Mayor Sanders Wants to Borrow $100 Million for Deferred Maintenance

By Alison St John / Reporter, KPBS Public Broadcasting

Published March 28, 2008 at 1:38 PM PDT

This story was published more than 16 years ago.

San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders wants to borrow 100 million dollars to start taking care of deferred maintenance in the city over the next five years. KPBS reporter Alison St John has more.

Mayor Sanders Wants to Borrow $100 Million for Deferred Maintenance

(Photo: Mayor Jerry Sanders speaks about his plan to borrow $100 million to start dealing with a 900 million dollar backlog of deferred maintenance in the city at the North Clairemont Rec Center speaking. Alison St John/KPBS )

San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders wants to borrow 100 million dollars to start taking care of deferred maintenance in the city over the next five years. KPBS reporter Alison St John has more.

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The latest estimate of what it would cost to fix potholes, storm drains and leaky roofs around the city comes to almost $900 million. The mayor's office has negotiated a private loan of $100 million from Bank of America at an interest rate of just 3.5 percent.

Sanders says this is the start of a $760 million five-year plan to take care of deferred maintenance.

Sanders: This is the first down payment on that and over the next five years you'll see us ramping up considerably and that'll actually put all of our streets in acceptable condition by the time we're finished with that program.

More than half the loan would go to re pave 77 miles of road next year.

The rest would fix storm drains and pavements. It would mend 17 leaky roofs on museums in Balboa Park and city recreation centers around town.

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The city council will vote on the private loan next week.

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.