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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024
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California, Carlsbad Chambers Creating Sites to See for Voters

This fall, on Nov. 2, the annual apathy conference will be held across the state. It’s officially called an election. About 35 percent of registered voters will exercise their voting rights, and the other 65 percent of us who don’t bother to vote in off-year elections will complain about the results for three or four years.

To help you 65 percent types, the California Chamber of Commerce has created a nice Web site, CalChamber2010.com, to help you decide whom to vote for as our next governor.

The site will focus on nine areas: budget and spending; jobs and the economy; taxes; education; health care; environment and energy; water; public safety; and housing and transportation. By going to the site periodically during the months before the election, the voter will be able to see and read what the candidates are thinking and saying on the issues above.

The site will feature independently sourced material and video clips to allow the voter to see firsthand what the candidates are saying. In order to keep the material objective, CalChamber 2010 hired former Legislative Analyst Bill Hamm to review all the content to ensure that all the material on the site is factual and presented in an independent way. Dial up the site and see for yourself the breadth of material available.

Mayor’s Seat Open

In Carlsbad, we decided to do a similar thing. We registered the site Carlsbadelections2010.com to allow the Chamber of Commerce to produce a similar site to allow Carlsbad voters to see the positions and platforms of the candidates for mayor and City Council in November. The significance of this site is that the mayor’s seat has not been open for all comers for more than 30 years. Mayor Bud Lewis is not running this fall for the seat, so a wide open seat with many candidates is predicted. Two very viable candidates have surfaced, and they are both sitting council members. Matt Hall, a councilman for more than a dozen years, and Keith Blackburn, a veteran of only two years on the council, have both announced their desire to replace Mayor Lewis.

Unlike the state site by the CalChamber with its nine issues, the Carlsbad issues list is much shorter. As a matter of fact, the main issue is the city employee retirement pension program. The budget experts predict that if the current plan is not changed, then the city will have spent $16 million in 2008-2009, which will grow to $23.5 million by 2017-2018.

In the big picture, that is 16 percent of the entire city’s operating budget, a cost that does not pencil out as affordable. The main topic or issue will be a two tier pension plan. Two levels of pay for the same job. The current employees would probably be grandfathered and the new hires would be paid under the new tier. For sure it looks like the employees will have to begin to pay their full 8 percent soon in order for the system to survive long enough to be realigned.

When the new Carlsbad site is up and running, the interested voter will be able to go to Carlsbadelections2010.com and read all the information and the positions of all the registered candidates.

Scripps Health Gains Recognition

In other North County news:

• Scripps Memorial Hospital Encinitas and three of its sister hospitals were honored March 16 with certificates of excellence by the California Hospital Assessment and Reporting Taskforce, or CHART, for having superior or above average quality scores. To make the list, a hospital must score above average or superior in five of eight measure sets and not receive any below average measures. The other Scripps Health hospitals that were recognized are Scripps Green, Scripps Mercy and Scripps Memorial La Jolla.

All four are on the state’s most recent list of top California hospitals for delivering quality health care. Only 41 hospitals statewide made the list this year.

• TripAdvisor.com, one of the nation’s top travel sites, has selected West Inn & Suites in Carlsbad as No. 2 among family hotels in the United States and third among all family hotels worldwide. This is the second year in a row that the hotel has been so honored. In the last five years, the hotel has received 15 global, national and regional accolades from the Internet travel site operated by TripAdvisor LLC.

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