VOSD Monthly | July 2012 Preview

The State of Negotiations: Concessions or Not, Teachers Will Get Raises Next Year

www.voiceofsandiego.org

JULY 2012

Vol. 1 No. 3

Dumanis Doesn’t Go Quietly She finished fourth in the mayor’s race.

And she’s got something to say about it and rival Nathan Fletcher.

BY LIAM DILLON

Voice of San Diego is a member-based news organization. Join our community and get a subscription to this magazine. Learn more at vosd.org/join-members ▸▸

July 2012

Volume 1 Number 3

16 EDUCATION

At This School, a Good Deed Outlives a Job Last year, music teacher Russell Shedd ran a 50-mile race to raise money for band uniforms. Now, like 1,500 other San Diego educators, he’s been laid off.

BY WILL CARLESS

10 POLITICS

Dumanis Doesn’t Go Quietly District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis is the kind of person San Diegans like to elect mayor. Law-and-order. Moderate. Republican. Experienced. But she finished fourth in the mayor’s race. And she’s not going quietly. BY LIAM DILLON

Inside 2 EDITOR’S NOTE | Andrew Donohue Whistles, Not Pom-Poms

3 RAISE YOUR VOICE

Frye Packs the Shed for One Voice at a Time Event

4 ON THE STREET

Using the Newspaper as a Weapon | Rob Davis Filner: Party Like It’s 1999 | Liam Dillon DeMaio Misses Our Point on Education | Liam Dillon Chaos Before the Flood | Kelly Bennett

20 EDUCATION

Concessions or Not, Teachers Will Get Raises Next Year A furious battle over whether the teachers union should make concessions on promised pay raises belies a simple fact: Even with concessions, no teachers will see their pay decrease. BY WILL CARLESS

COVER PHOTO BY SAM HODGSON

9 GRAPHIC | Keegan Kyle Tracking the Polls

30 FACT CHECK | Keegan Kyle The Privatization of City Hall

32 COMMENTARY | Scott Lewis The Great Growing Bond

26 PUBLIC SAFETY

The Curfew Questions Continue A trip to the movies ends with curfew arrests. The latest in SDPD’s curfew saga. BY KEEGAN KYLE July 2012 VOSD MONTHLY

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Editor’s Note Whistles, Not Pom-Poms THE DAYS BEFORE AN ELECTION become intense in our world.

Accusations get shot around loosely and whisper campaigns get going strong. Political consultants have this tense, pale look. It’s not that different from that look you get right before you’re going to throw up.

If they’re losing, they’re frantic. If they’re winning, they’re paranoid. As a journalist, you’re often right in the thick of the crossfire. Every side says they’ve heard you’re going with the other side.

Then, it suddenly subsides the moment after the final results become clear after Election Day. When that happens, it’s like a brooding storm has been swept away in an instant and rays of sunshine fill the land.

There’s nothing quite like watching a losing candidate deliver a concession speech. Instead of being filled with tears and sadness, they exude genuine relief and even a hint of bliss.

They’ve just spent a good chunk of their life trying to make a huge population of people like them. That’s required them oftentimes to be someone they’re not, or many different people they’re not. They’ve put their very self up for judgment and worked relentlessly, wondering what that judgment would be. Even when the judgment has been delivered, even when it isn’t great, they look pleased just to have it over with.

It’s in those days after the election when you have a political operative who’s been at your throat for months all of the sudden publicly complimenting what a great job you did.

So now we enjoy a brief respite of peace before the elections ramp up again ahead of November.

Just remember, when things get tense again, that we’re not here to be your candidate’s cheerleader. We’re here to uncover, analyze and think.

And, many times, simply referee.

