The day after the Mayor's Office proposed budget cuts called for reduced library hours at 16 library branches, former library assistant Anna Daniels started worrying again.
She e-mailed Library Director Deborah Barrow, the Mayor’s Office and members of City Council, calling for notices to be posted at all affected branches and for copies of Mayor Jerry Sanders' proposal to be available there.
"The mayor is not following his own core values on this. The library department is the only one with reduced hours," Daniels said in an interview later. "It starts to undermine the value of services to the citizenry. I want to make sure no other branch will have reduced hours or schedules."
The 12 library branches in the system that are currently open on Sunday should not have their hours affected, said Rachel Laing, mayor’s spokeswoman.
The City Council will hear the mayor’s proposed reductions on Dec. 14.
It is true that imitation is the greatest form of flattery.
I am saying goodbye today to my comrades at voiceofsandiego.org, and taking the amazing lessons they've taught me up to Orange County where I will be helping my longtime friend and colleague Norberto Santana start up a nonprofit online news organization.
Our new venture is aptly named Voice of OC. The organization is completely separate from VOSD, but Norberto chose the name Voice in honor of the pioneering work done by the great journalists here. If Voice of OC has half the impact on public life in Orange County as VOSD has on San Diego, then Norberto and I will consider our venture a smashing success.
We are especially excited about the possibility that the two organizations will at some point collaborate on some of the many stories that cross county lines in Southern California.
In addition to my colleagues at VOSD, I want to thank the politicians, scientists and other interesting folks I've had the pleasure of covering over the last two years for a great ride. And finally, I want to thank all of the people to have and continue to support the great work being done here. Please keep it up.
One of our readers contacted us earlier this month about a lemon in the Fire Department. The reader regularly drives by the department's repair facility at 3870 Kearny Villa Rd. and noticed the same fire engine, over and over again.
The city purchased the engine 22 months ago from Crimson Fire, Inc., of Brandon, S.D., for $820,000. The truck was stationed downtown to replace a 15-year-old engine of the fleet. But the truck hasn't worked as out as planned.
The new fire truck has been out of service for 10 of the past 22 months, department spokesman Lee Swanson said. There have been battery problems, malfunctioning windshield wipers, cracks in the truck's frame and numerous other problems. Crimson Fire has paid for the repairs but the breakdowns take another truck from the city's available fleet.
Swanson said the engine was the first purchase the city of San Diego made from Crimson Fire and it "may be the only piece of equipment we ever buy from them."
Jim Salmi is the chief operating officer for Crimson Fire. Some malfunctions are usual, Salmi said, but not as many as San Diego's fire truck. Salmi said he doesn't know why the truck is having so many problems.
"I would say this is on the high end of ... where we are," Salmi said. "It's certainly not the same [for the company's other trucks]."
We held a little in-office shindig for him the other day and I snapped this photo. While I'm no Sandy Huffaker I made an honest attempt to recreate his New York Times image that captured Washburn, hand held high, conducting an interview.
This is your last newsblitz for the week before I head up to the Alpert family homestead. Drive safe, be thankful and don't overdose on the cranberry relish:
We blog that the teachers union in San Diego Unified won a controversial rule to limit workloads. It had proved one of the toughest issues at the bargaining table between the union and the school district, with critics fearing that the rule would hamstring principals and schools from making changes. Bargaining is still continuing over other issues, nearly a year and a half after teachers' last contract was due to expire.
The Union-Tribune reports that a state appellate court ruled that part of a settlement with a former MiraCosta College president was an illegal expenditure of public money, defying a lower court ruling. You might remember this as part of Palmgate and its aftermath.
The UT also reports on the different ways that schools are handling Thanksgiving, including taking it as an opportunity to teach kids more about American Indian cultures.
A Vista community clinic is recruiting teens to talk about the dangers of cyberspace, the North County Times writes.
University of California, Davis students ended their standoff with school officials over tuition hikes on Tuesday night, the Sacramento Bee reports.
The Fresno Bee writes about the changes in California law that legislators are trying to make for a chance at snagging more school stimulus dollars.
San Ramon Valley schools may seek a loan to install solar panels, Bay Area News Group reports. The question of how to pay for going solar has also come up in San Diego.
Education Next hosts an online debate over the nagging question: Can schools alone solve poor kids' problems? Or must schools take on broader issues such as health and counseling to close the gap?
Another blog looks at what happens when some kids can spit back information on tests but don't understand it -- and other kids understand it but can't spit the information out.
The Washington Post opines that a legal ruling should put to rest the idea that D.C. schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee manufactured a budget crisis to get rid of teachers she didn't want.
And for you number nerds: Thanksgiving by the numbers. (Hat tip to Math for America for tweeting it!) Happy Turkey Day, everyone.
Some observations from a day on the City Hall beat (thanks, Liam).
