The Morning Report
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Yesterday Councilman Carl DeMaio did a Twitter presser (journo slang for “press conference”), in which he took questions from journalists and citizens alike. Many went unanswered, which I suppose is better than the endless bafflegab politicians do in face-to-face forums when they don’t want to answer or don’t have one.
Among answers he did give, he said he opposed adding a “state surcharge” to parking tickets. (The city paid $3.8 million in parking ticket surcharges to the state last year instead of passing on the cost to violators.) On another story VOSD reader David Cohen says “it is an outrage that City budget funds have been used for years” to pay the parking surcharges.
Parking fines, DeMaio said on Twitter, “should be about managing parking availability, not generating revenues,” (1, 2), which, interestingly, closely echoes comments he and Councilwoman Sherri Lightner made about changing parking meter pricing in 2009: “I think it’s clear this is about raising revenue and not managing parking.”
Instead, DeMaio added, “If you want to save money in parking tickets, we should look at labor costs of meter maids.” To which Debbie Terry (@Debbie858) replied, “Did you REALLY just say ‘meter maids’??” (presumably because, as one dictionary notes, “meter maid” is old-fashioned; “parking enforcement officer” appears to be today’s language).
DeMaio also talked a bit about the reasoning behind his 401k proposal and said he supports fireworks.
• On a story about art in the schoobrary, that fabled Taj Mahal, commenter David Crossley read where the article says that the library project does not involve money from the city’s general fund and replied with “Not yet…” and added that “The tap dancing has already begun, as KUSI tonight had a story about how the library is being constructed without the funds in place to complete the inside of the building. I would love to see the plaque on the empty shell of a library, listing all of the people responsible, headed by Mayor Sanders.”
• On our story about $4 billion in potential redevelopment projects, including a line-by-line PDF of everything being considered, Linda Colley has suspicions that when he threatened to kill off redevelopment agencies, Gov. Jerry Brown knew the agencies would start as many new projects as possible. Was it all part of Moonbeam’s plan? Michael Russell has another issue with the list: “Seems they think that the taxpayers should pay for the ‘restoration of historical buildings’ in 2048, which are buildings they just built yesterday. Nice scam.”
• Mayor Jerry Sanders was one of several mayors representing border towns who responded in a joint letter to an op-ed by former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee in which he said “efforts to secure our southern flank have failed miserably.” The letter replied that “(C)laims that our border cities are out of control are just not true.” The full letter is here in PDF form.
• Ron Burgundy has been nominated by an LA Times blog reader as a mascot for San Diego.
Send comments you’d like to have included here to Grant Barrett, engagement editor for voiceofsandiego.org: grant@voiceofsandiego.org or (619) 550-5666 or @grantbarrett on Twitter.