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Believe the Grand Jury. Do NOT Believe the Mayor's Office
Two reasons: Lack of transparency between city departments and its wholly owned corporation DPC and lack of real leadership. The latter being San Diego's real problem since 2005.— November 19, 2010 12:33 p.m.
Believe the Grand Jury. Do NOT Believe the Mayor's Office
Don I am not saying this statement from the City isn't suspect, but if you did any investigative work on SAP OneSD Software/computer system you'd find your toes curling from the waste and massive expense. What's worse, the ridiculous amount of time squandered by employees who try and make this "Rube Goldberg" software actually do what vendor promised. With close to $50 Million already spent, it's so buggy even the ORKIN Man would throw up his hands from the keyboard, and say who paid for this piece of excrement.— November 18, 2010 8:07 p.m.
DeMaio Blind to One Thing: Greed
The IRS would not be too happy to see any pension system funded at 120%. Funding at those levels would risk the system's tax exempt status, and indicate too much money is being sheltered from Uncle Sam. If the IRS is not getting its share of tax money, they get a little nasty.— November 7, 2010 3:50 p.m.
Councilmember Marti Emerald Douses Political Firestorm over San Diego's Public Safety Budget Cuts
Flounder better check the mirror buddy. This thread was about DeMaio's false and exaggerated claims of BONUSES to firefighters. The reality is DeMaio's so-called bonuses are part of their base pay and the City never changed the salary codes table once it, the City, changed EMT from an optional skill with additional compensation, to a mandatory job requirement. The last paragraph of the story tells it all: "From her spot on the dais, Councilmember Marti Emerald, chair of the committee, also took offense to her colleague's comments. It appears that Mr. DeMaio is playing some political game with public safety," said Emerald, who then directed her comments to staff members from councilmember DeMaio's office. "None of us appreciates that, from your boss or from any of you. Spreading rumors, spreading lies to try and influence your political outcome.... I hope you take that message back to your boss. We will do whatever we can to silence this misinformation, this irresponsible behavior." The bottom line is you support DeMaio and that's your right as a citizen. I do not support him. Mr. DeMaio has been called out too many times for spreading or worse, as in this instance, creating misinformation. This time his actions warranted criticism in the strongest of terms by his colleagues. IMO the man is all ego, he has demonstrated unethical behavior, and sadly, he lies straight faced to San Diegans. If this is the kind of leadership you want, if these tactics and lies are acceptable to you, then San Diego will suffer for years to come.— October 22, 2010 9:56 a.m.
Councilmember Marti Emerald Douses Political Firestorm over San Diego's Public Safety Budget Cuts
Citizens of San Diego have not and do not pay the TRUE cost of services. The best example of this is the City's trash collection service. Since 1919 San Diegans have had the trash collected at LITTLE or NO cost to them. Certainly not the TRUE cost of collecting it. Hell the City even gave each resident a FREE trashcan when it started the automated system. Here's another one. The City only bills the Chargers for 50 percent of the cost of law enforcement, fire and traffic control services during home games. Spanos is a billionaire who doesn't even live in San Diego. If he had his way, he's want the services for free, so don't tell me people don't want services for free. You guys should be asking your hero Carl DeMaio why the City doesn't get FULL cost recovery on ALL special events? Sadly, Puppy hasn't posted anything NEW or completely factual in the Reader's blog columns in years. Most of the time it's the same retreaded comments or outrageous exaggerations.— October 21, 2010 1:28 p.m.
Councilmember Marti Emerald Douses Political Firestorm over San Diego's Public Safety Budget Cuts
Guess you did not listen to the Mayor at one of the first town hall meeting. Cops have already done what you ask. FF will be doing it this years, and employees hired after 7/1/05 don't get the pension or benefit you complain of. I love it when people like you say the employees should take the "hit" but citizens like you want services for free or half the real cost of providing the service. What would you do, if as puppy suggests, your income, no matter what it source, was cut by 25 percent. Maybe you're independently wealthy, and it wouldn't matter, maybe you have a trust fund, but if 25% of your income disappeared, never to return, you'd be worried too. Puppy says salaries should be capped. Well not only have they been capped for a couple of years now, they've also been reduced in many instances by 6 percent. But then again, your hero, Carl DeMaio, gave his crew raises. Next, you and the pupster will suggest we reclassify government employees as indentured servants, not public servants. But there's little point to this thread because we won't agree on anything.— October 21, 2010 10:38 a.m.
Councilmember Marti Emerald Douses Political Firestorm over San Diego's Public Safety Budget Cuts
Guess you haven't been paying attention. Your buddy Goldsmith has filed litigation against SDCERS that claims employees must share 50% of the investment losses, but none of the gains. Yeah those ages will work for safety employees. The only problem will be 90% or more will be retired with industrial disability pensions. I want to see those 62 year old firefighter hauls up 100LB hoses with the other 100 lbs of safety gear. Go ahead and send YOUR plan to DeMaio. One of two thing will happen, he'll claim he came up with it or some slight variation or he'll just ignore you like so many others. DeMaio is out for DeMaio nothing else matters. So DeMaio will only grandstand for political capital every chance he gets.— October 20, 2010 9:53 p.m.
Sanders's "Frighten 'Em" Prop. D Scam
Don It's Fire Chief Manier 3rd paragraph, second sentence not Police Chief. And it's blogofsandiego DOT com, not COMA com. Get a good nights rest and things may get better in the morning.— October 20, 2010 7:35 p.m.
Councilmember Marti Emerald Douses Political Firestorm over San Diego's Public Safety Budget Cuts
Visduh, That's the point the City collects LESS than other cities in California but spends just as much or more than it take in. That's called a structural deficit.— October 19, 2010 9:59 p.m.
Councilmember Marti Emerald Douses Political Firestorm over San Diego's Public Safety Budget Cuts
On one hand San Diegans are tax adverse, it's been that way for years. In simpler words, they're cheap. But on the other hand, San Diegans want services. They just don't want to pay for them, or, they really believe the services should be provided at 50 cents on the dollar. But why would they think they can get them cheaply? Well, over the last 30 years our political leaders repeatedly obfuscated the true cost of operating the City until they were caught red handed. So citizens like yourself have been conditioned to believe that way and it's not the real world. The point of the report which focused on five potential revenue streams to reduce the structural deficit, was San Diego residents and especially visitors are not paying their fair share for the services. Here's another great example: "T.O.T." San Diego is a few percentage point lower than other California destination towns. But when visitors come here they use services at a reduced rate, so residents who pay for these services too are subsidizing visitors. As I said before, Prop D is not going to solve this problem on its own. But it is the first step on the revenue side equation. Prop D along with the reforms, both required and voluntary ones, is a step in the right direction if you really want to fix the structural deficit.— October 19, 2010 9:56 p.m.