Councilmember Gloria to the Rescue – The Sins of San Diego Mayors – Part 2

By Norma Damashek / NumbersRunner / Feb. 22, 2023

(Here is Part 1)

Councilmember Gloria Bounds to the Rescue (2013–2014)

According to the City Charter, the presiding officer of the city council has limited authority to act as mayor in the event of an unplanned vacancy in the mayor’s seat.

With a wink and a nod from City Attorney Jan Goldsmith, Councilmember Todd Gloria put his feet up on the mayor’s desk and immediately got to work reorganizing city government in his own image.

He hired an efficiency maven from Indiana, touted as an expert in privatizing city government (supplementing our in-house expert in  privatization matters–former councilmember Carl DeMaio).  Far exceeding his limited authority, Interim Mayor Gloria hired, fired, rearranged, undid, proclaimed, reversed, and erased all traces of ex-Mayor Filner’s popular reforms and political direction, saddling the next “strong mayor” administration with his own hand-picked officials, appointees, directors, restructured lines of authority, policies, decisions, and hidden alliances.

(The city has resorted to temporary mayors in the past: Bill Cleator held the honor for 4 months… Ed Struiksma for 6 months… Mike Zucchet for 3 days (a whole other story)… Toni Atkins for 5 months.  None had abused the position as Todd Gloria did for for 6 months.)

Our parade of mayors resumes with Kevin Faulconer (2014-2020)

Kevin Faulconer passed himself off as a moderate Republican.  As Mayor, he was one of the most airbrushed, remote-controlled officials our city has yet produced.

• He was already on record–alongside Mayor Sanders, Carl DeMaio, the SD Taxpayers Association, and the Republican Lincoln Club–as a promoter of the shrink government ploy on the 2012 ballot to wipe out reliable retirements for incoming city employees (excluding police).

• A few years later, Mayor Faulconer was on the speaker’s list at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) conference held in San Diego (reminder: ALEC is a Koch brothers/tobacco industry-funded/ conservative conglomerate of legislators and corporate lobbyists who create and promote model bills and resolutions that advance “free-enterprise” objectives like minimizing corporate regulation, reducing taxation, loosening environmental regulations, tightening voter ID rules, weakening labor unions, and promoting gun rights).

• Despite his sun-kissed smile and ingratiating persona (what a contrast to Bob Filner!), Mayor Faulconer managed to back away from nearly every municipal challenge that crossed his path and substitute wishes for action.
  • as the city’s homelessness count worsened and complaints from downtown businesses and residents grew, he responded with a list of empty wishes–but no action
  • he wished that unhoused people would be dispersed from downtown.  Jagged rocks were installed beneath sheltering overpasses to discourage and disgorge them
  • he wished for the deadly hepatitis A epidemic to magically disappear.  His unconscionable incompetence as a manager contributed to 20 deaths and over 400 hospitalizations as disease swept through downtown streets
  • he wished for voters to endorse an increase in hotel taxes (TOT) to finance his #1 priority –the expansion of the downtown Convention Center.  As a cynical campaign sales pitch, some funds for homeless services were tacked on to the proposal
  • he wished for an overall plan for temporary housing and emergency shelter.  His newly-hired “senior advisor for housing solutions” resigned after a few months on the job… no explanation… no replacement… no plan forthcoming

But wait!  Though Mayor Faulconer’s inactions were bad enough, it got worse whenever he did take action:

