Maintenance assessment districts are complicated little tools that local governments use to fund neighborhood maintenance and improvements like sidewalk washing, tree trimming and debris removal.
So how do they work? Why are they used, and why have some, like Golden Hill's, which I wrote about yesterday, come under such scrutiny?
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First, a little background:
When Proposition 13 placed severe limits on local governments' ability to generate revenue through property taxes in the 1970s, those governments started relying more heavily on alternative funding sources, including property-related fees, special assessments, and various taxes like hotel and business taxes.
In 1996, Proposition 218 targeted their ability to raise and spend revenue from these sources, too. Its intent was to make special taxes and assessments subject to voter approval. It also tried to ensure that revenue raised through assessments and property fees provided specific benefits to the property owners who paid them, rather than be used for general government services.
An assessment is a levy on property collected specifically for services that benefit property. It differs from a tax, which can be used by governments for purposes benefitting the general public.
That distinction is at the center of the Superior Court ruling in the Golden Hill case that I've been writing about.
A maintenance assessment district -- which we'll call a MAD from here on out -- draws boundaries within a neighborhood.
Property owners are then assessed a fee for maintenance services and improvements. Property owners cannot be charged more than their proportional share of the total cost of the services. Prop. 218 also requires that those services provide "special benefits" to the properties assessed.
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This is where MADs get tricky. A special benefit provides a specific benefit to land and buildings. A general benefit is any benefit to the general public.
Under Prop. 218, local governments can only use assessments to pay for services that provide special benefits to the property or building owners who are assessed.
But many of the services funded by MADs also benefit the general public. Clean sidewalks benefit the houses that face them, but also benefit people who can pass through the neighborhood on foot without stepping in chewing gum.
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So local governments are required to use what's called an engineer's report to determine exactly how much benefit each property owner is receiving from the services they're paying. This calculation, based on size of properties and other factors, is used to determine how much each property pays into the assessment.
These requirements have forced cities, including San Diego, to create engineer's reports that devise complicated equations that make these calculations. Property owners then vote on the report to establish the MAD and agree to be assessed.
In most of San Diego's 57 maintenance assessment districts, the reports lay out exactly how much "special benefit" properties within the district will receive. In Golden Hill, the special benefits were more nebulously defined:
- Enhanced visual aesthetics
- Increased economic opportunity
- Creating a sense of community
- Enhanced quality of life
These are many of the same benefits provided in MADs across the city, but in Golden Hill these intangible benefits were not quantified in the report, as state law requires.
And this is why using the tool has often been called more of an art than a science -- it requires quantifying intangible benefits.
Because the report that Golden Hill voters approved two years ago was ruled in violation of state law last week, the city must now determine whether the entire MAD must be disbanded and started from scratch. Until the city announces its move, the future of MAD-funded services in Golden Hill remains uncertain.
Tuesday, November 24 -- 7:00 pm
Our videographer friends over at the Media Arts Center recently sat down with Amina Adin, a Somali resident from the City Heights neighborhood of Colina Park. I recently wrote about Colina Park and the efforts underway to organize residents and nonprofits to improve safety, health and general quality of life for its large immigrant population.
Amina is Somali immigrant who recently teamed up with Neighborhoods First and the City Heights Community Development Corp., the nonprofit leading the quality of life initiative.
Tuesday, November 24 -- 5:29 pm
As Colina Park residents, businesses, and nonprofits roll out the neighborhood's first quality-of-life plan, which I wrote about Tuesday, its coordinators are trying to figure out how best to engage the large immigrant and refugee community there. They want residents to feel like they have a stake in ensuring the plan's success.
I noted in the story that they'll have to overcome the effects of very low rates of resident homeownership. If they don't own their own homes, residents are less likely to think about making long-term improvements in their communities. Set that aside and you have large numbers of first-generation immigrants from disparate parts of the globe arriving in the United States via Colina Park.
"They don't come to this country wanting to advocate," said Sakara Tear, the plan's coordinator.
