City Schools, Services Face Cuts As City Hall Fiddles.
The slippery slope of San Diego politics got a little slicker this week, and when the dust settled around City Hall, both the proposed sales tax increase and the schools’ parcel tax were burning hulks, sitting on the side of the Sanders’ feel-good expressway. The battle arena over increasing revenues for local city services and/or public education has now shifted from the voters in November to the back rooms of Sacramento, where, rumor has it, a pending deal between Republican and Democratic legislators will delay upcoming corporate tax breaks granted in past years’ budget negotiations and allow the legislature to ease the budget cut backs for next year that are threatening local finances.
The key player in all the machinations over local taxation was San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders, who shepherded a succession of meetings between various politicos seeking a path towards ballot box victories in a toxic political atmosphere emanating from Tea Party activists and a public hit hard by the recession.It was San Diego’s Mayor that originally hosted off-the-record discussions earlier this summer incorporating both labor and business interest groups that explored support for a ½ per cent increase in the local sales tax. He publicly abandoned the effort after word of these negotiations leaked