EDITOR

Andrew Donohue STAFF WRITERS

Kelly Bennett, Will Carless, Rob Davis, Liam Dillon, Keegan Kyle CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Ashley Lewis

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER

Scott Lewis

VICE PRESIDENT, ADVANCEMENT & ENGAGEMENT

Mary Walter-Brown WEB EDITOR

Dagny Salas MEMBER MANAGER

Summer Polacek FOUNDERS

Buzz Woolley & Neil Morgan BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Reid Carr, Bob Page, Bill Stensrud, Gail Stoorza-Gill

July 2012 | Volume 1 Number 3 Subscriptions and Reprints

ANDREW DONOHUE

Editor

VOSD members at the Speaking Up and Loud & Clear levels receive a complimentary subscription to Voice of San Diego Monthly magazine as a thank you for their support.

Individual issues and reprints June be purchased on demand for $7.99 at vosd.org/vosd-mag.

Digital editions are also available for $2.99.

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Want to advertise in VOSD Monthly? Call today to become a Community Partner: (619) 325-0525.

Thank you to the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation for supporting innovative journalism.

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2 VOSD MONTHLY July 2012

News and Updates from Our Member Community

Frye Packs the Shed for One Voice at a Time Event MORE THAN 130 PEOPLE packed into Bird’s Surf Shed on June 20 for the premiere of our One Voice at a Time conversation series. Our first guest was former City Councilwoman Donna Frye, who also donated seven pieces of her personal, electioninspired, artwork for silent auction.

A big thank you goes out to Frye and Eric Huffman, the owner of Bird’s, who donated the space that doubles as a surf shop by day and a hip event venue by night.

This was the first of many One Voice at a Time events we’ll be hosting with San Diego’s big thinkers. Members at the $101 giving level, and above, enjoy free admission and VIP treatment. We’re confirming our next guest right now, so stay tuned!

RECENT EVENTS

Former City Councilwoman Donna Frye’s tales of City Hall kept the audience entertained at VOSD’s first One Voice at a Time event.

Group Memberships Now Available!

In our continued effort to make our reporting and analysis available to more people across San Diego, VOSD is launching a new institutional membership program that allows companies and organizations to purchase group membership benefits for their employees and constituents.

Benefits include a subscription to our daily Morning Report and other member communications including the Member Report and Inside Scoop, a year’s (print or digital) subscription to this magazine and sponsored messages on our website and in this magazine that organizations can use to raise awareness about their causes.

Institutional memberships are priced according to the size of your group. If you’re interested in learning more, please give me a call at (619) 325-0525 or email me at mary.brown@voiceofsandiego.org.

MARY WALTER-BROWN

Vice President, Advancement & Engagement

Former City Councilwoman Donna Frye and VOSD CEO Scott Lewis

UPCOMING EVENTS JUL 26

Go to vosd.org/join-members to learn more about the benefits of membership. Get in the loop! Join the VOSD community today.

QUESTIONS? CONCERNS? Write to mary.brown@voiceofsandiego.org

8:00 A.M. | VOSD OFFICE

VOSD members are invited to join us for coffee, a light breakfast and lively discussion with CEO Scott Lewis and our reporting staff. Space is limited. Please RSVP to summer@voiceofsandiego.org.

AUG 1

Are You Ready to Raise Your Voice?

Member Coffee

Meeting of the Minds

7:00 P.M. | 10TH AVENUE THEATRE

Join us for our next installment of Meeting of the Minds — under the stars. Six local enthusiasts will present a rapid-fire glimpse of stimulating arts and culture ideas on the rooftop of the 10th Avenue Theatre. All VOSD members enjoy free admission. All others asked to make $5 donation. Cocktails provided.

July 2012 VOSD MONTHLY

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A DAY AT THE FAIR About 1.5 million people were expected to attend the San Diego County Fair in Del Mar from June 8 to July 4. Fair officials say the event creates a $450 million economic impact on the region.

On the Street

HAPPENINGS

On the Street Using the Newspaper as a Weapon

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JOHN LYNCH, who became CEO of the U-T San Diego late last year, set a tone for the newspaper’s direction under its new ownership before the sale was even final.

