Sanders vies to restore confidence in public spending

By Alison St John / Reporter, KPBS Public Broadcasting

Published May 14, 2006 at 9:00 PM PDT

This story was published more than 18 years ago.

San Diego mayor Jerry Sanders took steps today to restore public confidence in how the city spends public money. Sanders' reforms are in response to last month's grand jury report that accused the ci

San Diego mayor Jerry Sanders took steps today to restore public confidence in how the city spends public money. Sanders' reforms are in response to last month's grand jury report that accused the city of back door funding. KPBS reporter Alison St John has more.

The mayor acknowledged it should not have taken a grand jury report to catch that the city was siphoning money from the well funded water department to top up the budgets of other departments. Sanders has appointed a new water department director from the private sector, to make changes and monitor the money, that includes water fees paid by residents.

Sanders: "The kind of changes we need to prove to the citizens of San Diego that their hard earned tax dollars are being used efficiently and only for the purposes they were originally intended."

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Sanders says he will also restore almost $2 million to the water department next year, from the city's beleaguered general fund. The city's water and sewer departments need hundreds of millions of dollars to build pipelines and pumping stations to comply with federal and state water quality standards. 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.