At every press conference, the Mayor's Office hands out a package of information -- quotes, stats, figures, background. On Tuesday, its handout about the budget cuts spent more time making a case that other cities have recession-driven budget problems than detailing San Diego's own strategy for making cuts. The handout has 11 pages of news coverage, which includes a sans-context information sheet that reports, for example, that Toledo, Ohio laid off 75 police officers in May and that Akron, Ohio laid off 38 firefighters in October.
By contrast, it has three pages of details on the mayor's proposal and doesn't offer a line-by-line list of savings.
Rachel Laing, a Sanders spokeswoman, dug up some of those details for me. (Thanks, Rachel.) Cutting the police unit that patrols Mission Bay will save $67,548 annually. That's mostly fuel.
Cutting 12 police dogs will save $644,050 annually -- including $421,159 in expenses. That's a lot of kibble, training, equipment and vet bills.
Cutting the horse unit will save $243,333 annually -- including $183,561 in expenses.
When a reporter asked whether the council offices should cut their budgets, City Council President Ben Hueso said, in effect: No.
It would be my hope that we try to keep our offices in tact. We've been reduced to a very core staff. And we have a lot of work to do. This is my own personal view. I think other council members have different opinions.
I've been cutting in my expenses since the first year I joined the council. The first year we had $140,000 budget savings, the next year we made cuts, but I think we're down to core staff right now. My concern is that if we don’t have the staff that we need to respond to the budget requests that we have and the projects that could before us, we're not going to have enough time to scrutinize the information that's put before us.
And that's gonna force council members between choosing decisions that they don't fully vet or just simply voting no. And voting no on things that put before us run the risk of solving problems for our city. And I can tell, right now, in my office, we are extremely overworked, responding to constituent requests. One of my staff is out there removing graffiti on a day-to-day basis trying to prevent neighborhood blight. We are working very, very hard in our offices with very limited resources.
Cutting another position will only impair our ability to respond to the needs of San Diegans. And that includes passing a budget, passing land-use issues. If you consider the amount of work we have and the different committees and commissions we have, I have staff members that've taken on enormous responsibility to vet information at all levels of government: county, state, city, I mean, we serve on various -- outside of the council -- we serve on MTS, the board of directors, Sandag board of directors, various joint power authorities, various commissions, League of Cities.
All these positions through our involvement, through our active involvement in different levels of government, we've been able to effectuate bringing a lot of money to San Diego. We've been able to be a part of the solution. We've been able to respond to the needs of our constituents. If that's eliminated, it's going to impair the council's ability to have a balanced form of government. So from my standpoint, I feel that in my office, we've done everything we could do to save and create efficiencies. I don't have anyone in my office -- the average salaries in my office are very, very low. It's hard to recruit capable, talented people when we pay very low salaries. We have been very creative, and we have worked very hard to remain on top of an enormous workload.
Among political wonks at San Diego City Hall and beyond, a question casts a big shadow over budget deliberations: Is the city in the hole financially because of the recession? Or are there more basic problems that need to be fixed permanently?
Mayor Jerry Sanders revealed how he's leaning this week. Most of his recommended budget cuts are one-time solutions that won't save money over years to come. In fact, some major expenses are being postponed, not eliminated. (A PDF of the mayor's budget report is here.)
Our story provides perspective on how the cutbacks fail to jibe with the opinions of the mayor's own advisory panel, which called in a draft report for a halt to "half truths, unfunded mandates and budgetary gimmicks."
We also explain how 530 proposed job cuts -- 330 vacant positions and 200 filled ones -- don't translate to hundreds of pink slips. The number of layoffs could actually be zero.
And we check into the fates of the police horses and police dogs who may lose their own jobs. They won't get gold watches for their service, but don't worry: we're told they'll find homes.
In other news:
We have an explainer about how maintenance assessment districts work. Those are the "complicated little tools" that help neighborhoods pay for services but have come under scrutiny.
In housing, columnist Rich Toscano ponders trends in home sales: the prices for high-priced homes are weakening, following demand, as the winter home-sale doldrums loom. He also finds an excuse to mention the U-T, housing data and manscaping in the same sentence. Nice work. I'm alerting the Pulitzer Prize Committee immediately.
Also on our site: San Diego teachers have reached an agreement with the district regarding workloads. Our partners at the Media Arts Center interviewed a Somali woman who's trying to improve life in City Heights. And our Photo of the Day is of a lonely saxophone. Where's the owner? Maybe today's photo soundtrack has the answer.
Elsewhere:
The U-T says San Diegans are already fighting the mayor's proposed budget cuts.
"A special prosecutor is looking into complaints against Chula Vista City Councilman Steve Castaneda," reports 10News.
San Diego CityBeat reports on two energy-drink moguls who have watched their local company "succumb to debt and litigation and now find themselves tied to a high-level federal drug-trafficking case." CityBeat also profiles a woman who's filed 87 lawsuits in the past year and reports that Children's Hospital nurses are suing over flu vaccinations. The nurses say they must wear masks and special badges if they refuse.