On the day downtown hotelier Doug Manchester struck a deal to buy the paper for about $110 million, Lynch told me that he wanted its sports page to advocate for a new downtown Chargers stadium and call out opponents as “obstructionists.”

Since Lynch has taken the reins, his mark on the newspaper has been clear. The U-T has bullied the Unified Port of San Diego in its news and opinion pages for opposing a massive waterfront development the newspaper proposed downtown.

The paper has become more partisan, provocative and petulant, drawing the attention of media analysts who say it’s an important national case study to see whether ideologues like Manchester are solely interested in the newspaper industry because they can use it for their personal political gain.

The latest reinforcements of that narrative came over the last month.

First, the San Diego Reader revealed Wednesday that Lynch had obliquely threatened to use newspaper coverage in a dispute with the city over a $1,000 fine the U-T faced for hanging a banner from its Mission Valley headquarters.

Then, the paper fired popular sports columnist Tim Sullivan, igniting national outcry. He said he didn’t get an explanation, but suspected his failure to be a cheerleader for a new stadium had something to do with it.

Emails the Reader obtained between Lynch and Councilman Kevin Faulconer’s office focused on two issues. Lynch didn’t want to remove the

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banner. And he wanted to meet with Faulconer to discuss a digital sign the U-T wants to build on its headquarters.

While Faulconer’s chief of staff, Katie Hansen, tried to set up a meeting about the new sign, she told Lynch that the banner had to be removed or the U-T would face a $1,000 fine. Lynch acquiesced. But he didn’t sound happy.

He wrote: “I have instructed that the banner to be taken down. If it weren’t for the digital sign pending approval, I would instruct our folks to run a piece on how this is so reflective of this city being anti-business.

“We are fighting to keep this business vital and if it were ever to go away, there would be 700 San Diego jobs that go with it.”

Lynch is on unfamiliar ground at the newspaper’s helm. Months ago, he acknowledged that he was wrong to say he’d have sports reporters call out football stadium opponents. He told me his background was radio, where being provocative was vital.

But the incident shows a basic lack of understanding between what’s acceptable for newspapers (using the institution to advocate for the public good) and unacceptable (using it to advocate for the ownership’s personal benefit).

The newspaper under Manchester and Lynch then became national news when The New York Times’ esteemed media writer David Carr picked up the story under the headline, “Newspaper as a Bully Pulpit.”

“There is a growing worry that the falling value and failing business models of many American newspapers could lead to a situation where moneyed interests buy papers and use them to prosecute a political and commercial agenda,” Carr wrote.

“That future appears to have arrived in San Diego.”

— Rob Davis

Number of the Month

22% The percentage of people in San Diego County older than 18 who voted in the June 5 election.

TIME CAPSULE

Filner: Party Like It’s 1999 IN 1999, Democratic Congressman Bob Filner considered running for San Diego mayor. He decided against it, but did tell San Diego Union-Tribune reporter Gerry Braun what he was would do if he jumped in:

[Filner’s] own mayoral campaign platform, he said, would have included greater development of the Port of San Diego into a true maritime center, expanded programs to help school-aged children and greater cooperation along the border.

Now, Filner’s actually running for mayor. And the planks in his current campaign platform are exactly the same. His economic development plan relies on port expansion and more cross-border trade. His education idea is to implement more before- and after-school programs.

“I’m pretty consistent,” Filner said in an interview. “I’m talking about the exact same stuff here.”

The sameness of Filner’s ideas speaks to a couple interesting points about his candidacy.

SAM HODGSON FOR VOSD

BULLY PULPIT

QUOTE OF THE MONTH

“I don’t know the issues!”

— A woman in Carmel Valley, upon being asked by reporter Keegan Kyle why she voted how she did.

She then ran to her car.

