I've been meaning to mention this: Over the holiday, I actually heard from David Garcia, the former city manager of Chula Vista, who was chased out after a bizarre kerfuffle over what he was looking at on his work computer.
Here's what he reports:
I have accepted a job with the U.S. State Department as a contractor. I was contacted by a headhunter in September who was recruiting personnel with City Management, budgeting, redevelopment and construction experience to work with USAID( US Agency for International Development). I will be going to Iraq for the next 12 months to be part of a group called the "Provincial Reconstruction Team". This is joint military civilian task force that has two main missions; First, rebuilding the infrastructure in the towns and cities in Iraq, and second to establish the framework for democratic governance at the local level.
And he says, he had no problems with the background check.
Still smarting from the mayor's rude kidnapping of the Union-Tribune's incomparable metro columnist, Gerry Braun, I've been reluctant to embrace his replacement, Michael Stetz.
Where'd you go Gerry? Did they stuff you in a closet? Are you trapped on the 11th floor of City Hall? If you are, and somebody has smuggled you this blog, place a sign at the window with a picture of a big smiley face on Friday at 4 p.m. The Truth Pirates can get you out.
OK, back to Stetz. The dude is still on probation as far as I'm concerned.
Here's a snippet from one of his first columns (the emphasis, of course, is mine).
Many of today's teens grew up in a fairly prosperous time, complete with iPods and cell phones, and they might be in for a rude awakening now that the economy is tanking.
My kids will be no exception. On Christmas morning, when my 15-year-old rushes down to the decorated Christmas fern -- who can afford a tree? -- she might just be underwhelmed when she tears the wrapping paper off a half-full box of paper clips.
Then he writes this, Sunday, in a piece advocating that the city start charging residents for their trash pickup service:
I took full advantage of my trash service during the holidays.
My trash cans were overflowing with wrapping paper, toy packaging, roasted chicken remains (yum).
But it hardly matters how much I managed to stuff in there. Every week is like Christmas when it comes to trash pickup in the city of San Diego because it's free for homeowners, like me.
Many businesses, condo owners and apartment renters aren't so lucky. A person owning a Point Loma hilltop home with an ocean view, like mine, gets free trash pickup, but a renter in North Park does not.
So I'm having trouble following him: Is he feeling the pain of the economic crisis or not? Sounds like his 15-year-old actually did get some presents unless he stuck her with the roasted chicken remains. He seemed like he was trying to forge a bond with those who were cutting way back for the holidays only to, weeks later, write "Ha! Not really. I got a huge house, tons of presents and loads of good food."
The San Diego Unified Port District looks like it's still a little freaked out about the ballot measure from November that would have put a huge deck on top of the Tenth Avenue Marine Terminal. The deck would have allowed, perhaps, something like a football stadium to be constructed on top of existing port cargo operations.
The measure, obviously, ate dirt. The developers of this dreamy construction project couldn't even get the builders' interest groups on board. And the developers themselves started fighting. Voters ended up sending the measure back to the cooks like a hamburger with a smushed cockroach on top.
But did the measure actually draw a road map for other groups that might have a better plan to put forward to voters?
The port doesn't want to find out. It's going to try to make it impossible to do a ballot measure like that in the future.
The port held its annual luncheon and bid farewell to outgoing Chairman Michael Bixler today. And in his remarks, Bixler made a bit of news.
He discussed the frustrating debacle the port had with the developers who wanted to build the deck on top of the port's most prized property.
"We are pursuing legislation to ensure none of us have to go through this again," he said.
And later, when the port's vice president, Irene McCormack, made her own statement, she wondered aloud how anyone could have ever hoped to put a Chargers football stadium on the Tenth Avenue property.
"Voters made sure it didn't happen in November. With your help, we'll make sure it never happens," McCormack said.
Bring it on, Chargers.
What would such legislation entail? Since the port is actually the local administrator of state tidelands, the theory is that those lands should only be manipulated by a ballot measure on the state level, if at all.
This will be something to watch.
After all, it wasn't inconceivable to imagine the ballot measure in November doing better than it did. Had it been proposed by a bit more competent of a group, with a bit more support from, say, a successful and newly popular football team, it could have been triumphant.
A few weeks ago, I found it encouraging that even though Chula Vista was facing a disastrous budget shortfall, at least the interim city manager was making City Hall deal with it months in advance. This allows employees time to prepare for the worst and it makes it so that as thorough a discussion about city priorities can happen as possible.
San Diego City Councilman Tony Young called me last week with some encouraging news. He is the new head of the city's budget committee and he claims he's committed to starting the budget process now. It's pretty much a given that the city will either have to make the toughest cuts it has in recent memory or the boldest tax increases.
Tony Young: Hey, relax with the budget. I got this.
Whatever they decide, it's going to take a good discussion of priorities.