If you're a native, you may have fond memories of attending sixth-grade camp at Camp Cuyamaca in the mountains of East County. The camp isn't going anywhere, but its name might be: county education officials want to sell naming rights for a cool $3 million.
"We're not going to sell anything on the back of kids," cautions a spokesman. Guess we'll know they've gone too far when the squirrels start sporting Nike logos. (KPBS)
Finally, a woman who takes photos of scantily clad wives and girlfriends for their Marine sweethearts has been asked to remove an ad that uses the phrase "Aboard Camp Pendleton." The Marines say her use of the name of the base, where she lives, is the problem.
She's moving off base, however, and promises to keep providing a service to the servicemen. Business may start booming: the NCT helpfully provides not one but two links to her work, plus video. Talk about service.
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.
♦♦♦
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.
♦♦♦
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.
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.
While on assignment today trying to track down the Police Department's equestrian unit, I stumbled across this saxophone. I've always loved the way that light glints off of these instruments.
Wired News is reporting that a type of brain scan has been used in a court case, a murder trial in Chicago, for what appears to be the first time.
This could be a big deal for No Lie MRI, a San Diego company that has been trying for years to get its brain scan technology admitted into court. We reported in April on the technology, and an attempt to get it admitted in a San Diego juvenile sex-abuse case.
Nearly a year and a half after its last contract expired, the teachers union has reached an agreement with San Diego Unified that will limit their workloads.
Union leaders say it will prevent teachers from being overburdened with new responsibilities and push schools to plan for teacher time. Workload rules have been one of the most controversial questions for the school district during the protracted negotiations with teachers.
Principals have questioned whether the new rules would hamstring schools from making necessary changes in teachers' duties at all. To address those worries, the union added a section saying that the rule "does not prohibit the District from implementing programs, initiatives or curricular reforms."
Clarification: The school district has not worked out a full contract with the teachers union. It has only settled the question of how to handle workloads.
You thought your morning newsblitz would disappear early for Thanksgiving? Think again:
How bad could it get for San Diego Unified? We report that if California makes the worst possible cuts in the worst possible way, the school district doesn't even have enough ideas on how to slash the money. But skeptics caution that it's too early to panic, especially since budget numbers have a way of shifting.
School board member John de Beck opines in SDNN that shortening the school year is the best option for surviving those cuts.
Cafeteria workers, bus drivers and other workers agreed to do just that in Los Angeles, taking two furlough days to help balance the Los Angeles Unified budget, the Times reports. The Daily Breeze adds that the school district also froze hiring.
A San Jose community college leader racked up some outsized expenses despite the budget crunch on the community colleges, the Mercury News writes. The costs include meals and trips to El Salvadro and Scotland.
The University of California system argues that lost in the furor over tuition hikes at colleges is one key fact: There are also new tax breaks for families with kids in college, the Sacramento Bee writes.
The Oakland Tribune blogs that a school board member who was going to step down because of conflict-of-interest concerns is sticking with the board.
USA Today writes that a California-based group that focuses on civic education misspent $5.9 million from Congress to settle lawsuits and cover costs for unnecessary meals and travel, a U.S. Department of Education audit discovered.
Educated Guess asks workers in technology: Ready to hang up your hat? How about teaching?
The feds are changing their definition of a school turnaround -- a shift that could allow schools to make fixes without replacing all their staff or shutting down, Education Week reports.
Rhode Island schools are moving towards pay-for-performance -- aka merit pay. The teachers union says not so fast, the Providence Journal blogs.
A Montessori educator blogs in Education Week that the best way to get kids to read is to let them choose what they like.
And finally, The New York Times reports on how families are paying to prep kindergarteners for a gifted-and-talented test.
As they face a deficit as high as $203 million, San Diego schools are thinking about getting rid of people (librarians and vice principals), programs (arts and magnet ones) and even campuses (five elementary schools might close).
These are ideas at this point, although they could become reality. And then what?
That's the question facing district officials as they try to figure out what to do if their financial situation gets even worse thanks to state cuts.
The head honchos could choose to wait to figure out what to do, and history suggests that's not a bad idea. After all, scary budget predictions are often wrong. But settling for a poor grade in "Planning Ahead" could be hazardous to the district's financial health.
In other news:
A Superior Court judge has finalized a ruling targeting a levy on property owners that pays for uses to neighborhood trash cleanup, sidewalk sweeping and graffiti removal in San Diego's Golden Hill neighborhood. The city may appeal.
More than three years ago, San Diego voters decided the city should be allowed to put municipal services up for bid.
Outsourcing hasn't exactly come to pass. Yesterday, Councilman Carl DeMaio launched a bid to put a measure on the November 2010 ballot that would once again put privatization before voters, but this time with more of what he considers to be safeguards.
A local labor coalition is sounding the alarm, saying DeMaio's plan hurts workers and fails to protect taxpayers.
In other City Hall news, San Diego's financial hole is getting deeper for the current year, too.
When it comes to software used to track criminal cases, San Diego city and county prosecutors are now on the same page. But they disagree on how much the public should know about the inner workings of the software.
