I know Scott Lewis is looking around for a municipal recovery plan. I applaud voiceofsandiego.org for providing a venue for these types of things to be vetted. I just pray that you’re not getting your hopes up.
To be honest, there is no plan. The cavalry is not just beyond the next ridge. The greatest generation is not massing to come and save San Diego.
We now exist in the post-Reagan, post-apocalyptic era created by the haters of government, the government-can-do-no-right crowd, the Grover Norquist groupies and all those who think paying for what we get/need/demand is somehow wrong.
Let me give you a bit of anecdotal data about the downtown real estate market: This year, we’ve had a nice rush of foreign buyers at the higher end of our condo market. Where are they from? Canada and England, mostly.
Interesting that these (by US definition) socialist countries, with their “oppressive, job-killing” tax rates manage to create the kind of wealth that allows their citizenry to buy expensive second homes at the same time many of us are losing are primary ones.
My simple point is that San Diego’s constant bedeviling of its municipal workforce will not and has not provided a platform for recovery. The conservative mantra that “Government IS the problem!” has only led us to growing poverty, a declining middle-class and an entitled elite. It’s just blame-shifting ala Wisconsin and Ohio. It certainly hasn’t amounted to any kind of solutions in the seven years of Mayor Sanders’ stewardship.
Heaven forbid anyone hint at increasing revenues. Blasphemy.
Jim Abbott is the president of Abbott Realty Group.
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