Transcript of Interviews With City Manager

Editor’s note: Last Sunday, The Times published an article based on two on-the-record interviews with San Diego City Manager Sylvester Murray in which Murray, nine months into his job, gave his perspective on San Diego.

Several of his printed comments--especially about the attitudes of blacks in San Diego, his authority over the Police Department, and his relationship vis-a-vis the City Council--caused an uproar. Murray, severely criticized on several fronts, publicly apologized for the remarks. But by week’s end the controversy persisted, and there was talk of his job hanging in the balance.

The interviews with Murray were taped by the reporter, and several council members asked The Times to furnish them the tapes.

It was a request the newspaper could not fill. The principle of not handing over notes (be they written or recorded) is one that The Times defends continually and at great cost. To do otherwise would be to allow the newspaper to be seen as allied with one faction or another and would, in the long run, affect credibility.

On the other hand, Murray did not seek a pledge of confidentiality of his remarks and does not object to the release of the material. And there is, obviously, intense community interest in this matter.

In an attempt to shed light on the public debate without forsaking principle, The Times today is printing the full transcript of the two interviews.

Both interviews, informal in tone, took place over breakfast. The first one, on May 23, involved Murray and almost two dozen Times reporters and editors. The second interview was on May 29 with reporter Ralph Frammolino and City Editor Richard Kipling. In some cases, words or phrases were unintelligible because of background noise and those instances are marked in the transcript. Minor grammatical changes were made for clarity.

Both sessions were taped with Murray’s knowledge, on the understanding that any material to be off the record would be mutually agreed upon. Nothing that follows was so designated.

Question: What is your impression of the reaction to the Penn trial and the number of witnesses that have come and testified on a wide variety involving the Police Department? What are the concerns that you would like to see addressed concerning the Police Department?

Answer: I am surprised at the reaction to the trial that I have witnessed. The reaction has been basically blah. Except, I think, for a while there, there were some pickets around the courtroom. It has not generated publicly the issues of police brutality or non-police brutality, blacks, racial strife, that I just know it would have generated in Cincinnati or some, every other place. It illustrates a couple things. Blacks in San Diego are just as conservative as whites. Blacks in San Diego are just as concerned about not rocking the boat as whites not wanting the boat to be rocked. On the one side. And on the other side, I think it demonstrates in our Police Department that there is division, and the trial, I don’t know if the trial is widening in that division, but it certainly isn’t bringing it closer together. Now we did, six months ago, create the Police Community Relations Team. A group of citizens who are literally coming in and reviewing things with the police division and making some suggestions, we hope in the end. So maybe that will make a difference. But I guess in answer to your question, you can make changes easier if changes need to be made. You can make changes easier, when there’s a hue and cry to make a change. I said that and I thought about the (Unintelligible). But we don’t have hues and cries around here, and I just was surprised about that.

Q: Do you have any ideas of change as far as the Police Department and its community relations go?

A: Yes. We were very serious about the citizens’ committee that has been established. And I have committed to them that if they come up with recommendations for ways that we should make changes in the Police Department that we would do it. I am personally pleased with the belief that the higher command of the Police Department, at least the chief of police, is sensitive and that, where it makes a difference, and that means in public discourse, that he says things that I approve of in terms of community relations. My ordinary action would have been to change the chief of police to get a better leadership that was more sensitive, and I don’t have to do that in this case. So, that is why it is not. I can’t tell you in response to your question that I am going to make a big change because the big change would have been to change the chief of police.

Q: Can you think of, or talk about, some areas where this basic conservatism, no matter what your race, or your political affiliation, or whatever, where this basic conservatism manifests itself and perhaps could block an agenda that you might have?

A: No. Because if I have the agenda, if I really think something ought to be done, I’m going to find a way to do it, getting around that basic conservatism.

Q: Have you seen some things so far in your seven months of tenure here where that conservatism has done things that have surprised you? Other than simply the no uprising here, no outrage here over the Penn affair?

