Hutton Marshall | Downtown Assistant Editor

At the Oct. 28 meeting of the Infrastructure Committee—a committee created just last December—a $120 million “Infrastructure bond” was unanimously approved both to pump money into addressing the depleted condition of the city’s physical assets and to provide funding for new capital projects.

If ok’d by the full council in January, this will be the largest of three general obligation bonds passed in the last five years created to address the city’s aging physical assets.

“This infrastructure bond will help us improve our neighborhoods to levels San Diegans deserve,” Interim Mayor Gloria said in a recent press release announcing the bond’s proposal. “Repairing streets, storm drains and replacing failing aging facilities with bond funds is fiscally responsible and community focused.”

While this bond will give a significant amount of funding to street repair and capital project funding, a key aspect of the infrastructure problem is identifying the scope of the project backlog. A survey of the city’s streets, storm drains and buildings in 2011 put San Diego’s deferred capital backlog at an estimated $898 million—and this number likely now well exceeds $1 billion.

Currently, San Diego is performing the first-ever analysis of San Diego’s sidewalks, and an updated building analysis will begin in January, which should paint a clearer picture of the city’s infrastructure needs by the time this newest infrastructure bond would come into effect.

Councilmember Kersey’s Infrastructure workshops

In a recent outreach effort in conjunction with his initiative to create of a five-year infrastructure plan, Councilmember Mark Kersey has begun traveling district to district throughout San Diego to host nine separate “Infrastructure workshops.”

The first of these workshops was held on Oct. 22 in Gloria’s Council District 3. Hosted in the Balboa Park Club, the workshop invited community members to learn about the severity of the capital project backlog and to offer their input into what type of capital improvement projects the city should be prioritizing.

Gloria opened up the workshop, speaking about the city’s exacerbated need to address the deteriorating streets and sidewalks. He also touched on the importance of the bond that would pass in subcommittee a week later. He optimistically spoke of what this bond would do to bring the Hillcrest/Mission Hills Library within arm’s reach. The bond has $4 million set aside for the library, and, added to the $10 million in pledged donations, leaves the project only $2.3 million shy of the $16.3 million estimated project cost.

Gloria then handed the audience’s attention over to Kersey, who commended the interim mayor for his longstanding commitment to infrastructure improvement.

“[Gloria’s] been talking about infrastructure before it was cool,” Kersey said.

He then spoke of the inherent need for a five-year infrastructure plan, saying that this was a key part of infrastructure plans for cities comparable to San Diego, and how public input was an important part of formulating this plan.

“I don’t want to dictate through city hall that a fire station is more important than a library,” Kersey said.

He then began fielding questions from the audience before delving into the interactive portion of the workshop. One participant questioned why the forum wasn’t better publicized.

“I only found out about this meeting because I listen to the radio,” he said. “This room should be packed.”

There were 36 people present including city staff. Four out of six of the tables in the room were filled.

Infrastructure committee consultant and Kersey’s deputy chief of staff Almis Udrys spoke briefly before turning the attention of participants toward their questionnaires. He stated that only six cents of every dollar allocated in the general fund was given to infrastructure spending, a disparity he said should be given more attention. Although only a very small amount of the general fund, the primary funding source of the city’s operations, the bulk of the Capital Improvement Projects Budget (i.e. infrastructure funding) comes from bonds, specific tax revenues and highly specified funding that doesn’t usually include a significant amount from the general fund.

The first page of the questionnaire asked participants to rank 20 asset types from most important to least important. A few of the asset types listed were “Streets & Roads,” “Golf Courses (Balboa, Mission Bay, Torrey Pines),” “Wastewater Infrastructure (treatment plants, pipeline)” and “Sporting and Event Venues (i.e. Stadium, Convention Center).”

Following the ranking system, participants were asked several questions regarding their community involvement and whether they would prioritize repairing existing infrastructure over breaking ground on new projects.

Mike Aguirre’s response

The next day, former City Attorney and mayoral candidate Mike Aguirre announced a press conference in his downtown law offices of Aguirre, Morris & Severson in order to present data linking the infrastructure budget deficit to the ongoing pension problem.

“Despite rosy talk and campaign promises of increasing budgets for critical city services, candidates and elected officials ignore continued pension drain on the city budget, which is taking more taxpayer dollars, with projections for further increases while police, fire, streets, and other essential city services suffer,” Aguirre’s press release stated.

Aguirre said the lack of funding for the city’s worsening infrastructure was the result of the enormous amount of money being devoted to the pension budget.

Data Aguirre presented at the press conference showed that the budget for road repair has floated around $20 to $60 million since 2007, while pension spending has grown from $162 to $231 million during that time.

Aguirre also cited a San Diego County Grand Jury Filing dated April 26, 2012 enumerates the existence of this problem for the last decade.

It may be months before the scope of this issue’s financial implications become clear, but its immediate effects will almost certainly impact all San Diegans for years to come.

Listed below are the remaining Infrastructure meetings to be held by Councilmember Kersey’s office in conjunction with other council offices:

• Wednesday, Nov. 6 at 6 p.m., District Six with Councilmember Lorie Zapf

Pangea Bakery Café, 4689 Convoy St. #100, San Diego, CA 92111

• Wednesday, Nov. 13 at 6 p.m., District Two with Councilmember Kevin Faulconer

Cadman Elementary School Auditorium, 4370 Kamloop Ave., San Diego, CA 92117

• Nov. 20 or 21 at 6 p.m., District Nine with Councilmember Marti Emerald

Workforce Career Center, 3rd Floor Conference Room, 3910 University Ave., San Diego, CA 92105

• Tuesday, Dec. 3 at 6 p.m., District One with Councilmember Sherri Lightner

Location to be determined.

• Wednesday, Dec. 11 at 6 p.m., District Eight with Councilmember David Alvarez

Colonel Irving Salomon San Ysidro Community Activity Center, 179 Diza Rd., San Diego, CA 92173

Please be sure to contact the appropriate Council office beforehand to confirm the date, time and place of the infrastructure workshop in the event some of the details have changed.