The U-T reports that Mayor Jerry Sanders will propose cutbacks today, with the "most visible cuts" targeting libraries. Other cuts include about 200 pink slips for employees, less beach cleanup and, possibly, less-frequent trash pickup.
The National City office of the ACORN community organizing group is in the news again, this time for apparently throwing thousands of pages of documents into a dumpster, including private information about clients. (NBC San Diego)
Joel Anderson, the East County assemblyman facing a campaign-fund investigation, defends what the U-T calls "a campaign-style mailer at taxpayer expense" which "some say" is targeted at a potential rival for a state Senate seat. "I'm not even in the race and already I'm being ripped -- for what? Doing my job as an assemblyman," he tells the paper.
The embattled Anderson was interviewed at El Cajon's Mother Goose Parade, where any thoughts he had of staying out of the spotlight were clearly a fairy tale.
After a delay last week in presenting the new budget projections, the Mayor’s Office made good on that promise on Monday night.
In releasing the most recent official budget data, Financial Manager Angela Colton said that there would be a $7.5 million shortfall for the year’s end in the city's operating budget, after calculating expenditures and revenues for the first three months of the fiscal year. That's separate from the $200 million shortfall that's projected for next fiscal year.
Mayor Jerry Sanders is slated Tuesday to release his proposed budget reductions for that shortfall. Council will have the opportunity to consider the mayor’s proposed reductions on Dec. 14, said Chief Operating Officer Jay Goldstone.
He said he would be monitoring the deficit over the course of the year. If the deficit stays about the same, he will hold off on recommendations until after the third quarter of the fiscal year. If it grows in between now and that time, recommendations will be made earlier, he said.
Not everyone agrees that Councilman Carl DeMaio’s proposal this afternoon would be a good idea.
The San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council opposed the potential ballot initiative, said political director Evan McLaughlin, who blasted DeMaio’s calls for transparency.
The proposal would hurt local workers, McLaughlin said, since it would repeal the city’s living wage ordinance and ban agreements that prevent strikes on public works projects, among other issues. It also contains language that gives the mayor or city manager the discretion and sole authority to begin direct outsourcing of selected services, including trash or landfill management, without allowing city employees to participate in the bidding process, he said.
"It takes tools out the city’s tool belt as far as policies that promote the local workforce," McLaughlin said.
McLaughlin also took issue with DeMaio’s, a former federal contractor, talk of transparency.
"Putting a buzzword like reform or transparency on a sweeping obliteration of this all taxpayer and worker safeguards is dishonest," McLaughlin said.
More than three years after voters passed a privatization measure for city services, Councilman Carl DeMaio wants to put the idea back on the ballot.
DeMaio stood with an array of contractor workers earlier this afternoon as he announced his intention to gather signatures for a November 2010 initiative that would amend the city charter to produce a more "accountable" version of the program.
The version DeMaio proposed includes deadlines and transparency measures Prop. C did not, he said. This would include posting all contracts online, disclosing the number of bids on each contract and requiring the mayor and City Council members to reveal any campaign contributions received from contractors in the previous year. It also sets a deadline of June 30, 2010 that the city would have to complete a competition process for several support services, including solid waste collection, landfill management, auto and print services and facilities management.
DeMaio lamented what he called an "inexcusable delay" in carrying out Mayor Jerry Sanders' program, which would pit city services departments against private contractors in a bidding process that could lead to their outsourcing.
Not one program has been subject to such review since Proposition C was passed by voters in 2006; it has been stalled as the Mayor's Office and unions have failed to reach an accord on guidelines.
That has fostered a lapse in public trust, he said.
"I think it will help the mayor advance reform at City Hall," DeMaio said. "To achieve efficient project management, to make sure we can restore public trust in decisions that are made in city government."
DeMaio’s decision to go solo with his announcement follows weeks of back and forth between the Mayor’s Office and City Council in closed negotiations about the merit of the mayor’s plan.
"Nothing seems to be changing on that front," DeMaio said.
In light of the city’s $200 million budget deficit, the need for savings has made the issue more urgent, DeMaio said.
"I feel the public is pretty frustrated about that delay and the millions of dollars could have been saved by implementing it quicker," DeMaio said.
The Mayor's Office does not have a position on DeMaio’s proposed version, spokeswoman Rachel Laing said.
DeMaio did not outright dismiss the current ordinance on managed composition, saying he would continue to work with council members on it.
But the time for action is now, he said.
"We need to get moving on those reforms because we have money we need to save in this budget deficit," DeMaio said. "The more money we save in competitive bidding, more money we save (overall)."
I took this shot while on assignment today at the Wild Animal Park. The story (which should drop later this week) has nothing to do with giraffes, but how could I resist taking this picture? Plus, it keeps up with the animal theme I started on Friday.
The San Diego City Attorney's office has updated the system it uses to track criminal cases with software created and used by the San Diego County District Attorney. Authorities pushed for the city's upgrade in order to enhance communication between the two law enforcement agencies.
