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Fee Increases Revisited to Solve San Diego's Financial Woes

By Alison St John / Reporter,  KPBS Public Broadcasting
Published March 28, 2007 at 1:47 PM PDT
This story was published more than 17 years ago.

Mayor Jerry Sanders has promised not to raise taxes, but the city of San Diego's budget shortfalls are projected to grow bigger every year. The city council's budget committee talked Wednesday about w

Fee Increases Revisited to Solve San Diego's Financial Woes

Mayor Jerry Sanders has promised not to raise taxes, but the city of San Diego's budget shortfalls are projected to grow bigger every year. The city council's budget committee talked Wednesday about ways of raising revenue in the future. KPBS reporter Alison St John has more.

So far Mayor Jerry Sanders has managed to keep the city's financial head above water by business reorganization, cutting staff, borrowing and selling city land. But the council's independent budget analyst, Andrea Tevelin says the mayor's five year budget plan shows a massive $100 million deficit, starting in 2009, even after all the changes.

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The mayor has rejected fee increases for fiscal 2008, but as we look out to the future, raising fees or revenues in some fashion is going to become a more and more important discussion.

The committee considered 12 possible fee increases, including a first responder fee of about $300 for calling the city's paramedics. Charging business improvement districts $11,000 each would bring in about $200,000 a year. Spokesmen for several small business improvement districts complained they are already paying to empty trash bins that the city's trash services leave to overflow.

City councilwoman Donna Frye said she doesn't want to have to sit through hours of hearings from people objecting to fee increases that are too small to solve the city's problems anyway. Instead she suggested shifting about $16 million worth of annual debt payments for the ballpark and the convention center over to the city's booming downtown redevelopment agency. She also made a suggestion that's proved highly unpopular in the past. 

Frye: If you're going to talk about fees and taxes -- and lets call them what they are -- I think the public needs to be provided with a very serious discussion about a sales tax increase -- a half-cent sales tax increase -- which by my rough calculations would generate a $100 million on an annual basis.

Observers says Fry's support of a half-cent sales tax may have cost her the mayoral election in 2005. But she asked city staff to analyze it as a possibility for the ballot in 2008. Alison St John, KPBS News.

Alison St John
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.
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