Like a zombie, the budget deficit city leaders crowed about having killed last year is back.
San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders had declared an end to the so-called “structural deficit” the city faced. This is the chronic condition where the city is simply not set up to take in as much money as it’s set up to spend, creating regular gaps between its budget and its revenues.
The city faces a deficit of $23 million to $27 million based on new projections. And that doesn’t count expenditures the City Council is considering.
What We Learned This Week
School Capital Appreciation Bonds’ Absurdity Is Getting Clearer: The Bond Buyer takes a look at capital appreciation bonds, focusing on the unintended consequences of legislation meant to protect taxpayers. They also detail Santee’s outrageous bonds, which have a repayment ratio of 18-1. Assemblyman Ben Hueso moved this week to make sure nobody does these kinds of loans again. But how late are we?
People Love Balboa Park: It’s pretty clear that the reason people fight so much about Balboa Park is because they all love it. We provoked a conversation about peoples’ favorite places there and what people want to see in the park.
Carl DeMaio Makes Some Unverifiable Claims: The candidate for mayor has said regularly that he has a task force working on the difficult problem of how to build a new stadium for the Chargers without public money. But he won’t say who is on it. He says he’s working with medical marijuana advocates to come to a compromise. But he won’t talk about who they are and prominent leaders in the community say it’s not them. Finally, he claims bipartisan support for ballot measures and other pushes he’s made, but can’t show the proof.
• On Friday, we highlighted a U-T San Diego report that DeMaio had gotten the endorsement of former U.S. Rep. Lynn Schenk, a Democrat. It was a big step in his effort to show he’s building a bipartisan coalition. But Friday, Craig Gustafson, the U-T writer, said he’d gotten a statement from Schenk that she had not, in fact, endorsed DeMaio. She’d agreed to be on his jobs committee were he to win, which her assistant told us she’d do for any mayor. Gustafson said he had a story updating things on the way.
• And Bob Filner’s no stranger to trouble with the facts. He is also trying to prove that he has bipartisan appeal. They’re both trying to capture the political middle. Filner said he’d helped raise the budget for health care for veterans at the federal level by a significant amount. That was true. But he said he’d gotten a unanimous congress to do it. Not so much.
Bill Clinton Really Likes San Diego: It wasn’t just a shout out that Bubba gave us on the Daily Show. The whole thing is worth a watch.
Quick News Hits
• NBC 7 San Diego explains why the Chargers did not take advantage of a new league rule that might have helped them avoid a blackout of the games that don’t sell out, like Sunday’s. Three other teams plagued by the potential for blackouts did.
• The San Diego Police Department has been accused of favoritism. The chief has an interesting defense: “There’s no policy in our department that you can’t do an act of kindness for anybody.”
• KPBS reports that the new Public Market is a go.
Quote of the Week
“A pothole is a pothole. It’s not a gay pothole. It’s not a black pothole. It’s just a pothole.” — VOSD member Dave McCulloch, a DeMaio supporter, in a U-T story about the candidates’ relationship to the gay community.
You can contact me directly at scott.lewis@voiceofsandiego.org or 619.325.0527 and follow me on Twitter (it’s a blast!): twitter.com/vosdscott.