A: I don’t know if I was surprised in the renaming of a street for Martin Luther King. But what was a pleasant surprise after the fact was that the City Council took no action to change their decision after the people on Market Street became aware and concerned. It surprised me that that was not brought back on council’s table for discussion and perhaps a revote. I was very pleased by it. But that’s about the only thing I can think of.

Q: Is there anything that you’ve seen or haven’t seen since you’ve been here that, is there anything the city could do that you would like to see done to spur a little economic development in a different way, perhaps how they did in some banks in Cincinnati? We had hundreds of millions of dollars of IDB’s (industrial development bonds) issued in the early ‘80s, half of which were gobbled up by SDG&E; and supposed to help meet the lower rate to lower industry. Anything that you can do that you think we haven’t done yet?

A: Where there needs to be government help to push it, I think, is down in the South Bay, Otay Mesa area, the San Ysidro area. And I think that we can do things down there that makes it more attractive. On a personal basis, I would prefer giving the land away, in essence, meaning letting somebody have the land at a much lower cost as a means of just absolutely getting exactly what you wanted where you wanted it as opposed to giving a lot of other tax benefits. That which we must have in the long run are the taxes from these enterprises in addition to the jobs. We are fortunate, I think, in this city and county that we don’t have to go out and beg for industry like others have to do, and I think that the kind of industries that are coming to this city would come. And I don’t want that to come out saying that we should not be pro-active economic development in North County and North City. I think we should, but I am of the opinion that where government needs to get involved more is probably at the lower end of the ladder to employ some of the lower people of the lower-income level now to make certain that they can get a higher income, and that our best possibilities are to the south.

Q: How about in the Southeast, where Gateway is under construction and has had some tenants and Gateway II is also off the ground? Anything else we can do besides what we have already done to give some tax incentive to the people who build them?

A: No, I can think of nothing else. What is the unemployment rate in that area?

Q: Well, it’s twice as high, three times as high, let’s say, as it is in northern San Diego, which is 7%. Among youth this summer they are estimating between 40% and 50% unemployment. That’s not atypical for Southeast. The question is really, how do you bring industry there? They’re not just going to flock to Southeast despite cheaper land costs. They’ve tried for more than a decade to get them in there and have had very little success. Kaiser was supposed to build a facility there and they pulled out. Do you think it’s just going to happen? That doesn’t sound like what you were saying.

A: I wasn’t even thinking of the Southeast. Because I don’t think in the minds of a lot of people that if you are thinking about your industrial areas, that the Southeast fits into that, that image. We have made it fit into that image on the assumption that blacks live in the Southeast so take the jobs where the blacks live. Every other discussion of economic development has been, in a lot of instances, allow people to live where their jobs are. Can unemployment in the Southeast be rectified by making certain that the blacks living in the Southeast get jobs outside of the Southeast? It could. I think so. We have people in our town who get in a car to drive 35 miles to work. So that if we were providing economic assistance to buildings, to industry, in the Torrey Pines area, we could just as easily say you have an obligation to hire low-income people, and the people can’t come from the Southeast. In order to deal with the Southeast we have to put the businesses down in the Southeast and somebody is going to make a decision that is not a business decision. And I don’t think that will necessarily happen.

Q: But how do you deliver people from Southeast to Torrey Pines with our transportation system?

A: Give them a job in Torrey Pines that pays enough so that they can buy a car if that’s what they want to do. That’s what we do.

Q: Is what you’re saying sort of counter to what we’ve got SEDC (Southeast Economic Development Corp.) set up to do?

A: Yes. It is important that we therefore don’t assume that SEDC is going to be the savior for Southeast. SEDC, at its height, suppose it identifies 50,000 new jobs. Nobody here would say that is unsuccessful, but there will probably still be more people who will need work. You have a piece of land down there now that we have SEDC putting businesses on. When all of those businesses are there, how many people will be employed? What do we call it? East Gate? Gateway? When it is totally utilized, the total employment would probably be less than 5,000 people. That’s not going to be enough. So, what I am saying to you is don’t eliminate SEDC, but in addition to SEDC doing that, let’s not let the Convention Center off the hook for hiring some people from Southeast San Diego.

