San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer Discusses His Re-Election Bid

In the race for San Diego Mayor, it looked for a while that Mayor Kevin Faulconer -- he is a candidate to be in the upcoming June primary. So what is tran18's agenda for San Diego if he is reelected? Welcome Mayor Faulkner. Let me jump right into it and build on what we just heard about rebuild San Diego. The city's infrastructure funding gap is 1.4 billion over the next five years everybody seems to agree that rebuild San Diego ballot measure that you endorse races less than $200 million in the next five years or thereabouts. What is going to pay for the repairs that we need in the next five years question were We are making a huge step on that right near. In fact in this year's budget when you have 500 me and dollars towards infrastructure. That made it a priority. I'm glad frankly that the Council has supported that priority and if you look, we have a budget up now that is going through the process that we commit what we're doing on road repair as an example. We are doubling the amount of roads that we have repaired from several years ago. We're fixing our water pipes and our infrastructure. Part of making that commitment of 50% of the revenue was a commitment that I started when I was Mayor. It takes all of us working together and I was very proud that in last year's budget, it was adopted unanimously by the city Council. Republicans and Democrats who believe as I do the infrastructure and neighborhood services should be our city's top priority. I'm going to continue that and it is continued in this year's budget. We need to continue that for the foreseeable future Cramped critics are calling this that's , some critics are calling this -- why not just face the problem of this huge infrastructure deficit and with a bond measure or a tax hike or a trash pickup the? We are facing it and we are facing it head on. As councilmember Mark Kersey and the rest of the Council have been working and along with myself, to make infrastructure the priority. We continue to dig our way out of this pension crisis and the recession with the city made some horrible decisions with our money. I said very clearly when I was running for mayor and it the budgets that I did that said we have to make infrastructure a priority. You back that up I actually putting the dollars for neighborhood services. Not only on infrastructure but the fact that we have increased library hours to their highest in a decade. Same with what we're doing with rec centers and I just mention on street repair. So we were together and tackle the issues which is what we have been doing, people are seeing a result. It is not about sending more money to City Hall. It is about City Hall doing a better job with the money that we had. You mentioned the proposition the pension for city workers that was eliminated by proposition B. That seems to have jumped up and bit us where we did not expected because those of eliminated pensions and the freezing of the salaries for five years for city workers, both actions that you supported. We're having trouble now hiring and retaining police and police dispatchers. The death of an infant and Mira Mesa has put the understaffing of San Diego's 911 dispatchers in the spotlight. You said you would bring police and dispatchers back up to straight why is it taking so long question were That is exactly what we're doing. And we are proud of the work that our men and women do and our Police Department and the dispatchers. They work incredibly long hours and are doing a remarkable job. To get back to your point of what the pension crisis did, when the city deliberately underfunded and not make any provisions for the long-term, we're still paying still paying that credit card. If we did not make those past mistakes, we would have over 100 more million dollars in this budget alone. We could be doing the things the San Diego's deserve and expect. One of the things we have done working in a bipartisan fashion and working with the police officers to give them additional compensation that they need and spending a lot of time particularly on the dispatch issue. Working with the unit and cutting the time that it takes to hire dispatchers and making sure that the positions are actually fully funded in the budget which I have done. And making sure that we have done things like increased compensation as they start, some merit day. This is an issue that the city got itself into a lot of trouble with. Over the last several years and 10 years before. We are solving it and we are tackling it head on and that is what people should expect and what they are getting. The police department does say they are losing cities that's cut workers in the pay is not frozen. Is that an unintended consequence of the proposition B question were With our city Police Department, we can to a unanimous agreement on them with increasing dollars. Not just dollars but also equipment. Things we're doing on healthcare and facilities. Again, making sure that we are recruiting out your round fully funding academies which was not done in the past. We have four academies fully funded not only this year but Lasher as well. So when you look again at what the city was not doing in terms of hiring and keeping these highly qualified men and women, I have made that a priority and so has the Council and you are seeing the results. Signatures are being gathered as we speak