You don't have to drive far on city's streets to get a clue about San Diego's infrastructure maintenance backlog.
Beyond all the potholes are crumbling sidewalks, water pipes, storm drains and other key public facilities.
Will they ever get fixed?
At City Hall – a 50-year-old building that’s overdue for replacement -- they're calling a possible long-term answer "Rebuild San Diego".
It’s ballot measure to commit more than $4 billion to infrastructure upgrades and maintenance over 25 years -- that's just how far along the problems have gotten.
"The mayor and the council control the budget; we could absolutely decide to do this,” says Mark Kersey, chairman of the City Council’s Infrastructure Committee. “ The problem is, history has shown that city leaders -- for whatever reason -- won't prioritize the city's infrastructure. If they had, we wouldn't be in this mess today -- right? And that's the whole problem we're trying to fix."
So the legal mechanisms to accomplish the upgrades would be engraved in the City Charter, if voters approve the measure in the June primary election.
For starters, "no new taxes" is the mantra.
The money would come from growth in the city's General Fund revenues, sales tax proceeds and pension cost savings.
Projected average infrastructure investment: $180 million a year.
However, will all that accrue at a pace that eventually gets the city ahead of the backlog "going forward"?
San Diegans who spoke Monday with NBC 7 are skeptical, but seemed willing to buy into the premise.
"It's going to take years,” said Pacific Beach resident Joe Maruca. “You can always go out and contract to repave a street and fix potholes. But when you start messing with the infrastructure of the sewers and waterlines and all that. They were all originally put in with cast iron."
Added Logan Heights resident Steve Huppert: “Some of these pipes are early 1900s. And they need to be dug up and redone. Put a lot of people to work.”
The measure goes before the Council Tuesday for placement on the June 7th ballot.
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With no new taxes involved , a ‘majority-plus-one’ vote will pass it.
In a recent, scientific survey of 2,500 hundred residents, three out of five said they were dissatisfied with the condition of the city's infrastructure.