He said he's planning the best one of those the city's had in a while. He's going to release a schedule of special hearings and he says he plans to ask or demand that the city's labor unions come up with their own solutions. If they don't want to be blamed like they claim they always are, they will have to come up with their own answers for bridging the gap between the amount of money the city has coming in and the amount of money it owes.
We'll see.
He said the City Council cannot just wait this year to see what the mayor proposes to cut.
"Nothing against the mayor, but each of these past few cycles, they basically present the whole budget and say this is what we're going to do and give very little time for public input and discussion," Young said.
And if you want to close down libraries, or raise taxes or whatever, it takes time to get people used to the idea. Maybe they have other priorities.
So stay tuned for Young's schedule and invitation. And be sure to send him your priorities.
You may have seen the news the other day that Greg Levin, the city's comptroller, announced that he was leaving City Hall to take a job with a foundation tied to San Diego State.
Levin is best known for his work in bringing the city up to date on its audits.
But that's old news.
Levin was increasingly consumed with his work managing the massive overhaul of the city's computer system, the OneSD project -- or ERP. And he apparently wanted out.
I'm telling you, this project is a huge deal. Its budget is $36 million (equal to the entire cost of running the city's library system for one year to put it in perspective) but it is overdue by months -- maybe even a year -- and every minute city employees work on it longer than they planned is more money that wasn't budgeted. This comes, of course, at a time when the city's finances are more frightening than perhaps they ever have been.
It is argued -- credibly -- the new system will save the city money in the long term and make it more efficient. But it has to be implemented first and that's not going well.
Levin was the project manager. And when it became clear in November that the city's contractor in charge was not getting the job done, he and Mary Lewis, the city's chief financial officer, decided to fire the firm. It was at that point that Levin asked if he too could hand off the project to someone else.
At least that's what I heard.
I asked Levin to comment.
He confirmed.
"Yes, I did I asked to be removed from the project because I knew there was going to be a change in direction and I wanted to focus on my first love which is accounting and financial reporting," Levin said.
So what happened? The Mayor's Office refused Levin's request to be moved from the project.
A month later, the comptroller left -- yet another manager to take this project, chew on it a little bit and either leave or be pushed out. The software changeover was the brainchild of Sanders' former top aide Ronne Froman and it was initially managed by Rick Reynolds. Froman quit and Reynolds was fired. Then it was managed by Matt McGarvey, the city's top information technology official. He quit. The city's current chief operating officer, Jay Goldstone, juggled it along with about a dozen other major responsibilities.
And then he gave it to Levin and Lewis.
Levin's done. I called the Mayor's Office to see how they'd manage the project now.
Rachel Laing, the mayor's spokeswoman, told me they were trying to figure it out now. The city has no current chief information officer, but an official named Nader Tirandazi was temporarily serving in that role. He would be taking over the project for the time being, Laing said.
"He will keep the ship running until they get someone in there permanently," she said.
Last week, with family, I went to the movie "Marley and Me." It's obviously about a journalist in Florida, his dog and his family. It was a bit jarring. Why? Not because of any of the crazy dog scenes or the less-than-excited-feeling it gave me about having kids -- no, the impact came from the scene it presented about the world of journalism.
The movie was set in the 90s and here was a young reporter in Florida with opportunities abounding. He got offered job after job, promotion after promotion. Newspapers were hiring and thriving, telling important stories. And this writer wasn't content even in this ocean of prosperity.
It was jarring because that world -- if it ever existed -- certainly doesn't exist now. Newspapers everywhere are falling apart, being closed or being sold -- though nobody appears to be buying. Publishers are laying off reporters, not promoting them. Magazines, local television stations and media sources everywhere are cutting back. Even NPR, once a fundraising powerhouse, is cutting talent and programs.
There is a startling and fast-paced revolution occurring in the way we get news.
Unfortunately, it's happening right during the time when local, in-depth, investigative reporting is most needed. It's not the most opportune time to completely revise our entire media landscape.
But we don't have any choice. Local governments are about to go through their most challenging times in recent memory. School districts will be facing strife and trouble as the state does whatever it will eventually have to do to pull itself away from the brink of bankruptcy. The local economy and housing market will need to be monitored obsessively. The stories that emerge about our environment, our public safety issues, our neighborhoods and our neighbors may never be more interesting.
You see what we do with our budget every day. We're trying to tell these important tales.
So if you are looking for an end-of-the-year donation to round out your giving for the year, please consider donating to help us fund our 2009 budget. If you'd prefer to send a check rather than do it online, you can get all the information here. We've got a great year planned and we are optimistic about our ability to grow and take on more and more stories -- more and more angles from more and more places in the county.
To those who have already given, we can't thank you enough. Please consider coming to our monthly member coffees where everyone who gives -- whether it's $10 or $10,000 -- can come listen to our plans and suggest better ones.
