Primaries are set for June 3, but if no candidate wins more than 50 percent of the vote, the context will continue into November. The Carmel Valley News/Del Mar Village Voice recently sat down with Mayor Sanders to discuss his work as mayor, the campaign, and what the future has in store for San Diego.

What’s it like campaigning while trying to be mayor at the same time? How busy are you?
I know I get two more Sundays off in that period [before the June 3 primary] and that’s it. You can’t complain about that — you get into it. You get tuckered out, but once you get going in the day, you’re fine. People really do want to see you. Normally I try to take Sundays off so that I have time with the family. And try to get at least one night during the week off so that I can just get home and lead a normal life.

How much do politics at city hall change during an election year?

I think one the things that people have not really seen much is really the strong mayor form of government. We’re still adapting to that. It wasn’t a very defined charter proposition and because of that there have been loads of issues that we’ve had to negotiate with council or with others. You’ll see that in the charter propositions — A, B and C — that are going forward [on the June 3 ballot]. Those are not the ones that I would’ve put forward. But we had to negotiate with the council to get ones that we thought made sense.

On the I-5/SR-56 Connector Project, would you support a solution that involves the taking of private residential property?

I don’t want to see private property taken on that. I just think that there’s better solutions. We’ve talked to Caltrans — Caltrans has taken the lead on the project — but we told them we don’t support taking any homes for that.

The state of the economy is worrying — we’re likely in a recession, gas prices are high and employment is down. Is there anything that government can do to help?

In the past we’ve built our way out of recessions. It’s been homebuilders who have started building and I think right now … people have not noticed that building has slowed down so much until you start seeing construction workers and all the industries around that, those people being out of jobs and that’s what we’re starting to see now. I think what we have to do is work with the building industry and make sure that we’re doing whatever we can to help them out in terms of streamlining and stuff like that.

The state is in some really deep trouble. Our biggest concern is they’re going to take the monies from the cities and transfer those around and if that happens, it’s going to be catastrophic. They claim they’re in a $15 or $16 billion problem when more realistically it’s more like 20 million. They’ve got to start making some cuts.

The education community is outraged at some of the budget cuts proposed by Governor Schwarzenegger. Schools argue that they shouldn’t face such deep cuts. What do you think?

Well, nobody thinks they should be cut. You find one state agency that thinks they should be cut and I’d be interested in hearing who they are. What’s going to happen though is there’s two ways to work around this: They can start slimming down the bureaucracies the same way we have done in San Diego — we’ve cut 10.3 percent of the non-public safety bureaucracy now — and the state’s going to have to start doing that whether they like it or not. The only way you cut is through cutting personnel. That’s the only way in government that you cut, no matter how painful that is. Otherwise, they can raise taxes — that’s up to them. I don’t think that’s a very good thing during a recession.

What do you say to residents who’ve noticed a decline in the quality and availability of city services as a result of your efforts to streamline city operations?

I know people say that but our library hours are still the same. Our park and recreation hours are still the same. You get your trash picked up every week on the same schedule. All of those things are getting done. Frequently what happens is you have some of the unions telling people there’s a decline but we haven’t seen that.

Part of our problem with planning and some of those things is I think people are seeing it because they’re not seeing their planners as often. But we haven’t been cutting that planning group that much — in fact, we’ve added money in there for community plans in some of the areas. Where we have seen the change is the City Attorney decided that these meetings needed to be run differently. It’s added a whole layer of bureaucracy to what was already a pretty huge undertaking for our folks. So it’s been some of those systems changes that have really done it more than cutting back people.

Are you planning on making any endorsements in the City Attorney’s race or any other local races?

No, not in the primary. I’m really running and endorsing other people is kind of an empty gesture when you’re trying to regain your office. I endorsed in the presidential race only because I admire John McCain. I mean I just admire the man. It wasn’t really a political decision, it was a gut decision.

Looking back on your term, what’s gone well and what hasn’t gone so well? What have been the greatest challenges?

