Mayor Jerry Sanders delivered his State of the City address Jan. 12 \u2014 part city report card\u00a0and part bucket list of projects he wishes to accomplish before leaving office next year. Sanders focused on moving forward\u00a0on major developments, despite the financial crisis still gripping the city and nation.\u00a0\u00a0 “My commitment to this city and to finishing the job we started has never been stronger,” said Sanders.\u00a0\u00a0“My last day in office will be as busy as my first.” One of Sanders\u2019 goals is to eliminate the structural budget deficit through a combination of pension reforms, departmental budget cuts and managed competition of city services. Sanders said he and District 2 City Councilman Kevin Faulconer plan to introduce a 401(k)-type retirement plan for future city employees, including elected officials, similar to those of the private sector.\u00a0\u00a0Acknowledging unsustainable\u00a0pensions as a destabilizing force for municipalities and\u00a0not practical in the modern economic environment, Sanders called the 2002\u00a0City Council\u00a0vote to underfund the pension system a “a failure of character” and a “robbing of the public” that was founded on a conclusion that a day of reckoning would never come. Sanders also acknowledged that taxpayer anger sparked from the pension issue was a major contributor to the significant rejection of Proposition D on November\u2019s ballot, a sales-tax increase to pay for city services. “(The voters) said no, and I listened to them,” said Sanders.\u00a0\u00a0“It was a clarifying moment that will help us move forward.”\u00a0\u00a0 He also said that despite the defeat of Prop D, the city would still work on instituting the 10 reform conditions that had been tied to the tax increase had it been passed. Sanders acknowledged that despite consolidation of select city departments and a reduction of workforce, more cuts to city services \u2014 including public safety \u2014 will be inevitable, and that the city has the lowest level of city personnel per capita in four decades. He said more will be asked of employees and citizens. “I\u2019m not running for mayor and I\u2019m not clamoring for attention.\u00a0\u00a0I\u2019m thinking of the taxpayers,” said Sanders. Other speech highlights: \u2022 Accolades were given for city workers involved in recent storm-response efforts, including public safety services and water department employees who were instrumental in pumping more than 1 million gallons of water from “Lake\u00a0Qualcomm” in time for the Poinsettia Bowl. \u2022 Construction workers broke ground in 2010 on a new central library in downtown\u2019s\u00a0East\u00a0Village, a project three decades in the making.\u00a0\u00a0A combination of funding from the state, the school district, redevelopment funds and private donors\u00a0will be\u00a0used for the project. \u2022 In the area of water-quality improvement, sewage spills along\u00a0San Diego\u2019s coast and waterways are down.\u00a0\u00a0A decade ago, Sanders said, the city averaged one spill per day. Last year, however,\u00a0San Diego\u00a0had the fewest spills per mile of beach than any other major city in the\u00a0U.S. \u2022 Despite the economy,\u00a0San Diego\u00a0continues to attract new business.\u00a0\u00a0Sanders estimated that one technology startup company is launched every day in San Diego,\u00a0\u00a0including specialties such as analytics and wireless health, “clean tech,” spacecraft components and organizations such as Synthetic Geonomics, a La Jolla-based company that is creating fuel from algae. \u2022 Sanders pledged to fight efforts by the state to dissolve redevelopment agencies in its next rounds of budget cuts.\u00a0\u00a0Local redevelopment agencies like the Centre City Development Corp (CCDC) have been a catalyst for tremendous growth in downtown\u00a0San Diego\u00a0and throughout the region. Disbanding these could have tremendous negative consequences, stifling future development, Sanders said. \u2022 Convention Center expansion:\u00a0Sanders said that before he leaves office he would like to see ground broken on the expansion of the downtown convention center \u2014 a project that will pump millions of dollars into the local economy, increase tax revenue and create thousands of jobs both construction and otherwise, as well as\u00a0ensure San Diego will continue to play host\u00a0to major conventions\u00a0such as Comicon.\u00a0<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mayor Jerry Sanders delivered his State of the City address Jan. 12 \u2014 part city report card\u00a0and part bucket list of projects he wishes to accomplish before leaving office next year. Sanders focused on moving forward\u00a0on major developments, despite the financial crisis still gripping the city and nation.\u00a0\u00a0 “My commitment to this city and to […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11561","_seopress_titles_title":"Mayor lays out tough financial plan, warns of more painful cuts to come","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11551,11593,11561],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-298627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-no-images","category-peninsula-beacon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298627\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}