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divert a large proportion of its tax revenue away from services that help poor citizens (like the police department and forest management)

Isn't San Diego the city where the police stopped responding unless someone was shot? Story seems to confirm that was the case in 2011, and still mostly the case now.
As for Fire Management, I think last month speaks for itself.

So where do they cut to make the payments? Your suggestions have already been done.

VOSD is a bit slanted when it comes to that. I'd take a look at the average POV of all the various local media to get a better view on things. Basically, no that's not the case.

Back on topic, San Diego is one of the few West Coast cities that's made its light rail system work and not sink into the red by focusing on commuter corridors, gradual expansion, and using existing right-of-ways. That said, like all CA cities it was not laid out with transit in mind and San Diegans as a whole are not in favor of converting to the types of density that would be necessary to make more transit financially viable. San Diego has a 30-block downtown core, and from there out it's mostly single family detached homes for the entire rest of the urbanized county. I grew up riding public transit because I used it to get to school, but no one who lives here uses it unless they have to or they live directly on the commuter corridor.

Sadly, no one has quite told the Progressives this. San Diego has been trending from center-right to center/slightly-left; Dems finally have control of the SD City Council, and have forced SANDAG changes that gives the urban areas more say on regional transportation. What have they done? Diverted resources from road maintenance to transit programs, and replaced lanes on the streets with bike lanes in some bizarre belief that ANYONE will commute via bike to work.

The only reason there hasn't already been a pushback against the effects of this has been Trump's general depressive effect on R turnout and Independents voting for R's. When/if that goes away, the Dems need to get their local planning back inline with reality or there'll be quite the pendulum shift back.

divert a large proportion of its tax revenue away from services that help poor citizens (like the police department and forest management)

Isn't San Diego the city where the police stopped responding unless someone was shot? Story seems to confirm that was the case in 2011, and still mostly the case now.
As for Fire Management, I think last month speaks for itself.

So where do they cut to make the payments? Your suggestions have already been done.

And here's a vice mayor trying to shakedown the owner of a small grocery store for campaign contributions. It's pretty egregious.

Unfortunately, the terminal is on the opposite side of the airport from the rail lines. A trolley spur along Harbor Drive to the terminal was studied in the 1980s but there were several problems.

The current plan is to improve pedestrian access between the Middletown station and a stop on the new shuttle service between the parking and rental car facility being built on the north side.

1. Quick effective CPR by the police officer was probably critical. He was less than a block away when he got the call.

This is why San Diego is trying out two-person crews in pickup trucks as a way to cut costs and response times:

The decision cut response times in the neighborhood in half, early results have showed, and cost the city roughly $600,000. That's cheap compared with the $12 million it costs to build and staff a new fire station with a full four-person engine crew.

Southern California gets wildfires in the spring and the fall due to the prevalence of strong Santa Ana winds (hot dry winds blowing from the deserts, over the mountains, toward the sea) and, given that the region is essentially an irrigated desert there's ALWAYS material ready and willing to burn. Any time a fire starts in the brush or in a canyon for ANY reason it will naturally become a massive wildfire unless fire fighters get it out in a hurry while it's still small

Some wild fires are started by power lines knocked-down by strong Santa Ana winds. Many are caused by illegal alien migrant workers who camp-out in some of the brush-filled canyons and use small fires to cook or keep warm on cold nights (one body has been found in the remains of such a campsite in the canyon where one of the current fires began). Some are started by morons throwing cigarette butts out of cars. Occasionally some hunter causes one. Many are either directly caused by federal land management activity or made worse by federal policies. And then, of course, one should never underestimate the destructive power of a pair of stupid teenage males who clearly have no valid reason to live.

Nowhere in that list was "global warming". In fact, there were some really bad fires in the 1960s that were only matched, NOT in the 70's or 80's or 90's but in 2012. When you consider that Southern California has been getting more and more-populated and developed decade-by-decade, it should NOT surprise if the number if fires detected (with more people around, and more arsonists present) and fought (with more property at risk) goes up - indeed the trendline for value of property should also go up (because more developed property, with higher value, is threatened when more land is developed and populated). Lining-up such fire data with climate data will easily provide a correlation-causality illusion. Of course, such false relationships are the sort of propaganda no self-respectingAGW alarmist can resist: When the "weather" seems severe it's proof of global warming, but when the "weather" is cold or fails to produce the predicted hurricanes and tornadoes, these uber-intellectual titans insist that "only an idiot" would conflate "weather" with "climate" - and they think the general public is too stupid to spot the completely dishonest and hypocritical "spin"...

Note for the future: When Katrina hit and Al Gore was running around pushing his book and film, he and his friends were pointing to a rise in hurricanes and tornadoes as evidence for AGW - but we are (and have been for severl years) experiencing a record low-level of such activity (and A.G. and his friends are notably quiet about these "weather" incidents). It is inevitable that hurricaine and tornado activity will rise in the future - when it does, look for Al and his compatriots to once again start using "weather" as "proof" of their "climate" theories. Given that we continue to build more-valuable things in more desireable (and riskier) locations, we can predict that the monetary damage caused by those future weather events will go up and up too, which will no-doubt make it into some dramatic (and intentionally misleading) graphs...

http://voiceofsandiego.org/2012/07/18/the-trouble-with-the-san-onofre-nuclear-plant/

San Onofre’s safety problems began drawing attention in 2007. A fire prevention specialist responsible for hourly patrols around the plant had deliberately falsified inspection records for years. In 2008, a safety battery was discovered to have been disconnected for four years.

