Sanders to hire eight new leaders

By Alison St John / Reporter, KPBS Public Broadcasting

Published November 28, 2005 at 9:00 PM PST

This story was published more than 18 years ago.

San Diego city council appointed Ronne Froman as the interim city manager this afternoon to replace Lamont Ewell who resigned as of yesterday. Froman will be mayor elect Jerry Sanders' chief operati

San Diego city council appointed Ronne Froman as the interim city manager this afternoon to replace Lamont Ewell who resigned as of yesterday.

Froman will be mayor elect Jerry Sanders' chief operating officer in January under the new strong mayor form of government . Sanders also announced the first appointments to his leadership team this afternoon. KPBS Reporter Alison St John has more.

Sanders says he plans to hire eight new leaders to work with his chief operating officer Ronne Froman . Two of them are already chosen. One is former Padres government affairs liaison Kris Mitchel, who will now liase with the council and the community.

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Secondly, attorney Joanna Sawyer Knoll will be Director of ethics and integrity at the city, a post separate from the existing ethics commission.

Sanders: "Having miss Sawyer Knolls with us we're going to start working on a program with every single city employee to talk about what the ethical standards for the city of san diego are. That'll include elected officials that'll include lobbyists that'll include everybody who does business with the city."

Sanders has not yet announced his chief financial officer, a key position for a city that has no approved audit for the past two years. 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.