San Diego, CA
How many middle managers does San Diego really need? City leaders remain at odds, despite their new budget.
The recent fight at San Diego City Hall over how many middle managers the city employs could signal the start of a shift away from such jobs in the future, after years of their ranks quickly growing.
The battle over middle managers, which emerged during controversial budget negotiations this spring, pitted Mayor Todd Gloria against city labor leaders — and eventually most of the City Council.
Labor leaders lobbied for sharp cuts to middle management positions so the city could lay off fewer front-line workers like librarians and parks maintenance staff in its effort to close a $350 million deficit.
The Municipal Employees Association stressed that there are more than five times as many high-paid middle managers known as “program coordinators” and “program managers” at the city as there were a decade ago.
During that same time, the MEA says, the overall city workforce has grown by only 20% — making middle managers a significantly larger portion of the city’s 13,000 employees.
Gloria and his staff don’t dispute those numbers, but they released a new study in May finding that middle managers make up a smaller percentage of city staff in San Diego than in most other large cities they analyzed.
According to their study, 8% of San Diego’s workforce are middle managers — a bigger share than in San Jose, Los Angeles and New York but smaller than in Dallas, Phoenix, Houston, Chicago and Austin.
Gloria’s staff also says the rise in such jobs has been necessary as the city has tackled more complex issues, expanded resident services and had to comply with more state and federal mandates.
“Growth, modernization and new programs often require the decision making, judgement and independent development of policies and procedures, and in some cases the creation of entire programs or entire departments,” said Gloria aide Alia Khouri. “These types of responsibilities are designated for unclassified management positions.”
Nearly all of the city’s middle management jobs are unclassified, meaning they are not part of the civil service system and the people in those jobs are not represented by a labor union.
The dispute over middle managers culminated last month with City Council members lobbying for cuts to those positions and eventually making some cuts themselves despite objections — and a formal veto — from Gloria.
The council cut two management jobs in the Communications Department and eliminated two of the city’s five deputy chief operating officer positions in a compromise budget it approved 7-2 on June 10.
It then reiterated its desire to cut those jobs when it overrode Gloria’s line-item veto, which had sought to restore all of those middle management jobs, in a 6-3 vote on June 23.
Gloria has so far declined to eliminate any of those management positions, even though the new fiscal year that the budget covers began July 1.
A spokesperson said the mayor does not plan to cut any positions or make any personnel decisions at the direction of the council.
“The mayor will continue making staffing decisions based on what’s needed to run a responsive and effective city government,” said the spokesperson, Rachel Laing.
She said the mayor will find cuts or savings elsewhere to cover the salaries of those workers. It’s not clear whether the council will challenge the mayor’s refusal to eliminate the jobs.
Mike Zucchet, MEA general manager, said this week that the council’s actions and the increased attention the council is giving to middle management jobs is still an important and fundamental change.
“It’s an unmistakable, seismic shift,” said Zucchet, praising other members for joining longtime middle-management critic Councilmember Vivian Moreno. “I think the level of scrutiny from the council will be much different — from the whole council, not just Councilmember Moreno.”
Since the battle began in the spring, Gloria has presented the council with many fewer requests than usual to create program manager and program coordinator positions, Zucchet said.
But the number of such jobs at the city, which typically pay between $200,000 and $250,000, has skyrocketed since fiscal year 2015 from 70 to 393 — up 461%. And the pace of the increase has accelerated, with more than 100 of those 393 positions created since fiscal 2023, Zucchet said.
“They love those positions,” Zucchet said of the mayor’s staff and city department heads. “You get to hire whoever you want, you don’t have to deal with any pesky rules, you get to pay them twice as much as you’d pay a classified employee and there’s not a lot of transparency as to what goes on with these positions.”
Khouri, a deputy chief operating officer who authored the new study comparing San Diego to other cities on middle managers, described an entirely different set of motives for the city’s hiring of so many middle managers in recent years.
San Diego needs so many because it is at the “forefront of a rapidly changing world” and is “home to innovative companies in the life science, biotechnology and research/manufacturing industries,” she said.
Governments must evolve to keep pace with the changes around them, Khouri said, and San Diego has recruited new talent in key areas to do that.
“This has primarily been enabled through the creation of new unclassified positions in the areas of data analytics, cybersecurity, cloud data storage, business intelligence, homelessness, climate change and resiliency, sustainability, mobility, talent acquisition, employee development and retention, veteran engagement and more,” she said.
Zucchet pushed back on her study’s finding that San Diego has comparatively few middle managers, contending the study is skewed by the comparison cities it uses.
