Life lessons

Why do I feel as if our U-T San Diego daily newspaper is shouting at me?  Headlines are so big.  So BOLD.  They jump right off the page. 

Just take a look.  It’s back to kindergarten with color-coded newspaper sections.  The BUSINESS section is dollar bill green.  SPORTS is football brown.  LOCAL is bay blue.  FOOD is plum purple.  

And what do you make of those front-page editorials that hammer away at us, nagging with instructions to love and embrace this or that splashy downtown development project -- aka vision?  Move over world and national news, you're getting in the way!

I guess Doug Manchester and John Lynch, the new U-T newspaper owners, figure that readers can’t be trusted to make the ‘right’ decision about what’s good or bad for San Diego.  Maybe they’re worried that readers are just yokels, too unsophisticated to flip to the back pages where most reputable newspapers put personal opinions and editorials. 

I guess that if you’re wealthy and accustomed to getting your way in The World’s Greatest Country and America’s Finest City you can buy the major newspaper and slap your marching orders on the front page.  Under the flag.

On the other hand, I guess U-T owner Doug Manchester can’t help it.  He never pretended to be an honest-to-goodness purveyor of the public good.  As far as I know, he has no pretensions of virtue in any sphere, public or private.

And he’s not the first newspaper owner to be a ham-handed handler.  He’s just our city’s latest and most blatant contributor to a deviant newspaper tradition called mouthpiece journalism – using the daily newspaper to control San Diego’s political, economic, and/or social decisions.  It's not the same as yellow journalism.  But he’s still new at the game.

NOW FOR THE GOOD NEWS.  

Despite the heavy-handed bludgeoning and over-the-top style of the new U-T, I’ve learned at least four useful things from its new owners.  Life lessons, you could call them.

          a) Being very rich doesn't necessarily mean you're all that smart.  What is means, basically, is that you've got a certain knack for making lots of money.  And for those who simply inherited their wealth, a knack for keeping it and making more.

         b) Some very rich people do happen to be pretty smart.  But not all…not by a long shot.

         c) Very rich people (smart and/or borderline) usually wield inordinate influence over elected officials.  By virtue of their wealth they have special access to meet and greet in private sessions with decision-makers.  They tend to make good headway in these sessions. 

         d) Finally, while it's true that the public is often in awe of the very rich, it's also true that smooth talk, unctuous flattery, bullying, and financial heft don’t cut the same cake with the public as with politicians.* 

*In the interest of historical truth we might make an exception for John Moores.  He seduced the public with the same finesse and success he used on our local public officials.  But enough looking back...

On to Doug Manchester.  His (dead-end, outmoded, elitist, tunnel-) visions for San Diego’s future are projections of his personal ambitions for greater power and wealth.  To manipulate the system to his advantage he should have done it the regular way -- behind the scenes, behind closed doors. 

He wasn't using any smarts by turning his newspaper into a missive aimed straight at the public.  In the fresh open air, anyone could see how blurry his vision is.

When the city's well-being is at stake, San Diegans clearly have enough common sense and backbone to resist.  This fact should be another life lesson.  It could be our not-so-secret weapon, the saving antidote against both the grandiose posturing of some rich folk among us (smart and/or borderline) and the wishy-washy, floppy, timid inclinations of some elected representatives. 

Public spunk – it's the secret elixir that could ward off the wealthy and powerful not-so-smarts wishing to run our city and pump up our could/would/should have been bolder elected representatives.  As always, it's up to us.  

Running on autopilot

ATTENTION NEXT MAYOR: San Diego is desperate for a leader who possesses the following four attributes –

1. Wide open eyes (to see the whole picture)
2. A truthful mouth (to speak with integrity)
3. A strong hand (to act with resolve) 
4. An outstretched arm (to do the greatest good for the greatest number of people)

History will be the final judge of our current lame-duck mayor and his tenure in office.  So far, the record reveals seven years of incompetent management, conflicted stewardship, revolving doors, political posturing, neglectful oversight, and willful failure to address (let alone acknowledge) the city’s crucial challenges. 

What’s been going on? The city is in arrears for almost a billion dollars worth of deferred maintenance on sub-standard city streets…buildings…sidewalks…storm drains...alleyways.  City facilities like recreation centers and libraries are in the pits.  Pension debt is over $2 billion – each year gobbling up bigger chunks of the city budget.  Water-main breaks plague our neighborhoods.  Skeletal crews of city employees have been spread thin and thinner.  You get the picture.

