Sanders hopes to build trust with top credit agencies

By Alison St John / Reporter, KPBS Public Broadcasting

Published January 24, 2006 at 9:00 PM PST

This story was published more than 18 years ago.

San Diego mayor Jerry Sanders will travel to San Francisco Thursday to personally visit the three major financial credit rating agencies. Joining him will be five members of his financial recovery tea

San Diego mayor Jerry Sanders will travel to San Francisco Thursday to personally visit the three major financial credit rating agencies. Joining him will be five members of his financial recovery team. KPBS reporter Alison St John has more.

Fitch Ratings and Moody's Investors Service downgraded the city's credit rating last year, on news of the federal investigations into the pension deficit, and the city's delayed audits. And Standard & Poor's suspended the city's credit rating.

Mayor Sanders says he aims to build trust in his new administration, an important step towards accessing the bond markets again.

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Sanders: "The most important thing that we have to convince them on is that we have a whole new attitude and we want to work through all these issues very openly and publicly - we're not asking for anything we just want to talk with them about where we're at right now and where we hope to get to in the very near future."

The credit rating agencies are watching San Diego carefully to see whether the city will avoid the option of bankruptcy. The city's hands are tied on millions of dollars of desperately needed infrastructure upgrades, since it cannot currently borrow money on the bond market. 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.