So how have Tear and her partners engaged?
Slowly, she said. First, they had to offer a primer on process.
"A lot of our residents don't understand process," Tear said. "When we talk about improvements, they think things are going to change overnight."
They conducted individual meetings with residents and asked if they would be interested in helping draft the community's quality-of-life plan. They looked for residents who were comfortable discussing their needs with staff and with their neighbors. Then they asked them to lead small group meetings, where Somalis would interact with Vietnamese residents. They were asked to bring a friend or neighbor or two.
They asked residents to draw their ideal neighborhoods. They were met with skeptical looks.
"They were saying 'I'm 40 years old, and you want me to draw a picture with crayons?'," Tear said. "But then they started saying, 'OK, we want a park,' and they drew it and really enjoyed it." They discussed their challenges, like transportation or affordable housing and proposed projects to address them.
Many made it into the quality of life planning document, which was presented at a community-wide meeting. More than 300 residents were included in the process.
This is all an experiment for the CDC. It's the first time, Tear said, that Colina Park has tried to improve quality of life on a comprehensive, neighborhood-wide basis. You can imagine some of the logistical complications arising from that approach in Colina Park, a gateway to the United States. At the neighborhood meetings, Tear, who is Cambodian, did her best to juggle translations for all the languages represented.
She feared much could have been lost in the translations they provided.
"But it's a step forward from where we started, which was no community dialogue at all," she said.
Wednesday, November 18 -- 5:26 pm This afternoon, I'll be interviewing Jorge Riquelme, director of the Bayside Community Center, for our weekly Q&A. Bayside provides a range of services for the diverse and largely immigrant community of Linda Vista.
Have questions for Riquelme about Bayside, Linda Vista or neighborhood community centers city-wide?
Send me an e-mail at adrian.florido@voiceofsandiego.org.
Thursday, November 12 -- 11:42 am The number of homeless veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan is on the rise in San Diego, and their faces, as you might expect, are not the faces most of us associate with homelessness.
A few weeks ago I spoke briefly with Darcy Pavich, chaplain at the Veterans Village of San Diego and the coordinator of Stand Down, the agency's annual three-day event offering a range of services to the region's homeless veterans, from food assistance to legal consultations to haircuts.
She said she'd seen a noticeable increase in the number of young people who have turned up to the summer event in the last couple of years. The demographic makeup of homeless veterans is shifting as the older generation from Vietnam is being renewed by veterans in their 20s. And, she said, their children.
"A lot of people also don't realize how many children are coming to Stand Down," Pavich said.
Many of the veterans are hardly more than children themselves. Brandon Wingle was pictured in Sam Hodgson's portrait accompanying my story on homelessness among new veterans. He is 22. He joined the military when he was 19. In 2008, he deployed to Fallujah with the Marines and returned to Camp Pendleton in October. He was on prescription painkillers after a bout with pneumonia and back problems. When he was taken off of medication, he said, he had an easy time continuing to get it from the military pharmacy without a prescription. Prescription drugs flowed freely on the military base, he said. He developed an addiction to Oxycontin, started using heroin, and while high one night walked into a stranger's home off-base and blacked out. He was arrested, charged and served time in jail. When he was released, he entered the residential treatment program at the Veterans Village and is now seeking commendations from his commanders to have his "other than honorable" military discharge reclassified as "honorable" in order to qualify for both disability and VA benefits. He has applied for jobs with several private mercenary groups, including Xe, formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide. He wants "any job where I can have a gun in my hand and be in another country," he said. Johnathan Pebley, 24, also wants to be a mercenary. When he was arrested two hours after receiving an honorable discharge from the military, he was staying on a friend's couch. He said returning to his family in Massachusetts would be hard because he no longer has anything in common with them. About his post-traumatic stress, they've all recommended he "just forget about it and move on." "You can't move on," he said. Wednesday, November 11 -- 3:30 pm Several people asked how I found out about Luigi Cannoni, the man who moved into a deteriorating house on 41st Street in City Heights six months ago and has transformed it into an oasis of green in one of the city's poorest neighborhoods.