Wasn't our new “strong mayor” system of government supposed to turn our city around?  In his inaugural address our first “strong mayor” Jerry Sanders declared that the era of delay, deception, and denial was over.  But what did we get?  Less political accountability than ever before.  Less public access.  More pulling-the-wool-over the public’s eyes.  More passing the buck!  

Time to expose the down and dirty secret about what’s really been going on.  For the past seven years of this current administration -- that is, ever since our “strong mayor” form of government became official – city government has been running on autopilot.

Autopilot means no one is at the helm…in the cockpit…behind the wheel…pedaling the bike…minding the store...  

Running the city on autopilot has been a monumental swindle.  It's resulted in a hollow city.  It's caused San Diego to decay from the inside out.

Therefore, we're sending out an SOS.

ATTENTION NEXT MAYOR: San Diego is desperate for a leader (with wide open eyes, a truthful mouth, a strong hand, and an outstretched arm) who will use the position of  “strong mayor” to accomplish two fundamental tasks –

1. Appoint a professional, experienced, well-trained city manager as his/her right hand man/woman -- someone to run the day-to-day operations of the city and restore efficiency, accountability, oversight, and effectiveness to all city departments 
2. Forget the dead-end mindset that's been San Diego’s trademark for far too long.  Turn the city around.  Pour San Diego's pent-up energy and resources into our city's Infrastructure, Institutions, Individuals, and Innovative opportunities.  It's the magic formula for long-range health and productivity.  

COME ON NEXT MAYOR: You've got nothing to lose and San Diego has everything to gain.  Open your eyes.  Never speak with a forked tongue.  Make good use of the "strong mayor" toolbox.  And do right by all of us.

Swindle City

San Diego’s been my hometown for decades and I want the best for it, for my kids and grandkids who live here, for my co-workers and friends and neighbors, and for everyone else I share this city with, whether I’ve met them or not.  

That’s why I hate to admit that San Diego is, at its core, Swindle City -- the spitting image of a limited liability company where no one is held accountable for the actions of others and -- even worse -- where no one is held accountable for his or her own actions.  

In a Swindle City like ours, public resources are routinely transformed into private and/or political capital and profit.  Flowing throughout San Diego history is a non-stop stream of  grifters, scammers, users, and double-talkers.  Experts at shaking down the public.

Starting way back with the behemoth robber baron John Spreckels, our city has been ruled by business magnates, shysters, and seductive con artists who manipulated, controlled, and (mis)appropriated San Diego public assets to enhance their personal fortunes, financial and political.  

Do these names ring a bell?  Aggressive entrepreneurs like Reuben Fleet, 'Pappy' Hazard, and Jim Copley.  Defrauders like John Alessio and C. Arnholt Smith.  Changeling politicians like Pete Wilson and Roger Hedgecock.  Ponzi-schemers like J. David Dominelli and Nancy Hoover.  Underworld dabblers like Dick Silberman, Allen Glick, and Bob Peterson.  Ruthless top officials like Susan Golding.  Greedy wannabe potentates like Alex and Dean Spanos, John Moores, and 'papa' Doug Manchester.  

Not a single mensch among them.

And always, the city’s second-tier elected officials (our city council) are putty in the hands of the masters.  They go along…acquiesce…play the game…protect the hustlers… perpetuate the scam.  

And always, the public never sees it coming.  

But it's back!  It's happening again!  This time two big-time swindles are in the making.  An historic double whammy. 

The first is the initiative on the June ballot with the flimflam moniker, Comprehensive Pension Reform.  It was created by mayor Jerry Sanders and council members Carl DeMaio and Kevin Faulconer.  This ballot measure leaves in place self-serving abuses of the old pension system while scamming the public with a $94 million bill to install an alternative, inferior pension system.

Yet, dutifully signing on to this scam are 3 out of 4 mayoral candidates: Nathan Fletcher, Bonnie Dumanis, and the aforementioned DeMaio.

But stop the presses!  Our termed-out mayor has just given birth to the biggest pull-the-wool-over-your eyes sham of all! 