The journalism world may not be anything like it used to be. But you can take steps to help its most important services survive the transition.
Seems like a few of you are a little perturbed that I would take the wish list sent to the federal government from San Diego officials so literally.
Reader sdsouthcoast responded to my last post with this:
I for one am quite tired of the local "gotcha media". The problem here is that you clearly don't have an inkling of an understanding of how this stimulus package works and what will ultimately be funded and how. It is fully expected that Congress will push funds out to states and locals under existing programs. They are not going to "earmark" or delineate specific projects in the bill, but yet members of Congress have asked for project lists so they can see the types of local projects. This will assist in their decision as to which existing programs to fund, but not how much to appropriate. As Mr. Pudgil indicated, local agencies submitted their previously approved CIP lists, as requested by Congress, in a compressed timeframe to serve as examples only. Grant requirements from the respective federal agencies will ultimately dictate what projects can be funded, not these lists.
Reader Another View had a similar take:
Has anyone considered that this was an effort to make the Obama administration aware of everything that was ready to go and COULD be done in the region -- and the value of having a higher number so that when you get a fraction, it's a larger number? That's how you lobby for federal money so that you aren't overlooked when the doling out begins. This list isn't a "fund everything on my list" one by one like a grant application, it's "look at all these items that are ready to go." Kelly Bennett's story actually puts it in the proper perspective, whereas Lewis just ridicules aimlessly without thinking of the actual objective of the list -- then ridicules the explanation given.
The basic theme of these dissents is the same: Like the Mayor's Office says, this is a list of projects that could be built with outside stimulus funds. The feds are supposed to look at it and get an idea of what we would spend a large investment of public dollars on.
We are not supposed to take it literally, then.
I don't agree with that, obviously. What's the point of a list if you're not supposed to look at what's listed? But let's go with the dissenters' definition of what's going on for a minute. Let's assume this is just a list we're supposed to read like a work of fiction -- representative of a greater truth not a literal account.
OK, it's a list of what could be -- not what is. But is it even that? Look at the case of the Ocean Beach library listed as one of the projects that could be built with federal help. The city's top elected official, the mayor, believes many branch libraries are unsustainable and that they should be closed -- top on the list is the OB library. What kind of city simultaneously believes that the Ocean Beach library is both ready to be expanded and ready to be closed? Obviously its expansion is a project far from being "ready to go" as reader Another View claimed.
I didn't even mention the other library on the list. The city claims it could spend more than $10 million of new federal funds on the Balboa Branch Library construction and that work could begin within 12 months. This would be a new 15,000 square foot facility.
Again, are you kidding me? How is the construction of this building representative of what "could" happen in the city of San Diego in the next year?
A couple of weeks ago, the Union-Tribune did an interesting story about the bizarre contradiction inherent in the city's plans to keep building new libraries at the same time it proposes closing others.
The fact is the City Council will have to do something miraculous to save the libraries we have open now. How in the world can the city say, in any context, for any purpose, that it has the capacity to deal with a new building like this? Yet, these projects are listed in the "ready to go" report the U.S. Conference of Mayors is touting.
This is embarrassing.
The potential federal investment in local capital projects provides us with an historic opportunity to not only create jobs to build them now but also increase the capacity and resources needed to stimulate our own local economy. We could draw up a plan that understands this and takes into considerations the limitations in local funding we will face for many years into the future. If this list sent to the government is indeed just some kind of work of fiction to show the feds that we know how to spend money, then I would hope our leaders are planning to get together and draw something up very soon with a little more vision and a little more understanding of reality.
I just talked to Darren Pudgil, the mayor's spokesman. I wanted to know why the city of San Diego would be asking for $10 million from Congress and the president to expand the Ocean Beach library only weeks after the mayor excoriated the City Council for not closing that same library.
The request for the $10 million was included in a massive list of projects all San Diego area public officials submitted to the federal government.
Pudgil said the list of projects the city sent in came from the list of capital improvement projects that the City Council approved last year. And that this was well before the mayor himself had recommended cutting the Ocean Beach branch.
Furthermore, he said, the list didn't matter much. Pudgil says it's just to give Obama and other feds an idea of the kind of projects the city would fund.
"This is not a grant application. It's basically just us letting them know the kinds of projects we would fund with block grant funding," Pudgil said. "It is not a menu or a wish list."
OK. So I wondered: If it's meant to give Obama an idea of what the city would spend its money on, are we giving him a misleading idea if we include projects on there like the expansion of a library the mayor doesn't even want to keep open now?
No, Pudgil said, we're not. "This will all be revisited next year."
So, with fanfare, the region releases a list of the projects it would fund with stimulus money from the new federal government.
But the mayor of San Diego says a good portion of the list isn't to be taken literally. It's just an "idea" of what we'd buy with federal money.
They should have just put, under the city of San Diego's tab of what it would fund: "I don't know, you know, libraries and roads and stuff."
