Our take on today's issues
CPI BLOG
With Peter Dreier
California is broken — and broke. Its K-12 public schools, roads, levies, aqueducts, parks, and bridges; its health-care system; home health care for the elderly and disabled; and even its once-envied public universities are all crumbling from long-term neglect and underfunding. State employees have been forced to take three unpaid furlough days per month — equal to a 14 percent pay cut.
Revising history does not solve the revenue problem at City Hall. Nevertheless, San Diego City Councilmember Carl DeMaio attempted to do just that Monday by factually disputing that the City collects less revenue than comparable cities.
In response to a presentation of a draft Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) for 2009, DeMaio objected to a statement about San Diego’s relatively low taxes and fees that he suggested was ” … just cut-and-paste from the Center on Policy Initiatives … I find this to be a factually inaccurate statement. I cannot vote for the CAFR with that line in it.” (Audit Committee, January 11, 2010)
The Center on Policy Initiatives (CPI) has raised the issue of the city’s low revenue for years, and has been validated by numerous independent sources.
“It is no coincidence that two cities that have resisted paying for trash collection have the worst recycling rates (Houston: 2.9 percent; Philadelphia: 5.5 percent) in the nation.
We do not have this option in San Diego. The city of San Diego has a residential recycle rate of 55 percent and we need to do more. The need for price-based incentives to encourage waste reduction behavior is not just an ecological imperative, but a physical capacity one, since the Miramar Landfill will be full in three years. Read more »