• in his early days in office, Mayor Faulconer created a charity called One San Diego to finance events and various furnishings inside the Mayor’s office.  He distributed some turkeys on Thanksgiving for impoverished residents in a few city neighborhoods
• contributions to his charity (slush fund?) were solicited by Mayor Faulconer from individual and corporate donors, many of whom had business before the city.  The ins-and-outs of these “behested” payments to his charity– reaching $1.6 million by the end of Faulconer’s term in office—teetered on the edge of corruption.  One San Diego was dissolved shortly after Mayor Faulconer left office
• Mayor Faulconer, as the city’s chief executive officer, accepted an offer to purchase the former Sempra headquarters office building at 101 Ash Street
• the deal was handled by Cisterra Development (a generous donor to Mayor Faulconer’s One San Diego charity) and involved an elaborately choreographed handoff
  first, Cisterra arranged to purchase the abandoned building from owners Sandor Shapery and Doug Manchester
• then, in a creative arabesque, Cisterra sold the property to the city, erasing evidence that Mayor Faulconer and ex-council president Todd Gloria were engaged in doing business with Papa Doug Manchester (another generous benefactor of the Mayor’s)
• Mayor Faulconer was the ultimate decision maker in the 101 Ash St. affair.  His brainless action–enabled by then-Councilmember Todd Gloria– to purchase the building AS-IS, without first obtaining a building appraisal and assessment of its condition, planted a ticking time bomb in the bowels of City Hall.  The entire transaction was an unmitigated catastrophe for San Diegans

But wait again…there were more real estate fiascos:

• Mayor Faulconer engineered the purchase of a Kearny Mesa operations yard used for maintaining the city’s fire trucks.  The costs of needed improvements to the property rose from an initial estimate of $6.5 million to an actual $14.8 million
• Mayor Faulconer squandered millions of dollars above appraised values to acquire motel property for use as transitional housing for former drug offenders.  Here again, he skipped performing basic assessments of building conditions.  Improvement costs came in at $2 million more than the original estimate
• The Mayor engineered and fast-tracked a $7 million purchase–once more without a prior city appraisal–of a defunct indoor skydiving building for use as a one-stop homeless “navigation” center.  Mayor Faulconer ignored dissenting voices.  The voice he did heed was that of influential political financier and hustling dealmaker David Malcolm–whose personal finances were intertwined with the city’s purchase of the skydiving lead balloon
• Mayor Faulconer paid out untold millions on a contract to outfit the city with “smart street lights.” Plagued by mismanagement, cost overruns, maintenance problems, and deceptive practices, the project had to be rescinded and completely overhauled
• Mayor Faulconer’s last ditch efforts at legacy projects still clog the city’s agenda: the Midway Sports Arena… loose construction deals with San Diego State University at Qualcomm Stadium… non-standard city parks…defective and deceptive zoning overhauls entitled Complete Communities

Bringing up the rear in our parade of mayors is our current chief executive Todd Gloria (2020-??).

Existing evidence reveals that Mayor Gloria is as ruinously incompetent at running and managing city government as was his immediate predecessor.  He is proving to be as devious… irresponsible… reckless… dishonest… over his head…and yes, corrupt as those who paraded behind him.

This may sound peculiar, but–in a city like ours where truth is stranger than fiction–have you noticed that Mayor Gloria is really a doppelgänger–a 21st century reincarnation of former Mayor Susan Golding?

He is (as she was) laser-focused on his personal political future.  He has (as she had) abused his contract with the San Diego public by prioritizing his personal welfare over and above the welfare of 1.4 million San Diegans.  And coming full circle, Todd Gloria’s unbridled political ambitions (coupled with defective judgement) are digging the city’s financial hole (first dynamited by Mayor Golding) wider and deeper than ever before, accelerating the city’s descent into financial crisis.

To illustrate, let’s take an independent tour around our present-day mayor:

• As of today, the city is over $5 billion in the red.  This is the gap between the city’s projected infrastructure needs over the next five years and the funding available to pay for them.  Right now, the city is unable to pay for normal municipal services like paving the streets, upkeep of city parks, repairing streetlights, adequately staffing city departments, or creating alternatives for people who camp out on our sidewalks and alleys…unable to pay for crucial repairs to roads, flood prevention, bridges, upgrading our sewage system and storm drains…unable to provide new infrastructure needed to keep up with persistent demands to increase housing densities and construction….

