The 28-year-old elevator that serves the San Diego Model Railroad
Museum can’t handle its regular strain. Once a month, the museum
off ers free admission, and parents, children, and strollers pile into the
elevator. On that day, the elevator o en overheats and shuts down for
a couple of hours, said John Hogan, the building’s operations manager.
Hogan called the elevator repair company so much he gave them
their own key.
But the elevator’s permanent repair has languished. So have many
others. The city had completed less than 40 percent of the 91 projects
on its original list through mid-August.
Current and past city offi cials cast the blame far and wide.
It’s the bureaucracy. Awarding repair contracts has taken six to
eight months. City Council approval sometimes has taken another
three months. And all the design and engineering work took time, too.
It’s the decisions at the top. Five years ago, Sanders switched the de-
partments that handled repair contracts so he could speed up the pro-
cess. He touted the change as a successful way to cut red tape. But the
new process took three months longer. This July, Sanders undid his
switch. He touted that change as a successful way to cut red tape, too.
In the past, the city didn’t have many shovel-ready projects because
it had never spent the money to get them ready. Offi cials also hadn’t
assessed the condition of many facilities. Others they hadn’t exam-
ined for years.
“It’s not like a racecar where you can start it and accelerate it up to
100 miles an hour right away,” said Dave Jarrell, who spent four years
leading public works in the Sanders’ administration before moving to
Annapolis, Md., last December. “It takes time to sort of start the pro-
cess and get the projects in the queue.”
In the meantime, the money waited. The city didn’t kickoff major
road repairs for an entire year. The fi rst year’s spending total? Just
more than $1 million.
Jarrell said he held meetings on the repairs every other week. He
went over every project on the list and tried to understand what was
taking so long.
“It’s frustrating when you have the money and you know that there’s
this great need and it’s just diffi cult to actually make it happen,” he said.
But city leaders have also promised more than they’ve delivered
over the past two and a half years.
In August 2009, Jarrell said the city would have $70 million to $80
million worth of construction contracts on the street within six months.
Twenty-four months later, the city still hadn’t reached that mark.
In March 2010, a streets department offi cial said the city would
complete all the road repairs by this summer. When this summer ar-
rived, a Sanders press release trumpeted instead that the repairs were
halfway done. The mayor made no mention of the original deadline.
Repairs now are expected to be fi nished by next summer.
Officials say they’ve learned lessons from the delays. They’ve
streamlined how they hire contractors. They know which facilities
need the most repairs. They now have many shovel-ready projects.
“Up until the last couple of years, we didn’t have a really good
handle on what our deferred capital needs were,” Heinrichs said. “We
now have a really good idea.”
City Auditor Eduardo Luna isn’t convinced that these fi xes untangle
all the bureaucratic webs slowing down spending. He depicted the
city’s repair process as labyrinthine. Too many departments involve
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