rattling around City Hall…unfilled.  Might that explain why current San Diegans experience chronic gaps in basic public services?

 

Once (ten years ago), Mayor Jerry Sanders got the blessings of then-City Attorney Jan Goldsmith to pretend he was participating as an ordinary joe blow and not as the Mayor of San Diego when he actively promoted a “pension reform” ballot proposition (Prop B).  The State Supreme Court said: "NO WAY."  

 

Although this subterfuge is currently costing the city at least $100 million to unravel the resultant mess, you’ll notice that these two dance mates have waltzed away, scot free. 

 

But no need to look to the past for deleterious examples of our dance fetish.  It’s happening right before your very eyes.

 

Once, an independent Redistricting Commission was added to our City Charter by San Diego voters.  Its purpose was to ensure that Redistricting activities would be conducted independent of and separate from the Mayor and City Council.  It was a forward step for our city. 

 

But Councilmember Chris Cate recently attempted to influence the mapping outcome 0f our independent Redistricting Commission, claiming he was participating as an ordinary citizen, not as a duly-elected Councilmember.  Wasn't the Court's "NO WAY" injunction loud enough when Jerry Sanders tried that ploy?  Cate's fancy footwork may or may not pay off for him personally, but the eventual cost to the public is yet to be seen.

 

Once, our city codified a system of Developer Impact Fees (DIFs).  The rationale was that new development should pay its own way...or at least that developers should facilitate the provision of community benefits and public facilities (roads, utility hookups, public spaces, etc.) made necessary by denser neighborhood development. 

 

But with a hop, skip, and jump backwards, Mayor Todd Gloria now proposes to redirect these DIFs away from the neighborhoods that are directly impacted by new development.  He wants to funnel DIFs into the city's General Fund... under his personal control... to be doled out as it suits his political agenda... never mind neighborhood impacts....  Is this legal? A judge may have another "No Way" to say about this maneuver.

 

Once, the city had a system for permanent retention of "official business" emails.  Undaunted, political consultant Stephen Puetz (chief of staff to former Mayor Kevin Faulconer) admitted he destroyed electronic messages integral to current legal investigations of the botched acquisition of 101 Ash Street.  

 

But Mayor Todd Gloria has a fix for this issue, as well.  He'll change the retention limit for important city emails/texts to a maximum of five years before they're destroyed.  Compared to his previous decision to delete and destroy city emails each and every year (he was interim-mayor at the time, following Mayor Bob Filner’s resignation), today's proposal looks like a baby-step forward.  But at a time when permanent storage is cheaper and more feasible than ever before, this signals a significant step backward for open government, transparency, and the public good.

 

So whoa, Nelly!  We're beginning to see how today’s dance moves by our current elected leadership threaten to take the city not just steps--but a GIANT LEAP BACKWARDS.

 

Our Mayor and individual City Council members may have reasonable personal convictions about what constitutes civic progress.  But collectively, they've espoused the myth that urban super-growth will be San Diego's savior to rescue us from the dire straits of housing unaffordability and the perils of climate change.

 

Abandoning principles of sensible zoning, they’ve taken a reckless dive into the YIMBY mosh pit to join assorted Growth Machine proselytizers and politically opportunistic lobbyists like Colin Parent (and his Circulate San Diego think tank).

Their rallying cry is Affordability! and their voices are well-nourished by financial infusions from the building industry and corporate real estate investors.   Whatever their motivation, they seem intent on leading San Diego backwards to an era of haphazard growth and environmental carelessness.  

 

But the evidence mounts daily that “supply and demand” in the housing market does not increase affordability.  High levels of density haven't made Hong Kong, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Miami, Tokyo affordable places to live.  It won’t be the magic bullet for San Diego, either. 

 

This bears repeating: growth is not a dirty word.  But growth--the quantity, quality, rate, impacts, losers, and beneficiaries--comes laden with enormous challenges for which there are no quick and easy answers.  