I first heard about Luigi several weeks ago, when our education reporter, Emily Alpert, returned to the newsroom after a meeting with Cindy Marten, Central Elementary School's principal.
Emily was in Marten's office and noticed a bowl of cherry tomatoes sitting on her desk.
"I asked if she gardened," Emily told me. "And she said, 'No! There's this man!'" They were a gift from Luigi.
She told Emily a little about him, and when she returned to the newsroom, Emily said she thought she had a good story for me.
A couple of weeks later I called Marten for more details, and a few days later, showed up on Luigi's front porch.
Keep an eye out for future installments about Luigi, and thanks to Emily for asking about that bowl of tomatoes.
Tuesday, November 3 -- 3:47 pm The city of San Diego has secured the use of a privately owned lot on 15th and J streets as the location for this year's temporary winter homeless shelter.
The site, owned by developer OliverMcMillan, was one of two sites selected by City Council to host the shelter this year at its Oct. 13 meeting. It remained unclear whether the site, which hosted the shelter last year, would be available because the owner said he had received federal stimulus funds to develop it.
The Mayor's Office met with developer Dene Oliver, who agreed to make the site available, according to San Diego CityBeat. Had the site not been available, the shelter would have been housed in an empty city-owned warehouse nearby.
The shelter, CityBeat reports, will be open by Thanksgiving, several days earlier than the previously anticipated Dec. 2 opening.
Click here for background and links to our previous coverage on this issue.
Monday, October 26 -- 10:42 pm Ken Jones, founder of KPBS, the first radio station licensed to a California State University campus in 1960, died Friday at the age of 90, the station announced today.
Jones was a speech communications professor at what in the 1950s was called San Diego State College. In September of 1960, he launched KEBS, a five-days-a-week educational radio station that broadcast for two-and-a-half hours a day.
Born in 1919 in Pittsburgh, Jones was initiated into the world of the airwaves as an Army radio officer during World War II. He studied at Northwestern University, and received a master's degree from Stanford University before moving to San Diego in 1948, according to a KPBS press release.
Jones is survived by his wife, Marian, four sons and four grandchildren.
Monday, October 26 -- 3:13 pm
I am in El Paso, Texas, for a conference entitled "The Border: A Region of Promise." It's being hosted by the Border Philanthropy Partnership and the Frontera Asset Building Network.
From my hotel window I can see the border fence with Ciudad Juarez, and a residential neighborhood that starts shortly behind it and ascends the slope of a mountain. On the side of the mountain are painted, in big white letters and in Spanish, the words: "Ciudad Juarez. The Bible is the truth. Read it."
The words are a bit disconcerting, considering that beneath them sprawls the city that holds the inglorious distinction of being Mexico's murder capital. Drug violence has been the cause of more than 3,000 deaths there since the start of last year.
And there's the fence itself. This is the first border town I've visited outside of San Diego. I flew a long way to get here, and the desert was vast. Looking out the window it's baffling that the rusted fence I see is the same one I wrote about a couple of months ago in San Diego, more than 700 miles away.
So there are those images, which are certainly powerful and unsettling ones, and which have come to define the perception of the borderlands in San Diego and the rest of the Southwest for many Americans.
But then there are the ones that I heard so eloquently expressed today, during the first day of the conference that has convened leaders of civil society both in the United States and Mexico's border regions. They are trying to promote opportunity for trans-border exchanges of language, community, commerce, ideas, and innovation.
I have met people from California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas who believe in the words “hopeful,” “culture” and “beauty,” and who think you have to believe in those words if you are to create good out of a region often feared, and convince skeptics that it's possible.
There are grant makers, community health promoters, education advocates, housing providers, and even a few journalists who want to dwell on the border's untold stories. I'm coming away with some interesting future story ideas of my own.
