Gloria touts infrastructure funding in first State of the District address

por David Harvey

Reportero SDUN

In his first State of the District speech on Feb. 1 at the Old Globe Theater in Balboa Park, District 3 Councilmember Todd Gloria said there are no tricks to securing San Diego’s financial stability.

“It’s not enough to hope that the deficit fairy will come, wave her magic wand and make this all go away,” he said. “We owe it to San Diego to make real solutions a priority.”

Gloria presented a laundry list of measures city officials have taken over the past year that seek to move San Diego from a financial failure to an emerging leader in fiscal responsibility. In addition, he addressed methods for continued infrastructure and job development, as well as crime prevention, in District 3.

In discussing the budget crisis, Gloria highlighted the 6 percent pay decrease imposed on city employees, pension reforms and cuts to every city department. He emphasized cuts to emergency services, such as the recently implemented “rolling brownouts” at fire stations and cutbacks in the San Diego Police Department’s harbor and mounted patrols, non-sworn officer ranks and canine units.

Lamenting the decline in city services, Gloria compared the current state of some San Diego services to 2001. The city’s 15 customer service centers are no longer in operation, he said, the libraries are open an average of 12 less hours per week and the 911 response time in San Diego has gone from an average of four seconds to ten.

While Gloria said he was not pleased to support the cuts made in 2009, he knew his vote was the right decision.

“You sent me to city hall to help solve the financial mess, and that begins with making tough decisions,” he said. “You can call it whatever you want. You can call it efficiencies, streamlining or whatever. The truth is that these are cuts, and if you utilize a city service – as all of us do – you will be feeling the impacts very, very soon.”

Quoting City Attorney Jan Goldsmith, Gloria said the mayor’s plan to wait 18 months before releasing a comprehensive platform to move San Diego out of debt would give city officials the right amount of time to dialogue and formulate a solid proposal.

However, Gloria conceded that the ultimate solution undoubtedly will involve a combination of further reductions in services and compensation, implementation of managed competition and the creation of new revenue.

“The only question is the degree to which each solution is used,” he said. “Because none of the options by themselves can completely solve the problem.”

Gloria said he wants to focus on new revenue now.

“We cannot wait a moment longer to pursue additional funding mechanisms. Let’s finish this job once and for all,” he said.

Gloria emphasized placing money into infrastructure development, an issue on which he has concentrated. In addition to a $103 million infrastructure bond from the federal Recovery and Revitalization Act and a fiscal year 2009 street repair budget of $79.2 million – a 400 percent increase from the previous year that will fund repaving of 60 miles of District 3 roads – Gloria called on business community members to pursue a citizen participation infrastructure bond for public review and vote. The bond, which Gloria said he would strongly support, would be similar to a Phoenix model that has invested billions into construction, maintenance and revitalization projects.

“It’s abundantly clear that you expect roads that don’t throw your car out of alignment, sidewalks that don’t cause you to trip and fall, water and sewer pipes that don’t rupture, and a transit system that doesn’t leave you stranded. … On this front, we are finally making some progress,” Gloria said.

The investment in infrastructure will also help create jobs, he said.

“While putting Americans back to work has been the central focus of our president and our congress, you need to know that your city is just as focused on creating jobs,” he said.

More service members are discharged in San Diego County than anywhere else in the United States, Gloria said, and he hopes to retain “these high skilled public servants.” To that end, Gloria announced that the City Council had that day passed an initiative he authored to give job priority to Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. Voters will decide the issue in June.

In addition to budget issues, Gloria noted that the crime rate in San Diego fell 28 percent from 2008 to 2009, and that the city now has its lowest homicide rate since 1972. Last year’s police activity in District 3 saw nearly 60 suspects arrested for their involvement in prostitution, and curfew patrols took hundreds of youth off the streets, he said.

Gloria said he is looking forward to an increased police presence and a continuing decline in crime. A new police storefront station coming to the corner of 30th Street and El Cajon Boulevard and his goal to expand the citizen patrol program started in Talmadge to the communities of City Heights and Normal Heights should contribute to that trend, he said.

“Greater police visibility will aid in our prevention efforts and revitalization of the Boulevard,” he said. “In District 3, we don’t just respond to crime, we prevent it.”

At the end of his address, Gloria briefly touched on Balboa Park’s upcoming centennial in 2015 and the funding drive that will refurbish the Plaza de Panama, but assured his audience that the park will remain public property.

“The park is, and always will be, the property of the people of San Diego. It will remain an asset of our city, and a beacon for cultural experiences, not a venue for commercial advertising,” he said.

He also said he hopes to have the city appoint a contractor in 2010 to build a permanent homeless shelter that will “end the disgrace that is our current approach to homelessness in this city.”

Gloria said he will continue to press for mass transit funding and the use of advertising on busses, as well as tighten regulations on new construction in the city.

“If you want the privilege to build in San Diego, you have to build it green,” he said.

As for the future of his district, Gloria said he will do what he has always done.

“Even on the longest days, I have never lost sight as to why I sought this position,” he said. “I love San Diego, and I want to leave it better than I found it. Instead of ringing in the new year by wringing my hands and throwing my arms in the air, I’m going to roll up my sleeves a little bit further and dig in deeper to the work that is in front of us.