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Progress, San Diego Style: Where More Gets You Less

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I’ve lived in San Diego long enough to remember what things were like “way back when.” And you know what? Not that much has changed!

True, there are more people living here than ever before. More restaurants and bars and multiplex theaters. More monotonous red roofs rimming bulldozed hilltops in the city’s north suburbs. Many more seals and sea lions hauling out on La Jolla beaches.

Also true is that nowadays you’ll find much more political clout embedded in the office of our mayor – a result of charter changes finalized five years ago. The new strong mayor governance system has great potential for making progress toward the goal of increasing the public good.   [Read more…]

Civic San Diego: The Kiss of Death for San Diego Neighborhoods

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By Norma Damashek

The city of San Diego has first-class universities, first-class biotech companies, first-class ethnic restaurants, first-class theater, first-class engineers, artists, and musicians. Also: Our city has first-class standing as a prototype of community-based planning.

Who would have guessed that during the heady years of the 1960s while the Pump House kids were tripping the waves fantastic at Windansea Beach, other San Diegans – more firmly-grounded and civic-minded – were partnering with City Hall as official members of newly-created community planning groups. The La Jolla community plan was the city’s first. Then the Peninsula plan. Soon came the others.

Half a century later there are more than 40 recognized community planning groups throughout the city, where locally-elected members meet monthly to opine on neighborhood land-use issues, community goals, and proposed real estate development and relay their advice and recommendations to city officials.   [Read more…]

Civic San Diego – Like a Hole in the Head

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By Norma Damashek

We need it like a loch im kopf.  A hole in the head.  It’s what people in the old days would say about a bad situation.  It’s what I say about Civic San Diego –the reincarnation of our former downtown redevelopment agency.

We need Civic San Diego like a hole in the head.  It’s time to get rid of it.

A quick backtrack:  It’s been three years since redevelopment agencies throughout California were terminated and instructed to wind downtheir uncompleted redevelopment projects and make good on their financial obligations.  Other cities complied by doing the job in-house, under public supervision.

Not so in San Diego.  To take care of the job in our city, former mayor Jerry Sanders created an unaccountable, autonomous corporation named Civic San Diego.   [Read more…]

A Public Interest Message About the San Diego City Charter

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By Norma Damashek

Maybe you missed the story in the NYT a couple of months ago that characterized certain San Diegans as “aggressively bland…scrubbed of their character… command(ing) so little attention…”

Yes, the description is a dead ringer for our current mayor Kevin Faulconer.  But no, the story wasn’t about him.

It was about a new No.1 starter for our  hometown baseball team– left in the lurch three years ago by a wily real estate developer who amassed mega-millions through canny downtown redevelopment deals with obliging city officials and then headed off to Texas with his publicly-subsidized loot. For former Padres owner John Moores, the public good was hardly the point of his business plan.   [Read more…]

The Silliness of the Council President Selection Drama

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By Norma Damashek

San Diego can be such a silly city. For proof, consider the oddly loopy hubbub that surrounds this year’s annual City Council ritual of choosing a council president.

People (many of whom should know better) have been turning themselves inside out over the roaring-hot question: will Todd Gloria be awarded a third term as council president or will another council member (presumably Sherri Lightner) get a turn to be the council’s presiding officer?

In case you’ve forgotten, ever since San Diego switched over to a “strong mayor” form of government (it’s been almost a decade) council members have selected one of their own to run council meetings and set the council agenda. First there was Scott Peters (2005-’06-‘07), then Ben Hueso (’08-’09), then Tony Young (’10- ’11), and then Todd Gloria (’12-’14).   [Read more…]

The Secret of the San Diego Growth Machine: Another Case for Nancy Drew

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By Norma Damashek

Albert Einstein searched for a unified theory that would unite the forces of nature (he had his eye on relativity and electromagnetism).

I, too, have been searching for a unified theory—albeit a more modest one—to unite the forces of nature (human, in this case) that make San Diego the chronically backwater/ amorphous/ uninspired/ tunnel-visioned/ closed-shop/ quasi-corrupt/ rigidly-manipulated/shady city it is.

Come join the search. Just follow the trail of clues, click on a sampling of news links about San Diego, and you’ll discover a unifying theme that even Einstein would find surprising.   [Read more…]

City Government: Why Can’t We Run it Like a Business?

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By Norma Damashek

Last time we met we figured out how San Diego was begotten. 

Now it’s time to unravel the purpose of city government and discover what’s it all about when you sort it out…  

We’ll start the sorting process with a couple of facts.

Then we’ll go for the jackpot question: why can’t city government be run like a business?   [Read more…]

San Diego’s Genome

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By Norma Damashek / Numbers Runner

A couple of weeks ago I wrote that San Diego’s switch to a strong mayor style of government begat “a fresh load of scandal, farce, confusion, and dysfunction….”

But can we lay the blame on the switchover?  Does the form of government really control the outcome?

Not necessarily.  In fact, a recent on this very subject suggests there is no direct connection between the form of city government (city manager… strong mayor) and how well local government serves the public.   [Read more…]

More Bare Facts About San Diego Government: How We Got From There to Here

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By Norma Damashek

Around this time last year San Diego’s former mayor Bob Filner was forced out of office.  As it happens, he was the first bona fide “strong mayor” our city has yet seen.

We voters had no choice but to wield our black markers once again and fill in the ballot bubble to select a new mayor.  The winner this time around was Mr. White Bread personified, Kevin Faulconer.

San Diego’s lead newspaper, the U-T, summed up the occasion in a neat sentence: “At least the day brought us one step further from our time of scandal and farce.”   [Read more…]

How Government Begets Government

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By Norma Damashek

As I stated last time, bare facts come in many shapes and sizes.  So do governments.

Today we’ll uncover some basic facts about how government begets government.  Don’t be surprised at how many partners are needed for the act.  Your role is just to follow the bouncing ball.

The first bounce is on the Declaration of Independence – the pugnacious pronouncement signed by 56 residents of Britain’s 13 American colonies, dated July 4, 1776, proclaiming: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men…” 

Now bounce ahead to 1789, landing on a polished gem called the preamble of the United States Constitution: “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”   [Read more…]

Certain Bare Facts About San Diego

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By Norma Damashek / NumbersRunner

There are certain bare facts about our city that we ­– as informed San Diegans and curious citizens – would benefit from knowing more about.

The intent of my upcoming commentaries is to shed light on the anatomy of hometown government while getting the bare facts out in the open.

In anticipation of the July 4th weekend, why don’t we start with some bare facts about flashy celebrations, San Diego style.

You’re probably aware that the job of drumming up money and excellent ideas for a centennial celebration of the 1915 Balboa Park Panama-California exposition (Panama refers to the canal, not the hat or cigar) was wantonly messed up by an elite group of downtown insiders who apparently lacked the will, skill, vision, aptitude, frame of mind, and/or civic dedication that reputable public service demands.

  [Read more…]

Who Gets the Last Laugh?

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By Norma Damashek / NumbersRunner

Watch the short video embedded in this story (inside).  It showcases our city’s top politicians strutting their stuff as hotshot Top Gun naval aviators.

It’s a droll skit.  You’ll chuckle watching the honorable men I recently wrote about as they bond in a boys-will-be-boys ritual.

But most of all, this doozy of a video spotlights why — in the hands of our current politicians and the people who prop them up — San Diego is destined to stagnate as an underachieving, plodding, uninspired, also-ran kind of city.   [Read more…]

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