Since voters first elected Filner to Congress in 1992, moderate Republican mayors have been in charge of the city. As the Democrat in this race, and a liberal one at that, Filner would represent a stark departure from that trend. Filner could argue that no one has run the city according to the principles he laid out 13 years ago so they remain as salient as they’ve ever been.

But Filner’s also been at his weakest on the trail when he’s tried to adapt these turn-of-the-century ideas to San Diego’s new political realities. He used outdated or inaccurate data about port commerce to justify his expansion proposal and seemed willfully ignorant when reporters called him on it.

He dithered for 10 months before releasing a pension reform proposal that wound up resurrecting some of the same proposals discarded at the outset of San Diego’s pension crisis.

Filner’s opponents could argue that his campaign platform is evidence that the congressman is out of sync with the city’s current politics.

— Liam Dillon

OUT OF CONTEXT

DeMaio Misses Our Point on Education IN MAILBOXES right before Election Day, San Diego mayoral candidate Carl DeMaio told voters that he’s the one “with a real plan to do more” on significant city issues.

For economic development and road repairs, that’s true. His plans were more detailed than everyone else’s.

For his education credentials, he cited a story from a very trustworthy and august news operation to try to prove the same point. The ad quotes from the story: “DeMaio connects his school reform ideas to his other plans.

His financial plans will guide how the district can make changes.”

Bob Filner

Here’s the problem. Those lines came from the same story that talks about how he really doesn’t have an education plan.

And the story even applauded him for not trying to pander on it.

I guess we’ll have to retract that now.

— Liam Dillon

HERDING KIDS

Chaos Before the Flood THE FLOOD WAS COMING SUNDAY, ready or not.

It’s a chaotic thing to organize 250some kids from all over the county, and all of the elements to mount a giant production in one of the biggest halls in town, on an $18,000 budget.

That’s what the San Diego Children’s Choir tried to do as it performed the story of Noah and the ark in an opera called “Noye’s Fludde,” by composer Benjamin Britten. So amidst the excitement, I’ve seen quite a few crossed fingers and expressions of

“I guess we’ll see” in the weeks leading up to this point.

They only get to practice in Symphony Hall on the day of their performance. There’s a lot to do to get to Sunday.

Transforming Kids into Animals and Birds

One afternoon in May, kids swarmed craft tables holding multi-colored feathers, plastic jewels and sequins shaped like flowers and butterflies.

Parents helped them use glue guns to make masks of zebras, giraffes, bison, pigs, bears, lions and birds.

Fifteen-year-old Walker Hewitt glued a trunk to an elephant face and said making the mask himself will help him better connect to his character in the performance.

Then a hiccup arose: The air conditioning unit at the choir’s rehearsal space began blowing hot air instead of cold. Within minutes the room filled with dozens of kids had risen to 77 degrees. It bothered the parent volunteers more than the kids.

July 2012 VOSD MONTHLY

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HAPPENINGS

On the Street

But the kids were feeling the heat in different ways.

To squeeze in as much practice as possible, the first- and second-graders were instructed to sing while crafting.

It’s a complicated task for young minds, and many of the kids’ lips stopped moving once they reached the craft station.

One girl forgot completely to sing and cried out “They have lavender!” when she spied a light-purple feather.

Building the Ark

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In the story, Noah’s wife and gossipy neighbors mock him for building a giant boat. He believes God tells him to build it to save his family and all of the species of animals from a giant storm sent to repay humanity for living wickedly.

In the opera, the ark gets constructed on stage. A middle-school

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shop teacher enlisted his woodworking students to build a moveable ark in the parking lot at Warren-Walker Middle School in Mission Valley.

But the kids in the choir won’t get to practice with the ark — navigating their choreography, singing while working around a giant prop — on the stage of Symphony Hall until this weekend, the day of the performance.

That’s got some people stressed out.

“We won’t even know if they’ll fit ‘til the day of,” said pianist Linda Lungren.