Today, (he says) I delivered some terrific news about San Diego’s fiscal recovery: After years of cutbacks, we see the light at the end of what has been a very long, dark tunnel. The city’s decades-long structural budget deficit is history.

The depth of this deception takes your breath away.  But the bar has been set very high in our city for hucksters, tricksters, con men, scammers, and fibbers.  This one is surely going for the gold. 

Details and explanations to come.  Meantime...psst...I know a bridge you can buy... 

When no news is BAD news

Popular wisdom is wrong on this one: no news is bad news.  And distorted news is worse.  

The Union-Tribune -- mainstay newspaper for generations of San Diegans – has been stashed deep inside the vest pocket of developer-extraordinaire Doug Manchester, known far and wide as the most ruthless, take-no-prisoners, narrow-visioned bull that ever ravaged a proverbial china shop. 

The paper’s new hyperbolic motto: The World’s Greatest Country & America’s Finest City seems to be in keeping with the hyped-up ego of its new owner.  

(Not that Manchester is the only local fellow with delusions of grandeur.  Candidate for mayor Nathan Fletcher has plans to rebrand our modest hometown The World’s Most Innovative City).

No, I’m not saying we should throw in the towel.  If there’s anything I learned growing up in NYC that applies to us here and now, it’s this: if you want to keep yourself and the people you care about safe and sound you better keep your eyes wide open.  You better know what’s going on down the street.  Around the corner.  And the next block over, too.

What I am saying is that public ignorance is dangerous to the public health. Keeping tabs on our city and on the people who run it may be getting harder, but it’s as crucial as ever.   So I’ll do my part as well as I can and I’ll count on you to keep me moving in the right direction.

======================

Starting with law enforcement: there’s a new and threatening game on today's streets and it's a far cry from the old days when kids were spoon-fed the myth about your friendly policeman (click it, you’ll like it).  This ditty’s advice was always a little iffy, depending on the color of your skin.  But given the changing role of our police force, it's gotten a lot iffier…for all of us.

Here’s my advice: try not to be fooled by the kind-faced policeman who parades as our benevolent mayor because you can bet that our city is right in the thick of it.  Tiny Tim must be turning in his grave over the following brief sampling of current events, in and out of San Diego:

·      A little-known but influential private membership based organization has placed itself at the center of advising and coordinating the crackdown on the (Occupy) encampments. The Police Executive Research Forum, an international non-governmental organization with ties to law enforcement and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, has been coordinating conference calls with major metropolitan mayors and police chiefs…(San Francisco Bay Guardian)

·      1400 members of the Los Angeles Police raided a park Wednesday morning and removed or arrested all of the Occupy LA protesters…the LAPD use a 'Bat Cat' bomb squad vehicle to remove protestors from trees and hundreds of officers dressed in Hazmet suits removed the tents and other personal belongings from the park…(examiner.com)

·      (At Occupy San Diego) in the middle of the night…with few cameras around, officers in riot gear swept in and arrested 51…(VOSD)

·      San Diego police arrested East County activist Ray Lutz for trespassing on private property at Civic Center Plaza Tuesday afternoon after he set up a voter registration table and refused to remove it…(SDUT)

·      David Bejarano (former San Diego Police Chief; US Marshall; Co-owner of the private security firm Presidential Security Services; 2010 candidate for SD County sheriff; current Chula Vista Police Chief) has ended his relationship with (Veritas) an outside security company that was linked to a plot to smuggle Moammar Gadhafi’s son…(Veritas) specializes in clandestine operations, armed combat and provision of weapons…and lists Chula Vista Police Chief David Bejarano as its executive vice president for law enforcement training (SDUT)

·      San Diego Police Chief Bill Lansdowne and Executive Assistant Police Chief David Ramirez appeared at a City Council committee hearing…to answer questions about a string of officer misconduct cases in the department… (and then our Police Chief claimed he was out of the loop about troubled people in his department like officer Anthony Arevalos, who was just convicted of eight felonies and four misdemeanors) VOSD

 Last piece of advice: keep an eye on who's running the new game in town.  They're big time players who carry guns. While they’re watching out for us they also take good care of one another.  The problem is, who is watching them?

Make the call, already

Gotta hand it to the guy -- New York City’s Mayor Bloomberg knows how to lay it on the line.  “The difference” he recently told an audience at MIT “between my level of government and other levels of government is that action takes place at the city level." 