But when it comes to discussing the system with the public, City Attorney Jan Goldsmith and District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis are not on the same page. Goldsmith held a news conference Friday and paraded the software's inner-workings in front of media. Meanwhile, Dumanis' office won't talk about it.
Although the software made news on Friday, I've been talking about it for awhile behind the scenes. A month ago, I contacted the District Attorney's Office and requested more information about the software's structural design. I wanted to know what kind of information is collected by the case management system, or in other words, what information does the software track besides a defendant's name, a prosecutor's name and a case number?
I requested the information under the California Public Records Act. The law compels public agencies to allow access to records unless "not disclosing the record clearly outweighs the public interest served by disclosure of the record." Some records are automatically exempt from disclosure, but the law requires officials to work with the requestor to "provide suggestions for overcoming any practical basis for denying access to the records or information sought." The law also requires agencies to "describe the information technology and physical location in which the records exist."
The District Attorney's Office denied my request late last month -- refusing to provide any information about the case management system. The following is an excerpt from the explanation that the office is required by law to submit to me:
"Public disclosure of the [system's layout] would also significantly increase the threat to ... an effective attack by 'hackers' seeking to compromise the system's security. The threat of system penetration is not hypothetical but quite real, and quite constant. For this reason, the public interest in maintaining the [system's] confidentiality outweighs any public interest in its disclosure."
Officials from the District Attorney's Office have repeatedly declined to provide any description of the security attacks, except that they happen daily. Are these incidents of spam e-mail or malicious attacks specifically targeted at the case management system? The officials declined to comment on that question.
I asked some colleagues in the journalism world who are more experienced with data security about Dumanis' denial. The journalists said disclosing the information could increase the security risk if the case management system had mediocre defenses from hackers. Otherwise, disclosing the information should not threaten the system's security.
Before Goldsmith's press conference, I met with Ron Moskowitz, the District Attorney's chief information officer and the person who oversees the technical security of the case management system. Moskowitz insisted that any disclosure of the system's design -- even describing the type of information stored by the system -- would increase the risk for malicious attacks.
"We do our best to provide a secure environment," Moskowitz said. "The more information you give out, the greater the risk becomes."
Goldsmith's office obviously disagrees with that level of caution. The news conference showed that his office is less concerned with the risk of disclosing the system's basic design to the public.
At the press conference, Assistant City Attorney David Greenberg led reporters through a visual tour of the case management system. Again, the system is almost identical to the system used by the District Attorney's Office. Several other reporters attended the press conference and so did a few TV news stations. That's right. Goldsmith allowed people to photograph the internal design of the case management system.
I went to Goldsmith's new conference partially on the advice of Dumanis spokesman Steve Walker. He told me Goldsmith's demonstration would give me some information that had been previously denied by the District Attorney's Office.
"Absolutely I see the irony," Walker said after the news conference, referring to the information disclosed at the press conference.
Gina Coburn, a spokeswoman for the City Attorney's Office, said the press conference was designed with some security precautions in mind. Greenberg showed only a couple parts of the system and used one adjudicated case to protect the confidentiality of current cases.
The Sabre Springs Planning Group elected nine new members last week, bringing the total number on the board to 12, which qualifies it as an official advisory committee to the city of San Diego.
The planning group's status was in jeopardy this year due to a lack of community representation. San Diego laws require planning groups to have at least a dozen members, but few residents were signing up for Sabre Springs.
Craig Balben, the group's chairman, told me about the new members in an e-mail. We have been staying in touch since I wrote about Sabre Springs and a string of fatal traffic accidents along the community's main thoroughfare. The most recent death involved a Sabre Springs resident, which inspired some neighbors to become more active in the community's planning group.
As a result of the recent fatality, city engineers are studying the safety of Sabre Springs Parkway. Balben said the planning group is scheduled to hear the city's report at its Jan. 20 meeting. In the meantime, some residents walk up and down the road with signs that say "slow down" or "share the road."
Please let me know if your community is having safety problems with certain roadways. You can contact me by e-mail at keegan.kyle@voiceofsandiego.org
It may be a short school week, but you still have your daily newsblitz:
I overlooked this story last week from KPBS on the forums that San Diego Unified is holding on its budget crisis. We'll be following up with more reporting on the financial troubles soon.
Vista schools decided against merging a middle school and an elementary school to save money, the North County Times writes.
The Union-Tribune profiles a 2nd grader with a knack for violin who spends her weekends at Juilliard.
The Beach and Bay Press writes that those interactive whiteboards popping up in San Diego classroom have an equivalent for preschoolers: the Smart Table.
Amid protests of rising tuition, college students seized control of buildings on University of California campuses in Berkeley and Santa Cruz, the San Jose Mercury News reports. The San Francisco Chronicle follows up with reports on what happened Sunday when the last students were removed from the Santa Cruz campus.
