Whether it’s debating about how to evaluate teachers or the city’s spending priorities, the comments sections on stories here at VOSD are quite lively.
Here are the top 10 most-commented articles on our website this year and a comment from each.
1. Building ‘Taj Mahals’ with Taxpayer Money
• Don Wood:
It looks like this is more about providing huge corporate welfare subsidies to “affordable housing” developers than providing reasonably priced shelter to low income families. Typical of San Diego.
2. Teacher Implores Union to Renegotiate
• Mary Laiuppa:
Why is it only teachers are supposed to sacrifice of the greater good of the kids? (As if we aren’t already.) How about some others make some sacrifices for the greater good of the kids that will be our future taxpayers?
3. Tie:
Letter: I’m a Teacher, I Feel Disrespected
I respect teachers, I really do. Every parent I know respects the job teachers do. But you lose me when you start talking about how little you make for your credentials. There are many people with master’s degrees who make far less than you do. The income people take home is not commensurate with their value to society.
Pay Cut, Parcel Tax Can Avoid School Insolvency, Barnett Says
My comment is that you need to live within your means as I’m forced to. Close all of the schools which bus kids long distances and stop spending what you don’t have.
We’re all fed up with the sky is falling scare tactics. SDUSD needs to impose hard austerity just like Greece!
5. Three-way tie:
Furry Handcuffs and the Great Pension Reform of 2011
• Linda Colley:
Reform does not mean more revenue comittment. If taxpayers were interested in giving more of their money to government then we wouldn’t be in the position we are in; obviously taxpayers are tired of paying more, getting less, and being told more revenue comittment is necessary to fix this mess.
The Professor Hearts Filner, But Why?
Might it be that we can’t blame city workers for everything that’s gone wrong around here. To listen the Mayor last week, he seems to think it’s their fault. He failed to mention in his address to a downtown Realtors group that stripping pension benefits from people who’ve paid into the plan in good faith AND who don’t have the option to collect Social Security, is a completely immoral approach. We’d be putting city retirees on the street….a street filled with potholes NOT due to greedy workers, but to failed, incompetent elected leadership over most of the last three decades.
What Balboa Park’s Makeover Would Look Like
• David Cohen:
There are alternatives that accomplish most or all of the Jacobs Plan and, in some cases do more and do it better. We can’t allow this critical part of Balboa Park to be sold to the first and highest bifdder.
8. Fix San Diego: Bicycling and Bike Lanes
Bottom line is, if the cars are respectful than ANY road can be safe for bicycles. I think if we could move things in this direction, then more people would try it and the result would be more willing investment in infrastructure.
9. Tie:
A Book Booster Ponders the Library’s Future
• Anna Crotty:
If that library disappeared, we’d have tweenagers on the street instead of in the library, retired people, 20 somethings and new parents sitting at home by themselves (going crazy, presumably), and more newcomers who don’t speak functional English. We’d have more kids who turn on the TV after running out of books they like because there was no librarian to suggest a new book. Is that somehow a better world for those of you who don’t go to the library?
Barnett Says Teachers Should Give Up Promised Raises
Even so… despite the many sacrifices I’ve already made as a SDUSD educator, I would gladly give up a pay raise if it meant keeping some of my colleagues at my school. However, the union doesn’t listen to newer teachers like me.
Want to contribute to discussion? Submit a suggestion to Fix San Diego.
Dagny Salas is the web editor at voiceofsandiego.org. You can contact her directly at dagny.salas@voiceofsandiego.org or 619.550.5669.
Like VOSD on Facebook.