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Top Managers at the City Lose Jobs

By Alison St John / Reporter,  KPBS Public Broadcasting
Published November 6, 2008 at 10:44 AM PST
This story was published more than 15 years ago.

The budget cuts at the city of San Diego will eliminate more than half of the top management positions that report directly to the chief operating officer, Jay Goldstone.

Top Managers at the City Lose Jobs

The budget cuts at the city of San Diego will eliminate more than half of the top management positions that report directly to the chief operating officer, Jay Goldstone.

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teamolen75.jpg

Jill Olen, Head of Homeland Security

  teamheap75.jpg

Elmer Heap, head of Community Services

  portrait_sawyerknoll75.jpg JoAnne SawyerKnoll, Director of the Office of Ethics and Integrity

The mayor’s office confirms that Jill Olen, the Head of Homeland Security; JoAnne SawyerKnoll, Director of the Office of Ethics and Integrity and Elmer Heap, the head of Community Services, will lose their positions under the mayor’s proposed budget cuts. 

Bill Anderson, recently promoted to the  post of Chief of Planning and Development,  may choose to return to his job as Planning and Landuse Director. 

Police and Fire, which had reported to Olen, will now report directly to Goldstone, as will Libraries and Parks and Recreation services. 

The mayor says most of the cuts will come from upper and middle management, in an attempt to leave front line employees in place.

The mayor proposes to eliminate 216 positions, but 102 of them are already vacant.

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Of the 114 people to be laid off, 37 are managers or supervisors.

The new management structure eliminates many of the higher paid jobs created when Mayor Sanders reorganized the city after taking office in 2005.

Mayoral spokesman Darren Pudgil estimates the cost savings acheived by eliminating the four  deputy chief operating officers and their assistants is close to  a million dollars .

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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