Cities in Texas and Arizona have more unclassified jobs because municipal labor unions are less powerful in those states, but not all those jobs are middle management, he said. “We’re talking apples and oranges here,” he added.
He said the two most comparable cities to San Diego in the study, Los Angeles and San Jose, both employ significantly lower shares of middle managers — 6% in San Jose and 4% in L.A., compared to San Diego’s 8%.
“You could look at this study and say San Diego has twice as many as L.A. and 33% more than San Jose,” he said.
He pointed out that the mayor’s initial draft budget in April had proposed cutting 300 front-line positions, including librarians and recreation center assistant directors, and only one middle management position.
But Laing noted this week that the mayor had already consolidated some departments and made other changes last winter that reduced management staff.
”The mayor in February significantly trimmed management positions, consolidating departments to eliminate 31 management positions and $5 million from the city’s annual budget,” she said. “The mayor’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2026 further trimmed management positions in keeping with his commitment to optimal efficiency and fiscal responsibility.”
SAN DIEGO (FOX 5/KUSI) — As it marks 70 years of service, the San Diego Rescue Mission is preparing to host its annual Thanksgiving Community Outreach Meal on Saturday, Nov. 15, welcoming those experiencing homelessness or hardship for a day of food, care and connection.
SDRM will open its doors at 120 Elm St. to nearly 1,000 San Diegans in need, offering a full Thanksgiving meal, free haircuts and showers, backpacks filled with essentials, and access to support services.
The Thanksgiving feast will be served from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., with volunteers providing roast turkey and all the traditional trimmings. Mobile shower trailers and haircut stations will operate from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., and guests can also connect with medical providers, pet care teams and spiritual counselors on-site.
Transportation will be available through the Rescue Mission’s “HOPE” vans, which will provide free rides to and from the event for individuals staying at the City’s O and B safe camping sites, as well as the Neil Good Day Center between 10:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m.
“This year marks 70 years of the San Diego Rescue Mission serving San Diego, and Thanksgiving is the perfect time to celebrate what that really means to us — that’s lives changed and hope restored,” said Donnie Dee, President and CEO of the San Diego Rescue Mission. “We’re not just providing a meal; at our Thanksgiving tables, we’re building trust with our unhoused neighbors so that when the time is right for them, they know they can come to us for help with getting off the streets and into a life of stability and hope.”
To make this celebration possible, the Rescue Mission’s kitchen is preparing more than 2,600 pounds of food and 1,000 slices of pie. The organization encourages community members to help by donating — each Thanksgiving meal costs just $2.72.
San Diegans can learn more or make a donation at sdrescue.org.
SAN DIEGO (FOX 5/KUSI) — Drivers may be feeling a little more pain at the pump this week. The average cost for a gallon of gas in San Diego has gone up nearly 15 cents from a week ago, according to the latest data from AAA.
As of Tuesday, the current average price for a gallon of regular unleaded gas in San Diego was reported to be $4.85. That’s about two cents more than Monday’s average and 15 cents up from a week ago.
Meanwhile, the average cost of a gallon of premium gas on Tuesday was about $5.26, also about two cents more than Monday’s average of $5.24 and 15 cents more than last week’s average, which was $5.10.
The cost of diesel also increased, although not by as much. The average price for diesel on Tuesday was $5.06 per gallon compared to Monday’s $5.04 and last week’s $5.03.
According to GasBuddy, the cheapest gas in San Diego County can be found at Horizon Fuel Center, located at 31267 Valley Center Road in Valley Center, which listed $3.99 for a gallon of regular gas as of Tuesday.
It’s followed by a few gas stations in Oceanside with $4.13 for a gallon of regular gas, as well as Express Gas on 8602 Lake Murray Blvd. in San Diego with regular gas at $4.15 per gallon.
Of the 18 museums in Balboa Park, only one is in a basement. The San Diego Model Railroad Museum is the successor to a rich history of model railroading in the park.
That history began in 1935, when a pioneer model railroader named Minton Cronkhite built a 40-by-70 foot model railroad exhibit for the California Pacific International Exposition.
Fast forward to 1981, when both the San Diego Model Railroad Association and the La Mesa Model Railroad Club were searching for new homes. They petitioned the city of San Diego for space and got the 27,000 square foot basement of the Casa de Balboa.
But the museum’s size isn’t the only thing that sets it apart.
“The Model Railroad Museum is very unique when it comes to how museums function,” said Michael Warburton. He took over as executive director of the museum a couple of months ago.
“All of the layouts that are in the museum are actually run by independent clubs. And so these clubs represent different types of trains, different scales, and even different philosophies around modeling,” Warburton said.