 

In the ongoing challenge to manage our growth and to continue efforts to make San Diego a more livable, well-run, environmentally sustainable, across-the-board affordable city, with social justice and fairness as our signature dance routine, one thing is certain: the role of and support for San Diego’s Community Planning Groups should be strengthened--not truncated--by our Mayor and City Council.  

 

Current proposals to promote super-growth--combined with plans to lobotomize Community Planning Groups and muffle rational neighborhood voices--are backward leaps that corrupt the public process to benefit private and corporate interests of the Growth Machine.  We should all be saying: NO WAY!

Scamming San Diego in 4 easy steps

Warning: this commentary is standing on its head and starting with its conclusion:  

The aftermath of San Diego's 2020-21 Redistricting process may prove to be more destructive to good government in San Diego than any monetary loss from past Ponzi schemes and political heists.  

The parties of interest in this latest con game colluded to divide and conquer the San Diego public.  They were willing to shred and tear at San Diego’s civic and moral fabric for their own economic and political gain.  

In a cynical abuse of the public trust, they capitalized on specters of racism, elitism, ageism, and nimbyism to gain their private objectives.  

The Redistricting conflict was never about social and racial justice.  As in all scams, it was about profit-making.  And for the foreseeable future, these latest operators will be laughing all the way to the bank.

************************

STEP 1:  If a city has a personality, how would you describe ours?  

The term that pops into my head is: GOOD-NATURED.   Aren’t San Diegans a cordial bunch of people?  Civil… undemanding… polite… nonjudgmental… forgiving?

Yes, we are definitely a good-natured, easygoing city.  Have we ever condemned former Mayor Susan Golding and City Manager Jack McGrory for foisting on us a city worker pension scam that still--to this very day--dessicates the city budget? 

 

Did we punish ex-Mayor Jerry Sanders for his sketchy scheme to saddle the public with an additional $94 million debt for a bogus Comprehensive Pension Reform initiative—for which we’re still picking up the financial pieces?  And didn't we forgive and forget his responsibility for reprobate police behavior, which resulted in tragic shooting deaths of many ordinary citizens in San Ysidro ?

And when nice guys like Jerry Sanders, Todd Gloria, and Kevin Faulconer handed exclusive control of a civic project to commemorate the 100^th anniversary of the 1915 Balboa Park Panama-California Exposition to a private corporation stacked with political cronies--which cost the city $3 million but produced nothing--weren’t we too polite to raise a stink?  

That’s old history, you say?  What about the get-out-of-jail pass we’re poised to give to high city officials like current-Mayor Todd Gloria, ex-Mayor Kevin Faulconer, and previous-City Attorney Jan Goldsmith as we shrug our shoulders over their criminally dodgy actions to acquire useless property like (but not limited to) the albatross at 101 Ash Street?

And yes, we've occasionally turned the other cheek to non-political scammers-- defrauders like John Alessio and C. Arnholt Smith; underworld dabblers like Dick Silberman and Allen Glick; Ponzi-schemers like J. David Dominelli and Gina Champion-Cain; and don’t forget those slick manipulators like Alex and Dean Spanos, John Moores, and 'papa' Doug Manchester.  

In other words, we’re not just good-natured--we’ve been trusting hosts to grifters of every shape, size, and denomination.

 

STEP 2:  I’ve spilled plenty of ink during these past months on the subject of San Diego City Council Redistricting, the once-every-every-ten-year ritual to redraw the map of City Council districts for the purpose of creating fair, equitable, and balanced voting opportunities through the city.  What makes this subject so riveting?

First, there's my longstanding commitment to promoting good government practices in our city.  

Then, there's the meteoric landing in San Diego of the “life sciences” economy, an industry joined at the hip with the enormously profitable real estate and development industry—which, in turn, is dependent for its prosperity on political goodwill over decisions concerning land use, zoning, taxes and fees, environmental regulation, and so on. 