Q: How do you keep them on the hook? Do you make codicils? Do you make clauses in the contract so that when you give them good land deals up in the Torrey Pines area they hire people? It was pretty successful right here in this hotel (the U.S. Grant) and right across the street (Horton Plaza), wasn’t it?

A: But they don’t do it unless you make them do it because they have a reason, an excuse when some people ask them about it.

Q: How concerned are you at the lack of blacks and Hispanics in the upper management level we have in the City Hall, and secondly, are you planning to do anything about that?

A: Very concerned, yes. (Unintelligible) Since being here I have had the opportunity to appoint directly department heads. Deputy department heads are my appointees, but they are done by a department head that I OKd. I have had the opportunity to appoint only one department head who is black. I appointed a black fire chief, which at the time nobody expected, and it was consciously done on my part. I will probably get an opportunity to appoint a second department head in a month or so only because we get this new binational department (the Department of Binational Affairs). That person will be Hispanic. Our people don’t quit, so I don’t know how many openings will come. But as the city manager, when the openings appear, I will personally make the decisions that make a difference. Now, beneath me for the department heads who are appointed, I have tried to get across to them that we are affirmative action-oriented--not equal employment opportunity--but affirmative action-oriented, that I will rate them and their performance based on the people they have the option of hiring. A problem that has occurred, not just in San Diego, but across the country, is that since we’ve gotten into affirmative action, when we talk about Hispanics or blacks, at some point along the way we included white women, and now it’s minorities and women. Now you can get the same number of brownie points for hiring a white woman as you would for hiring a Hispanic or black. And a lot of white women are being hired. And that is the case in San Diego. So that a lot of our deputy department heads, both department heads that would hire, would come to me and say, “OK, Sy, you know, real commitment, follow through, affirmative action, minorities and women,” and since I’ve been here at that level there have been at least four white women hired, no Hispanics, no blacks, but they get the same number of brownie points.

Q: Do you get any feel from the community?

A: I get black groups. We get Hispanic groups, and I get Asian groups coming to see me, saying, “We’ve got to be in on this. And you’ve got to recognize that we are a large population here. And nobody recognizes us when you are talking about minority hiring at all.” I get that. None of it has been a picketing of City Hall or the city manager’s office, and I think the reason why that has not occurred is because our City Council has also been positive. A councilman has almost always uniformly said, “We are for affirmative action.” And we, the councilmen on record is saying, “We want the Convention Center people to do this in terms of affirmative action.” So people are concerned, yes. People are concerned.

Q: How do you find San Diego’s elected officials compared with other cities you’ve worked in terms of attempting to influence the supposedly non-patronage hiring in the city?

A: They have not, that’s easy to answer. I thought you were about to talk about their intellectual capabilities. (Laughter)

Q: That’s the follow-up question. (Laughter) When we have 30 seconds left. (Laughter)

A: Less here than other cities I’ve been in really. And probably less because they have the capability to both hire some people individually on their own in terms of a staff, and probably also they could influence a whole lot of boards and commissions until they probably could satisfy those purposes there. But it has not been a patron saint like we’re accustomed to in the Midwest where you say, “Now, I want this guy to be the superintendent of streets.” I was asked to be city manager of Cambridge, Mass., back in the ‘70s, and after the City Council had voted to--not publicly--had said that they were going to hire me in closed session, I started meeting individually with them. This one guy said that “the Fire Department is mine. All promotions from the Fire Department come through me.” And this other guy said that “the Police Department is mine and all promotions go through me.” I don’t have that here. I didn’t go to Cambridge, either. (Laughter) If you’ve got those things, you might as well keep them.