What are your thoughts on the untold stories of San Diego's border? What should I be asking about while I'm here, among people who believe there's more to the border than a rusted fence meant to keep weapons, drugs, and people out?
E-mail me at adrian.florido@voiceofsandiego.org.
Tuesday, October 20 -- 6:05 pm
The New York Times has a story today with plenty of parallels to San Diego's annual winter shelter ordeal.
Residents of Hillsborough County, Fla., were up in arms (literally) over a proposal to erect tents that would serve 250 homeless people. Below are some highlights.
About the proposal, one resident said:
I’m not opposed to helping homeless people. It’s just this is no place for that.
Said one of the County Commissioners to vote on the plan:
In these tough financial times, someone has stepped forward and has been willing to reach out a hand of generosity. That’s what this country has been founded on.
Then he introduced a motion to deny the plan. Commissioners rejected it by a 4-3 vote.
Linda Hinson, 61, a retiree in East Lake, said defeat of the camp plan meant “I don’t have to go out and get a gun.” She declared that there were already enough shelters.
“No there’s not,” interjected Tom Atchison, director of a social service agency with 120 long-term beds for the homeless.
Mr. Atchison told Ms. Hinson there was a six-month wait for a bed, but she ignored his comment. She kept talking about crime as she pushed an elderly neighbor in a wheelchair toward the parking lot.
Wednesday, October 14 -- 2:18 pm
The City Council decided on two sites for this year's winter homeless shelter. The primary site, at 15th Street and Island Avenue, was the site of last year's winter shelter. Council had previously been told the site, which the city spent $140,000 to prepare for the shelter last year, would be unavailable this year.
The site's owner, OliverMcMillan, said the site had received federal stimulus funds that had to be expended on the property.
If that site remains unavailable, the shelter will be placed in an empty warehouse at the corner of 13th Street and F Street. City Council voted 6 to 2 on the sites, with Council President Ben Hueso and Councilman Kevin Faulconer voting no.
More to come.
Tuesday, October 13 -- 5:13 pm
Rosemary Johnston, the legislative chairwoman of the county's Regional Continuum of Care Council, which addresses homelessness countywide, on Tuesday sent a letter to City Council members urging them to select a downtown location for the temporary winter homeless shelter at their Oct. 13 meeting.
Citing the Jan. 30 homeless count conducted by the Regional Taskforce on Homelessness, Johnston said it made no logical sense to move the shelter outside of downtown. District 2, which includes downtown, was home to 1,098 homeless people, according to the count.
District 3, with the second highest concentration of homeless people, was home to only 455. Here's the complete breakdown, according to Johnston:
District 1 - 48
District 2 - 1,098
District 3 - 455
District 4 - 3
District 5 - 66
District 6 - 111
District 7 - 11
District 8 - 115
But District 2 Councilman Kevin Faulconer has opposed the temporary shelter being placed in his district. In recent months, he has supported his stance by arguing that homelessness is a regional problem that requires regional solutions.
According to Johnston, while that may be true, the greatest need remains downtown.
Because the street population is not distributed evenly throughout the city, it is not logical, efficient, or effective to place shelters or services in districts with a very low homeless population. The issue of access to services is very important and compounded by the lack of convenient access to public transportation throughout the city.
The Mayor's Office released a new list of potential sites for this year's winter homeless shelter on Sept. 28. It includes 27 sites, spread across the 8 council districts. Only 10 are suitable to accommodate the tent and the services it will provide, according to a staff report.
The list of potential sites was the second the Mayor's Office has provided to the council. Last month, council members rejected a list of proposals that contained only downtown locations. They asked the city to expand its search beyond downtown, but they all refused to propose possible sites within their own districts, as the mayor had requested.
The council will take up the issue at their next meeting on Oct. 13.
