During an election speech on the state of the city on Wednesday, Mayor Todd Gloria outlined his agenda for 2022, and at least for now it does not include any of the fiscal measures aiming at the November ballot.
Gloria stressed the need for more money in multiple policy areas where potential voting measures are already underway: libraries and parks, stormwater and transit. In any event, however, Gloria avoided mentioning whether she would lead those measures or even support them.
After the speech, Gloria spokesperson Rachel Laing confirmed it was by design. The mayor is not involved in any of the aspiring voting measures at this time.
“The mayor is not moving forward on the various citizen initiatives that are still in the conceptual stage,” he said. “He will carefully evaluate each measure once they have qualified for the ballot.”
Potential voting measures, however, represent each key point on the agenda he outlined on Wednesday.
Gloria, for example, described the responsibility of the city in case of rainwater. The city last year estimated it has a $ 2.3 billion gap over the next five years between the money it expects to have and all the infrastructure it needs to repair. Stormwater, the city’s flood management system, accounts for $ 1.7 billion of that gap.
On Wednesday, Gloria said stormwater needs require a massive solution, much like the Pure Water system the city is building to provide an independent water source.
“This is the kind of hands-on approach we need to repair our stormwater infrastructure,” he said. “The fee we charge to maintain our pipes, culverts, drains and treatment facilities has not been updated in nearly 25 years and, as a result, we have fallen far behind in absolutely necessary improvements to protect our beaches and waterways. water”.
He did not say, however, whether this year he supported an attempt to vote for an initiative to pay for those “critically needed improvements”. The Council’s environmental commission voted last year to work on a measure that could go into the 2022 ballot. Council President Sean Elo Rivera told us last month that it’s still in the Council’s plans.
Park and library supporters last year announced their initiative to increase funding for city infrastructure, and while Gloria publicized her goal of streamlining city funding for city projects from parks and libraries to streets and recreation centers, he did not mention the size of the vote.
And while he announced that he would launch a “collaborative and regional working group” of government agencies to bring San Diego plenty of money from the new federal infrastructure bill, he did not mention the initiative, led by unions and environmentalists, to raise sales taxes to pay for regional transport projects such as roads, transit and highways.
That initiative did more to leave what Gloria called “the conceptual phase”. It was approved by the San Diego County Democratic Party last month, and paid workers collected signatures right after Thanksgiving. Dan Rottenstreich, the consultant managing the initiative, said they already have tens of thousands of signatures in hand and are confident that they will qualify by 11 May, when they will have to submit them.
“The Democrats are excited about it, the business community is excited about it, everyone knows we need to do something about the infrastructure, transit and traffic in this city,” he said. “We can not wait anymore. We have the resources we need to qualify for the ballot and then some. I am confident that we will qualify for the second round and then we will win. “
Regional transport would suffer a major setback if it didn’t. The newly approved transportation plan for the county Gloria voted for in December is already counting on voter approval of an electoral measure next year and bringing in over $ 10 billion for new projects. Voters are expected to approve another measure similar to the 2024 ballot and another to the 2028 ballot.
Before Gloria’s mother’s approach to tax measures this week, it was notably his long-standing willingness to support efforts to increase revenue that Michael Zucchet, head of the Municipal Employees Association, said it separated him from others. local leaders. On election night in 2020, Zucchet said he hoped Gloria would usher in a new era where the city was honest with residents that they couldn’t get a world-class city on the cheap.
“Something has to radically change in San Diego,” he said. “For a generation citizens have been told they don’t have to pay for garbage collection, that they don’t have to have the same taxes and fees as other cities in not just California, but San Diego County, that we can do more with less. . The fact is, we can’t. We want to have the best roads, the best parks, the best public safety, all at discounted prices. Something has to give here. The city is not in good shape right now. There will be a fundamental decision, we will be the largest city that Todd has articulated and we will have to grow the cake with the projects he talked about, or increase the revenue, or re-prioritize what we want to do as a city. “
Aguirre Will Sue the Chargers, NFL
We wrote and talked about the incredible St. Louis legal win over the NFL and Rams owner Stan Kroenke. The city, county, and sports complex of St. Louis sued the NFL and Kroenke and settled for $ 790 million, with the attorneys pocketing $ 275 million.
The NFL and Kroenke settled for many reasons, but faced tremendous pressure after a judge allowed St. Louis attorneys to begin testifying NFL owners and searching their records.
The deal must be, by far, the most significant result of any effort by a city to hold the NFL accountable for moving a team after a city has spent public resources trying to keep or accommodate them. And many of us here in San Diego have looked upon our compatriots in St. Louis with glee.
But it seemed like something that only real big cities could do. And the city of San Diego, unlike St. Louis, had explicitly agreed not to sue the Chargers for leaving San Diego, in the revised 2004 lease with the team.
One guy thinks it’s not a problem for the city. Former San Diego City Attorney Mike Aguirre, whose career is primarily concerned with public interest cases like this one and potential deals they provide. He said he was inspired by the work of the St. Louis attorneys.
This week, Aguirre warned the city that it intended to file a similar lawsuit on behalf of taxpayers on January 21. It is unclear who will be the actor in the case, in particular, but Aguirre offered the role to the Policy Report. We refused.
Previously Aguirre had told us that the lease agreement signed by the city with the Chargers was illegal and therefore null and void. But now he’s said the St. Louis case has opened his eyes. And the lease has nothing to do with the goal of a lawsuit here
“I wasn’t smart enough to think about that then,” he said.
St. Louis argued that the NFL had established a de facto contract with the cities for years. They would no longer just move teams out of town at their unilateral discretion. They would go through the process a city could go through to keep a team free. St. Louis went through the process and spent nearly $ 20 million trying to keep the team in that process. But then, the lawyers argued, they found that the NFL and the Rams had no intention of complying with that process.
The NFL argued that its team transfer policy was not a contract at all. The judge disagreed and instituted a potential successful trial in which the city would try to prove that the Rams intended to leave the city anyway, essentially misleading the city and violating NFL policy and its de facto contract. with cities. St. Louis wanted $ 4 billion.
Aguirre said that no matter the city agreed to never sue the Chargers, this same violation has occurred here. That at one point the Chargers had no intention of staying here. The city lease may not have been breached, but the contract with San Diego as a whole had been.
“We are a third party beneficiary. They must act in good faith, “he said.
It’s still not convenient that the city agreed not to sue the Chargers or the NFL if the team moved. The new contract was signed to keep them in San Diego for at least another three years.
“The city acknowledges and agrees that the NFL will not be liable to the city in connection with such activities,” reads the lease.
Notes
Case Count Could Peak: Christopher Longhurst, UC San Diego Health’s chief medical officer, picked up some graphs on Friday that seem to indicate “we are sliding down the omicron slope” – COVID-19 infections in San Diego may have peaked.
The Fire: We very much hope that the fire in the home of County Supervisor Nathan Fletcher and former Congressman Lorena Gonzalez was a random accident. Police say it is “suspicious”. Let’s hope because the implications of the arson are serious. No political system can be productive or fair if leaders face assassination attempts. Even if the attacks are unsuccessful, they cause intolerable trauma to public life. If they succeed, the consequences are horrifying and destabilizing.
If you have any ideas or feedback for the Policy Report, send it to scott.lewis@voiceofsandiego.org or andrew.keatts@voiceofsandiego.org.
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