Carlsbad puts heavy thumb on city's lowest paid workers

For San Diego's North County Times

Carlsbad's elected officials like to say the city has been able to dodge layoffs and deep cuts in services because of their careful planning and fiscal prudence. But a closer look reveals another side of the story.

The city's proposed budget for 2011/2012 projects a $600,000 surplus, bringing the accumulated general fund balance up to $54 million, a whopping 47 percent of the $113 million budget. There's even room enough for another $1.4 million bailout of the golf course.

Previous million-dollar yearly subsidies since its opening have been in the form of loans. But now that it's clear the debt will never be repaid, and with hopes fading that the course will ever pay for itself, it will now be a part of the operating budget, just like the city's other recreational facilities.

The city boasts that no layoffs have been required during the recession. None are planned for next year. We can expect only a "minimal" reduction in city services, such as delays in streetlight replacements, road repairs and trimming trees on city property.

City officials claim "sharing the pain" has been the watchword for budget cutting.

But negotiations with the Carlsbad City Employees Association reveal the city's lowest-paid workers will bear the brunt of it. The group represents 340 employees with a pay scale from $30,000 to $80,000. The city's final one-year contract offer would result in a 7 percent cut in take-home pay, beginning July 1. That's because the city wants to shift to employees the share of pension fund contributions the city currently pays on their behalf.

Management employees, with a salary schedule ranging from $80,000 to $124,000, won't feel the pain. City Manager Lisa Hildabrand told CCEA members the city will continue to pay management personnel's 7 percent pension fund contribution and may give them a 2.5 percent pay increases, since they've gone without raises for three years. She told the group the city is also planning to consider outsourcing, furloughs, and moving employees around to effect additional cost-saving measures.

The CCEA met the city's final offer with a counter-offer, asking that the increase in pension contributions be phased in at 3.5 percent a year over two years, beginning Dec. 1. The association agreed to a one-year pay freeze and a reduction in retirement benefits for new hires from the current 3 percent at age 60, based on highest salary, to 2 percent at 60, based on a three-year average.

The City Council will vote on the contract at its June 21 meeting. Council members need to explain why the city's lowest-paid workers are being asked to bear the greatest burden in these hard times.

County leaders more interested in politics than people

For San Diego's North County Times

A study of the county's reorganized Family Resource Centers released last month by the San Diego State University Sociology Department and the Center on Policy Initiatives (CPI) found that changes in the business model to improve service have caused the opposite of what was intended.

In a written response, county officials called the report a "labor-sponsored stunt."

Without challenging the study's findings, county administrators questioned its objectivity because of the researcher's affiliation with the San Diego-based CPI, an organization county officials say is "linked" to the Service Employees International Union.

A nonprofit organization promoting policies that improve the lives of working people, the CPI has a 13-member board of directors that includes one SEI Union member, one member of the San Diego and Imperial County Labor Council, and the SDSU professor who conducted the study. It's hardly a "labor union passing itself off as a think tank," as county officials claim.

The survey of 342 county employees was conducted by unpaid graduate students. Union leaders helped provide access to workers. No union money supported the project.

The 2009 San Diego Report Card on Children and Families noted San Diego County has the lowest participation rate of needy children receiving food assistance of any large urban area in the nation. The report's key recommendation was to expand outreach and streamline and simplify the application process.

The SDSU/CPI study acknowledged the county has increased advertising for the program, resulting in a 97 percent increase in CalWorks and food stamp applications from 2001 to 2010. During that period, there's been only a 1 percent increase in staffing. Three out of four workers surveyed agreed the new business process has produced a decline in efficiency in handling applications.

Rather than addressing the report's recommendations, county officials chose to blame their employees, pointing out workers were involved in the design of the new system and participated in feedback through ongoing meetings, focus groups, and email.

If their websites are any indication, North County's supervisors are unconcerned about the work of the Family Service Centers. That's surprising, since the Health and Human Services Agency consumes the lion's share, 38 percent, of the county's budget.