Of course he’s right.  That's the beauty of local government.  It takes place in the here and now.  City politicians take a particular action (positive, negative, good, bad) and sooner or later the results show up in your neighborhood, around your corner. 

Back to Bloomberg.  Whatever else you want to say about him, this guy's not shy about how he uses his power.  And he's not coy about who's in charge of what goes on in his city.  As he informed the Cambridge, MA citizens, “I have my own army in the NYPD.”  

Back to OCCUPY.  Last week I wrote that mayors across the country consulted with one another about how to manage and/or quell OCCUPY activities in their cities.   Concurrently, police chiefs and federal agencies were doing the same thing.

Back to San Diego.  This may explain why our own Mayor Sanders managed to keep a straight face when he denied participating in conference calls with other mayors.  

Maybe what he really meant to say was that he let the city's Chief of Police Lansdowne do the talking for him, which would be consistent with his power under our newish 'strong mayor' form of government.  Under San Diego's new rules the SDPD is the mayor's right hand...if not his own army. 

Which brings me to the conference call I WISH had taken place.  

I wish that all mayors who felt so threatened by the OCCUPY activities in their cities (never mind that they've been essentially peaceful and lawful public assemblies, marred only occasionally by minor problems) were holding serious powwows over the ACTUAL common threat to cities across the country.

I wish that these mayors would come together to discuss the unprecedented number of cities possibly facing bankruptcy (yes, even San Diego) and understand that there's a connection between municipal financial failures and the Occupy Wall Street message.  

These mayors should compare notes on how their city's practice of gambling in the stock market destabilized their municipal pension funds and created unsustainable pension debt, leading to crushing financial crises in their cities.  

I only wish San Diego's mayor was kidding about how he didn't participate in OCCUPY conference calls.  As our city's top leader he owes it to us voters to act like a prime-time mayor should.  He belongs on the phone with other mayors.  And I don't mean talking football! 

My final wish for the day: I wish that Mayor Sanders would seize the opportunity in his waning days in office to set an example of good leadership for San Diego's future 'strong mayors' and start the ball rolling with the following small but crucial step to revamp our dysfunctional city finances:  

I wish he would initiate a conference call to mayors across the nation with the agenda of getting city employee pension funds OUT OF THE STOCK MARKET and back into stable and dependable public investments.

Now that would be an honorable and productive use of the phone wires! 

Who let the cat out?

Mayors across the nation seem to be quaking in their boots as large groups of remarkably decent and polite OCCUPIERS assert their constitutional right to assemble peaceably -- for the distinct purpose of expressing deep discontent over perceptions that government domination by a fabulously wealthy and powerful elite stratum of corporate and Wall Street monied interests produces negative public consequences. 


The overall discipline and good nature of the people in the OCCUPY movement (there are at least 400 ‘occupied’ cities across the nation) continue to be a marvelous, even miraculous, thing to behold.  

Still, it’s understandable that city leaders get nervous when unusual things happen within their jurisdictions, particularly if those things threaten to disturb or in any way recalibrate the status quo.


So maybe it’s only to be expected that a certain degree of conspiring has been going on.  Let me clarify that: conspiring not by the perpetrators of the OCCUPY movement but by the nation’s mayors and experts in law enforcement.  Plus other movers and shakers, as well.  

This is not idle speculation on my part.  It turns out that a series of conference calls and other communications have been taking place over the past months among mayors, law enforcers, and security-minded agencies on how to respond to (snuff out?) OCCUPY-related activities and events.  

The hapless mayor of Oakland inadvertently let the cat out of the bag in a recent interview when she acknowledged her participation in at least one conference call with the mayors of 18 other cities across the country.  The purported purpose of these calls? to trade notes, discuss best practices, share information, indulge in mutual therapy and moral support…simple things like that.  


What about certain confirmed conference calls from Homeland Security and the FBI to local police chiefs and mayors?  Therapeutic?  Guess again.  


Another high-powered caller on the communications circuit was a formerly obscure (at least to me) Washington, DC-based policing think tank known as PERF (Police Executive Research Forum).  They're on record as a coordinator of conference calls among 40 city police chiefs.  Their contribution?  Tactical and planning advice on cracking down on the OCCUPY movement.  