Traversing San Diego County

The Children’s Choir takes rehearsals to the corners of the county to connect with as many neighborhoods as possible. They have five different places where rehearsals happen every week — Allied Gardens, Mira Mesa, Hillcrest, Del Mar and Rancho Santa Fe. There, smaller groups

of kids meet and learn the songs. Then they come together, all 250-some, for the performances.

Plus, this year the choir added four “neighborhood choirs” that meet at low-income apartment complexes and community centers in Imperial Beach, City Heights and National City.

This means they’re not used to singing this piece all together. It’s yet another of the pieces that won’t really be seen until the day before the show.

The overall hope is to tell the story clearly, to convey its emotion and hope, said Children’s Choir CEO Donna Icenhower. The audience gets to sing during three songs in the show, too, which she said she hopes sparks a sense of unity with the performers.

“When you walk away you feel alive,” she said.

— Kelly Bennett

SAM HODGSON, KEEGAN KYLE FOR VOSD

Twelve people with flowing fabric recreated the storm that engulfed Noah’s Ark during a performance of “Noye’s Fludde” at Copley Symphony Hall.

GRAPHIC

Tracking the Polls The Trajectory of the Mayor’s Race Question: If the election were today, who would you vote for?

Source: SurveyUSA / KGTV-TV

T

HE graphic above illustrates the results from five polls conducted by SurveyUSA between September last year and May 31.

City Councilman Carl DeMaio has always been the frontrunner, and District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis was always projected to not advance through the primary.

The polling was fairly accurate. As of June 12, the latest results had DeMaio finishing with 31.6 percent, Filner at percent, Fletcher at 24.1 percent and Dumanis at 13.2 percent. DeMaio and Filner advanced to the Nov. 6 runoff to decide San Diego’s next mayor.

— Keegan Kyle

July 2012 VOSD MONTHLY

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SAM HODGSON FOR VOSD

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10 VOSD MONTHLY July 2012

INTERVIEW

Dumanis: ‘I’m Worried About San Diego’ She finished fourth in the mayor’s race.

And she’s got something to say about it and rival Nathan Fletcher

BY LIAM DILLON

D

ISTRICT ATTORNEY BONNIE DUMANIS is the kind of person San Diegans like to elect mayor. Law-andorder. Moderate. Republican. Experienced.

Her mayoral campaign also featured the most robust plan to address troubles at city schools. But Dumanis never gained traction during the race and finished in fourth place.

In a candid Q&A, Dumanis said that she never got asked to drop out of the race and that Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher went back on a pledge to her not to run for mayor.

Dumanis also explained why she’s inclined not to endorse City Councilman Carl DeMaio or Congressman Bob Filner in the general election. And the lack of a moderate in the race, she said, made her “worried about San Diego.”

If there was anything you could do over again, what would you?

I’m not ready to say that yet. We’re going to do an afteraction report, that’s what we do. But we have to wait and see where the numbers came in, what areas, what the demographics were, that sort of thing.

But surely there is something you would know off-hand, something that didn’t connect as well as you would have

liked, or something didn’t break in the way you would have wanted.

Although I think my experience resonated, I’m not sure I articulated well enough what the difference was between running a large city and being a CEO and what a legislator does.

How could you have done that better?

For instance, now that Nathan and I are not in the race, I would like to see if there is going to be any company that’s going to hire him as a CEO with no experience.

I mention it for every candidate, not just for Nathan.

I mentioned it when I talked to different groups. I think the real message is, what large organization with 10,000 employees, what business organization even, would hire someone with absolutely no CEO background or even as Carl had, a small CEO background?

Well, that’s not as sexy as “Kill Pensions.” Is that just a difficult message?

Sure. But isn’t that why they hired (current Mayor) Jerry Sanders to begin with? He proved that being the head of a large organization, the Police Department, that it was important. That’s why he’s been able to get done so much.

July 2012 VOSD MONTHLY

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