Thursday, October 8 -- 6:23 pm
I received a thought-provoking letter from reader Barbara Graham, a Grant Hill resident. She chimed in about my story on the calls to have Barrio Logan activist Rachael Ortiz removed from the stakeholder committee updating the neighborhood's community plan.
I can well understand Ms. Ortiz' concern about the neighborhoods of Barrio Logan. Grant Hill is just north of Imperial and Commercial streets. Like Barrio Logan, it is a mix of homes and businesses.
I have seen fires in the wrecking yards, and one gasoline explosion that rattled my windows.
Fumes from various industries amongst the homes would waft toxic gases throughout the neighborhood, making it smell like a meth lab.
The neighborhood is largely Latino, and many people work to keep their houses and yards attractive, which makes the industrial blight even more glaring.
When it rains, there is nothing to stop toxic runoff from flowing into the streets; runoff from auto junkyards, recycling lots, and industrial poisons. This is a hazard for the residents who live there. This "patchwork" neighborhood plan was a bad one to begin with.
Regarding gentrification, all one need do is look at the area to realize it could have an attraction for developers of luxury accommodations. Proximity to downtown, views of the bridge and the bay in some cases, and easy access to most major freeways are desirable features.
So the dilemma as I see it involves the removal of industrial businesses in the Barrio Logan neighborhood, as well as proposed usage of the properties they vacate, together with a desire by the locals to maintain the character of their neighborhood.
Yes, a lot of Barrio Logan is lower income, with small, older houses. Yes, the neighborhood is predominantly Latino and African American. Some of the best little restaurants in San Diego are down there.
I believe this "racial issue" is merely a smokescreen thrown up by people who have an interest in redeveloping this desirable area of San Diego.
Observing that upscale development and gentrification will impact ethnic neighborhoods is not racist. The fact is, what demographic group is likely to move into gentrified, overpriced properties? Hint: they burn if left out in the sun too long.
It stands to reason that this "stakeholder committee" would want to oust Ortiz. However, she, too has a stake in that community. The voice she brings is not the voice of developers, industry and commercial business. Her voice is the voice of the "little people" who have to pay taxes, and yet have their voices repeatedly ignored by city planners who have other interests in mind.
I think it is time the city planners start listening to the residents of Barrio Logan. What are their wishes? Which direction would they like their neighborhood community to go? That area has been abused for too long. The sort of "city planning" that has run rampant there would never be tolerated in Clairemont, La Jolla, Hillcrest.
This should be the rule of thumb; if you can't do it in middle income white neighborhoods, don't do it in Barrio Logan. They do want to maintain the ethnic character of their community. Establishing little conclaves of yuppies who don't mingle and don't participate in community issues or activities would not contribute to the ambiance of Barrio Logan. It could be seen as analogous to the American walled off communities in Saudi Arabia where there is little mingling or effort to understand other cultures. While my Latino neighbors are welcoming and friendly, such compounds would not be well received.
Incidentally, I don't see bike lanes as the intrusion of gentrification that Ortiz does. There are a lot of people riding bicycles in my neighborhood; from kids to adults who actually use them for transportation. Since there are no bike lanes, everyone rides in the street. It isn't safe, particularly for inexperienced youngsters. I have to disagree with Ms. Ortiz on this one. Bike lanes benefit communities. It doesn't mean there will be a sudden influx of spandex wearing, skinny tire import riding yuppies! It means a safer environment for residents.
Wednesday, October 7 -- 12:56 pm
I'd like to offer a bit of background on my reporting of yesterday's story about Barrio Logan's community plan update.
I've received a couple of e-mails from readers in which they address the controversial comments made by neighborhood activist Rachael Ortiz, a member of the stakeholder committee.
Reader O.P. said:
As to the actual content of the article, if Ms. Ortiz said the things she is quoted as saying, she should be removed. This is always a big "if", but it doesn't appear that she is denying the comments, just their racist nature.
There is not any question as to whether Ortiz made the comments I attributed to her.