Q: On a similar line, in Cincinnati, the city manager is the clear head of the local government, and he’s the most obvious, most recognizable person in local government. Here, that’s not true. It’s the mayor. Ever since Pete Wilson’s days. Do you find that you have enough authority here to do what you need to do and have you had any problems making the change from being the point man to being a different role?

A: You have to define some different roles for me that I have not defined for myself. The law in this city has not changed. Pete Wilson didn’t get the people to change the law. Pete Wilson had a personality that it didn’t make any difference what the law was. And he was able to influence based on personality. The law hasn’t changed. The powers of the city manager of San Diego are equal to, or in some instances, equal to the city manager’s powers in Cincinnati. The difference is the election of the mayor. In Cincinnati the mayor is selected by other council members. He or she runs as council member. Here, the mayor is elected directly by the people so that he or she is in a position to say I speak for the people. That’s No. 1. No. 2 is I have found that, I can’t prove this, but my feeling is, that San Diegans want a mayor. They really want to be led by a mayor. They feel that they are missing out on something if they don’t have a mayor. And that does as much to provide the mayor power as anything. But mostly it’s influence. Now my job, I came here at the time that Roger Hedgecock was mayor, without knowing that he would not be mayor, and I looked at Hedgecock as being a person with the same kind of personality that a Pete Wilson must have had, and I didn’t know him, so I don’t know exactly what he had, but Hedgecock was one of those kinds of people also. One of those kinds of people who can be the mayor. And I bought into the position at the time, never, never taking the position that I’m not going to be powerful. I will be powerful. I will be no more powerful than the law allows, but I will assume all of the powers of this office and will be just as comfortable here as I was in Cincinnati.

Q: Given what’s happened behind the Board of Education trying to lease one of its school sites to developers, does the city worry at all that there’s not going to be any money to build the school we’re going to need, and is anyone thinking about any ideas to do something about it?

A: Nobody at the city level. It’s another one of those instances where the political leadership has had some meetings in the past. I am told that a Pete Wilson would not assume responsibility when the judge said you had to integrate the schools. He has no legal responsibility whatsoever for the schools. None. And we have none now as the city. The elected school board, they can pass their own taxes on funding source, and to the best of my knowledge there is nobody on the City Council thinking about new schools to be built in the future as a project.

Q: But the people on the City Council are, in effect, preventing them from raising the money that they say they are going to need to build the schools.

A: By not allowing them to sell? No. The state says that if the school becomes surplus, it must first be offered to the governmental entity. If we get a school site from the school board, we must pay them fair market for it. Just like a developer would.

Q: I am under the impression that you get quite a discount for it. Twenty-five percent.

A: I’m almost certain we have to pay the fair market cost. Twenty-five percent off of what?

Q: No, 25% of the total cost. It’s 75% . . . OK, so that would be two-thirds discount.

A: Two-thirds discount? That’s news to me. I thought that we had a possibility of not buying all of the land. That’s news to me. And I don’t agree with that. If we want the land, we should pay 100% of the cost for it.

Q: I think where the question is coming from is that the City Council is using its, in effect, veto power to prevent developments that the city doesn’t want in neighborhoods like Pacific Beach.

A: Which I agree, too, is good. See, what we are doing is preventing development. What you have said is we are preventing the school board from making money. There’s two sides to the same coin. If you were writing an editorial separately, you would say we have every right in the world to have influenced development in any neighborhood in the city. And if the facility was owned by XYZ Co., you would still say that. So we have the right to influence development as a city. It should not make any difference to you who will lose or gain money. We just have a right to influence development.

Q: When you do that though, at least from the schools’ perspective, doesn’t it carry an obligation to help them with the building of schools for their 50,000 kids that are coming in the next 50 years?

A: And my response to that is yes. That’s what I’ve just said to you. Does the law put any restrictions on us, on that 25% of the cost? Does it say we can only use it to build up a fire station or for open space?

Q: Yes.

