\u00a0<\/p>\n
This week my colleagues on the Board of Supervisors voted 3 to 1 to spend $2.75 million in County taxpayer dollars on a brand-new arts bureaucracy and a pile of giveaways aimed largely at the City of San Diego.<\/p>\n
I was the one no vote.<\/p>\n
Let me say this up front. I love the arts. I think they make our communities richer, our kids smarter, and our neighborhoods more vibrant. The back-to-school events we host every year in District 5 are full of music, dance, and local artists, and I would not have it any other way. Arts and culture matter.<\/p>\n
But loving the arts is not the same as writing a $2.75 million blank check to bail out a City that refuses to do its own job.<\/p>\n
Here is what the Board majority just approved. A $1.5 million General Fund giveaway for a \u201cdirect grant program\u201d to individual artists and \u201ccultural workers,\u201d designed for what the proposal calls \u201clow-barrier and timely distribution.\u201d A quarter million dollars to embed artists inside County departments to come up with \u201cartist-led solutions\u201d to government problems. Half a million dollars sent to one single neighborhood inside the City of San Diego. Another quarter million for \u201cbinational creative economy\u201d projects nobody on the dais could clearly define.<\/p>\n
New staff. New grant programs. New designations. A sizable chunk of it walking straight across the County line and into City Hall.<\/p>\n
Now look at the City of San Diego right now.<\/p>\n
Streets that flood because storm drains went uncleaned for years. A budget deficit so deep the City is closing libraries and rec centers. Homeless encampments the City will not enforce against. A downtown most families will not visit after dark.<\/p>\n
When the floods hit Southcrest and Mountain View, who showed up? The County did. We opened the shelters. We cut the checks. We bailed the City out because the City could not do its own job.<\/p>\n
And now we are doing it again. This time with $2.75 million pulled out of the same General Fund that pays for our deputies, our fire prep, our mental health beds, and our roads in North County.<\/p>\n
Here is what that money could have done.<\/p>\n
More deputies on patrol in Fallbrook, Ramona, and Valley Center. Fire breaks cut before the next wildfire tears through our backcountry. Psychiatric beds for the fentanyl crisis killing our kids. Defibrillators on every youth sports field. Pothole crews that actually show up.<\/p>\n
That is what North County families pay their taxes for.<\/p>\n
Instead, the Board majority chose to stand up a brand-new County arts agency to take over a program the City of San Diego has run since the 1980s. They voted to hire $250,000 worth of new staff to run it. They voted to send half a million dollars to a single City neighborhood. They voted for a $250,000 line item nobody could explain.<\/p>\n
I will say it again, because I want there to be no confusion. I am not against arts and culture. I am against the County of San Diego serving as a bailout fund for a City that will not govern itself.<\/p>\n
If the City of San Diego wants to fund artists, it can. If it wants a creative economy program, it can build one. What it cannot do, and what I will keep voting against, is reach into the pockets of families in Escondido, Vista, San Marcos, Oceanside, and Fallbrook to pay for services those families will never see.<\/p>\n
North County deserves better. Public safety. Fire protection. Mental health beds. Roads. Basic services delivered competently.<\/p>\n
I lost this vote 3 to 1. I will lose more like it before this term is over. But I am not going to stop saying out loud what most taxpayers in this county already know.<\/p>\n
We work for the people who pay the bills. Not for City Hall.<\/p>\n
Jim Desmond is a member of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors. He represents the 5th District, which includes Escondido, Valley Center, Pauma Valley, Palomar Mountain and much of the Backcountry.<\/p>\n
*Note: Opinions expressed by columnists and letter writers are those of the
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