You might have seen this story a couple of days ago about local municipalities putting together a wish-list for incoming President Barack Obama to consider as he crafts the bailout of bailouts, the stimulus of the stimuli -- the big spending plan designed to save the economy.
The Jacumba Airport: Desperately in need of either lawn bowling or a fence. Photo: Rob Davis
Local leaders put together a plan asking for $7.4 billion. It's a lot of money, yes, but Santa Obama is supposedly talking about an $800 billion or more plan. He could give us $7.4 billion and still have, essentially, an $800 billion plan.
So, what, exactly, are we requesting? I need you to help me look through this list. But I can tell this is just classic.
Here's a good example: We are asking the new president and Congress for $350,000 for a "lawn bowling green" in Coronado. As a fan of lawn bowling and its more vulgar cousin, bocce ball, I can't help but approve of this bit of superfluous spending.
How about $350,000 for fencing at the always bustling Jacumba airport? Hey, good fences make good neighbors. Someday the airport might have neighbors to whom it should be good.
Ocean Beach Library: Set for expansion and closure.
But here's my favorite: Mayor Jerry Sanders and the city of San Diego are asking Obama for $10 million to expand the Ocean Beach library. Yes, this is the library that Sanders and co. wanted to close. In fact, they were adamant -- and surprisingly angry -- that the City Council resisted this particular request based in part on the idea that it didn't appear that the mayor had a long-term strategy in mind for the Ocean Beach library and others.
Turns out he has a very clear long-term plan for the Ocean Beach library: close it, then expand it, but keep it closed. That way, you can just tell anyone who complains about it being closed that, look, dude, you got a new library, isn't it pretty?
Then, when people ask what the point of having a big beautiful library is when you can't afford to open it, just announce that you're going to put a school on top of it and they'll love it.
I've called Sandag and the Mayor's Office for some perspective.
I often joked a couple of years ago that the most avid boosters of constructing a new downtown library were so interested in pushing it through that they'd be happy if it were built without a single shelf in it to hold books.
I mean, to minimize the escalating sticker shock of the colossal building, they had decided to furnish it with furniture from the old building. They had decided to use a cheaper concrete and "value engineer" it. They decided to leave two floors unfinished (never stating why they would want to build those floors then at all). And then they claimed that the new facility could be staffed with the same number of employees from the old facility.
It was pretty clear they were willing to say or do anything to make the project palatable to a cash-strapped city. They just wanted a building to be constructed that they could reasonably call a "library."
Call it a schoobrary! Why didn't we think of this before?
There are a few potential challenges. For one, schools are not public places. You can't just go to, say, Lincoln High School and hang out. In fact, to get into Lincoln High, you have to get past a gate and have a good answer for the person there who asks you what you want.
On the other hand, libraries are the exact opposite. They are inherently public places that anyone and everyone can enter. And you are not only allowed to just hang out in libraries, you're expected to. So would library visitors not be allowed into the top floors of the library?
Maybe, since downtown needs a fire station as much, if not more, than a school, we could put one on the top two floors of the new library instead of a school. We could fashion a kind of ramp for the fire trucks to go up and down every day. Or, as a reader suggested, we could put a football stadium, and maybe a cruise ship terminal along with an aquarium or something on top too.
All of that would add value to the project, after all.
At the height of the property bubble, California's giant pension fund, Calpers, made a fateful decision: It aggressively poured money into real estate. As a result, today it's one of the biggest owners of undeveloped residential land in America.
Partly because of these investments, California Public Employees' Retirement System is struggling to avoid one of its worst annual declines since its 1932 inception. Calpers has lost almost a quarter of its assets since July 1, the start of the current fiscal year.
Calpers is now warning California's cities, towns and schools that they may have to cough up more money to cover the retirement and other benefits the fund provides for 1.6 million state workers. Some towns are already cutting municipal services, and at least one is partly blaming the Calpers fees.
This is just what cities like Chula Vista or Escondido need right now. (For the record, Chula Vista officials say they have been told they will have to deal with the full impact of this in two years).
Was it really that hard for governments to envision that things weren't always going to be so rosy? That they didn't have to prepare for a valley when things were peaking? You should look at any politician who's been in power over the last six years, and decide a simple thing: If they weren't part of the tiny tribe trying to get the government of which they were part to either temper its spending, save money or raise money that it could save then they should never, ever, be entrusted with public funds again. Ever. Perhaps we should make a list of who those politicians are.
If you haven't yet read Rob Davis' two-part series on the regions biggest water users, here's the first and here's the second. They are both excellent. You should call Caltrans (or visit the agency's majestic Old Town building) and state representatives and ask them why you are being asked to conserve water (and threatened with mandatory cutbacks) when they are wasting money dumping potable water all over the sides of highways. There are undoubtedly needs for erosion control and other uses, but Caltrans should have a very clear answer about why it must use so much water. It doesn't.