A: So that it doesn’t have the value, it doesn’t have the 100% value then? OK.

Q: What’s been your impression of media coverage in this town?

A: It’s been complete. Most of the editorials that I have listened to on television I have thought have been shallow. I realize that on television you have to make them short and not really thoughtful. I have been displeased with editorials, written editorials in print media, because it appears that the editorials, a lot of them were written without the kind of research and forethought that an editorial should be. My impression of an editorial is that it is absolutely not a news story. It is not something that has to be out tomorrow to meet a deadline. Editorials ought to be something where somebody has set back and said, “This is an issue that needs real serious thought and that needs the time and effort to research it,” and then you write it to make a conclusion. And I have been displeased at some of the editorials that have not appeared to have taken that kind of tack. Instead, it’s been just a sense of saying that, “We’ve got to be timely. Something happened yesterday so let’s run an editorial today.” But other than that it’s been complete.

Q: Each time there is a Board of Supervisor election or a City Council election there are always candidates who raise the standard of consolidation of city and county services, citing the fact that both have lifeguards and, one way or another, both have public safety functions so forth and so on, and often there is, as you say, a certain hue and cry about that and it seems, in my mind, to kind of dissolve into nothingness. Is that a red herring? Are there areas where serious attempts of consolidation could or should be made or is that just a boiler-plate issue that helps a candidate flush out his list of issues?

A: There are serious places where I think that it could be made, where you could have consolidation. An example of one was the SANDER project. It makes a heck of a lot of sense to say let’s take garbage that once it becomes garbage it should not make any difference who’s garbage it was. At that point it’s really generic. (Laughter) But we have dropped out and assigned the project as of the end of this month, I guess, the next month we do not have an agreement between the city and county, and the city is going to be moving ahead solo to build a plant that will burn just city garbage. Just city garbage. And any county garbage still has to go to county landfills. (Unintelligible) Why that came to a halt, I don’t really know. I was told that it was halting and the county is not going to be a part of it. One that I don’t know if it has been tried in the past before, but we are grappling with libraries. That to me is another municipal service that politically should not make any difference whether it is city or county. You know, it’s something that can be together. We have no plans to consolidate library administration, and I don’t know if it’s ever come up before. I think there are areas where that kind of consolidation should take place and can take place. After I’m here longer and people have a little bit more faith and trust in me, and think that I am thinking about the long term for the city as opposed to just being a hired city manager who’s been here for three or four years, then I think I can take a leadership role in these kinds of things.

Q: Does the port reach over into that area, too?

A: I consider the port consolidated already.

Q. I was thinking in terms of the port’s money. And the city’s being able to get its hooks into the port’s money.

A: What is your question?

Q: A lot of people will say the port is out there generating this huge amount of money with which they can build a convention center and still have its millions of dollars, whatever the figures are, there has been talk, as I understand it, of the city, from time to time, trying to take that money from the port and make it the city’s money for a lot of other purposes other than just for port purposes. Do you see something advisable about pursuing that?

A: I am not as paranoid about the port having the money as opposed to it being in the city or county coffers than I am about what they do with it. If they have the money and use it to build a convention center where a convention center is needed, or have the money and use it to help develop an industrial park in Otay Mesa if an industrial park is needed, or have the money and use it to facilitate the building of a new sewage-treatment plant that could be used by the city, county and Mexico. As long as there is still a public purpose served in spending the money, the check doesn’t have to say the City of San Diego. It could say the Port District. So I’m not concerned that the port’s independence is bad, it’s just that they should have public purposes for spending their money.

Q: But is it your read that they do spend their money wisely?

A: From what I have seen, yes.

Q: But you’re a long way from getting them to build a sewage plant aren’t you?

A: Yes.

Q: It wasn’t easy to get them to build a waterfront convention center.

A: But I think that was an appropriate use of their money, the waterfront convention center.

Q: Right. It was a fairly good tie there, but to convince them to build something in Otay Mesa is a whole different ball game.