The San Bernardino Sun zeroes in on a Center for American Progress report that faults California for making it too difficult to fire bad teachers. School officials and union reps counter that the rules ensure that there is a fair process before teachers are removed.
Educated Guess blogs on how a group of Los Angeles charter schools will spend a sizable grant from the Gates Foundation that focuses on teacher performance and evaluation: a one-year residency for teachers, a data warehouse to track students' progress and a merit pay system that teachers themselves help create.
A new study finds that No Child Left Behind boosted math scores but had little impact on reading, Education Week reports.
Jay Mathews at the Washington Post tells how a new evaluation system favored by controversial Chancellor Michelle Rhee is rubbing one teacher the wrong way.
And speaking of Rhee, the New York Times reports on a longstanding worry that she may have intervened with a government watchdog agency on behalf of her now-fiancee, the mayor of Sacramento.
Rhode Island unveiled a school reform plan that dovetails with the goals of the Obama Administration. The Providence Journal writes that it includes goals for higher graduation rates, online classes and merit pay, and would make it harder to become and stay a teacher.
Editor's note: Six days a week, the Morning Report lands in the inboxes of more than 5,300 readers. Comprehensive and cleverly written, it's the best way to keep up with news about San Diego from our site and beyond. Make sure you're in the know: Sign up here for free.
More than 90 percent of California's coastal sage scrub has been paved over. But in Point Loma, the Navy owns one of the largest swaths of this type of only-in-California land. And the military has commissioned a comprehensive study of it to see exactly which bugs live there.
Yes, bugs.
You never know, they say, when someone might come around looking for a spider that was extinct everywhere else and that may help with erectile dysfunction or some other human malady.
Between November of last year and this month, the region's companies shed 52,000 jobs. As Rich Toscano, our economics and housing analyst notes, this may seem miserable but it's actually the best that measurement has looked in six months. He, of course, has some great graphs to make his points.
If you missed our scoop about the mayor's hand-selected task force on Friday evening, you are going to want to check it out. The group recommended major reforms to the way the city operates. Without them? The mayor should consider bankruptcy.
"Stop the half truths, unfunded mandates and budgetary gimmicks," the group tells the mayor. Yikes! That sounds like something an audacious columnist at an irreverent nonprofit news source would write, not a collection of the mayor's trusted inner circle.
Government reporter Liam Dillon has left town for the holiday, but he did leave his regular feature: Public Comment. This where he offers you a preview of what's on the City Council docket so you can weigh in if you can't get down there.
Elsewhere:
Qualcomm Corp. is showing off a small 5.3-inch screen that doesn't need a backlight and that might be perfect for reading things like your daily Morning Report. The company is hinting that it will launch a new e-reader with a "brand partner" in the next year.
When you apply to the San Diego Housing Commission for help getting a second loan to buy a home, you have to work with one of their 160 preferred lenders to get the first loan. But a handful of those lenders have had their licenses suspended and others don't have records available for inspection, writes the Union-Tribune and KGTV in a joint investigative piece.
Padres closer Heath Bell might have surprised a few people when he told a Boston Herald columnist that former Padres GM Kevin Towers didn't have the power to make the decisions he wanted to.
"I just would like to know what direction we’re going in ... I hope ( new GM Jed Hoyer) has got full rein. I hope he does. I know (former GM) Kevin Towers didn’t always have it," Bell told the Herald.
Finally, humans have known (though I missed the memo) that millions of tiny bacteria live on our skin. And they help us in countless ways.
But a San Diego researcher, Richard Gallo at UCSD, has illustrated the relationship better than before. And, according to Forbes, he's even added more evidence to the collection that suggests humans who live in industrialized countries are more susceptible to allergies and other ailments because they aren't exposed enough to these good bugs.
And that appears to be the theme of the day: Go find some good bugs, thank them and hope they can keep the bad ones away.
It's time for Public Comment, our weekly take on the San Diego City Council agenda. We link to all the agendas, briefly highlight an issue and invite readers to weigh in with their thoughts.
Notes: Council will meet Monday both at 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. Monday's supplemental agenda will address the city's first quarter financial report. Tuesday's supplemental agenda will address a city revenue commission.
Issues of Interest: The big news is not what's on this week's City Council agenda, but what isn't. Tuesday, the Mayor's Office is expected to release budget reduction proposals that are the city's first concrete attempt to address its $200 million budget deficit for the coming fiscal year. Council is expected to weigh in formally at a meeting in December. The goal, according to a schedule released last month, is to make substantial cuts by mid-December.
City Council will prepare for these discussions by reviewing the city's first quarter financial report on Monday evening, an item delayed from last week's meeting. Read the report here and the Office of the Independent Budget Analyst's take here.
A programming note: I will be out of town this week travelling to my homeland of cheesesteaks and honey. Also, there will be no "Agenda" in the morning. Please refer your questions, comments and derogatory remarks on the council docket or any City Hall issues to my colleague, Dagny Salas.
