Politics

Vista May Turn Off The Lights To Balance The Budget

By Alison St John / Reporter

Published February 15, 2011 at 3:00 AM PST

This story was published more than 13 years ago.

The City of Vista holds a budget workshop this morning to figure out how to plug a $9 million budget gap. The measures should get residents’ attention.

Vista Council members have already decided to take one of their ambulances out of service.

They will also turn off half the street lights in residential areas, starting in March.

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City Spokeswoman Andrea McCullough said the city hasn't raised the fees for street lighting since 1996, and is now subsidizing the cost to the tune of nearly $400,000. The city can’t raise fees for street lighting without an election, and residents haven’t returned enough petitions to force an election.

"It could be that they don’t realize how it affects them," McCullough said. "And so it could be that after the lights are turned off, that they may decide they want to pay between $4 and $20 on their property tax. “

McCullough says the Council will also consider whether to adopt an emergency response fee, or “crash tax,” to help cover the cost of responding to traffic accidents. Motorists from out of town involved in an accident would have to cover the cost of police and ambulance response. However, the city of Oceanside has found the amount raised by a crash tax approved last year generated far less than predicted.

Senior programs and youth sports are also on the table.

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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.