It's being treated as if it were a private club rather than an elected representative government. Speaking for herself and not for the League of Women Voters, Damashek said she has witnessed a growing sense of complacency on the council in the eight years since she stopped being a staff member in the District 1 Council office of Abbe Wolfsheimer. Ever since, there's been a bunker mentality on the 11th floor, and the public is harmed by that. Mitch Mitchell, the vice president of public policy at the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce, disagrees. I think until issues surrounding the big topic items are resolved, the City Council will always have to deal with public perception concerns, but they still should be commended.
Streets are paved, lights work, the trash is picked up.
Those are things that are essential, and I'm not sure that the public is questioning the council about the essential services. While Mitchell and others defended the City Council's record Thursday, naysayers pointed to a recent KPBS survey of 196 registered city voters as another illustration of public dissatisfaction with the current state of local politics. Part of this perception comes from a federal probe into Councilmember Valerie Stallings and her financial dealings in a Texas software company run by San Diego Padres owner John Moores . Activist Mel Shapiro , a frequent critic of City Hall, supports such a commission. Shapiro filed the lawsuit that alleged the council had discussed elements of the ballpark negotiations behind closed doors that should have taken place in public, and that the council had improperly noticed several of those closed-session meetings in 1998 and 1999.