to place the charges plan for a new downtown stadium on the ballot in November. You still haven't weighed in on the plane? I have weighed in and I said very clearly as to be something that is going to be fair for taxpayers. We have to make sure that we get all of the information. We have a proposal from the Chargers and so what we're doing very clearly is we have said there are some assumptions that are made in the proposal and that the proposal if pass will be the largest bond offering in the city's history. I have said my job as mayor is to make sure that I'm giving San Diegan's information in the data and we don't just take assumptions. We actually get into it and run the numbers. That is exactly what we're doing from a financial standpoint infrastructure standpoint. We have to do our homework. We have to make sure that we know all the costs are involved. That is what we have been doing over the last several weeks since his proposal was unveiled. That is what we're going to continue to do because San Diego's deserve to get all the information. The Chargers to send a letter answering some of your questions. Have the answer the questions question were They did send a letter and I put all of my questions down on paper. A very detailed and very thorough and very tough questions. That is my job to ask the tough questions. We received their responses at the end of last week and are going to be getting together with knowledge some of their legal and financial folks from our city side to make sure that we have the dialogue that we scrubbed the numbers. That is a process that we are engaged in now. If you look back at some of the deals that have been made in the city, particularly on sports issues that were not thoroughly scrubbed and thoroughly vetted, that is were the city has made some mistakes. I am ensuring in my job as mayor to make sure that we can all information. Don't voters in the primary have a right to know whether their next mayor supports his proposal or not question were Voters have the right to know that there may or is making sure that they get the information that they need. We spent, we had a pretty significant proposal on Mission Valley where we had the information a new with the land and infrastructure, because we did environmental impact reports and that certified by the governor. A proposal with the city and County. So we spent significant amount of time to make sure with that proposal in Mission Valley and all of the numbers and all of the things were done. That took about six or nine months. When it comes to this proposal we're going to make sure that we do our due diligence and get it done right. You have one chance to get it done right and that's what we're doing. May or Faulconer you're going to be announcing the house will meet the goals of the climate action plan today. A couple of hours from now. I'm going to assume that San Diego is going to be funding for some of those -- said she voted down the tax increase or you voted against putting it on the ballot measure desk at the Sendak tax increase how is San Diego going to fund those goals quick more That is what we are talking about now in very different. Obviously the Sandag for your cell stack is a very progressive sales tax -- tax payer advocates opposed to it. I'm very proud of and I stand behind. The fact that when I came into office and help get environmentalist in the business community together. I said we're going to do this. We're going to reduce our greenhouse gases. We're going to have renewable energy and we're going to be not only statewide but nationwide leaders. Today we are talking about how we're doing in the and our commitment as an example to peer water, water recycling and winning ourselves off of Los Angeles. We're going to talk about zero waste of funding for zero ways. Will be talking about downtown mobility plan and have dedicated bike lanes. This is a plan that has bipartisan support and one that was easy to get there. Why I am so excited about taking this next step today about not only showing were some the dollars are going the fact that we have said it is not enough to have a plan, we have to implement. I am very proud of our leadership in San Diego when it comes to the environment. I'm going to continue to make sure that we're doing right thing. Are you going to tell us where the dollars are going to go and where they going to come from question were If you look at for example, the fact that I have matched actions with dollars. We have brought in the sustainability manager. We are updating our community plans. We are putting the real dollars on your water which is not going to be inexpensive but critically important for both a sustainability standpoint and a water independence standpoint. The fact that just a month ago we got recognized as the city for being the second largest city for solar adoption in the country. We are leaders. We want to continue that. I feel so strongly about this. Our environment and our quality of life in her clean water and air defines who we are as San Diego's. That is part of the fabric and why it's so important that we not only have and it Gress of climate action plan that we put dollars behind it. I'm out of time served. We support Donald Trump for president if he wins the GOP nomination question were I'm strongly supporting Governor. John Kasich. I have been speaking with San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer. Thank you so much.