Polls show DeMaio in the lead, followed by Rep. He created a smartphone app for residents to report potholes, was photographed helping city road crews and promised to appoint an inspector general for potholes. “Can you imagine our roads getting even worse?” DeMaio asked in a near horror-stricken voice at a recent candidates’ debate.Įven before the campaign began, DeMaio released a seven-point “Save Our Streets” plan to dedicate $335 million to $497 million during the next five years to fix the city’s roads. His campaign slogan is “Pensions, Potholes and Prosperity.” The candidate who has the most street credibility on the pothole issue is Councilman Carl DeMaio, a conservative Republican and budget hawk who also has led the fight to reduce city pensions and outsource city jobs. Patching streets only perpetuates the problem - overall, the streets are worse now than before the mayor’s push began, the jury said. And $30 million more is slated to be put into the repair project this summer.īut in a city with 2,774 miles of streets, the backlog is staggering. When the city established a pothole hotline a couple of years ago it was swamped with complaints, some couched in the harshest of language.įinally, as the city’s finances began a slow recovery two years ago, Mayor Jerry Sanders announced that 134 miles of the city’s “most complained-about” streets would be resurfaced, at a cost of $47 million - more miles and money than in the previous eight years combined. The grand juries’ jeremiads are hardly news at City Hall. In late April, the county grand jury issued a scalding report that called for “broad-scale rethinking of repair and maintenance of this vital community asset.” Similar reports were issued by grand juries in 20. For several years, the city’s dismal credit rating made it impossible to sell the bonds necessary for large-scale street repair. “Nothing is more local than that pothole in front of your house,” Luna said.Īs San Diego has struggled with a spiraling pension deficit, the national recession and cutbacks in state funding, street repair has suffered. Candidates routinely promise to make this a world-class city at the cutting edge of technology, wireless communication, green energy - you name it.īut this election cycle, a more down-to-earth issue is playing a major role: potholes.Īll four major candidates - two Republicans, a Democrat and a Republican turned independent - have vowed to fix the potholes, fissures and cracks in the city’s streets that have become as much a symbol of San Diego as Shamu at Sea World or the pandas at the zoo.Ĭarl Luna, history professor at San Diego Mesa College, attributes the street-level tone of this season’s mayoral campaign to that famous dictum of the late House Speaker Tip O’Neill: All politics is local. SAN DIEGO - As befits a place that calls itself America’s Finest City, over-the-rainbow rhetoric is a common feature of San Diego mayoral elections.
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