Mayor's budget won't make dent in deferred maintenance

By Alison St John / Reporter, KPBS Public Broadcasting

Published April 12, 2006 at 9:00 PM PDT

This story was published more than 18 years ago.

San Diego mayor Jerry Sanders says his budget will hardly make a dent in the city's massive deferred maintenance needs, which run into the hundreds of millions of dollars. KPBS reporter Alison St John

San Diego mayor Jerry Sanders says his budget will hardly make a dent in the city's massive deferred maintenance needs, which run into the hundreds of millions of dollars. KPBS reporter Alison St John has more.

Deferred maintenance includes hundreds of little things like replacing ceiling tiles in city libraries, and big things like replacing the roof on the Museum of Man. The latest estimate of how much it would cost to upgrade run-down city buildings and roads comes to $370 million, and that was three years ago!
Mayor Sanders says he's ordered a complete inventory and new cost estimates for deferred maintenance.

For this year though we'll have $20 million to spend twenty million dollars is a limited amount when you're talking about needs that number into the hundreds of millions of dollars ... my budgetary proposal will include those items that require our most immediate attention.

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Sanders' plan earmarks money to re-roof the Malcolm x Library and the Old Globe Theatre. But his budget pays to resurface only 12 miles of city streets. And even that will depend on the city's long awaited audit. 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.