Bill Horn can't find room for the agency in his list of 5th District priorities. "Pam's Priorities," for 3rd District Supervisor Pam Slater-Price, includes "animal welfare," but serving needy families doesn't make the list.

If it's fair to question labor-union self-interest in the SDSU/CPI study, it's also fair to question Bill Horn's self-interest in attacking the county's proposed general plan revision. Is he as worried about the property rights of his constituents as he is about the business interests of land developers, his most generous campaign contributors?

Council civility covers political divide

For Carlsbadistan.com
A week after Carlsbad’s City Council voted unanimously to amend a policy governing grants to agencies for special events of citywide interest, Oceanside’s council wrangled over what to do about rent control. Carlsbad’s council meeting was, as usual, polite. Quite a contrast to the shouting match that erupted on the dais in Oceanside, where one council member, after being repeatedly interrupted by another, demanded of the mayor, presiding over the verbal slugfest, “Will you shut her up?” A recess allowed the city leaders to retreat to their opposite corners.

The difference between the behaviors of the two groups reflects more than just the gravity of the issue being discussed. Yes, deciding how to spend $50,000 of earned interest on a $1 million savings account for city enrichment activities is a bit less contentious than deciding whether to end rent control for nearly 2,600 low-income residents of mobile-home parks. But a closer look at the civil discussion among Carlsbad’s council members offers clues about how more contentious issues may be debated in future meetings and what the talking points of new and incumbent city council candidates will be in the next election.


The council quickly agreed to limit the annual amount for special events to $50,000, no more than $10,000 for a single grant. At issue was whether to require a recipient organization to have “some skin in the game,” as Mayor Matt Hall put it. Options for matching the city’s contribution ranged from dollar for dollar up to 20 percent of the event’s budget. Although current policy does not require matching funds, as a general practice city staff has asked organizations to do so.

In an unusual move, but perhaps forgivable for a rookie mayor, Matt Hall spoke first, expressing his concern that if matching isn’t required, “we’re liable to get a lot of requests.”

Other council members weighed in with their own preferences. Anne Kulchin suggested “fluidity,” pointing out some organizations had more money than others to match city funding. Farrah Douglas agreed, reminding everyone that the grants have always been intended to help startup organizations on limited budgets. After Keith Blackurn was assured that it would not be a hardship for staff to handle grant requests fairly without specific matching amount requirements, he supported Kulchin’s position.

Mark Packard, preferred a 4 to 1 matching requirement, but his rationale bordered on the bizarre. He reminded the council they were dealing with taxpayer money. Do they ever deal with anyone else’s? He pointed out that in these hard times cities are cutting spending and that this would be an increase in charitable giving. That brought a chorus of “no’s” from his council colleagues, since the money has already been set aside for this purpose.

But Packard’s strangest comment was comparing the city council’s Policy 51, the one under discussion, with Area 51, the highly secretive Nevada military base that’s famous for spawning UFO conspiracy theories, calling the city’s policy “weird,” with no particular explanation.

Despite Packard’s misgivings, he voted with the others to pass unanimously Kulchin’s recommendation to deal with matching funds on a case-by-case basis.

Hall’s goal to guard the fund from more grant requests and Packard’s characterization of the fund as a charity, rather than promoting “enrichment programs to Carlsbad residents and visitors” as Policy 51 reads, makes you wonder how the vote would have gone had Bud Lewis been mayor, forming the same Lewis, Hall and Packard majority that blocked funding for the Alga Norte Park project.

Charter schools fail to measure up

For San Diego's North County Times

In the 1993 film "Groundhog Day," Bill Murray plays a jaded TV weatherman, condemned to relive the day of the rodent each day until he has a change of heart. I feel like that hapless misanthrope each day that California's school test scores are released.

Like the daily replay of the Sonny and Cher song awakening Murray's character each morning, the news of test scores is as predictable: a slight improvement over last year and no change in the achievement gap separating students by ethnicity and family income.