There were a couple of responses to my last post on Wild ERP I wanted to address briefly. In my original column and in subsequent discussions, I've tried to make clear that I understand the need for the new computer system at City Hall. I also get the efficiencies it will provide. And I think residents should be patient with the city when it makes an important investment like this.
But that doesn't mean something hasn't gone wrong. I have no reason to think it's nefarious or scandalous. However, it's costing a lot of money; it's driving employees crazy; and it's still kind of strange. First, the city fired or lost the four or five top managers who were supposed to deliver the new system. Second, the city fired the contractors it has spent millions on trying to implement it. Now, the city expects a long delay and there's really nothing to indicate they won't have further problems.
So, I understand the need to do it. But Jerry Sanders' one big argument about why he deserved to be mayor and why he would be successful was that he was going to bring management competence to the city and set it up, as a strong mayor, to be managed successfully for the long term. This project is not a validation of that promise.
Finally, some of you have already remarked that you heard about the grant we received from the Knight Foundation. Yes, it's very cool.
Knight is working very hard to shine a light at the end of this tunnel of trouble the news media is going through. The foundation seems to have embraced wholeheartedly the concept that providing information is, quite simply, a public service. And that if that service is to survive the tumult right now, we will have to treat it as a service that the community can be (and is) supporting.
Anyway, here's a cool skype interview I did with a Knight representative yesterday.
The Mayor's Office is taking issue with my characterization of the Wild ERP project on TV the other day. During the broadcast discussion, I suggested that the 40 or so city employees working on the project full time as it is being delayed were costing the city money "in addition" to the $36 million budgeted for the project.
Actually, a portion of that $36 million budget for the project is supposed to account for the 40 city and Data Processing Corp. employees working on it full time.
Rachel Laing, a spokewoman for the mayor, wrote me this (my emphasis added):
The time of the city staff dedicated to the project is, in fact, being charged to the $36 million project fund. They are not "in addition to" the $36 million cost of software and consultants. Their work is part of the project budget. Every hour worked counts against the project budget. It's not a separate cost growing on top of an already-spent/earmarked $36 million. If the costs of the additional staff time grow such that it can't be contained within the $36 million project budget, then we will have to go before council to ask for an increased project budget.
Key word there is "if." I think we're beyond if. The project's finish date has been delayed now by at least eight months and possibly up to a year. And, the city has now been forced to hire SAP, with a no-bid contract to finish the work of the much cheaper firm, Axon.
So let's be clear, the budget of the project -- roughly equal to the entire cost of operating the city's library system -- does include costs for the city employees working full time on the effort. However, it was supposed to be done in October. Unless these people agree to work for free, making them work for several more months means they will have to be paid with money not budgeted.
City staff acknowledges this. In the FYI memo to the City Council announcing that they're doing the no-bid contract, (remember, they just communicate with the council as a courtesy, everything is run through the supposedly independent Data Processing Corp.) city officials say they're going to have to pay for the delay (my emphasis added).
On a total project basis, the primary pressure on the total project cost has been City employee staffing costs which are anticipated to be higher as a result of schedule changes.
So perhaps they should start talking about "when" the project costs exceed the budget rather than "if" they do.
And, finally, our news partner, NBC 7/39, got the mayor on the record directly:
I was under the mistaken impression that I was getting this column off my chest and could move on. Nope, it's not going to be so easy. You guys have flooded the email box with perspective -- some claiming expert first-hand knowledge of what's unraveling with this massive undertaking at City Hall. That's going to take a while to parse through.
This is a big deal. But let's take one thing at a time.
First, does it seem odd that city officials have decided they need a new group of consultants to fill out the rest of an $18 million information technology contract and they are going to hire this new group without a bidding process and without more than an FYI to the City Council?
I mean, I understand how it works. The Data Processing Corporation, or DPC, does all of the information technology procurement for the city. The DPC board will review the new, no-bid contract to hire SAP, and the City Council can read about it.
But it's not DPC staff that's deciding it needs this new group. City managers are calling the shots on this. The city is telling DPC what to do.
So if city staff is deciding something and a board apparently must approve that decision, how in the world is it not the City Council?
I talked to City Councilwoman Donna Frye Monday about the issue. She said she saw the value in the city getting a new computer system. Few people don't and I adamantly agree that the patchwork of technology platforms at the city is a daily, dull disaster.
She said the City Council "essentially waived its authority" by letting this whole thing go through DPC.
"The public has been shut out of the process," she said.
The way it's set up, city staff got the advantage of being able to decide all this stuff without the disadvantage of having to deal with the City Council and public on it.
Does someone need to remind Jan Goldsmith that he won the election for city attorney? That the campaign's over? He may have a sour taste in his mouth about what he's inherited from the former city attorney for some time. But he needs to get over it.
