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!

Civic San Diego: the kiss of death for San Diego neighborhoods

The city of San Diego has first-class universities, first-class biotech companies, first-class ethnic restaurants, first-class theater, first-class engineers, artists, and musicians.  Also:

Our city has first-class standing as a prototype of community-based planning. 

Who would have guessed that during the heady years of the 1960s, while the Pump House kids were tripping the waves fantastic at Windansea Beach other San Diegans – more firmly-grounded and civic-minded – were partnering with City Hall as official members of newly-created community planning groups.  The La Jolla community plan was the city's first.  Then the Peninsula plan.  Soon came the others.

Half a century later there are more than 40 recognized community planning groups throughout the city, where locally-elected members meet monthly to opine on neighborhood land-use issues, community goals, and proposed real estate development and relay their advice and recommendations to city officials.  

Although these planning groups are private organizations they have no legal power to take action on behalf of the city.  They're required to adhere to city council policies and city-approved bylaws.    

It's true, our planning groups are frequently dominated by people with personal or business priorities rather than communal well-being.  It's a fact, they generally represent the perspectives of homeowners over renters. Certainly, they can be contentious and rancorous.  Yes, they're sometimes short-sighted and overly-opinionated. 

But in these planning groups you'll find plenty of altruistic, environmentally-aware, economically-savvy, intelligent and openminded social reformers and planning advocates, all determined to do what no one else will do for them – look out their own backyards.  Plus those of their neighbors and neighborhoods in the rest of the city.  

Granted, there's plenty of room for improvement within community planning groups. Dwindling staff support from city planners (who have, themselves, been hammered by planning department reorganizations, budget cuts, unfilled positions, and political machinations) doesn't help. 

But here's a fact of life we should not ignore: imperfect though they may be, San Diego's community planning groups are indispensable.  They're the eyes, ears, and vocal chords of our neighborhoods.  They're the  building blocks of a healthy city.  

Without them, the voices of everyday citizens to improve the environment throughout San Diego are easily diminished... overridden... eventually extinguished.  

Here's another fact of life we should not ignore: one by one, in this way or that, San Diego's community planning groups are being sabotaged.

Look what happened in Barrio Logan and its community plan update.  See what's happening at the opposite end of the city, in Carmel Valley's One Paseo project.  Watch how numerous communities are left hanging out to dry over their community plan updates.  Take note of the chronic battering in Ocean Beach by variances to permit out-sized development.  Notice the attempts to cluster and meld distinct neighborhood planning groups in North Park, Golden Hill, and Uptown.  The Serra Mesa community group knows how hard it is to prevent being devalued and ignored.  The Grantville planning group knows the same.   

Community planning groups routinely tackle blunt questions: Does the proposal under consideration benefit the street? the neighborhood? the community? the city? the public good?  They put themselves on the line each time they resist fast-tracking and outsized projects… each time they challenge spurious claims and empty clichés about "property rights" or "transit-oriented development" or "smart growth"... each time they open the debate about community benefits versus private profits.  

Which brings us back to Civic San Diego and its kiss of death.  

Does Civic San Diego – the recently-created private real estate consortium, endowed by its creator (the city of San Diego) with certain (unalienable?) rights to override, supersede, and nullify the voices of community planning groups – sabotage San Diego's longstanding public system of city planning and community planning groups?  Yes!

Is Civic San Diego's most recent proposal to become a provider of "community benefits" and "work with a diverse range of community stakeholders... on community priorities" a calculated farce to placate their critics and keep themselves in business? Yes!

City leaders created and empowered Civic San Diego as an autonomous purveyor of private development and transferred city government responsibility for planning, zoning, permits, and oversight to a private corporation.  They locked themselves, the public, and city planners out of the process.  They got it all wrong.  

They sabotaged the public's rights to be heard and oversee our own backyards.  The City Attorney's office tiptoes around the edges but appears to have serious reservations about city delegation of authority to Civic San Diego.  The courts may not be as easily intimidated by San Diego's power elite or remain sanguine about Civic San Diego's kiss of death for community planning.

City officials need to cut their losses and try to get it right.  How to do it? 

FIRST, DISASSEMBLE AND DISSOLVE CIVIC SAN DIEGO.  Land use decisions involving the future of our neighborhoods and communities belong in the hands of city officials and the public, not in the hands of San Diego's downtown landed gentry.  Contrivances like Civic San Diego take us backward to the bad-old-days of lining the pockets of the good-old-boys.   Just get rid of it.

SECOND, EXPAND THE ROLE OF COMMUNITY PLANNING GROUPS.   After a half-century history of constructive partnership between community planning groups and the city, the time is ripe to consider enlarging and extending the scope of planning groups beyond land use issues. 

"Backyard" concerns like neighborhood job creation, local crime problems, renters rights, city budget priorities, utility rates, water conservation, transit, homelessness, and government efficiency belong side-by-side with land use recommendations on the agendas of city-authorized, locally-elected, well-regulated neighborhood councils.  It's not a panacea but it is a step forward – in the right direction.

City officials unwisely transformed outlawed redevelopment agencies into Civic San Diego.  That decision should be repealed.  

Our city can get it right by wisely transforming community planning groups into top-rung public assets, namely full-purpose neighborhood councils.  

Think about it.