The report that the city of San Diego’s funding shortfall for much-needed infrastructure projects has tripled since 2020 — going from $2.16 billion to a staggering $6.51 billion — is only the latest evidence that elected leaders aren’t being candid about the awful state of city finances. , the higher that figure gets, the more likely it is that San Diego will feel like a decaying Rust Belt community in coming decades. So we have that to look forward to.
City officials blamed “rising construction costs, higher borrowing costs and stricter regulations for how bridges, buildings, storm drains and other projects must be constructed and maintained.” They should also have cited elected leaders who are allergic to responsible budgeting. Not only do they balk at trying to control constantly escalating spending on pay and benefits, they pour gasoline on the fire. Their 2023 decision to give more than half of city employees a phased-in 23 percent pay raise appears to have been undertaken without the understanding that it would lead directly to such wrenching headlines as the one on Jan. 11 about the city’s mandatory pension payment reaching $533 million in the coming fiscal year.
That’s terrible news. Here’s even more: As recently as last fall, many City Council were eager to increase spending on non-essential needs. On Oct. 14, the U-T reported that the prospect of a 1 cent per dollar sales tax hike being approved in November by city voters — generating $400 million in additional annual revenue — had council salivating over how this would allow them to increase arts and culture spending and funding for a variety of other programs. After city voters narrowly rejected Measure E, however, reality sank in — sort of — in the form of a $258 million deficit forecast for fiscal 2024-25.
But the claim that Measure E’s age would have stabilized city finances — repeated throughout 2024 by the politicians and government unions pushing for it — requires magical thinking. Even if the entire $400 million in new annual revenue went to nothing but the $6.51 billion in infrastructure needs for 10 years — and if the cost of those needs somehow didn’t keep increasing — then the city would still have an infrastructure funding shortfall that was more than the $2.16 billion reported in 2020. And how dire was that shortfall considered?
“It’s an unbelievable challenge,” former Mayor Jerry Sanders said that April. “I faced some budget problems when I was at the city, and this is just bigger than I’ve ever seen.”
The challenge, alas, remains unbelievable. But then why wouldn’t elected leaders refuse to reckon with reality? Because of term limits, they know that when the bills they’ve run up come due, they’ll be long gone from City Hall.
Two mistakes were corrected on March 3. One was an inaccurate reference to the size of the city of San Diego's entire annual budget. One was a characterization of City Council ' plans for use of potential new revenue that did not reflect their infrastructure priorities in budget memos.