I’m really happy that we’ve got those four audits out now. We are very close to getting back in the bond market. We talked to Standard and Poor’s. Fitch moved us from negative to positive which was a huge move. So I feel good about that.
The greatest challenge would be the City Attorney. I simply operate without legal advice. I get a lot of political advice from the City Attorney, but I don’t get timely, written legal advice from him and that makes it really hard to run a $3 billion corporation. Is that clear enough?

I think the other issue that was very difficult is the fires. Seeing the impact on the region, seeing the impact on families in Rancho Bernardo, seeing so many people being put out of their houses for days at a time when we did those evacuations. That’s been a difficult one and getting the recovery process really moving has been difficult. But it’s also been rewarding.

What do you think is the public’s perception of the pension crisis and the city’s financial woes?

The pension crisis — the public’s perception of it was much greater than it probably is. It was bad. The council had not been making the payments. And we made the payment now — we got it from 65 percent funded, to 79 percent funded and it’ll go over 80 percent this year, which, for pensions systems, that’s not bad. But I think that really highlighted the fact that the city was not being honest about how it was doing things.

I don’t believe people have seen the progress that we actually have. It’ll actually be paid down in about 15 years instead of 20. We have a new pension system that I’ve proposed for new employees that are not public safety. That’ll save the city about half.

I actually made a lot of headway. Where the public gets confused … is they think we can just take that stuff back, and the courts have said over and over again — the city attorney has lost every lawsuit on this — you can’t do that. Pensions are a vested right of the employees the day they start. So I think the public’s still pretty cranky about it. The reason is that it’s a good retirement system. I mean when you can retire after 30 years of service and get 120 percent of what you were making, it makes people pretty cranky because nobody in the private sector is getting that.

On immigration: San Diego has been called a “sanctuary city” for illegal immigrants by some commentators. Is that accurate? And what should the city be doing about illegal immigration?

We’re not any more lenient than any other large city. What’s happened is the country has not figured out what to do on the immigration issue. The Fed government is charged with the responsibility of shutting down the borders and enforcing immigration. They have not been successful in the least because nobody really knows what they want to do. Also, sanctuary city implies that when people go to jail they’re not checked for immigration status and that’s just not true. The county checks every single prisoner to check their immigration status and they notify the Border Patrol of that.

Our [police] officers are tied up — they’re as busy as they could possibly be tied up with criminal issues in the US. If we want them to become Border Patrol officers and spend all of their time doing immigration that means that they’re not going to be there when you call them for somebody breaking into [your] house. [Police] call Border Patrol [when detaining someone of questionable immigration status]. If they get there within 20 minutes, we’ll turn them over, but if the Border Patrol doesn’t come within 20 minutes, we’re not spending our entire time dong that. That’s just not in the cards.

What do you think about the stances Steve Francis is taking in the campaign — and how different many are from his previous positions?

What I’ll say is, I’ve been who I was in the campaign. I have changed on a couple issues and I’m not hesitant to say that. Steve’s changed on every issue: From being no-taxes to taxes … from being pretty much anti-union in the last campaign to asking for union endorsements. From being a pretty large lobbyist himself at AMN to now saying he doesn’t want any lobbyists around. From being a pretty huge campaign contributor himself to saying I’m not taking any contributions. I think those are some pretty dramatic changes and I think people need to ask who are we really getting. For me I’m not sophisticated enough to have two fronts out there. I’ve pretty much said what I believed and done what I said, so I’m kind of stuck with my record, like it or not, and I’m pretty happy with it.

Nobody has ever been on TV every single night from February until June. And my biggest issue with that is he’s casting a cloud over the city right now. So of course I’m nervous. But once again all I can do is run a city, show the progress we’re making ... and I think you’ll see his messaged tailored — because its pretty poll driven — tailored that we’re not better off. Because that’s what he has to say.

— Ian S. Port, Assistant Editor