Glaring Hole

Perhaps nowhere is the gap between goals and accomplishments more evident than in the annual ritual of the State of the City address.

The address is one of the highlights of the mayor’s ceremonial leadership, giving her the opportunity to cite her accomplishments and her priorities for the coming year. Last year, Mayor Maureen O’Connor chose a Soviet arts festival as the goal she would showcase, and indeed she has made considerable progress toward that goal. She has put together more than $5 million for the festival, a proposal she sponsored almost single-handedly.

This year, she has declared that improving programs for children is her goal. We hope that O’Connor feels even more strongly about the “Year of the Child” than she did about the “Year of the Arts.” The needs of children urgently need attention. And she has shown that she can raise funds when she puts her heart into a project.

But we were dismayed by how lightly she dismissed some unmet goals she has espoused in the past.

The failed efforts to produce a growth-management plan, which took up much of the City Council’s and community’s civic energy last year, is the most glaring example. First, the council and the mayor abdicated their responsibility by deciding to put the plan on the ballot rather than adopting it outright. Then, the council adopted a plan with the flaws of too many compromises. Finally, the mayor sat on the sidelines during most of the campaign.

The result is that the city still does not have the growth-management plan that it needs. Yet this fact merited only a sentence in the annual report and no mention in the speech.

We know there are limitations to a State of the City address and even an annual report. And there are limitations to the power of the office of mayor under San Diego’s council-manager form of government.

But surely San Diegans deserve at least a mention of the issue that dominated the civic agenda last year. A glimpse of the mayor’s revised goals on growth management would have fit in nicely in a speech dedicated to the future.