Maybe it's just a  coincidence, but here’s what happened: within days of these therapeutic and PERF conference calls, in more than a dozen cities, using the same police tactics (riot gear, middle-of-the-night clampdowns), and similar legal justifications (zoning, health, sanitation, curfews) -- law enforcement officials swept through and forcibly evicted OCCUPY gatherings and encampments in cities across the nation.  

Yes, San Diego was one of the pack, in lockstep with New York City, Portland, Denver, Salt Lake City, Dallas, Atlanta, Oakland, and others.

Collusion to deprive citizens of their constitutional right to peacefully deliver a message the "establishment” disapproves of?  Behind-closed-doors-coordination of political crackdowns?  Granted, this is pretty chilling information.  But wouldn’t you have loved to be a fly on the wall during one of those conference calls…??  Stay tuned for updates.   

Also stay tuned for a description of the nation-wide conference call I WISH had taken place.

Wanted, for Mayor or otherwise

San Diego could be a place that unfolds like a rose.  Look at our city’s assets: strong neighborhood cohesion, entrepreneurial vigor, accommodating social values, renowned academic institutions, unique geography of canyons and hillsides and coastline, diverse communities, great climate… 

Now look at the mess we’re in: galloping public debt, collapsing city streets, shrinking libraries, accretions of homeless people, cracking water and sewer pipes, scarcity of good jobs, practical jokers passing themselves off as journalism moguls...

So here’s my question: How can it be that there is NOBODY in a position of responsibility in the city of San Diego who is willing to be open, frank, truthful, and honest with the public about the facts of life in our wilting city?  

Isn’t it odd that there is NOBODY in a position of responsibility who risks saying: 

I’m fed up with useless lip-service, let’s get serious about our shrinking public services and imploding communities.  

Time to stop fooling around the edges, let’s get started restructuring our crushing financial debt.   

You gotta be kidding about a 500-foot tall bayside erection.

Ditto for a pumped-up $800million super bowl-sized downtown football stadium.  

Isn’t it peculiar that there is no one in a position of responsibility, or in a political campaign vying for a position of responsibility, who will step up to the plate and speak the truth? 

Isn’t it mortifying that the public is an absolute loser when it comes to effective political leadership in San Diego?  

Despite it all, I'm an optimist.  So who’ll help me put the finishing touches on the following ad for Craig’s list? 

WANTED, FOR MAYOR OR OTHERWISE

 A public-spirited leader who genuinely cares about San Diego and is eager to make a positive contribution to the city and to the people who live and work here.  

• Must be experienced, smart, energetic, and thoroughly willing and able to tell and face the truth
• Must be reasonably independent of political, monetary, and ideological ties that bind...inevitably
• Must be bold enough to tell it like it is, call a spade a spade, and take the lead in the process of digging our city out of the muck
• Must not be a procrastinator, bully, or higher-office seeker
• Must revive and elevate the stature of ‘public servant’
• Must go along with the metaphor of San Diego unfolding.  Like a rose.

It's no joke

Am I the only one having trouble figuring out what’s a joke and what’s for real?  You can help me out by taking a quiz.   Consider the following stories from the past week’s news and let me know, which do you think are jokes?  Which are for real?

* Mayoral candidate Nathan Fletcher circulated a 9-point plan called San Diego Must Invest in Infrastructure.  He says that it’s “time to turn the page on City Hall and move San Diego into a new era…time to invest in our infrastructure and ensure we lay the foundation for a bright, prosperous future.”  His first step would be to create an infrastructure “strike force.”  

Huh? Our city has amassed a deficit approaching one billion dollars for overdue repairs to streets/ sidewalks/ sewer mains/ water pipes/ libraries/ recreation centers – these are basic infrastructure needs.  And that's not all.  This daunting deficit is dwarfed by our unfunded pension liability, which adds another couple of billions to San Diego's backbreaking financial burden. 

In a cynical maneuver to patch up the city until he is safely out the door, our current Mayor has been borrowing from Peter to pay Paul for day-to-day expenses.  It's like taking a 3rd mortgage on your house to pay for roof repairs and new downspouts.   Fletcher says he’ll do it the same way, but he'll use a strike force to lead the charge.  Is this a rational plan? or a joke?

