Frye, Mayor Scuffle Over Recycling Law

By Alison St John / Reporter, KPBS Public Broadcasting

Published July 17, 2007 at 1:14 PM PDT

This story was published more than 16 years ago.

San Diego City Councilwoman Donna Frye has issued a summons requiring city staff to attend a meeting tomorrow about a mandatory recycling ordinance. Sanders says he has his own recycling plan, which h

San Diego City Councilwoman Donna Frye has issued a summons requiring city staff to attend a meeting tomorrow about a mandatory recycling ordinance.

Mayor Jerry Sanders says his staff cannot provide information at Frye's Natural Resources Committee meeting.

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Sanders: We have not seen a recycling ordinance. The city attorney is proposing it. He has never given it to us; we have asked for it. You can't ask staff to participate in it if they've never seen it.

Sanders says he has his own recycling plan, which he plans to roll out in the fall.

Frye says city staff have seen copies of the city attorney's ordinance at previous committee meetings. She accuses the mayor of stalling tactics.

Frye: To play politics or control information or who gets credit, I don't care who gets credit, I just want to get something done.

Frye says she and the city council have been trying to get the city to act on mandatory recycling for two years. She says under the city charter, city council members have the right to issue summons to staff to appear at their committee meetings.

Alison St John

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Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.