A: But I don’t think it is farfetched. A port is an economic development entity, and any kind of economic development within their transportation (Unintelligible) that will use the resources that will get their money I think should be within their sphere to help them. So it’s not farfetched. Maybe nobody has asked them to do it. I don’t know if the state law will permit it. But I can easily see them helping with an industrial park.

Q: Let’s turn for a second to another entity that is under your control, that is CCDC (Centre City Development Corp.). There have been a number of people who have raised questions about whether CCDC has a real commitment to this housing element downtown. One, do you think there ought to be this pressure to bring housing downtown? And two, do you think CCDC is in fact committed to doing that?

A: Yes, I think that there ought to be pressure to put housing downtown. There needs to be housing downtown. I’ll even go further than that and say that it has to be middle- and upper-income housing. I say that, especially coming from Cincinnati where we felt that the only public purpose is for low-income housing. For our downtown what we need are people who are in a position to go out three nights a week and buy food at restaurants, at high-class restaurants, so we need upper-income housing downtown. In answer to the second part of your question, I think that CCDC’s primary focus has been to. It’s not been so much against housing as it has been showing action, showing development. And economically it has been easier to put together a deal for a new office tower or a new hotel than it has been for housing units. And because most of our bosses and citizens give us grades based on what they consider to be action done, CCDC has taken the action where you can point to it and say, “They did it.” But I don’t think that it is an indication that they are against housing; It’s just easier to do hotels and office buildings. And that’s what came first. I still think we ought to push for the housing. But the housing is going to be much more expensive and there is less immediate profits to the developers.

Q: Is CCDC going to have to give the same kind of deals to future developments downtown that it has in the past?

A: It is going to give better deals for housing.

Q: What about other kinds of developments? There are some critics, evidently even on the CCDC board, who are saying, “Hey, we are in a new era now. We built a downtown. We can show you what we’ve done, and we don’t have to give the land away, and we don’t have to do everything for a developer. They should come to us, and they should want us now, rather than our having to go and beg for something from them.”

A: And you are asking, have they reached that point?

Q: Yeah.

A: I do not know, but we should reach that point at some time. I do not know if this is it. But that’s a point that you should reach.

Q. What about the night life downtown? It’s pretty much nil as far as the things that would draw people downtown. Will restaurants alone do it? Or are there other things? Supposedly CCDC thought what they were going to do was to try to make a place (Unintelligible) a popular place at night.

A: Restaurants alone will not do it. But you know what will do it? Hotels. Big hotels will have banquet rooms and will have show rooms and could have singers coming in, so that’s an added assistance. As opposed to somebody simply putting up a nightclub. The theaters, I think, could make a difference and we are very blessed to have a number of those downtown. Theaters, restaurants and hotels, I think are the people generators.

Q: Do you think a club in a hotel probably would be more effective than some sort of nightclub?

A: Standing alone, depending solely on people coming to it, yes. To make it run, a hotel might have some other parts of it that if there is a bad night for the nightclub, then it could still make a living.

Q: On the arts, the city has most of TOT (transient occupancy tax) funds. As far as I understand, all the arts support from the city is coming from that rather than the general fund. Nothing is coming from the general fund. Should the city play a large role in support of the arts, and why?

A: No. And because I interpret your support as meaning money.

Q: No, not necessarily.

A: Oh, you mean verbal support, proclamations and that kind of stuff? (Laughter)

Q: Yes, yes. Well, facilities come to mind.

A: I think that there is a public purpose to be served in public art, but it doesn’t have to be publicly financed.

Q: Do you say that there should not be any increase in any advisory thing such as a commission as they have in Los Angeles, for instance?

