Written by: Nathaniel Mannor
In 2009 Former San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders launched a task force to expand San Diego’s Convention Center. The plan was to construct a new Convention Center big enough to host 8,000 person dinners to boost travel revenue and increase tourism. But 12 years later, the government has made no progress on this promise, so what happened?
Many factors contributed to this slow process, but the two most significant were money and location. California law requires that tax increases must pass a two-thirds supermajority vote before going into effect because it is a government initiative. Due to the project costing around $750 million to $1 billion, Sanders’ task force lumped the Convention Center tax with a hotel room tax that later became known as Measure C. However, a two-thirds vote is an extremely high threshold to meet. So boosters crafted the bill into a citizens initiative (where it only needs the majority, over 50%, to pass) by lumping it with other social issues, like homelessness. Essentially, they put more benefits on the bill and created a way for it to pass without two-thirds if it should fall short. Which, lo and behold, it did.
As with location, the California Coastal Commission requires public access for waterfront property along the coastline. That, combined with Mayor Bob Filner’s reluctance to help win approval, stalled the project even further. It wasn’t until the task force lined the Convention Center with grass (thereby making it a public park), did the commission approve it.
Then in March 2020, Measure C received a vote but fell shy of the two-thirds threshold at 65.24% of the electorate voting in favor of expanding the Convention Center by raising taxes. The center of the debate is whether the bill is a citizen’s initiative or a government initiative. Proponents of the bill claim it is a citizen’s initiative where it only needs a simple majority to pass. They point to other cities that have done the same thing in order to support this initiative. Opponents of the bill, like Alliance San Diego, argue that the city told voters that the measure could not pass without two-thirds of the vote in its official ballot descriptions. It can’t change the rules afterward. Legal battles over this matter are still ongoing.
Many oppose a hotel room tax, while other issues include the supermajority and building regulations in San Diego that make it impossible to headway the operation. It may be a while until the expansion for the Convention Center takes place, and it will definitely be a circus show until then.
Photo from: San Diego Tourism
