Sanders calls for council meeting

By Alison St John / Reporter, KPBS Public Broadcasting

Published December 18, 2005 at 9:00 PM PST

This story was published more than 18 years ago.

San Diego city council will interrupt its legislative break again this week for yet another special meeting, to discuss the ongoing investigation into the city's massive pension deficit. KPBS reporte

San Diego city council will interrupt its legislative break again this week for yet another special meeting, to discuss the ongoing investigation into the city's massive pension deficit. KPBS reporter Alison St John has more.

More than two million city documents are now included in an electronic data base being assembled as the basis of the investigation.

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Mayor Jerry Sanders has called the council meeting to extend the contract of the electronic data collection company to pay for an extra 80 gigabytes of storage. Electronic Evidence Discovery Inc. is creating a repository of information, including old city emails, that both the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S.
Attorney's office will have access to.

While he's willing to pay for the extra storage, Mayor Sanders wont move forward yet on a multi million dollar funding increase requested by the city's independent audit committee which is conducting the investigation. Sanders has asked Arthur Levitt, head of the committee and former SEC chair, to provide a clear time line for their work, which now extends well into next year. 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.