And finally, there's the sudden strange disappearance of San Diego’s unofficial trademark: good-natured civility.  Something about the Redistricting process had set us at war with one another.  A noxious smokescreen--thick with orchestrated accusations of racism, elitism, ageism, and nimbyism--was pumped into the air.  Boldly but stealthily, the public was being manipulated.  But why?  And by whom? 

 

STEP 3:  Could it be that San Diego Redistricting was just another swindle? The answer is NO!  And then again YES! 

NO, because--to their credit-- San Diego Redistricting Commissioners (despite a few hiccups) played by the rules.  The Commissioners (most of them, anyway) succeeded in keeping their end of the process above board. 

 

And YES, because the basic elements of a scam--deception, diversion, pretense, smokescreens, graft, payoffs--were deployed throughout the Redistricting process in the service of hidden agendas and monetary gain.  

 

It might take a grand jury investigation to reconstruct this latest San Diego scam.  But we can take an early stab at identifying some of the pieces on our own.  

 

Here are a few things we know about City Council Redistricting:

§  We know that the city of San Diego has written guidelines that exclude elected officials from engaging or interfering in the Redistricting process. 

§  We know that gerrymandering to cater to political parties or political ambitions is a no-no.  Same goes for gerrymandering to promote the financial interests of a private business or industry.

§  And we know the Redistricting process must satisfy basic requirements for proportional population numbers, community integrity, and fair racial and ethnic representation.  

§  Also, we know that widespread agreement existed throughout the city to promote a strong “Black” political bloc in District 4, a strong “Asian” political bloc in District 6, and strong “Latino” political bloc in District 9.

 

Here are a few things we did NOT know: 

•  Most of us did not know that San Diego City Councilmember Chris Cate--in violation of acceptable behavior for an elected official--was actively engaged in attempts to influence the outcome of the mapping process.  
•  Who knew that Councilmember Cate’s fingerprints were on a prefabricated Redistricting map? And on a shell organization called Neighborhood Voices of San Diego? And on a “Confidential Plan” with $100,000 budgeted for consultants, social media, scripted talking points, and financial bonuses for recruiting students and other "community members" to deliver dictated public comments at Redistricting hearings?
•  And how could most of us know that the aggressively-publicized "Collaborative Communities” map promoted by some of San Diego’s well-respected social justice nonprofits was basically a Neighborhood Voices/Confidential Plan hand-me-down?

STEP 4: How far were the parties of interest willing to go?

What could be a cleverer way for an extended family of venture capitalists and Wall Street investors to dominate the direction of San Diego growth and land use policies than to create a hand-tailored Redistricting map that would consolidate into a single council district (District 6) prime real estate opportunities ripe for acquisition and commercial development? 

And then to facilitate the election of a suitable councilperson for the district?

 

The icing on the cake was to be the transfer of the entire campus of UCSD out of its environment-conscious district and into a district designated for intense growth and development, alongside University City, Mira Mesa, Scripps Miramar Ranch, and Kearny Mesa.  

Parties of interest in this underground scheme (in addition to Councilmember Cate) included industry heavyweights like the self-proclaimed Uniter of the Life Sciences Industry, Biocom; entrepreneurial developers like IQHQ; REITs like Alexandria Realty Equities; and in constant battle with neighboring San Diegans over his aggressive plans for university growth and expansion--the ambitious UCSD Chancellor Pradeep Khosla.

More parties of interest included local lighter-weights like political consultant Ryan Clumpner; Clumpner’s partner and Chamber of Commerce director of public affairs Sara Kamiab; some members of the Asian American and Pacific Islander community; and college student Aidan Lin.  And it was often hard to determine when Redistricting Commisioner Justine Nielsen was upholding her good government responsibility or lobbying on behalf of her Biocom clients.

By the end of many months of Redistricting Commission public meetings an acceptable City Council map was produced.  It’s tempting to issue a good-natured report that all’s well that ends well.  

But it wouldn't be the truth.  

\