Editor's note: Six days a week, the Morning Report lands in the inboxes of more than 5,300 readers. Comprehensive and cleverly written, it's the best way to keep up with news about San Diego from our site and beyond. Make sure you're in the know: Sign up here for free.
Shape up. "Stop the half truths, unfunded mandates and budgetary gimmicks." And if the city of San Diego can't manage to make drastic changes and boost taxes, it should reorganize under bankruptcy proceedings.
That's the stunning advice in a draft report written by a group of advisers to Mayor Jerry Sanders.
Why stunning? Because the draft, which our reporter Liam Dillon obtained, is so blunt about bankruptcy and other drastic options: our story says it calls for "slashing employee expenditures, reducing and outsourcing city services and gaining voter approval for dramatic staff reductions. The task force also advocates tax increases after expenses are cut."
The draft even raises the prospect of the elimination of retiree health care benefits for city workers, although it suggests reform too.
We'll keep a close eye on this, with an eye toward monitoring the language of the final report, expected to be publicly released within a few weeks. One of the advisers says the draft we obtained may have undergone as many as five revisions.
In other news:
A Mexican teenager pleaded guilty yesterday to fatally shooting a Border Patrol agent in July. We were in the courtroom and recap the case, which was solved when the shooter turned himself in, partially because he feared an intense manhunt put him and his family in danger.
It's hard out there for a biotech entrepreneur. Money is scarce, and even keeping pledged dollars is a challenge. In this weekend's Q&A feature, we talk to a top official at an algae biofuel start-up about venture-capitalist backbones, stimulus funding and the future of innovation.
Our Photo of the Day is a keeper: It's a shot from photographer Sam Hodgson's personal files of two sheep on the run in New Zealand. Our resident Kiwi (he has born there) tells me they were being chased by a sheepdog. Today's photo soundtrack is a Beatles song said to have been inspired by another sheepdog.
Elsewhere:
The U-T reports that "Assemblyman Joel Anderson has sent a taxpayer-financed, campaign-style mailer touting legislation aimed at a potential political rival." Anderson, who's under investigation over campaign funding issues, refuses to talk to the paper.
"City Councilman Carl DeMaio and a group of building contractors are scheduled Monday to announce a ballot initiative titled 'Competition and Transparency in City Contracting' for the November 2010 city election." (U-T)
The (Long Beach) Press-Telegram bashes the $350 million desalinization plant in Carlsbad in an editorial, but its ultimate verdict on the project may surprise you.
David Beckham: San Diego soccer-team mogul? This story from a British newspaper hints that it's possible.
The Coffee Collection (our best reads of the week):
And Not a Drop to Discount: Water prices will keep going up and up. We explain by how much and why.
Maybe They Should Run from Office: San Diego is facing huge and painful budget cuts, just as a bunch of councilmembers get ready to face voters.
Quote of the Week: "It's kind of embarrassing. The last time he walked into a bank in San Diego, he pointed a gun at the clerk and said, 'What did I come in here for?'" -- Jay Leno on the now-famous bank robber known as the "Geezer Bandit."
In the process of trying to put together my own website, I've realized I have a lot of interesting images that never make it onto the pages of voiceofsandiego.org. Friends and family will tell you that it's hard to get me to put my camera down. The result of this is a massive body of personal work that may or may not make it onto the web.
So, every now and then, I'll share a bit of personal work with you here as a Photo of the Day. This one is from a 2006 trip to New Zealand, where I worked for 6 weeks on a farm near Christchurch (where I was born). Over the years, many friends and family have commented that it's one of their favorite images of mine, so I thought it I'd share it with all of you.
A few questions weren't answered in my story about San Diego's largest water users today:
How much water does it take to keep the Balboa Park Golf Course green? The city used 116 million gallons in the last year -- enough for 700 families. That's down 15 percent from the previous year, when 137 million gallons were used.
As a standalone facility, the course would be the city's 14th-largest user, consuming more than three Marriott hotels (downtown, La Jolla and Mission Valley) or the Poway Unified School District.
What role do cruise ships play in the Unified Port of San Diego's consumption? They consume about 27 percent of the water the port buys from the city. The agency, which is the city's ninth-largest user, bought 216 million gallons of water in the last year, according to city statistics.
Port spokesman Ron Powell said the district cut consumption in its buildings by 25 percent and in its parks by 35 percent -- conservation gains he said were outweighed by thirsty cruise ships filling up their potable water tanks before leaving port.
San Diego Unified has spelled out new guidelines on school fees, 10News reports. We also wrote about this issue a few weeks ago, as parents raised concerns that schools were crossing the legal line when hitting them up for art supplies, uniforms and other costs.
The California Constitution mandates that public education be provided to students free of charge, unless a charge is specifically authorized by law for a particular program or activity ... whether curricular or extracurricular, and regardless of whether credit is awarded for the educational activity. The right of free access also prohibits mandated purchases of materials, supplies, equipment or uniforms associated with the activity, as well as the payment of security deposits for access, participation, materials or equipment
Finally, a process that allows for a waiver process for an otherwise mandatory fee, charge or deposit does not render it constitutionally permissible.
