Making the Tough Decisions. Sometimes.

By Jacob Pyle, Pacific Beach

If this does happen I dwould hope you do everything within your power to see that all of them are replaced by more capable individuals. The smart thing is to organize and see that the really important things are done before that happens. There are ten little two letter words by Rudolph Dreikurs that are relevant in these trying times. They are: If it is to be, it is up to me. I live in Montana and would like to live in San Diego but if a 4 bedroom home continues to cost around $200,000 I will probably choose to live elsewhere as I consider the San Diego prices still way too high. The average wages are too low . Oh yes. that $200,000 house was probably built around 1950 and I bet the materials to build the house today wouldn't cost $75,000.

Posted by Dennis Gergen | reply to this comment
October 19, 2009 7:48 pm

$200k?? You certainly set your sights low. I don't know exactly what the median price of a home in SD County is, but it is way over that. My dog would leave me if we moved to a house at that price in San Diego. Try $650k + for a decent home, not luxury, but nice. For a nice home in a nice area (that's TWO considerations) start at $850 and work your way up to $1M. Entry-level luxury starts at $1M. You might want to stay put. Sure, you can find a gorgeous, luxury home somwhere in the Kansas Tornado Alley, but that's because who wants to live there? The maxim of real estate is location, location, location, not condition, condition, condition.

Posted by Edgar | reply to this comment
October 21, 2009 5:39 pm

One theory I heard put forward at least since 2004 is that any bankruptcy would be long in coming because the local power brokers would first attempt to "save" the city by selling off prime one time assets to developers. The result would be a fire sale of many of the prime public assets ahead of any bankruptcy because those assets would be protected by bankruptcy. Essentially a looting of the city store. I used to find that view very cynical, but based on the actions (or lack thereof)of the mayors and council member since 2004, combined with the fact that our "reform" mayor blew out his partner in reform (Froman) and the mayors office is now completely stocked and controlled by the same folks who ran the office for Golding and Murphy, I am starting to believe.

Posted by paul | reply to this comment
October 20, 2009 7:34 am

Since there is no current City Directory and has not been one for years, how did you find out who is working in the mayor's office ? No one seems to know or reveal the names. It would be a public service if you did.

Posted by grasca | reply to this comment
October 20, 2009 11:49 am

So Mike Aguirre was right all along. Perhaps he should be mayor.

Posted by Chris Wood | reply to this comment
October 20, 2009 9:31 am

While I would agree with you, not enough has been done, I would disagree with your statement regarding the mayor doing nothing to upset employees. I can tell you this, employees are furious with the mayor. He ran his campaign on promises of gaining concessions from employees, reducing spending and raising revenues. The only thing he has done is gain several concessions from employees, and imposed many more! The mayor has now asked all departments to slash their budgets. He has asked for $73 million from the police budget ($240M approx total). To put that in context, it would equal the salary of all PO-I and PO-IIs and we don't get to count the 250+ vacant positions! That money will ultimately come from the officer's pockets. What concessions have the mayor, council or citizen's made to solve the problem?

Posted by matt | reply to this comment
October 20, 2009 9:58 am

Where did you get $240 million?? The published 2010 budget for the police department is $398 million. The combined budgets for fire and police account for 52.2% of the general fund budget, so if you try and balance the budget without touching safety, you essentially stop providing any services for the public (bye-bye libraries and parks and rec). Also, according to the employee database published by the UT, in 2008 POII's were paid a total of $124,443,155.29 and POI's were paid a total of $13,215,935.34, for a combined total of $137.76 million, which is a long way from the $73 million you said would pay for them all. Also, that is just compensation, and doesn't include pension and medical contributions. I know that there are some inaccuracies in the employee database, but your numbers seem way off. Where did you get them?

Posted by Paul | reply to this comment
October 20, 2009 11:27 am

I was referring to the budgeted salary from the general fund...it is actually $220 million and includes the civilian support staff. The numbers come from the city's budget. 250 plus( cops) of that is unfilled positions, which the department gets no credit for in the cuts, unless they want to cut those jobs from the budget. Why is it, everytime someone talks about balancing the budget, they demand cuts by the employees? If you look at the city's taxes and fees, they are well below that of the state average! Albeit admittedly biased, the CPI did a survey and found they city would increase revenue somewhere in the neighborhood of $170m (a few years ago) by charging the average fees and taxes paid in other cities. The citizens need to do their share as well.

