Politics

Chula Vista Looks Ahead To Even Bigger Budget Deficit

By Alison St John / Reporter

Published August 17, 2010 at 1:16 PM PDT

This story was published more than 14 years ago.

Chula Vista is tackling next year’s budget deliberations six months early. Even after four years of cuts, the city’s budget hole is larger than ever.

The projected budget short fall for next year is somewhere between $12-$17 million.

City Manager Jim Sandoval says the council could eliminate whole city departments and still not close the financial hole.

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"For example," he said, "if the city libraries and the rec. centers all together were to be closed up, that still only gives you about $7 million, so the magnitude is very large."

Sandoval says he’s not recommending closing whole departments, but he wants the public to understand the severity of the problem.

He says Chula Vista has already eliminated more than 250 full-time positions, and has reduced its hourly staffing by half.

He says when the economy picks up and revenues increase Chula Vista will be well positioned, but the city faces several more years of restructuring.

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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.