* Not to be one-upped at the firing line, Mayoral candidate Carl DeMaio came out last week with his Save Our Streets Action Plan, promising to fix our decrepit streets without raising taxes.  What's in his magic potion?  An “infrastructure lock box.”  And “innovation labs.”  

DeMaio has a knack for catchy phrases that capture attention and feed on public anxiety.  But here's a warning: his action plans take aim at a lot more than pensions and potholes.  His ‘innovation labs’ are an experiment in dismembering city government and selling it off, piece by piece.  San Diego is his guinea pig.

I'll give you a hint: it's no joke.  DeMaio works from a step-by-step manual for privatizing city government -- not to save money, not for purposes of efficiency, but to launch a new world order based on private corporate ownership of public services.  Don't walk blindly into one of  his 'lock boxes.'  They're traps.

* Another news item from last week: the small Rhode Island town of Central Falls (whose motto is A city with a bright future) filed a bankruptcy plan to plug a huge budget deficit caused by unfunded pension and retiree health benefit liabilities.  The story says it's one of a handful of U.S. cities and counties staring down the road of fiscal collapse.  

With a structural deficit in the billions, San Diego qualifies as a leader of the pack.  The public gets sporadic glimpses into the extent of our collapse during budget hearings each June, when the hatchet falls on increasing numbers of city services and workers.  In the meantime, in between times, city’s leaders and wannabe leaders are still whistling Dixie.  

* On the other hand, in a refreshing show of practicality and candor, the Chargers attorney Mark Fabiani finally told it like it is to the San Diego press: if we want to keep the Chargers in town San Diegans will have to ante up with a big wad of major league taxes.  Finally, someone who’s not kidding!  Too bad the joke's on us.

* And how’s this for a news item: you can WIN A GUN at the annual National Rifle Association fundraiser, to be held in October at the Scottish Rite in Mission Valley.  “This event raises money for local shooting clinics and events including Wounded Warriors, Women On Target, Boy Scout merit badge shoots, and the extremely successful NRA Shooting Sports Family Fun Camp… the ONLY fundraising dinner where you could win a gun!”  No joke, unfortunately.

* But wait.  Last week’s story on the Voice of America (also reported by the Union-Tribune) puts the NRA to shame: “Gun is Grand Prize in Al-Shabab Children's Contest: Somalia's al-Shabab Islamist group has awarded assault rifles and hand grenades to the winners of a children's Koran recital competition…the first prize winner of the Koran recital contest received an AK-47 rifle and $700, while the second-place contestant won an AK-47 and $500.  It says the third prize winner received two hand grenades and $400.” 

Where does this quick scan of last week's news leave us?  With the disconcerting reminders that San Diego isn't isolated from or immune to problems that beset far-away places and that we oughtn't to pass judgment since we aren't doing such a great job here at home.  

But don't give up yet -- there's a consolation prize for failing this quiz.  We may have little control over far-away places but we DO have the power and ability to choose what grows in our own backyard.   

Yes, we need to elect the right people and reject the wrong ones.  But our “leaders” can't and won’t do it on their own.  That's a fact.  It's up to us.  No joke. 

Here's my number one priority for our own backyard: extricate our city from the crippling financial crisis that hobbles us at every turn.   

Organize and produce a vigorous, rigorous public debate about resolving and surviving our city's budget crisis.  

Throw words like visioning, workshop, brainstorming, politifest into the trash.  Dare to speak words like insolvency, municipal bankruptcy, defined-benefit pensions.

Let’s get this one done and over with.  Then we can start on the rest of the world.

Back in the saddle

The official end of summer doesn’t happen until next Thursday but our Mayor and City Council are back in the saddle again after their 5-week break for R&R.

What did everyone do over their long vacations?  We know about the Mayor, since he stole the headlines with a summertime journey to the midwest to check out how other people pay for new football stadiums. The quick answer? by dipping into public funds and imposing new taxes -- not a great option for a broke city like ours.  But that’s the way the football crumbles.

And our other elected officials?  Some were transitioning into campaign mode, particularly the odd-numbered Councilmembers -- Sherri Lightner/district 1, Todd Gloria/district 3, Carl DeMaio/district 5 (actually, he’s running for Mayor), and Marti Emerald/district 7 (actually, she’s running for a new seat in district 9) who are up for election/reelection in 2012.