Schools are ranked by comparing their test scores with all other schools in the state and with those enrolling students with similar characteristics. A couple of weeks ago, we learned that more than half of North County's schools rank above average of similar schools, the same as last year. That says nothing more than that we're keeping up with the Joneses, implying the Joneses are to be envied.

I was struck by how schools with the highest statewide rankings often have unusually low similar-school rankings and that charter schools do no better than other public schools.

Take, for example, Torrey Pines, San Dieguito Academy, Carlsbad and LaCosta Canyon high schools. Ranking from the top 10 percent to the 80th percentile statewide, they drop to the 50th percentile down to the bottom 10 percent of similar schools.

Vista, Oceanside and El Camino high schools, on the other hand, range from the 80th to the 90th percentile of similar schools and from the 50th to 70th percentile statewide.

San Marcos and Mission Hills high schools have the most impressive rankings. With larger shares of low-income, nonwhite, and English-learner students than districts in wealthier communities, they rank in the top 10 percent of similar schools and at the 90th percentile statewide.

North County has 17 charter schools. They rank from the 90th percentile to the bottom 10 percent statewide and from the top 10 percent to the bottom 10 percent of similar schools. The two outliers are Escondido's Heritage, a site-based charter, which ranks in the top 10 percent of similar schools and at the 90th percentile statewide, and Vista's Mountain Peak, a home-school charter ranking in the bottom 10 percent in both statewide and similar school rankings.

The majority of local charters rely on home schooling. None of them rank in the top 10 percent of schools statewide.

With few exceptions, test scores show North County charters fall short of their mandate for measurable results for improved learning, especially for underserved populations. Most of them enroll children of relatively well-to-do families, dissatisfied with traditional public schools for reasons that go beyond academics.

And that won't lead to better public schools.

Echoes of Irrational Fear

For San Diego's North County Times

You'd think banning discrimination in school instruction would be a no-brainer. Respect for others who don't look, talk or act like you has always been an important value to pass on to our children.

But SB 48, prohibiting discriminatory content in school instruction, awaits action in the California Assembly, revealing a divide between those who think including a minority group in the curriculum will indoctrinate young children and those who believe exclusion breeds isolation, fear and contempt.

A song in the 1949 musical, "South Pacific," contained the lyrics, "You've got to be taught to be afraid of those whose eyes are oddly made and people whose skin is a different shade." Some claimed the song, by justifying interracial marriage, represented a Communist threat to the American way of life.

Echoes of that irrational fear can be heard in the organized resistance to SB 48. Headlines have unfortunately declared that the proposed bill would require "gay history" to be taught in public schools. That's misleading, since it implies a far more extensive change in the curriculum than is proposed.

You won't find the words "gay history" anywhere in the bill. What you will find is a requirement to choose instructional materials that "accurately portray the cultural and racial diversity of our society." It would add the contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans to the current list, which includes ethnic groups, men, women, and persons with disabilities.

Driven by fear it will turn their kids gay, opponents of SB 38 are trumpeting a fictionalized account of what the new law would require.

FICTION: Teachers will be forced to promote gay "lifestyles."

FACT: Either promoting, or adversely reflecting upon, sexual orientation is prohibited.

FICTION: Kindergartners will be indoctrinated to admire homosexuality.

FACT: Schools will continue to decide what's taught and at what grade level.

FICTION: Schools will be forced to spend millions on new textbooks.

FACT: Current textbooks don't have to be tossed out; new ones must be more inclusive.

Those of us of a certain age know that textbooks evolve. Women and persons of color were largely absent in the white male history we studied in our social studies and literature classes.

North County's LGBT Coalition is currently seeking donations to create a Resource Center in Oceanside. Police and city officials have been cooperative. They recognize the city's obligation to serve all the people, just as schools must recognize their obligation to serve all students.

That's why passing SB 48 is important ---- not just to teach gay history, but to include the contributions of all who played a role in building our state and nation.

Remembering Mrs. Hilde

For San Diego's North County Times
In a time of budget deficits and nasty politics, it's been a welcome relief to read about teachers of the year selected by our local school districts. It brings back memories of Mrs. Myrtle Hilde, my favorite high school teacher. Together with her ample girth and sense of humor, Mrs. Hilde filled her classroom with infectious enthusiasm for what she taught.

