Gosh darn it, I don’t like to be negative but when I look around, I can’t help it.
I mean here we have place that’s so pretty with beaches, bays, bluffs, a solid bar and restaurant scene, friendly people and very agreeable climate with 300+ days of annual sunshine and it would seem all you have to do is not screw things up to make it an idyllic place to live and visit.
And into this scene, enter the San Diego City Council and Mayor Todd Gloria. Now on one hand you may think – somewhat correctly – that while you are sitting at an outdoor table having fine food and/or drinks, at a Padres game, walking along the beach, seeing the sea lions in La Jolla or watching yet another spectacular sunset, how could you complain about anything at all?
But then you see homeless people looking like characters out of a zombie movie staggering down the streets and passed out in broad daylight on sidewalks, have to pay for at balboa Park for the first time ever and $40 (and up) for a Padres game and bounce along bumpy streets – some places in La Jolla are so bad a local tour guide describes it there as “a place of multi-million dollar homes and 10-cent streets – and you realize things in San Diego are far from perfect.
The city is so badly managed, it spent money a hotel tax that did not pass, in part leaving it with a $146 million budget deficit for the upcoming year. It no longer blocks off busy Fifth Ave., the main street in the Gaslamp Quater, to a pedestrian-only street at night because it was paying a company – wait for it – $426,000 a year to put up metal poles. Now it doesn’t take a genius to ask “well now, if they were paying that much money for something so simple, what are they spending on other projects?”
In an attempt to make up for their financial mismanagement, the city council is now, for the first time, charging for parking in Balboa Park, which is keeping people away from their and hurting the museums, upped the rate of meters in the entire downtown area for Padres games and Petco Park events and raised the anger of residents by imposing high trash collection fees.
In each case they have bungled it so badly the city council has managed to piss off just about everyone in San Diego. And now Gloria is talking of canceling or scaling back one of the most treasured events of the year, December Nights in Balboa Park. I can’t wait to see the backlash if that happens.
Even with all that, San Diego remains a great place to live and visit. It has too many other positives to let even this city council and mayor screw is up completely. Tho they are certainly trying to do it.
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