New City Websites Purge Previous Data

By Alison St John / Reporter, KPBS Public Broadcasting

Published December 17, 2008 at 1:52 PM PST

This story was published more than 15 years ago.

Documents related to key events at San Diego City Hall over the past four years will be more difficult to track down, as five elected officials leave office and their web sites are erased. KPBS repor

Documents related to key events at San Diego City Hall over the past four years will be more difficult to track down, as five elected officials leave office and their web sites are erased. KPBS reporter Alison St John has more.

The new San Diego city attorney, Jan Goldsmith, has started fresh with a web site that contains none of the reports, legal opinions and meeting minutes of his predecessors, Mike Aguirre or Casey Gwinn. The four new city council members have also launched their own new websites.

In the case of the city attorney’s web site, reports by Aguirre relating to the city’s pension deficit and the subsequent SEC investigation are no longer on the site.

Become a KPBS sponsor

A private citizen has launched an independent site to preserve some of those documents on line.

San Diego’s city clerk, who has the task of maintaining public records, says managing electronic records is overwhelmingly complex. Though the city does keep hard copy records of issues that make it to the city council’s agenda, electronic data - like that stored on websites that are discontinued - may or may not be preserved. Alison St John, KPBS news.

Alison St John

twitter

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.