He dedicated his whole inauguration speech and his little meeting with the U-T to bashing Mike Aguirre? Imagine if Barack Obama dedicated his inauguration to whining about George W. Bush. We're tired of hearing about it.
Goldsmith wanted the job. He's getting paid good money. He needs to start defining himself.
We're not starting out very well if Goldsmith appears to have shown less class in replacing a troubled rival than Aguirre did.
My column today is here. This one took a lot longer to pull together than I'm used to. Let me know if you have any questions. It's going to require a lot of follow up, some of which should come this week.
I talked to City Councilwoman Donna Frye about it. I'll go through those notes asap.
And you, readers, as always, have some interesting things to say. One of you already got me thinking tonight.
While the city can identify a fixed cost to buy the software and hire the contractors needed to implement this new computer system -- "the largest City information technology project the city's ever undertaken" -- it can't wrap its arms around the cost of all the dozens of employees it has working full time on the effort.
But it's bigger than even that. Here's reader MP on how the city's push for a new computer system is affecting their department:
Good story on the ERP system. I was wondering if that issue would ever hit the light of day. Besides the employees working fulltime, there have been others drawn into it. I happen to be a "change champion" -- a group that was formed in late spring to help get the word about the new system, get employees to accept it, look at working through the changes, etc. We had a rush project to complete "readiness plans" by September 30. It seems right after that everything slowed way down. It wasn't until last week that we were told of the new dates for implementation. I'll believe it when I see it.
One of the problems I see as well is when they initially brought in SAP, the intent was to use it off the shelf with very few customizations. But as time went on it was apparent that this wasn't possible. So they are managing to do a little customization on a shoe-string budget. When SAP can't do something, they call it "best management practices." Ha ha ha! Right!
Also, once the training phase kicks in, each department had to identify a staff member to be assigned to the ERP team for a "train the trainer" type session so that they could then go back and train departments. So we will lose someone to ERP whenever that phase kicks in.
Lani Lutar, the CEO of the San Diego County Taxpayers Association, took my last post seriously and had an observation.
She noted that the city of Chula Vista isn't really facing something it's never had to deal with. She sent over some charts. Even after the recent cuts, the city has about the same number of employees as it had in fiscal year 2004.
But if the manager's proposed cuts are realized, we'll have to go back to the previous decade to see comparable staffing levels.
The U-T chimed in on our ongoing discussion about how the Democrats were able to win local City Council races.
This observation caught my eye.
In the city's north coastal District 1, Democrat Sherri Lightner carried her neighborhood of La Jolla, long expected to be a stronghold after her years of service on community boards there.
But the political newcomer also took the home turf of her Republican opponent, Phil Thalheimer, in Carmel Valley. It was also the neighborhood of her opponent in the primary, Marshall Merrifield.
Chula Vista city leaders are preparing for Thursday's meeting where the city's politicians will finally confront a very large deficit their staff has been warning about.
The city manager has already put out a list of potential cutbacks. I've never seen so many cuts to public safety services, libraries, recreation centers and other personnel proposed at a city before.
Scott Tulloch
I had a chance today to talk to interim City Manager Scott Tulloch. He's doing something interesting. The $20 million budget gap he's trying to fill in the next month isn't in this year's budget. The deficit Tulloch and his deputies are facing this year is down to $4 million. In other words, they could get through this year with small cuts, but next year is so ominous, they have decided to try to make the adjustments needed now -- several months before the budget is actually due.
Chula Vista may have been remarkably adept at getting itself into a horrible mess. But the city's staff seems also remarkably willing to face reality and deal with it. This wasn't always the case, of course, and it could still change. And we'll see if the politicians share the enthusiasm to deal with everything.
Why, exactly, is Tulloch proposing to set next year's budget now, even though the budget isn't due until the summer?
People are going to lose their jobs -- perhaps dozens, he said. If they set the budget now and prepare for that, those employees will have more than the standard two weeks to prepare and look for other jobs.
On the other hand, short-timer syndrome is often best kept to as short of a time as possible.
Anyway, it is admirable to prepare for a storm in advance like this. Actually, it's just rational and something we should expect, but when it comes to local governments, rational decisions are often extraordinary.
And he had even more reality to bring home for us. This isn't just a yearly problem he said. It isn't something that will be OK.
"It's a structural issue. It's not just a problem with next year. I think we need to reorganize the city and how it goes about its business. We can just sell land or take out a loan. That's not a good solution if you think it's going to go on for several years more," Tulloch said.
I asked Tulloch if he thought the city would be fundamentally less safe if the City Council chose to cut the firefighters and police officers the interim city manager has proposed laying off. His staff has proposed cutting 34 full-time positions from the Police Department, for instance. And it will "mean moderate to significant reductions in many areas of service."
So does he think Chula Vistans will be less safe?
