Time Is Now to Deal With Difficult Issues

When this newspaper recently chronicled the problems the community now faces because of years of neglecting its sewage system, the headline writers titled it “The Cost of Complacency.”

It seemed an apt phrase for a series that detailed a lack of strong leadership and good decision-making over the past couple of decades. But the sewage crisis and the billions of dollars that will probably be required to deal with it seem symptomatic of a pattern of unwillingness to come to grips with the difficult issues facing San Diego. It is a pattern not limited to San Diego or San Diego County, but it seems particularly acute here.

Examples of issues that have reached or are close to reaching the crisis stage with no obvious solutions in sight include what to do about the terribly outdated central library, whether and where to move Lindbergh Field, how to best deal with overcrowding in the jails, and getting a handle on the planning that is necessary for the area to rationally absorb growth.

In each case, the longer it takes us to make decisions, the higher the cost--financial and otherwise. And the ultimate price is that we risk making a choice that is not the best one, but the one dictated by disaster.

Beyond the issues of local government, we note the ongoing life-and-death struggle of the San Diego Symphony Orchestra, the failure of a sound proposal for a law school at UC San Diego and the loss of a giant computer consortium to Austin, Tex. With others, we bemoan the difficulty of getting the convention center off the ground and wonder about the adequacy of the current effort to attract the America’s Cup races.

There, of course, have been successes, too. Downtown San Diego is being re-energized. The transportation system, including the freeways and the trolley, is better than in many California cities. The Super Bowl was successfully lured here.

But why is it that generally we, as a community, have such a hard time coming to a consensus about what we want and making the commitment to pay for it?

Does this state of affairs reflect a lack of vision among our political leaders and an inability to galvanize the public? Is it the absence of regional government at a time when the problems defy jurisdictional lines? Is there a lack of a mature business community committed to maintaining San Diego’s fiscal health and livability? Are the unimaginative media part of the problem? Or does the situation just mirror the laid-back atmosphere that makes this at once such an attractive and frustrating place to live?

A case can be made that all of those factors play at least some role in our inability to get things done. For sure, San Diego does not have the kind of big businesses that help set the agendas in other cities and see that they are carried out. Why some of the other community segments don’t make more of a contribution is more of a mystery.

We don’t have an immediate answer. But we will suggest that this is perhaps an appropriate time for some collective soul-searching. It is probably true that San Diego County will always have a wonderful climate as well as an ocean for a backyard. But through community complacency, it could lose its charm and its specialness and become just one more American city wallowing in urban malaise.