By David Alvarez
The City Council recently voted to place a charter amendment called “Rebuild San Diego” on the June ballot. Supporters proudly proclaimed that Rebuild San Diego will dedicate $3 billion to $4 billion to fix our city’s failing infrastructure, such as streets, sidewalks, and storm drains, all without raising taxes. The proposal that voters will consider purports to accomplish this by amending the charter to require that future growth in sales taxes and future, undetermined, pension savings all get put into a lockbox that can only be used to pay for infrastructure. What’s not to like?
For starters, Rebuild San Diego will not rebuild San Diego, its very name is an example of clever political spin. The city currently faces a $1.4 billion to $1.7 billion backlog of infrastructure repairs over the next five years. You might think that if, as promised, Rebuild San Diego delivers at least $3 billion, the city’s infrastructure problem is solved. You would be wrong. What supporters of Rebuild San Diego don’t like to tell you is that we won’t see anywhere near $3 billion for nearly 25 years. In effect, this charter amendment tells kids who need a new playground in their neighborhood that there will be plenty of money to build one…25 years from now.
In fact, there is no reputable financial forecast that indicates that Rebuild San Diego would even deliver $3 billion. The only forecast that does exist, by the Independent Budget Analyst, shows that the measure would only deliver $1.3 billion over 25 years, and the IBA acknowledged that this estimate is highly speculative. More importantly, the IBA’s forecast shows that the vast majority of the funding would come over 15 years from now. The measure only produces $186 million or 11 percent of the money we need to fix our infrastructure in the next five years.
Even worse, Rebuild San Diego has a giant loophole that should concern every San Diegan. It allows the money it dedicates to infrastructure repairs to also pay for personnel costs that are merely associated with infrastructure. Future mayors and city councils could use this loophole to a devastating effect. For example, there is nothing that would prevent future mayors from using this money to pay for bonuses for management employees far removed from actual construction. But supporters of Rebuild San Diego refuse to be transparent with voters by not even mentioning this huge loophole in the actual question that will appear on voters’ ballots.
Like many other proposals by politicians, you should definitely read the fine print. Over the next five years, Rebuild San Diego delivers much less money to fix our streets than the mayor offered to the Chargers to subsidize a new football stadium.
So what’s the alternative? I agree the city does not need to raise new taxes to repair our infrastructure, but if we actually want to fix this problem we need to better prioritize the money the city already spends. So the public needs to ask some important questions about what our priorities are as a city. Why does the city plan to saddle San Diegans with avoidable debt by borrowing money from Wall Street which results in millions of dollars in interest payments, when we could put those dollars towards repairing and building actual projects in our communities in the next few years? Why is the city spending $3.5 million a year on a communications department that has quadrupled in size in just two years? And why did the mayor offer the Chargers $350 million in taxpayer money to build a stadium that the Chargers didn’t want while our infrastructure continues to deteriorate?
I issued a proposal in January that produced at least three times as much money in the next five years as Rebuild San Diego. To aggressively solve the city’s backlog of needed infrastructure construction and repairs, I proposed three funding sources: 1) dedicating property tax growth, 2) cutting inefficiencies from the city bureaucracy of 1 percent or greater and, 3) debt service savings from cutting up the city’s credit card. I have also endorsed the Citizens’ Plan, which can add hundreds of millions to the city’s general fund over just the next five years that could be used to pay for infrastructure. If you add to this the massive stadium subsidy the mayor has already offered the Chargers, then the city would have the necessary funds over the next five years to fix our infrastructure, all without raising taxes or incurring more debt.
Actually solving San Diego’s infrastructure problem will take more than political spin. It will require city leaders to do more than make promises. The mayor and the council must put real money behind their promises, and actually get to work on fixing our infrastructure in the next five years. The Rebuild San Diego charter amendment does not solve the city’s infrastructure problem. Voters should reject this flawed and deceptive measure and send a clear message to city hall that this problem needs to be solved now — not 25 years from now.
David Alvarez represents District 8 on the San Diego City Council and was a candidate for mayor in 2014.