As if there isn’t enough confusion about who’s a candidate for which district on our newly redrawn City Council map (not expected to go into effect until December 2012), our 4^th district Councilmember Tony Young seems to have spent his summer vacation mulling over how to throw a wrench into the whole process. 

In a heated exchange with the City Attorney, Council president Young defended his position that sitting Council members should take over responsibility for the newly-drawn districts immediately and divide up responsibility for the new district 9.  His motives are mysterious.  Ditto for his employment plans for the near future, which may put district 4 up for grabs sooner rather than later.  We’ll have to wait and see.

Here’s some more confusion.  Councilmember Emerald is serving in her first term in district 7 but she isn't running for reelection to a second term.  Instead, she's running for the new 9th Council seat.  

Since we’ve got term limits in our city: “…no person shall serve more than two consecutive four-year terms as a Council member from any particular district,” if she won in the new district 9, it would reset her elective clock, which might work out fine for her and maybe even the district, who knows?  

But in the terrible possibility that the nefarious, deceptive, misleading, and misanthropic Comprehensive Pension Reform initiative promoted by Councilmember DeMaio (and shamefully endorsed by the Mayor, Councilmembers Falconer and Zapf, and Mayoral candidates Bonnie Dumanis, Nathan Fletcher, and DeMaio) qualifies for the ballot and gets voter approval, it might also result in negative consequences for her, for other newly elected officials, and most importantly for the city's future.  

You can deduce what I think about this initiative, but more about it later.

This brings us back to naming the real and only issue that dominates and exerts full control over our city -- the growing mountain of debt that jeopardizes San Diego’s existence as the pleasant and promising city we call home. 

The cynical “pension reform” initiative promoted by DeMaio et al. will not touch, not even tickle, the multi-billion dollar city debt that hangs like an albatross around our necks.  In fact, this “pension reform” initiative, in conjunction with other attempts to delegitimize city government, will hasten our city’s demise.

Will the facts be addressed during the upcoming campaign season when candidates for Mayor and 5 odd-numbered Council seats start strutting their stuff? 

 Or will the usual political game orchestrated by insider power brokers and self-serving special interests go about their usual business as if Rome weren’t burning and the Titanic not sinking?  To them, the city’s health and well being may be just another cliché.  Russian  roulette, anyone?

After ten months of redistricting

By the end of next year (December 2012) the city of San Diego will be swearing in a brand new Mayor.  At the same time City Council members representing Districts 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9 will also be sworn in.  Bringing up the rear will be the (reelected, presumably) City Attorney. 

Does this lineup augur substantive improvements in San Diego’s civic health and well-being?  That depends -- almost entirely -- on who will be our next "strong" Mayor.  As for the nine individuals occupying the seats of what will be a reconfigured City Council — their roles will be much diminished.  The difference they will make depends on how many of them are sitting at which end of city hall's political seesaw.  

Much more about that, later.  For now, let’s see what the past ten months of the city’s redistricting process have wrought. 

San Diego’s Redistricting Commission approved a final redistricting plan last week.  The final map divides the city into nine Council districts with (give or take) ~144,000 people in each.  To satisfy constraints of census-based population changes, voting rights law, and recent city charter amendments some communities were shifted into neighboring Council districts and a new (multi-ethnic/Latino empowerment) district was inserted into the southern half of the city.  

Here are some speedy bullet points about the history of San Diego government to help put redistricting changes in a wider context:  

• San Diego was incorporated as a city March 27, 1850 
• The first city government consisted of an elected 5-member Common Council and an elected Mayor, City Marshall, City Attorney, City Clerk, City Assessor, and City Treasurer.  Other officials were appointed by the Common Council
• After only two years the city went bankrupt and the State dissolved the government
• The next several decades saw a turbulence of different government forms
• In 1931 a Manager-Council form of government was created with a 7-member Council comprised of 6 Council members and a Mayor
• In 1963 voters approved increasing the number of Council districts from 6 to 8
• In 2006 voters approved a trial Strong Mayor government
• In 2010 voters made the Strong Mayor system permanent; approved the addition of a 9th Council district; and created the requirement for a 2/3 Council majority (6 members) to override the Mayor’s veto

And that gets us to where we are today.  

