San Diego City to Hold Evening Council Meetings

By Alison St John / Reporter, KPBS Public Broadcasting

Published March 2, 2009 at 2:44 PM PST

This story was published more than 15 years ago.

The San Diego city council has agreed to hold more evening meetings, to make it easier for people to get involved in city business. KPBS reporter Alison St John has more.

The San Diego city council has agreed to hold more evening meetings, to make it easier for people to get involved in city business. KPBS reporter Alison St John has more.

The motion to hold 6 evening meetings a year is one of the few reforms to survive from a package of reforms proposed by council members Donna Frye and Carl Demaio.

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Their attempt to make it easier for city council members to get issues on the agenda did not get enough support to pass.

Demaio says the city needs more reforms. "Having evening meetings will help, but - you can change when we discuss something, you can change where we discuss it, but if you don’t change what you discuss, you don’t truly have an open government," he says.

Council president Ben Hueso retains control over the agenda.

Frye requested that Hueso schedule items that are controversial in the community for evening meetings, to make it easier for people affected to give their input.

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.