• Consider this: it was Todd Gloria as then-president of the city council, who promoted the most disastrous real estate deal in our city’s history: the acquisition of the derelict office building known as 101 Ash Street.   It’s still a puzzle–did he do it out of ignorance? stupidity? carelessness? or simply as a favor to some cronies?

• And once he became Mayor, Todd Gloria compounded the fraud.  Amid lawsuits and general chaos over what to do with an unusable, abandoned, valueless, high-rent, 19-story office building across the street from City Hall, Mayor Gloria foisted a sleazy (possibly illegal) “settlement agreement” on San Diego taxpayers.  It’s called borrowing from Peter to pay Paul…at public expense.

• • here’s how Mayor Gloria’s “settlement” deal works: the city buys–with cash–the offending property for $132 million.
  • the cash comes from raiding public funds that have already been earmarked for street paving, flood control, and city parks (public projects)
  • after purchasing the property, the city goes to the Wall Street bond market and borrows around $175 million to backfill the budget and pay for designated on-hold public projects.
  • of course, the city will pay interest on this borrowed money
  • this means that Mayor Gloria’s initial role in the AS-IS purchase of a building that was asbestos-ridden and electrical and plumbing-delinquent, when added to Mayor Gloria’s “settlement agreement,” will cost San Diegans $11.6 million each and every year for the next 30 years.  That’s $348 million of public money
  • with leadership schemes like this, is it any surprise that the city’s existing funding gap has tripled in the past four years?

• The Mayor’s judgement was already suspect when he (alongside then-councilmember Kevin Faulconer) used his influence as Interim Mayor to award a flimsy sole-source contract to an inexperienced organization (Balboa Park Celebration Inc.) to organize what was to be a gala celebration of San Diego’s Centennial anniversary.  Through failed leadership and lack of oversight the venture collapsed, stiffing the public for $3 million in the bargain.
• Years earlier, then-councilmember Gloria engineered the establishment of the Balboa Park Conservancy, whose mission was to raise funds to maintain and improve the park (Balboa Park was in his council district).  The Conservancy stumbled, sputtered, and languished under his negligent supervision.  Today, under Mayor Gloria’s indifferent eye, Balboa Park is on life support.

• It was not the last time that San Diego taxpayers had to pick up the pieces following Todd Gloria’s ineptitude.  A jury found that councilmember Gloria improperly pressured city staff at the Planning Department to fudge a report about a disputed expansion of the Academy of our Lady of Peace, a private religious school in North Park.  The city was originally slapped with a $1.1 million fine for this unethical interference (but managed to settle the matter for half that amount).

• Unfortunately, Mayor Gloria’s judgement or devotion to the public welfare have not improved over the years.  His recent “settlement” of the 101 Ash Street scandal is–for him– a crude but crafty get-out-of-jail card that sweeps under the rug the central role he played from the start.  And it lets off the hook his fellow-perps (past, present, and future campaign donors).  Apparently, the District Attorney can’t prosecute a politician for bad judgement …or stupidity.

• Then there’s the Mayor’s curious decision to cherry-pick the ”Midway Rising” multi-billion dollar master plan proposal for massive redevelopment in San Diego’s Sports Arena community.  The business record of his anointed firm– Zephyr Development– is pockmarked with tax liens, breach of contract, lack of experience with large projects, civil complaints, partnership disputes, and more.  Yet, Mayor Gloria disregarded these red flags when he chose Zephyr over competitive bids.

• Surely, the Mayor’s decision can’t be chalked up to bad judgement… or stupidity.  Is it possible that that Mayor Gloria was influenced by the $100,000 campaign check written by the company’s chief official to help get him elected mayor?  The city’s Ethic Commission seems to be asleep at the wheel.