History had always been my least favorite subject. Memorizing dates and names of events and famous people struck me as a meaningless exercise compared with the important business of impressing girls between classes and coaches in the gym after school.

Mrs. Hilde brought American history alive with gossipy asides, like Tom Jefferson's illicit love affair with Sally Hemmings, one of his Monticello slaves. She used the first names of historical figures as if they were members of her family. I began to see them not as pigeon-splattered statues, but as real people with real problems. She helped us see connections between their distant world and our hormone-driven young lives.

Our local teaching stars show the same energy and dedication to their work as the teacher who awakened in me a love of history that endures to this day.

Here's a sample of what they told this newspaper's Stacy Brandt:
"I absolutely love what I do. ... I wake up every single morning, so excited to spend the day with my students."
"I just feel strongly that all children can learn. Every child has the potential to be anything that they want."
"The students are the ones that deserve the award, because they're the reason that I got it. They inspire me to be a better teacher."
"I like running a very energetic class. We use a lot of technology. We move a lot. We put lessons to songs. Every person is brilliant in his or her own way."

All the talk about school reform boils down to the question of how to attract and retain teachers like these. Abandoning public schools isn't the answer, nor is eliminating teacher unions. California's nonunion charter schools, as a group, have been no more successful in producing measurable results in student learning than other public schools.

The current debate in California is whether to balance the budget by cutting school funding or by maintaining current tax levels.

As we consider what's best for our children's future, we need to worry at least as much about burdening them with an inadequate education as burdening them with government debt.

City can't find needy homeowners

For the North County Times and Carlsbadistan.com.

Carlsbad city officials can't understand why more low-income homeowners haven't applied for federal funds earmarked for minor home repairs, from clearing clogged drains to installing assistive devices for seniors and disabled persons.

The city pays $8,500 each year to Community HousingWorks, a San Diego nonprofit, to administer the program. In the past three years, only four households have received funding.

At the City Council's March 22 meeting, Councilwoman Farrah Douglas asked Debbie Fountain, director of housing and neighborhood services, to explain how the program has been marketed. Fountain told of postings on the city and HousingWorks websites, direct mailers to the barrio neighborhood, and articles and advertisements in community publications. She singled out word-of-mouth as "pretty successful." Maybe that explains how the two homeowners receiving help last year learned of the program.

After failing to find it on the HousingWorks website, I found the home repair program buried deep within the city's website, but only after plowing through "city services," "list of city departments," "neighborhood services" and "programs." And I had the advantage of knowing what I was looking for.

What I found was the "minor home repair program manual" featuring a complex loan application. You can borrow up to $5,000 in an interest-free loan ---- depending on your willingness to provide a copy of the deed to your property, a credit report and IRS tax forms ---- and agree to hire and pay a licensed contractor to do the work for later reimbursement.

Would anyone who needs help fixing a leaky faucet, replacing a broken light switch, installing a smoke alarm or upgrading a faulty toilet take the trouble to apply for this program? You be the judge.

According to San Diego Association of Governments, 1 in 4 Carlsbad households, nearly 10,000 homes, have incomes of less than $30,000 a year. You'd think the city could find more than four who qualify for government assistance for home repairs.

Compare Carlsbad's approach to Escondido's Neighborhood Enhancement, Attractiveness and Training (NEAT) Project. During the past 11 months, Project NEAT completed 262 projects in low- to moderate-income neighborhoods. There's no application required and no income limits.

Program administrator Dan Hippert drives through low- and moderate-income neighborhoods on the lookout for homes needing exterior repairs and other evidence of property maintenance needs. Low-income homeowners are offered either financial assistance or the help of volunteers recruited by the city for household repairs or to spruce up their property.

Carlsbad outsources its program to a loan agency, making it available only to those who can find it. Escondido seeks out those in need.

Our Village by the Sea could learn something about public service from its North County neighbor.