A: No. And all of you are news people. I know you like real answers, crisp answers, and I am trying to always say yes and no to every question that you ask so at least you know where I am coming from. I don’t object to there being public involvement in the arts so that the city has a Balboa Park; We have just an example of the Museum of Modern Art. Sure, the city can put money into keeping the buildings there, so the building could be publicly owned. The city can, as a part of its development projects, just as we ask people to build five feet back from the sidewalks. In Cincinnati we require that they have a significant art part of their project if the city gave them a tax benefit of any kind. And it had to be public, it couldn’t be the chairman’s office. (Laughter) And I’m for that kind of stuff. I’m for there being a citizens’ committee that can advise us on that and that can advise private citizens who have questions about it. What I am suggesting to you is that I don’t think that the actual purchase, display, everyday occurrence of art should be a publicly financed activity.

(End of tape)

Q: You said that when Roger Hedgecock was mayor, he was a real presence, so on. Since that time Roger Hedgecock is no longer mayor, we’ve had a City Council election for two seats, there are two new members, we have another council member under indictment, another one who is under a cloud for quite some time. It has all the readings of a vacuum at City Hall, and we also have calls in to the City Council to hold off things until the election is made. How has that influenced you in the performance of your job? Have you found that the vacuum has been an advantage? Has it been a problem? Are you getting the information you want? Have you had to put a lot of things on hold? Where does it play out so far as you performing your job?

A: It’s probably been an advantage from the point of view of less competition and less fear of competition or second guessing. All of that is predicated on the assumption that with a mayor the city has a leader, a visionary person, who every morning gets up and says, “This is what we are going to do today, city. And this is where we are going to be five years from today. And in order to get there five years from today, we are going to have to start today taking these steps.” That’s what it’s predicated on. That has not been happening so I have been in a position to take the initiatives that I wanted to take or to respond to issues the way I wanted to respond to them based on me and my staff’s opinion as opposed to what might be public leadership, political opinion in five years. So it’s been an advantage.

Q: What happens on June 4?

A: June 4, the citizens are satisfied. The news media is satisfied. Bureaucracy will not change.

Q: Have you a head start on the new mayor?

A: I have no idea who the new mayor is. That’s June 4. I suspect that by September or next November when we are getting ready now to do a new budget for ‘88, that we will have, then the bureaucracy will change because we now have that person that everybody has said, “This is what we’ve always needed. We’ve needed the vision, we’ve needed the leader.” So that person will have spent from June 4 to October or November pontificating on where we’re going and the bureaucracy will respond to that. I’m being serious. And we will respond to that and show it. It will probably come fastest in terms of how we prepare next year’s budget.

Q: So how do you assess the intelligence of the City Council in this city? (Laughter)

A: I have been in this business for about 20 years, and I have yet to meet that incompetent incumbent City Council person. (Laughter)

Q: Of the city that employed you then.

A: You may say that on the record. Will it read just as I said? (Laughter)

Q: I think that may be a very good place to end our discussion this morning. We certainly want to thank you for your presence and for your candidness, and we’d very much like to invite you to do this again, maybe next October or November?

A: Let me say thank you. This is the first city that I’ve come to where, I don’t mean this negatively, a major newspaper has not done this for me. We have two separate editorial staffs on the Tribune and Union, and I have met individually with the editor of the Tribune, and I have met the editors of the other paper in passing, or maybe a short meeting. But that you gave me an hour of your time, allowed me to look at you, you were able to talk to me, I think that is something I think is very applaudable, and I say thank you.

Q: I’d like to ask one last question. How closely do you read The Times and follow our coverage of city affairs? Do you read it everyday, or weekly or what?

A: Daily. Here’s what happens at City Hall. The auditor has not yet eliminated, but the city has to buy the newspapers. The city pays for newspapers. Every morning when I get to City Hall about 7:15, the Union, Transcript and The Times are on my desk, paid for, and not only do I read it, but most of the senior management staff is in by 7:30, and between 7:30 and 8:30 the deputy city managers and I sit down at the coffee table and read the three papers. And The Times is right there with them. The San Diego County news, not the Los Angeles news because we really don’t give a damn. (Laughter)