San Diego City Council members Ben Hueso, Marti Emerald and Todd Gloria all last year decided to show goodwill to the rest of City Hall and cut their office budgets during a tough time for the city.
Unlike three of their colleagues — Tony Young, Kevin Faulconer and Sherri Lightner — they won’t be doing that again this year. Theirs were one-time gestures.
“But there is more than a symbolic quality to council budget cuts. The council members who cut their budgets permanently are just getting less money from the city. The others can squirrel away any savings for their own use — not for the city’s general finances,” Liam Dillon writes.
The three council members make their case. What do you think?
- That the politicians can even do it in these times is yet another product of a surprisingly mild budget proposal for San Diego. Despite all of our budget problems, we are still not making the big cuts other cities are. Meanwhile, San Francisco city leaders have just agreed to lay off 500 workers.
- Today’s cartoon features a salty submarine chief absorbing the news of the day.
- Kelly Bennett heard from a reader recently who tells a story of a man who hasn’t made a payment on his home since 2008 and yet, hasn’t been kicked out. It’s the shadow inventory. What’s that? There is a well-founded belief that thousands of homes in San Diego are in foreclosure but, for whatever reason, the banks haven’t moved them onto the market. The worry is that they will someday have to do that and the market will be flooded with low-price homes and the rally will flag.
Do you know of anyone in a similar situation? Drop Kelly a line.
- I just posted a new piece on the bizarre rationale supporters of term limits for county supervisors are clinging to.
- Are too many people using hospital emergency rooms when they should have a simple doctors office to turn to for minor situations? Does the state’s redistricting commission represent you? Who will get the new contract to run the Del Mar races? And who is going to define our waterfront and how it looks? All of those questions are being discussed in the People’s Post.
- The other day, Union-Tribune sports columnist Nick Canepa made what would seem to be a ridiculous suggestion: the Chargers and city should build a new stadium downtown with a roof on top of it — retractable that is. This is San Diego. You’re going to build a stadium with a roof?
But watch the trial balloon rise. According to the Daily Transcript, Chargers special counsel Mark Fabiani appeared in front of the San Diego Hall of Champions yesterday alongside Padres owner Jeff Moorad. He touted the idea — build a stadium downtown with a retractable roof and you could absorb all of the football games being held at Qualcomm Stadium and the concerts and ice shows at the Sports Arena and maybe even some conventions. Then you could sell the Sports Arena (city owned) and Qualcomm Stadium land (city owned).
And taxpayers win.
Perhaps we could even stick a new library (with a school to boot!), a new City Hall and airport inside this facility too. I kid the Chargers. I’ve heard worse ideas. Remember the plan to put the stadium and hotels on top of hulking machinery at the Tenth Avenue Marine Terminal?
- Finally, according to TechDigest, today is the fifth anniversary of the first video ever uploaded onto YouTube. It’s a 19-second-long masterpiece featuring the founder of YouTube at, yes, the San Diego Zoo. Since that moment, of course, millions of videos have been posted.
I’m pretty sure that 90 percent of them that mention San Diego feature someone just as eloquent as that guy pointing out something just as random as he did at the Zoo.
— SCOTT LEWIS