"Yes I do," Tulloch said.
Hooray for frankness.
And how about the city's debt obligations?
As we've pointed out, this is a huge deal. The city borrowed millions to build facilities like new police and fire stations and a new City Hall. But the funds to pay off those loans came largely from one-time development fees. These fees, of course, aren't being collected anymore now that the housing boom has turned into a bust.
I asked Tulloch if part of the budget trouble had to do with this phenomenon. He said that it wasn't a major factor. Yet.
He said the city must get 600 new housing units every year to be able to make the payments they need to make. Right now, for this year, they've approved 25 units. An apartment complex north of the Olympic training center might bring on hundreds of new units, but if it doesn't go through, there could be more trouble.
He said that the $20 million deficit they're dealing with now will be significantly higher if no housing development comes through to help the city pay those loans off.
Tulloch said they could make transfers from other development fee pools but that ultimately, the city's general fund would have to carry the burden.
The City Council will have to grapple with this, too.
"We're getting ready to talk to them about this issue," Tulloch said.
Looks like San Diego County Assessor Greg Smith is outsky. The man who may be able to speak faster than any person in the county is moving on and trying to arrange for his deputies to take over. Smith announced his resignation Monday and, on county letterhead, asked the Board of Supervisors to appoint his assistant, David Butler, as his replacement and to support his other assistant, Jeffrey Olson, in the 2010 election for assessor.
Smith's letter is effusive in praise for Olson.
Jeffrey is a dynamic individual who has the passion and desire to run for this office and will make an outstanding candidate and future Assessor.
The guy can do boosterism. Of course maybe we should take his recommendations with a grain of salt. This is also the guy who was trying to persuade everyone to buy a home in the middle of 2006.
"I think the fundamentals are strong," he said. "We don't have a recession, we have job growth -- I don't see the dark clouds out there, I really don't."
Chula Vista breaks my heart. If you missed the budget presentation they are giving, here it is. Some smart people need to go through that and see if it all adds up.
I'm going to try to speak with interim City Manager Scott Tulloch. I would be surprised if the City Council actually decided to lay off firefighters and police officers. But this is how serious it's getting down there. City officials may not declare bankruptcy, but they'll have to cut everything down to the bone to be able to continue to pay their debt obligations.
So you might have noticed that The New York Times wrote a story about us. Overall, it's really been an amazing experience as e-mails and interest in what we're doing have been coming in every day. There was an interesting note in the story that caught us a bit off guard.
The Times wrote about our readership and traffic to the site using measurements from a website called quantcast. I'd never heard of quantcast, but when the writer for the Times looked us up on the site, quantcast had only an estimate for us and that's what the paper used. It was 18,000 people a month, which surprised us. Our internal statistics, from Google Analytics and our content management system, have measured our monthly unique visitors statistics at a much higher level.
For instance, in November, our Google Analytics stats put us at 82,000 absolute unique visitors for November.
We've since signed up with quantcast and embedded the code in our site so that it can track our traffic. Now, quantcast says that 55,000 people visit our site per month.
We'll place the badge below on various parts of the site so you can check it from time to time if you're into that kind of thing.
And if that makes you or your organization want to sponsor the site, you're always welcome to talk with melanie.seales@voiceofsandiego.org and see what she can come up with.
A friend asked me the other day why I hadn't written much about the city of San Diego's budget troubles. I think it's mostly because I've found the whole thing a bit unsettling. It's very startling to see such major service cuts proposed by the city and its mayor. Obviously, it's the kind of realism I've pushed for, but public officials do everything they can to avoid this. When they're worried, we should be pretty freaked out.
And they wouldn't have proposed what they did unless they really were very worried about the city's fiscal health. I've been trying to process what that means for our near-term future.
I don't know yet, but here's what I was able to gather as far as observations go.
I've had some rather interesting (and passionate) bits of feedback from this post recently in which I deduced that the Obama wave didn't seem to be much of a factor in the Sherri Lightner vs. Phil Thalheimer race for the First District City Council seat.
According to the figures at the time of the post, 7,443 more people voted in the 2008 District 1 City Council election than did in 2004 election -- a presidential year in which Thalheimer spent millions to unseat the incumbent, Scott Peters.
This year, Thalheimer was able to significantly improve his showing from 2004 and Lightner got slightly more votes than Peters did. I concluded that it looked like if there were any waves of new voters, Thelheimer got a huge number of them. Not so fast, many of you have told me. Let's get the numbers in and do an intensive analysis. So, I concede, if I'm wrong, I'll admit it. And I may very well be wrong.
Perhaps when all the data is in, you guys can help me analyze it and really see how much of an Obama tsunami there was. And it's not good enough to point out that Lightner did better in precincts like the ones around the university. Of course she did.
