San Diego City Council Approves Bigger CCDC Loan Repayment

By Alison St John / Reporter, KPBS Public Broadcasting

Published June 9, 2008 at 3:02 PM PDT

This story was published more than 15 years ago.

The San Diego City Council has approved a $3.2 billion budget. It draws on downtown redevelopment money to help reinstate many of the job cuts proposed by Mayor Jerry Sanders. KPBS reporter Alison St

The San Diego City Council has approved a $3.2 billion budget. It draws on downtown redevelopment money to help reinstate many of the job cuts proposed by Mayor Jerry Sanders. KPBS reporter Alison St John has more.

The vote was not unanimous. Councilmen Kevin Faulconer - who represents downtown - and Jim Madaffer opposed the plan. It avoids cutting park and library positions around the city, partly by asking the downtown redevelopment corporation to help pay off the bonds used to build the Ball Park .

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City Council President Scott Peters said redevelopment in his district would have to pay for itself, so it makes sense to ask downtown to cover its own bond repayments on Petco Park.

Peters : So I like the idea of starting to ask the Ball Park to pay for itself, because that’s General Fund paying for a downtown assets, but I would not support a general raiding of the fund beyond that expense .

Petco Park costs the city $11 million a year in bond repayments. The mayor’s budget asked the downtown redevelopment corporation to cover $5 million; the council’s Budget Analyst suggests $7.5 million.

The mayor has a week to accept or veto the council’s modified budget plan. Alison St John, KPBS news.

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.