A roundup of perspectives and opinions on the voiceofsandiego.org website:
• A long look at the beginning of the end of the city’s pension liabilities turned out to be gasoline on a fire. The proposed solution:
If all goes as planned, in June 2012, San Diego voters will not only decide on a new mayor and City Council but will have the option to impose a new plan for city workers that does two main things: One, it ensures all new city employees — except police officers — have 401(k)-style pensions. And two, it caps the salaries that the city will use to calculate its current workers’ pensions for five years.
In other words, current city employees would ultimately get less in pension payouts than they might otherwise have received, which looks like a snow job to John Quigley. He writes in the comments:
The situation kind of reminds me of the man who offered the boy $15 if he would shovel his driveway. The boy finished the job and looked forward to his reward only to be told by the man he would honor his offer but he would only pay the boy a penny of the total amount owed each year!
Despite the optimistic bleats of Republican sheep lying down with Republican lions (compared by Scott Lewis to the conference of FDR, Winnie and Uncle Joe), some people still see doom on the horizon:
As SD resolves (or appears to resolve) its fiscal distress, it will be in for a whole new world of hurt. I wish all of us who have voted for, and would continue to vote for, more tax revenue could, like the Israelites, mark the doorposts of our homes with the blood of a spring lamb so the disaster about to befall this faulty city would spare us — but alas that is not possible. We the worthy will get hit just like the ones who willingly carve up public service to avoid paying more in taxes.
There are many more comments where those came from, as well as a letter from Dick Vortmann generally addressing the city’s tendency to elect Judas to rob Peter to pay Paul. He exhorts young people to notice they ought to be mad as hell because they have been done a terrible disservice by the current political establishment.
• More than 144 people “Facebook-liked” (which is akin to smudging the glass of a sweetshop display case) our story about the mayor saying that money spent on arts makes this city great and, according to a report, contributes to the city’s economic well-being. He also said he won’t cut big parts of it (though he may cut some of it).
Still, for some people, the argument isn’t enough.
“I hate to break it to Hizzoner, but he is not presiding over a ‘great’ city,” says Bill Bradshaw. “At present he’s presiding over a mediocre, financially strapped city that happens to have great weather.”
“My street looks like a Jackson Pollock painting,” writes Michael James Holland on Facebook and in the comments. “Does that count?”
William Sweeney sees arts vs. public safety as a zero-sum situation:
San Diego PD. Around 250 below minimum staffing. Next time you’re getting burglarized, call a sculptor.
• Michael Sabo says it looks like there has not been a single public EV charger installed by ECOtality during the 18 months they’ve had the EV Project contract, which is supposed to spend $230 million on more than 13,000 residential and public charging stations for electric vehicles.
EV Project website actually indicates numerous public EV chargers being operational throughout San Diego County. But when you go to those locations, if there even is an EV charger present, it will be one installed a decade ago for the late 1990’s GM EV1 vehicles with the old style connector. These old EV chargers don’t use the current J1772 connector that the new EVs use. So they won’t work. Regardless, these old chargers were never part of the present EV Project and to claim them is being so is disingenuous.
The San Diego Reader reports that three charging stations may be installed in Balboa Park this summer.
• Sandra Keener sounds like she had a fine time at the Padres opener.
Dagny Salas contributed to this roundup.
Items quoted here may be lightly edited for spelling, grammar, or style (such as using proper capitalization, removing extra exclamation marks, or fixing obvious typos). 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.
‘The Disaster about to Befall this Faulty City’ and Other Opinions
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A roundup of perspectives and opinions on the voiceofsandiego.org website:
• A long look at the beginning of the end of the city’s pension liabilities turned out to be gasoline on a fire. The proposed solution:
In other words, current city employees would ultimately get less in pension payouts than they might otherwise have received, which looks like a snow job to John Quigley. He writes in the comments:
Despite the optimistic bleats of Republican sheep lying down with Republican lions (compared by Scott Lewis to the conference of FDR, Winnie and Uncle Joe), some people still see doom on the horizon:
There are many more comments where those came from, as well as a letter from Dick Vortmann generally addressing the city’s tendency to elect Judas to rob Peter to pay Paul. He exhorts young people to notice they ought to be mad as hell because they have been done a terrible disservice by the current political establishment.
• More than 144 people “Facebook-liked” (which is akin to smudging the glass of a sweetshop display case) our story about the mayor saying that money spent on arts makes this city great and, according to a report, contributes to the city’s economic well-being. He also said he won’t cut big parts of it (though he may cut some of it).
Still, for some people, the argument isn’t enough.
“I hate to break it to Hizzoner, but he is not presiding over a ‘great’ city,” says Bill Bradshaw. “At present he’s presiding over a mediocre, financially strapped city that happens to have great weather.”
“My street looks like a Jackson Pollock painting,” writes Michael James Holland on Facebook and in the comments. “Does that count?”
William Sweeney sees arts vs. public safety as a zero-sum situation:
• Michael Sabo says it looks like there has not been a single public EV charger installed by ECOtality during the 18 months they’ve had the EV Project contract, which is supposed to spend $230 million on more than 13,000 residential and public charging stations for electric vehicles.
The San Diego Reader reports that three charging stations may be installed in Balboa Park this summer.
• Sandra Keener sounds like she had a fine time at the Padres opener.
Dagny Salas contributed to this roundup.
Items quoted here may be lightly edited for spelling, grammar, or style (such as using proper capitalization, removing extra exclamation marks, or fixing obvious typos). 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.