It’s being billed as a Solutions Showdown. Voice of San Diego’s annual Politifest is slated for Saturday, Oct. 4 at the University of San Diego. Voice of San Diego's CEO Scott Lewis spoke with KPBS to spotlight what’s on tap for this year’s political public summit.
So, Scott, this year's Politifest is called Solutions Showdown. What does that mean? And why did you decide to format it that way?
Lewis: Well, we normally have a bunch of panels, discussions and speeches and such. And what we really wanted to do this time is focus on the problems and confront the problems — but offer solutions. So we're asking every panelist now to give a presentation on what they would do to solve the problem that their panel is about. And then we're going to have them discuss after a little bit of moderated discussion. Then an actual vote. We're going to have the live audience and the audience online vote on which one they think was the best solution for that. At the end of the day, we'll have a little gathering of all of the winners and see what the best solution presented that day was.
What might be some of the local issues that solutions will be discussed on, and what might those solutions entail?
Lewis: That's a great question. So one of them will be the crisis in the Tijuana River Valley, the sewage crisis. We want to hear from solutions. We've heard about the problems at length, ad nauseam. But what are some things we could hope for to happen? I think a lot of those solutions are very expensive — infrastructure improvements south of the border. But there's maybe some ... There's one guy who has an idea to build a jetty all the way out into the ocean to block it. Child care crisis. What are we going to do about the access and affordability of child care? KPBS is helping us with that one. The cost of electricity. There's a guy who's going to propose that the city or a nonprofit associated with the city take over what SDG&E does here in San Diego. And then there's a couple of other people who have more market-based solutions that are going to present. So I think it's a real chance for people to grapple with these problems that we're all worried about. But we're really looking forward to the hope that solutions discussions offer.
So there is a ton of political cynicism out there for obvious reasons. What do you hope people will take away from Politifest this year? And what do you hope elected officials will get from it?
Lewis: Well, I hope that people get hope. Honestly, I think that we're really good at Voice of San Diego, at talking about the problems. And I think people get like, 'Oh, man, here they go again.' There's another big problem we have to deal with. We believe San Diego is strong enough to face its biggest problems. One of the panels is going to be about what the future or how you can get the city that you want to get in San Diego, the city of San Diego. So Shani Lo Rivera, a council member, is going to offer his vision. And then Amy Fawcett, from maybe the more right-of-center perspective, is going to offer her vision of what would happen and what kinds of things need to happen to make San Diego work better. So I think it's just a chance to hope because solutions are fun. Problems are tough. Problems make you worry. Solutions actually make you hopeful.
Politifest has been going on since 2011. So this is what, 14 years now?
Lewis: Yeah, we missed a couple of years here and there, we used to not do it on off-election years, and now we do it every year.
So how has Politifest evolved over the years?
Lewis: Well, you and I remember the first few we were doing them in Liberty Station in a park. We had a dunk tank. It was supposed to be a festival with a little politics aside. Now we realize most people just wanted to see the debates and the panel discussions, and that's what we focus on now. So it's a daylong discussion and a chance. And this, we think, gamifies it a little bit, adds a little bit of interest and competition, because we do want people to focus on the future. And so we'll see if this works. I think people are excited about it.
There is widespread belief that civic discourse is unwell in this country. Do you think that Politifest disputes that or contradicts that?
Lewis: I think local disputes that. I think there is a lot of cynicism out there, and I think there is a lot of reason for despair, frankly. But I think local politics, local public affairs, local journalism is a chance to break through that because we can see each other. We can talk to each other. We can humanize each other. We can go up to the mayor or the board of supervisors or the Congress members here, and we can see that they're real people and have to deal with them right or wrong on the things that they're excited about or advocating for. We can see potholes, and we can see schools. We can see and tangibly deal with the things that we're talking about. I think that's a lot easier for civic discourse to happen as compared to a national discourse, where you can't meet the people, you can't humanize them, and you can't even really conceive the problems as well. And so that's the advantage we have locally, but also the mandate we have to make sure we take advantage of that and force people to talk about what they're going to do to make this a better place.