The City Charter gives people one month to contest the Redistricting Commission’s final map.  If a successful challenge is mounted, the Commission would be required to produce a new plan.
        That could be a risky proposition for dissenters, who might wind up with a map they’d find even less acceptable than the one they're rejecting. 


Still, there are some pretty irate people out there.  For example, some Rancho Penasquitos residents have been up in arms over how Commissioners drew district boundaries for their Park Village neighborhood.  They're organizing a community forum on September 1 to discuss their discontent and decide on how or whether to mount an official challenge. 
        This unexpected flareup of economic/social elitism within the city's first “Asian influence” district brings to mind an old Life of Riley radio quote: “What a revoltin’ development this is!”  

Then there are the heavyweights from Kensington, whose protests have been prodded not only by economic/social elitism but apparently by political pressure from on high.  (To their credit most, but not all, elected officials had the good sense to keep a low profile during the redistricting process).  
         A challenge from this quarter could easily end up biting them in the rear, so turning lemons into lemonade might be a wiser alternative.

Here’s what the new Council district map will look like if all goes smoothly. 

Special strokes for special folks

Redistricting may sound like a dry topic but I assure you it's not. Redistricting is the church key that has pried open San Diego's can of worms and exposed to the light of day clods of hungry and competitive special interests that ordinarily maneuver underground. Redistricting has also unearthed big dollops of intra and inter-community strife, ethnic and racial tensions, and delusions of entitlement. It's a surefire way to get to know your city from a new perspective.

Earlier this summer I explained the process of San Diego redistricting this way: “Our city is currently engaged in REDISTRICTING -- drawing new boundary lines for City Council districts that will more or less equalize the number of San Diegans in each district.  This task is in the hands of a 7-member Redistricting Commission, which also has the added responsibility of carving out a new (9th) Council district” (see July 4,The Size of the Mayor’s Clout).

The target deadline for ratifying a final map is August 25. The job is almost -- but not quite -- finished.  In fact, new turns of events threaten to derail what was expected to be a respectable conclusion to the Commission’s lengthy efforts, and they could result in an expensive and disruptive detour for our city.

One brouhaha involves last-minute resistance by a cluster of Asian-Americans (apparently organized and spearheaded by their Caucasian suburban neighbors) to the formation of an Asian-Pacific Islander "influence" district in the north-central tier of the city, drawn to include Clairemont Mesa, Kearny Mesa, Mira Mesa, and a part of Rancho Penasquitos that includes their neighborhood of Park Village.

The other brouhaha involves the Redistricting Commission's decision to designate the city’s newest Council district as a Latino majority/multi-ethnic “empowerment” area in the part of town just south of I-8, behind and below where you’ll find San Diego State University.

Although it was disquieting to hear the objections of many dissenters not wishing to have their "whiter" suburban-style College-area neighborhoods included in this new District 9, general goodwill and civility on the part of these neighborhoods seem to have won the day.

But no such luck with the community of Kensington, which has been fighting with considerable muscle and political clout to extract and distance itself from the poorer and "browner" new multi-ethnic District 9.

Just last week, Kensington successfully engaged the cooperation of a majority of Redistricting Commissioners, who voted to violate their own oft-stated core principle of preserving communities intact and substituted a new principle called special strokes for special folks.

They redrew the redistricting map and set Kensington free from (undesirable?) neighbors residing in the newly created District 9 and from equally disposable fellow-Kensington residents. 

How? by hacking off the southern part of Kensington where its poorer, browner residents live; by slicing in half the unsuspecting next-door community of Normal Heights; by amputating Kensington’s sister-neighborhood Talmadge (too declasse? sleepy? undistinguished?); and by throwing them all into District 9.  Then by tenderly depositing the northern, affluent, picturesque portion of Kensington into the up-and-coming, politically well-connected Council District 3 lying to the west.  No justification, backup, principles, or standards required.  

Four Redistricting Commissioners gave their OK to this back-alley surgical procedure. Three said NO WAY.

Should there be a revote at the upcoming Redistricting Commission meeting this Monday, 2pm, at City Hall that reverses this unworthy action, some prominent Kensington people are already whispering referendum...lawsuit...

Apparently there are a number of San Diegans who consider coddling a right to which they are exclusively and unmitigatedly entitled.  

to be continued...