The Obama Wave theorists believe that there was a huge group of relatively uninformed people who turned out to vote for the new president. And they believe that labor unions and others did a good job persuading these people to look for down-ticket Democrats like Lightner (even though no party designation appeared next to her name on the ballot).The Wave theorists believe that these people didn't know Lightner from Adam but were told somehow she was a Democrat and voted accordingly. They believe this happened everywhere.
But, there is one problem. If this was the case, it should have also helped someone like City Attorney Mike Aguirre. These Wave voters, if they existed, should have had no knowledge at all about Aguirre but would have looked for the Democrat, and gone for him. But Aguirre got absolutely hammered in his race. The Republican, Jan Goldsmith, just pulverized him. If Aguirre got an Obama bump, it's really difficult to see.
Alas, again, if I'm wrong, let's talk it out. Two things first: The believers in the D1 Obama Tsunami are coming dangerously close to making a couple of conclusions I don't think they want to: 1) That no Republican could have won; and 2) That if there hadn't been this enthusiasm for Obama -- if it wasn't a "wave" year -- they would have won.
Let's deal with the pitfalls of both points: 1) If no Republican could have won, doesn't it just make the Republicans' miscalculation even worse? They spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and man hours on the D1 race. 2) The people who are in politics and who successfully manipulate elections pride themselves on dealing with the world as it is, not as they wish it was. The challenge in District 1 was to deal with the reality as it was and still win. To say they would have won if the situation were different is like someone telling you that the Chargers would have beaten the Steelers in Pittsburgh if it hadn't been cold and snowing and if the Steelers defense hadn't intercepted Philip Rivers twice.
It probably wouldn't make you , if you were a Charger fan, feel any better.
Finally, I told Council President Scott Peters that I would talk to as many current City Council members as possible to see if they had found him to be someone who arbitrarily manipulated the council's docket and forced them to play games to put their issues up for discussion when he might be opposed.
This is the central argument of Carl DeMaio, the newly elected District 5 council member, and City Councilwoman Donna Frye, from District 6, who both want to gut the role of the council president and give all members of the body more opportunity to push forward their issues and resolutions.
Peters argued to me that he had always accommodated requests from his colleagues to discuss issues even when he disagreed. Frye came up with two instances in which he hadn't. But he implored me to talk to the others.
I talked to Brian Maienschein, DeMaio's predecessor the other day. Maienschein, said Peters had never blocked him or held back discussions of issues he thought were important to debate. And he didn't get the sense you had to play "games" with the council president to get your issues heard.
Since Tony Young, from District 4 does not want to change the role of the president and disagrees with DeMaio and Frye. And Councilman Kevin Faulconer vouched for Peters' integrity on the issue, that leaves only Toni Atkins, Jim Madaffer and Ben Hueso to consult about whether they think Peters played games with the docket.
Pretty sure Madaffer and Hueso, who wants to be the next prez, think the status quo is just fine. Next time I talk to Atkins, I'll give her the same question.
Mayor Jerry Sanders says it would take some kind of magic to salvage the concept of a new central library for downtown San Diego and that he can't picture how it would happen.
He said the long push for a main library downtown has been just about brought to an end.
"The economy has brought it just about to the end," Sanders said in an interview. "Reality is not going to allow a library of that type downtown."
The cost of the downtown library was last estimated in 2005 at $185 million. The estimate hasn't been updated despite fluctuations in labor and construction costs. The city has long set aside $80 million in taxpayer funds meant for downtown for the project. In addition, proponents counted on a $20 million grant from the state and they hoped to raise the rest -- $85 million -- from private donors. But only $3 million has been pledged for the effort since it was approved in 2002. Two-million dollars of that came from the owner of The San Diego Union Tribune, David Copley, who has been dissolving his newspaper and looking for a buyer for it.
Sanders said he expected the state to withdraw its grant for the project and that city money set aside for the facility will need to be freed up for other uses.
"We are going to need the money saved at CCDC for the Embarcadero and other uses," he said.
I interviewed Sanders for a column I'm writing about the budget controversy that has engulfed City Hall in the past few weeks. To deal with a shortfall in this year's budget, Sanders proposed that the city shutter seven libraries before the City Council rebuffed his move and located one-time funds to keep them operating for the next few months. The mayor has warned that the council's decision will pass along a $10 million shortfall to an already frightening budget taking shape for next year.
I asked him, just to be sure, whether he was saying that San Diego should wake up from its dream of a downtown library.
"I can't imagine that there's going to be any rabbits brought out of the hat now," he said.
That, after all, would require magic.
A member of Sanders' staff called back to clarify that proponents of the library can still prove its viability by raising the $50 million in private funds needed to break ground by the end of the year.
The Scott Lewis on Politics blog, abbreviated cleverly as SLOP, is a collection of observations, insights and the occasional scoop on public affairs in San Diego. Please feel free to e-mail Scott at scott.lewis@voiceofsandiego.org.
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