Ron Roberts Takes Charge

One of the people who has worked to keep the Chargers in San Diego County's supervisor Ron Roberts. He joins us today to talk about the Chargers and the other challenges he will see as he supervises the county board chairman of the county board also chairman of SANDAG San Diego Association of governments and Ron Roberts thank you for coming and . Nicely with you. What is this day like for you as a person who has worked to try to keep the Chargers in San Diego? You put a lot of effort into something and you have hopes that maybe it will pan out and not real optimistic, I am frankly surprised at the strong support on the Carson site given all the problems that are there. I still am amazed the NFL committee would want to build a stadium on a landfill without limiting problems and anything else. It just strikes me as a very bad decision so be it. I think the county San Diego County has offered to contribute $125 million to build a new charger stadium, and the Chargers are rebuffed in their attempt to move to LA County tickets financial offer off the table or will that remain? We always felt we wanted the Chargers to stay here and actually the county has offered $150 million. We just did not -- depends on what has happened if all of a sudden they say the Raiders with the Chargers are going to go to LA but San Diego would you be interested in having the Rams? I think that we would be interested in talking in fact I would make that deal if it was open to us. But it is still early and I am not so sure this is going to evolve in the way it appears to based on the committee vote. I hope the NFL is listening in the Rams can come to San Diego if they like. Finally on the subject of the Chargers we San Diego what does that say about the NFL? Pricing themselves out of markets that are not willing to put up $1 billion to build a magnificent stadium? I personally think LA show had a team some time ago. Surprised that they did not do some kind of extension where they could have sold the rights to that team for a significant amount of money to say the least. I think it may be says more about the local ownership and access about the NFL because they were put in a position where three teams all of a sudden decided we want to go and we want to appreciate the value of our franchises and that is what we are seeing. I am very disappointed of our own local ownership. Moving on to another big issue the county board is going to have to deal with, possibly this year and that is the 1700 home development in Valley Center call light kills. A lot of people are saying this would be leapfrog development if it were approved putting huge development in a rural area and contrary the county general plan. What do you want to say to us about Lilac Hill? We just finished a long process here about a year or so ago of redoing the general plan and what did is we counseled all of the that County areas to reduce the future growth and travel and everything else needed. We reduce the number of houses vary significantly, and we try to shift those into more urbanized areas and ocean update organize because we talk about some of the rule if you will, also in the plan itself we have knowledge we should be looking at major thoroughfares, major freeways and will be the density into those areas along the freeways, long transportation corridors if you will. Think we consider those people future residents better. I think we have not gotten into the Board of Supervisors having gotten to the details of Lilac Hills and they do not want to say too much until that happens. But arguments could be made on both sides of this and we will wait and see. It sounds like you have not taking a position yet. No, I hear a lot of people claiming they know what position of taking but I have surprised them before. 102 our visitors supervisor Bill Horn has been told you should not vote on this by the fair political practices board because he is a conflict of interest because he has property very close to the proposal Bill Horn disagrees with his, but Ron Roberts when do you expect to take up this very controversial issue? I would imagine it would be sometime this year but I think it is too early to tell. I think there are still questions or new questions now that have evolved regarding how do you account for grace -- green house that and other things -- gas and other things that could delay the board hearing on this. I don't know, we do not have a firm date, we are waiting for staff to tell us. Here is when it is clear and we will hear it. I expected to be this year but I would be very surprised if it is not to later in the year. Ron Roberts is my guest. San Diego County supervisor and impact chairman of the county board and also chairman of SANDAG San Diego Association of governments. Another interesting thing that might be coming up in here asking you to put on your SANDAG cat there's talk of putting initiative on this years initiative pellet to address needs for transportation infrastructure in the county. Can you tell us where we are at with that? Another long process, Tom, seems like we put a lot of hours into this this past year and what we are really looking at how can we supplement the money we have for transportation and naming both public transportation in terms of MTS and North County transit and also our Rosener freeways. Locally we know virtually every city needs money, for the development and maintenance of the road systems. We are going to see an even more after these storms but we also know there are things we want to do with public transit. The only way you can make a significant project public transit happen is to have your local tax base. It would have never happened that we could have brought in a trolley out here to San Diego State without having a prior proposition was passed that provided funding. This year we will break ground on another trolley line out to you as CSD. $2 billion project approximately 1,000,000,000 comes out of the local tax, was approved several years ago. TransNet? Says that and the other half comes from the federal government and the only way to get the dollars from federal government is have local dollars available. There's a new trolley line abducted the purple line outcome of South Bay long generally five corridor ultimately to the marrying a site area. That will be more expensive. But there are a few ways we need to get some work done also. TransNet as I understand it is one third, one third, one third, whether transit and one third for local worlds and one third for freeways. We had that right? Spoke generally been that we're looking at a slightly different formula now. Local roads looking at increasing out to about 38 increasing out to about 3839%. -- 30 or 39%. I think selected as kind of working to reach the goals of the claimant action plan in San Diego would prefer most of the money, if we do have a tax, would go to transit but it sounds that is something that you would consider the situation. First of all, I don't think there is a chance that you would see that approved regionally. This is not a city of San Diego tax. This is a County of San Diego. With 18 cities, each of them has their own distinct interest and we have unincorporated areas. We're trying to craft something that we feel will contribute to those things that are important to those residents of the various communities in San Diego. Do you need a supermajority to raise money? Yes, two thirds vote is required. Ron Roberts couple of questions for you before we let you go. One thing I know you want to talk about with regard to the county board is children's health. You have a new initiative is pharmaceuticals, not initiative meant something to put before voters [Indiscernible - multiple speakers] Expect initiative in the sense that our new program we will be driving -- I cannot say too much right now. I can tell you we are working with Children's Hospital in something that I think will be pretty significant in a number of different ways and number of different components to it and we are working with the County Board of Education and others that will be working with every school district in the county to bring forward when I considered major program here. Later in the year. Details of these are still being worked on so I do not want to say too much right now. Pretty excited about it. Still a secret one other thing I know that you are interested in is what you call putting services in the hands of voters. With a new app? County we look for technology, in every single way. We have a lot of technical technological solutions that if you really proud of. We have something called pulse point where we listed I think now almost 50,000 people to assist us in being first responders in those events where people are having strokes any immediate attention. Get there sometimes faster in many cases faster than paramedics. We are using an app to basically running out our response and also identified for them where the nearest defibrillator is so you do not have to be fully trained paramedic to be able to assist somebody on a very timely way but that is just one example of the things that we are doing to allow maybe communities to participate and to help us to provide better services. Ron Roberts chairman of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors, also chairman of SANDAG and thank you very much. Is to be with you, Tom.