Now that San Diego's mayoral election is over, attention shifts to what the winner, Jerry Sanders, will do to tackle the city's fiscal crisis. Observers say he needs to put his political capital to work as soon as possible to use the momentum of his victory. In these early days, even interest groups like the employee unions are expressing a desire to work together to solve the city's problems. KPBS reporter Alison St John has more.
Jerry Sanders wasted no time in laying out his goals for the first months of his term as mayor of San Diego
SANDERS : I'm going to tell voters what my goals and time line are for the next 90 days >I'm gonna ask them to hold me, the city council and the city attonrey for working together in achieving these goals.
Sanders won the voters' confidence with a significant majority. Carl DeMaio of the conservative think tank, the Performance Institute, says now Sanders needs to show he can produce results in a city that has waited too long for a leader.
DE MAIO: Certainly Jerry Sanders will have the weight of the world on his shoulders, coming into a city that's facing its worst financial crisis in its history. I think he has to get down to work quickly, he needs to put out a very aggressive recovery plan
The glow of victory is still fresh and even city attorney Mike Aguirre, who originally endorsed Donna Frye's financial recovery plan, says the main thing now is to meet the public's expectation of positive change.
AQUIRRE: The only way we can do that is if we all come together as a community, we've got to find a way to get rid of the illegal benefits, fund the legal benefits
Sanders will need to put some changes to the city council and bring others back to the voters next year . But one of the trickiest things on his agenda is to convince the labor unions it's worth their while to consider his proposals including a different kind of pension plan.
SANDERS: I anticipate that all the labor groups will want to come back to the table and help the city solve these problems- these problems affect their membership just as much as they affect everybody else in San Diego
The city's employee unions have remained uncharacteristically silent during the campaigns. Rather than endorse either mayoral candidate, they sat on the sidelines and waited to see who would win. Now that they know who they are dealing with, they're talking about the future again. John Perkins of the Firefighters Union says they're willing to sit down with Sanders and think ahead the firefighters only negotiated a one year contract last year, so they'll be angling for a new contract as soon as next spring. Perkins says firefighters wont be willing to take more pay freezes or cuts unless they can see the true state of the city's finances.
PERKINS : The taxpayers don't trust the city so why should the firefighters trust the city so what we need to see is honest numbers, honest budgeting negotiating that puts everything on the table, we're willing as firefighters to put everything from our side on the table and say ok how do we work together. 18
Perkins says the firefighters are already having trouble meeting response times for some communities in the city. He trusts former police chief Sanders to make public safety a priority, and he hopes the new mayor will treat firefighters differently from the city's blue collar workers. Judy Italiano is President of the Metropolitan Employees Union that represents blue collar workers. She says she's worked with Sanders before when he was the police chief and she's ready to sit down with him again, as long as he shows he's not expecting employees to bear the full brunt of his recovery plan. But Italiano says, there's a limit to what the unions can put on the table.
JUDY: As far as our contract is concerned we can reopen and bargain, I'm not intending to do that at this point, but that part can be done, but pension benefits there's no way to undo those.
Both Italiano and Perkins insist there is no way existing pension benefits can be bargained away. But Italiano knows the threat of privatizing some city services is near the top of Sanders' agenda, so she's willing to look ahead at ways employees can save the city money.
The rhetoric leading up to the city's mayoral election has created high expectations of change. It remains to be seen whether Sanders' clout as the new strong mayor is enough to keep the city out of bankruptcy and put it on the road to recovery.
Alison St John, KPBS news.