The guidelines go on to lay out exceptions to the rules, including charging kids for loaned books or supplies that they fail to return, fees for parking vehicles on school grounds and school camp programs.
The almighty dollar strikes again in your morning newsblitz! It ain't pretty out there:
We blog on two clashing views on what it takes to do "zero-based budgeting" -- one way that San Diego Unified wants to revamp its financial planning -- and how the school board is nudging labor unions to look at ways to save money on health and welfare benefits.
Gov. Schwarzenegger is being asked to roll back funding for an after-school initiative that ties up more than $500 million annually -- an idea that he vetoed last year, the Associated Press reports.
Meanwhile, the Gates Foundation is spending millions on the question: What makes a good teacher a good teacher? The New York Times explains how they're looking for the answer.
The Christian Science Monitor writes about how the Obama Administration wants to make better preschools for disadvantaged kids, how they'd pay for it and what the skeptics say.
The feds are getting a lot of complaints about the rules tied to their school innovation grants, which critics say could make foundations the gatekeepers for crucial school dollars, Education Week writes.
And finally, a piece of positive news in the midst of all this dour budget talk: Education Week reports that more children worldwide are in school and fewer are dying, two decades after the United Nations launched a treaty on children's rights.
At the Balboa Park Golf Course, the greens are still green, but the driving range is turning brown. Nowadays, it just gets watered once a month. And that's just fine by the city of San Diego, which runs the course.
Other cutbacks -- including less irrigation at its 400 parks -- helped the city lower its overall water use more than any other single user in San Diego over the past two years.
But the city doesn't seem to have much company among the largest users when it comes to saving lots of water. "While the region has consistently been told to use 10 percent less, San Diego's 96 largest users collectively haven't hit the mark," we report.
In other news:
San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders wants the police and fire departments to come up with $107 million in cuts. In a follow-up to yesterday's examination of public safety on the chopping block, we take a closer look at how much that is. For one thing, it's 20 percent of the city's public-safety budget.
Pink slips for hundreds of scientists who work for the Pfizer pharmaceutical company could translate to profits for small local biotechs that may be recruited to fill the void. And it looks like local Pfizer employees will be spared the ax.
A geological fault line traverses the proposed downtown site for a new football stadium. It's in what's known as Tailgate Park, near the baseball stadium. The fault worried the folks looking for a site to handle an expansion of the convention center, but the Chargers general counsel says stadium architects can work around it.
Also: We have more details about the land deal that provides space for the convention center to expand. We explain "zero-based budgeting" and what it means for San Diego schools. And our Photo of the Day is a sneak peak at the subject of tomorrow's Q&A feature. The photo soundtrack is courtesy of Linkin Park.
Elsewhere:
Jeff Schemmel, San Diego State's athletic director, resigned yesterday amid a scandal involving a reported extramarital affair and what's described as an attempt to make the university pay the cost of traveling to Alabama for a romantic rendezvous. Yes, Alabama.
Just when Escondido thought it was out, its mayor is pulling it back in. To the hunt for a new Chargers stadium, that is. Mayor Lori Holt Pfeiler is flying to Denver on a team jet Sunday and hopes to tell "Dean Spanos, whose family owns the Chargers, that Escondido would be a good location if a stadium site the team is considering in downtown San Diego falls through." (NCT)
I'm heading out in the morning for a little vacation and so the blog will be quiet for a few days. In the meantime, I'll leave you with one more piece from the numbers I posted earlier this week from MDA DataQuick:
We've been tracking how many of the current home sales in San Diego County are financed with FHA loans, and that percentage keeps growing.
In August, FHA financed 28.2 percent of the homes bought using mortgages. In the same month in 2007, a tiny 0.8 percent of the homes bought with loans were FHA-financed.
In September, 28.8 percent of the homes bought with loans were financed with FHA.
This week's numbers were for October, and 29.7 percent of the homes bought last month were financed with FHA loans.
Why does this matter?
The Federal Housing Administration is coming under increased scrutiny for the sustainability of its attempts to fill in the lending gaps left by the skittish private banking sector. Last week, an audit of the agency revealed it has fallen far below the minimum level of cash reserves the federal government requires it to have. (More on that announcement here.)
Because such a big chunk of San Diego County transactions use FHA loans, changes at the agency could dramatically affect the local market. Though no specific changes have been announced, some analysts have warned the agency could follow the lead of other big players in the mortgage sector -- implementing more requirements for borrowers like higher down payments, for example. If the federal government does make the loans more difficult to get, then a significant percentage of local buyers will face new hurdles to getting a home, potentially changing the face of demand
I'd love to hear your thoughts on this growing share -- leave a comment below (head to Survival if you're not there already). I'll be back after Thanksgiving. Enjoy your holiday.
Listen to voiceofsandiego.org's radio program on AM 600 KOGO: Latest Episode (November 8): Scott Lewis and Michael Zucchet talk about the city's budget
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