Something I should have mentioned in the story, but did not, is that I got the quote directly from an audio recording of the Sept. 9 stakeholder committee meeting. The audio recording is a public record, available from the city's Planning Department upon request.
Monday, October 5 -- 6:31 pm
I just got an e-mail from Manjeet Ranu, the vice chairman of the Carmel Valley Community Planning Board.
He has been pushing to get the city to build the first neighborhood park in his community, Pacific Highlands Ranch. We wrote about it a couple of weeks ago, highlighting how city budget troubles have affected the construction of public facilities in new developments that have been expecting them, and already paid construction costs.
The mayor's 5-year financial outlook through 2015, released Thursday, listed the public facilities scheduled to come on-line over the next five years.
Gonzales Canyon Neighborhood Park was not among them, though the community's facilities financing plan scheduled construction to begin this fiscal year.
He wrote Park Department director Stacey LoMedico to ask if it had been listed under another name.
She responded:
We have partial (operations) funding allocated in FY15 as the project is anticipated to come on line mid-year. The balance would be requested in FY16.
"This is not acceptable to the community," Ranu wrote.
What do you think? Shoot me an e-mail at adrian.florido@voiceofsandiego.org.
Friday, October 2 -- 2:48 pm
San Diego City Councilman Tony Young has proposed another alternative to the winter homeless shelter that is still seeking a home.
In a memo to Chief Operating Officer Jay Goldstone, Young asked the mayor's office to explore the possibility of funding additional beds at existing homeless shelters in order to "prevent us from scrambling around each year to find a place to erect tents."
The City Council is expected to select a site for the temporary shelter Oct. 13.
Perhaps you and staff can convene a meeting with the main shelter providers ... and ask them if the City were to provide them with the approximately $500,000 for temporary winter shelter beds, could they individually or collectively provide an additional 225 beds for 120 days.
Young, who represents District 4, has said that he would oppose not only the winter homeless shelter in his district, but in any district. In a Sept. 21 letter to the mayor's office, he proposed the possibility of providing homeless people with motel vouchers on especially cold days.
Thursday, October 1 -- 2:15 pm You might remember a mention I made in my story a couple of weeks ago about the budding prospects for grocery options in the Greater Logan Heights area, where those options are few.
A local grocer with a downtown produce store called Market 32 had opened a little produce mart in the big pink Farmers Market building on 22nd Street and Imperial Avenue, which was mostly empty.
Two weeks ago a makeshift produce mart opened in the building's main parcel.
Mark Rillos, who was tending the register and looking over the small selection of fruit and vegetables, said the owner was waiting to determine whether there was enough of a market to expand. Though business was good, he said, he reduced the quantity of produce from the first week's stock because they hadn't sold it fast enough to keep it from rotting.
"People are still hearing about us," he said.
I was driving by the building yesterday afternoon and saw a couple of people loading up a small pickup truck. I got a glance of the building's inside and noticed the shelves were empty.
I pulled into the parking lot and asked the two men if they were affiliated with the store.
One of them, Matt Amoia, was the owner. He'd decided to close shop.
"It's been slow," he said.
Tuesday, September 29 -- 12:38 pm
I enjoyed my stint as The People's Reporter today. You sent me some really newsworthy tips, many a little too complex to clear up over the course of an afternoon of reporting. But they've beefed up my repository of future story ideas, and I hope you'll keep sending me your thoughts about issues affecting your communities, at adrian.florido@voiceofsandiego.org.
Keep an eye out for our next installment of The People's Reporter, which will once again be a regular feature here at voiceofsandiego.org.
In fact, we've reserved a People's Reporter Twitter account, which we plan to get up and running soon.
And on that note, I'll leave you with something I found pretty amusing today.
I have been thoroughly enjoying San Diego MTS's Twitter Feed.
It looks like the administrator just keeps an eye out for tweets about or referring to San Diego's bus and trolley system, and responds to them.