Concerns began mounting. Whistleblowers alleged they’d been fired for raising safety questions. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission added an extra on-site inspector. The NRC flagged the plant for its problems. San Onofre stayed under the ominous federal warning for four years. It was a serious threat to the plant: Improve or else. Federal regulators have shut down at least one nuclear plant that didn’t heed their order.

The San Onofre mess was brewing for years. It's not like there were no warning signs. Nothing substantial happened.

When Edison replaced the heat exchange system, they self certified that it was a replacement, not a substantial change. It was in fact an upgrade, so they could extract more power. They deliberately lied and no one at the NRC either knew or cared.

Around 50 reactors are not in compliance with fire safety standards that were set in the 1980's as the result of a fire at the Brown's Ferry facility.

http://allthingsnuclear.org/fission-stories-98-fires-at-browns-ferry-get-your/

The owners of 51 reactors formally notified the NRC of their plans to comply with the NFPA 805 fire protection regulations. In doing so, they implicitly conceded that these reactors failed to comply with the 1980 fire protection regulations. After all, no owner could justify spending the millions of dollars needed to comply with the 2004 regulations if it already satisfied the 1980 regulations.

In the eight years since that time only four reactors have taken the steps to comply. Today, 47 of those 51 reactors still do not comply with either the 1980 or 2004 fire regulations.

Ironically and sadly, the three reactors at Browns Ferry are among those that fail to comply with either the 1980 or the 2004 fire protection regulations. That’s right—more than 37 years after a fire nearly melted down the Unit 1 and Unit 2 reactors, these reactors operate in violation of fire protection regulations expressly developed to prevent another Browns Ferry fire.

In the real world, the safety culture of the nuclear industry is pathetic. The lack of major failures is due to luck as much as anything else. As aging plants have their operational lives extended far beyond their original design, it is inevitable that a very serious accident with major radiation release will occur. Everyone involved goes through the motions, but no one is taking real responsibility.

A professionally trained, well-paid human teacher eh?

If this is true, then how come our schools are so awful?

We the people have been throwing more and more money at schoolteachers, and requiring ever-increasing levels of training and education to maintain their license to teach, yet the educational achievments of our students have been flatlined for 40 years, and have even fallen dramatically in some districts.

this is a MYTH.

this is nothing but a red herring argument foisted by fiscal conservatives to continue to destroy the public school system and to concentrate resources in elite public schools. for a nation whose economic engine relies on advanced knowledge and high literacy, we should be treasuring our teachers. teaching should be one of the highest-paid professions, and people should be beating down the doors to try to become a teacher.

instead, people have bought the line that teachers are "overpaid" and don't bother to realize that teachers earn incredibly low salaries for the education and professional level of their work. that is insane.

at the very least, please stop repeating the blatant lie that teachers are overpaid. there could be nothing farther from the truth.

"Welfare fraud has become an obvious scandal"

Please cite your sources.

I find pages like this: http://voiceofsandiego.org/2010/11/10/fact-check-the-frequency-of-welfare-fraud/

Where actual investigation, statistically significant, relevant, and specific, make it clear that welfare fraud is over-reported. I hear anecdotes about welfare fraud, but I have yet to see reputable, statistically significant sources listed.

I have a strong suspicion that you, like cayenne8 before you, are simply stereotyping, falling into the same type of ignorance, bigotry, and hatred that continues to keep "them" from having the same opportunities you've had.

I would like to point out that you made no mention of mental health or education in your argument, perhaps you'd like to comment on literally the first result that comes up in a Google search: http://suite101.com/article/suburb-vs-urban-areas-an-educational-comparison-a154719 I know you prefer hand-waving dismissal of facts, but you may want to work harder at passing off your opinion as fact.

You're right to an extent (the news cannot be free as in beer), but the nation-wide non-profit online only experiment that I was referring to is really more aimed at the kind of reporting you are talking about. See: The Voice of San Diego, The MinnPost, and The St. Louis Beacon for examples. Non-profit, local newspapers going 100% online and depending on their communities for support (with maybe some ad sales on the side). All of them are doing hard news coverage and in some cases are doing it better than their city's major daily paper.

Also, your local NPR station has long operated on the model that you just described, providing the kind of coverage that you've described.

The model may not yet be proven for "print" but it is certainly being tested, and seems to be holding up pretty well.

Maybe that's because they've moved out west: Nonprofit news Web site wins coveted investigative journalism award. Interestingly, the Voice of San Diego web site follows National Public Radio's basic format -- deliver a top-notch product and let people donate what they're willing to donate. Maybe the more traditional newspapers could construct a similar model ... that is, if they don't mind ditching their decades-old mindsets of what a newspaper "should be" and get with the times.

tl;dr: Newspapers can either adapt or die. If they choose the latter, they deserve no pity from us.

The lowest-paying entry-level police jobs I could find on the West Coast start around $40k per year. Make it a career and you can become one of the highest-paid public employees around.

http://www.sfgate.com/webdb/citypay/

You mention San Diego, which was in the zero percentile (absolute bottom) for police pay in California as of 2006. The minimum recruit base pay was right around $30k compared to a median of roughly $47k. Not a lot of money in this day and age, but certainly more than being "lucky" to get $20k per year.

http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/articles/2006/12/21/news/01buck.txt

Silly libertarian; since when to private developers build 5 lane highways!?

Anytime there is profit to be made through such an activity. Consider the 91 Express Lanes or the Otay Mesa Toll Road (which was subsidized by the government). While the developers themselves may not build the road there are certainly many people out there willing to engage in such a project.