• Also menacing for the San Diego public is the fact that Mayor Gloria is a consenting captive of a formidable pileup of San Diego’s entrenched power brokers whose mission is to drive and accelerate economic and residential growth and development in the region–with scant regard to issues of equity, justice, quality of life, or negative environmental impacts.

Our home-grown “growth machine” members range from bankers, to big business owners, to consultants, to convention center purveyors, to developers, to financiers, to building trades unions, to hoteliers, to law firms, to lobbyists, to newspaper owners, to the real estate establishment, to land speculators.

• On any day of the week, you’ll find Mayor Gloria sitting at the feet of local lobbyist Colin Parent (regional avatar of San Diego’s YIMBY cult and opportunistic executive director of Circulate San Diego).  Colin Parent’s land development mission is Mayor Gloria’s mission.

• You’ll find the Mayor issuing directives to rewrite the city’s zoning codes, eliminate neighborhood voices, and reduce environmental standards.  With his gift of hyperactive happy talk, our Mayor delivers deceptive promises of “affordable housing” as a pretext for generously gifting his campaign donors free rein to overdevelop San Diego with high-rise apartment buildings and dense backyard units in residential areas throughout the city–without analyzing or evaluating long-term consequences.

It’s not very different from the city purchase of property without appraisals or assessments–except for the massive scale differential and predictably devastating outcome.

• And in an ominous throwback to his Interim-Mayor days when he hired an out-of-town “efficiency expert” who specialized in privatizing government services and selling city functions to the private sector, Mayor Gloria just signed contracts with two private companies to replace city staff and take over decision-making functions in our city’s Planning /Development Services Departments.

• And while Mayor Gloria announces almost daily: “Addressing homelessness is my top priority as your Mayor,” some may remember when Interim-Mayor Gloria reversed a program–previously funded by then-Mayor Filner– to keep shelters open year-round.   Closing cold weather shelters eventually led to a deadly outbreak of Hepatitis A just a few years later.  You might think he had learned something from that tragedy.

• But the acts of addressing and accomplishing are not synonymous.   Mayor Gloria has been unable to accomplish even the limited task of providing and maintaining desperately needed public toilet facilities in downtown locations.  He shifts the blame for his inability to ameliorate the problem and sputters incoherent excuses: “I don’t have enough park maintenance people to keep this thing clean, right?  So just for God’s sake, if you see someone messing this up…this is getting crazy…. I think my staff’s gonna have a heart attack… be a decent human being for God’s sakes. And flush when you’re done if it’s not too much…”  This is our Mayor talking.

• A couple of years ago there was an editorial headline published in the San Diego Union-Tribune that warned: “Keep Faulconer Away From City Real Estate.”  It came too late.

• We’re overdue for a follow-up warning from our daily newspaper: “Keep Gloria Away From City Real Estate… Away From the Planning Department… and Away From All Important City Business.”  But it may already be too late.

*****************************

Our Parade of Mayors leaves us with many questions.  We can start with this one:

• what can explain the degree of incompetence, insubstantiality, indifference, shortsightedness, and inadequacy that has defined San Diego’s political figures?

Incidents of low level corruption are unavoidable but they’re not necessarily fatal.   What is fatal to the public good is the lack of fervor, integrity, intelligent conviction, stability, and dedication to public-oriented service from the people we elect to city government.  The reasons aren’t obvious but they’re worth debating.

We need to ask ourselves: Are the people of San Diego better off since we switched to a “Strong Mayor” form of government?  Was it a wise decision for San Diego to throw out our City Manager system?

To be more blunt: were we fu*ked over?  Are we being screwed?  Have we had it with political bullsh*t from unworthy city leaders?

If so, let’s unzip our collective lips– not to fool around with language niceties… not to indulge in salacious gossip… not to be the most correct person in the room — but to demand the initiation of a formal process to reevaluate the city’s governance system and reform our City Charter.  This time, we must insist that neighborhood voices dominate the process.  It sounds mundane, but self-preservation and the future of our city are at stake.