Posted by matt | reply to this comment
October 21, 2009 10:28 am

The overall general fund budget is being cut, which is $398M not $220M. Since the budget is primarily employee compensation, the only real way to make a cut is to reduce compensation or have layoffs. I'll ask you the flip-side question: How come the city hires more people than it can afford to pay? I understand employees being upset when they are asked to make cuts, but why were they hired in the first place if the city can't afford to pay them? Raising taxes to pay for increased service levels is all well and good, but you do that FIRST and THEN hire personnel. taxpayers get understandably pissed when the city illegally obligates them to pay employees with no funding source, and then the employees demand tax increases to pay for it. Do it in the right order and you may get some support.

Posted by Paul | reply to this comment
October 23, 2009 8:01 am

The general fund for salary in the PD is $220m, the rest is specialty pays, educational incentives, benefits, etc that very from person to person. As far as why the city hires more, spends more, wastes more than it makes is the $X-million dollar question. You can enter whatever figure you want there, depending on which deficit projection you prefer. Don't get me wrong Paul, I am not one of the doom and gloom types. I am very realistic, and honest, about what is happening. I would imagine the citizens would want something done with their crime report once the patrol officer takes it. For now, not much is being done. Detective positions are horribly understaffed just to make sure a uniform shows at your door in a "reasonable" timeframe when you dial 911.

Posted by matt | reply to this comment
October 24, 2009 11:26 pm

Making tough decisions. It's time for those elected to represent the people to step up and have the courage to educate the electorate that the time has come to continue enjoying the services they so desire, it may just be time to pay the piper and start contributing more in order to pay for those services. When a family is faced with financial limitations, they obviously cut back on their expenditures but will soon reach a point in time that they come to realize to that cutting back just won't solve the problem - they begin looking for other ways to augment their income. So it needs to be with the elected officials and the electorate to begin looking at other means of increasing the City's income. Soon there won't be enough employees to perform the required work. Wake up San Diego.

Posted by GM | reply to this comment
October 20, 2009 10:36 am

I would like to see the mayor's staff reduced and each council office lose one staff representative in the proposed 27% budget cuts. All the burden of the cuts seems to be in community services. In the Park and Recreation Department an assistant deputy director was hired in September 2009. This deputy director makes over $100,000 per year plus benefits. If this department needs to trim fat, why was the staff position filled ? Many vacancies are not being filled in this department. Recreation centers are being staffed by temporary people. If the Park and Recreation Department exemplifies city management at its best, I think we should be very concerned.

Posted by grasca | reply to this comment
October 21, 2009 12:55 pm

Bankruptcy must be approved by a judge in Bankruptcy court. A judge has to see what assets the city has, and he or she can demand liquidation of those assets before declaring bankruptcy. Also, a judge can demand that creditors get paid off with liquidated assets. that may include the money the city owes the pension fund. So, if San Diego has too much property, the judge can reject bankruptcy or force liquidation. To all the people saying that we should declare bankruptcy, it is not something that can automatically happen, and if it did, the amount going into the general fund, even with new employee contracts, may be very small.

Posted by Fran | reply to this comment
October 24, 2009 8:53 am

I just read where in an effort to save energy costs, the state of Utah put all their non-emergency employees on 10-hour days and closed offices on Friday. While this didn't have quite the savings they hoped for in energy costs, they did save millions in overtime. The public was happy because offices were open after 5 (usually until 6 pm) and they were able to get services provided without having to leave work early. The empoloyees were happy because they had 3-day weekends, and the state was happy because overtime went down. They found that employees could get more work done in the 10 hour day and didn't have to rely on as much ot. Why couldn't this be tried here? It may be one way to reduce the overtime as well as other expenses. Mr.Mayor, this might be worth looking into as right now every cent counts.

Posted by Just A Thought | reply to this comment
October 24, 2009 10:06 am

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