Here are some examples:
@artdirectorjake said:
I think I just put a non English speaking couple on the wrong trolley.. hope they enjoy Tijuana.. #oops #fb
@sdmts responds:
@artdirectorjake well, the best way to see San Diego is to see all of it right? ;)
@sphinxsphere:
On trolley to sdff! awesome :)
@sdmts:
Have fun!
@jfamolare
Feeling under the weather today so took the bus. I miss my bike but it was a wise decision Nice morning today
@sdmts
Get better soon!
@fahnando:
What a nice 150-to-downtown bus driver, whose bus number is 1008 by the way, @sdmts
@sdmts:
I'll send it in!
Date: 9/25/09 Reader Larry Little wants to know about the trolley system:
Are there still plans to extend the Green line from Santee all the way to downtown and eliminate the forced transfer at Old Town? It seems to me that the reason for the transfer at Old Town was that the older stations between Old Town and Downtown couldn't handle the newer type Trolley cars. The plans then were to eventually redo those stops. What happens when the older Trolley cars give out and are no longer available? It seems the transit people have forgotten about this. The transfer is inconvenient, adds 5 to 10 minutes to the trip and is very confusing for visitors.
MTS spokesman Rob Schupp told me just now that yes, the agency plans to eliminate the need for that transfer, and it's working on it as I write this.
You're right, Larry, that the problem up until now has been the Old Town Blue Line Station's incompatibility with the newer trolley cars that run on the Green Line.
MTS plans to raise the platform on older stations to accommodate the 57 new low-floor trolley cars it just approved funding for this month. The modifications will align the platform with the new cars' low floors and allow level boarding. This will ensure the system meets ADA accessibility regulations.
Schupp said that upgrades to the Old Town station will start in about six months and should be completed on all the downtown stations 18 months from now. That will allow the Green Line to continue along the current Blue Line route through downtown.
"It would go through the Santa Fe Depot station and then go around the bayside and terminate at Imperial Avenue and 12th Street," Schupp said.
Thanks for the question, Larry.
For the rest of you, send me your questions at adrian.florido@voiceofsandiego.org or on Twitter.
Date: 9/25/09 Here's a question for the People's Reporter from E.W.:
What happened to the second ethics survey the city did? How were the results? Why weren't they publicized?
In 2006, Mayor Sanders commissioned the city's first ethics survey. The survey asked city employees about their perceptions of the city's ethical standards, whether managers were held to the same standards as other employees, and whether they'd perceived or reported ethics violations in their departments.
The results weren't pretty. They found that 41 percent of city employees surveyed had observed ethical misconduct at work, compared with 26 percent in a survey conducted nationwide.
E.W.'s suggestion that a second ethics survey had been commissioned was news to me. But I guess that's what it means to be a reporter.
I called the Mayor's Office to confirm, and it's true.
The mayor's Office of Ethics and Integrity commissioned a second survey last year, and according to spokeswoman Rachel Laing, the results were "off-the-charts good."
But the report was never released. Just when the results came back last November, City Hall was forced to make mid-year budget cuts. And, well, the Office of Ethics and Integrity, which conducts ethics training, got cut. It was costing the city more than $1 million a year, and the mayor decided to redistribute its duties to other departments, like Human Relations.
So the report never saw the light of day. It's sitting somewhere in the files of former Deputy Operating Officer JoAnne SawyerKnoll, who ran the department.
Laing said Chief Operating Officer Jay Goldstone was going to try and track it down. She's going to forward it to me when she gets a copy, so I'll keep you posted.
Good question, E.W. For the rest of you, keep them coming. Write me at adrian.florido@voiceofsandiego.org or on Twitter.
Friday, September 25 -- 2:27 pm
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Whether it's an interesting story from a neighborhood street corner or a moving obituary, Adrian Florido is out there every day pounding the pavement to bring home the story. This blog brings you all the observations, documents and details that he can bring back to the office (or transmit remotely) in a day's work.
Contact Adrian at adrian.florido@voiceofsandiego.org.
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