Proposed San Diego City Budget Unveiled

By Alison St John / Reporter, KPBS Public Broadcasting

Published April 8, 2008 at 12:48 PM PDT

This story was published more than 16 years ago.

San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders has revealed the first details of his proposed city budget for next year. It includes more money for firefighters and less for libraries and parks. KPBS reporter Alison S

San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders has revealed the first details of his proposed city budget for next year. It includes more money for firefighters and less for libraries and parks. KPBS reporter Alison St John has more.

The mayor says city residents may have to wait longer in line to check out books at the library, and all but one city pool will now close for almost four months a year. But Sanders says he does not plan to cut library hours.

He proposes to save money by eliminating another 127 positions from the city's list of more than 10,000 employees.

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Public safety and financial management will both get a boost: $2 million goes to staff the city's second helicopter, and the fire department will get more than a million dollars worth of new equipment. Six new code enforcement officers will monitor brush abatement on private property. $160 million will go into the pension fund .

For the first time, the mayor will ask the Center City Development Corporation to help pay city obligations by covering $5 million of the $11 million the city pays every year to cover the Ballpark bonds.

Sanders plans eight community meetings, and the city council will debate the budget in coming months.

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.