Besides the museum’s original tenants, there are two other clubs running exhibits there. One is the San Diego Society of N Scale, focused on some of the smallest model trains. The San Diego 3-Railers is the other club, operating toy trains and other accessories in a room called the Toy Train Gallery.
That corner of the museum is a veritable extravaganza of sights and sounds. There are trains, of course, but there are also incredibly detailed buildings and even a drive-in theater!
That, and everything else here is thanks not only to museum staff, but also the hundreds of volunteers who show up week in and week out to engage in their passion of running the rails.
They include Benji Foust, a member of the La Mesa Model Railroad Club. At 23 years old, he is living proof that model railroading is not a hobby limited to the older set.
“This is a semi-prototypical model of the Tehachapi Pass, which is here in California,” Foust said while showing his club’s model of the rail line that runs through the Tehachapi Pass, linking Bakersfield to Mojave.
Like the real life rail line, this model is a marvel. It’s a two-level HO scale layout with a total of more than 30 scaled miles of mainline track. In layman’s terms, that means they’ve recreated a 30-mile stretch of that line, in a scale 87 times smaller than the real track.
The standards are exacting.
“Part of being part of this club is the prototype accuracy. We’re really diving into the actual specifics of what trains went over this layout, what cars, what engines, stuff like that. We’re getting into the time period of the cars and accuracy and all that,” Foust said.
The trains may be the centerpiece, but there is so much more that goes into making this museum special.
“Model railroading is such, I call it a super hobby, actually, because it incorporates so many different hobbies in one thing: painting, sculpture, electronics, wood working, all kinds of things that come together in this one super hobby,” Warburton explained.
The museum works to spread enthusiasm about model railroading beyond its walls. A big part of that is education.
“Schools can come here and do programs and projects here. We can also go to schools and do programs and projects. We have adult clinics that we do as well,” Warburton said.
But at the heart of it all is the fascination with and the enjoyment of trains.
“Just being able to work here and watch my train go around the layout is a pleasure,” Foust said as he worked the control of the massive Tehachapi model railroad.
And then there’s the joy of watching others watch the trains.
“The reaction of kids just being so excited to see the trains running and see them running over bridges and things like that … If we could bottle that excitement, it would be amazing, right?” Warburton said as a child screamed with glee watching one of the trains.
Bottle-able? Maybe not. But gett-able — definitely! All it takes is a visit to the San Diego Model Railroad Museum, where it’s all aboard for a trip into a treasure trove of tiny trains.
Zohran Mamdani, now NYC mayor-elect, announces mainstream transition team. Who’s on it?
Video shows helicopter falling from sky and crashing in Southern California beach parking lot; 5 hospitalized
Former TV anchor accused of stabbing 80-year-old mother to death, told neighbor she did it to ‘save herself’
Dallas train shooting leaves 1 dead, second homicide on DART transit system in a week
ICE says suspect accused of killing teen in second drunk driving incident was in US illegally
Florida High School Football Rankings: Top 25 teams – Oct. 21
How old is Bo Nix? What to know about Oregon quarterback ahead of 2024 NFL Draft
Cleary's 21 help Le Moyne down Central Connecticut State 69-64 in OT
99th annual Pony Swim held in Virginia
Video: ‘It Didn’t Have to Happen This Way:’ U.Va. Faculty Call for Review of Police Response to Protests
Zohran Mamdani, now NYC mayor-elect, announces mainstream transition team. Who’s on it?
Democrats keep Pennsylvania Supreme Court control after 3 justices win retention races
Vetoes, reforms: Main takeaways from Euronews’ Enlargement summit
Democrat Spanberger wins Virginia governor race with message on DOGE, cost of living
Over one month into government shutdown and no end in sight – but predictions run rampant
-
Milwaukee, WI1 week agoLongtime anchor Shannon Sims is leaving Milwaukee’s WTMJ-TV (Channel 4)
-
News1 week agoWith food stamps set to dry up Nov. 1, SNAP recipients say they fear what’s next
-
Alabama1 week agoHow did former Alabama basketball star Mark Sears do in NBA debut with Milwaukee Bucks?
-
Culture1 week agoVideo: Tyler Mitchell Breaks Down Three Photos From His New Book
-
Culture7 days agoVideo: Dissecting Three Stephen King Adaptations
-
Seattle, WA3 days agoESPN scoop adds another intriguing name to Seahawks chatter before NFL trade deadline
-
Seattle, WA1 week agoFOX 13’s Aaron Levine wins back-to-back Jeopardy! episodes
-
San Diego, CA1 week agoAdd Nick Hundley, Ruben Niebla to list of Padres’ managerial finalists