All three candidates made time on a beautiful Sunday afternoon while the Niners were winning their sixth game of the year to debate the issues once again. Hosted by CBB this time with a better format that allowed for longer answers and some candidate-to-candidate questions, the result was very similar to the 1.0 debate. Part of that was probably because some of the same supporters attended and asked some of the same questions hoping to show their candidates' best sides.
The questions included: What have you done (or would you do) to diversify our revenue sources? How have you helped link the City and the schools? How have you increased community involvement? What about high-speed rail especially vis a vis the "blended solution"? What would you do to reduce emissions (which is kind of a loaded question in this venue :-). And what would you do about pensions and retiree medical benefits?
Ricardo Ortiz' challenge on the financial questions is how to "lay a glove" on the incumbents in a way that the typical voter can understand. The incumbents have two advantages: they have a reasonable knowledge of the details that allow them to talk for two minutes on it and they have one legitimate defense that the problems stem from Sacramento and, in particular, Gov. Gray Davis' term.
You may have received a detailed mail piece recently from local Andrew Peceimer with headlines like "Burlingame Expenses – Up, Up and Away!", "Burlingame's Ever Increasing School Expenditures", and "Did You Know a Typical Navy Seal Makes $65,000/Yr?" Even with the charts and graphs Mr. Peceimer included, the reader is left to piece together the whole picture because it's complicated. For example, you can't directly compare Full-time City employees between cities without knowing what assets they own and staff (like sewer treatment plants) and what services they outsource (like fire or libraries). The mailer reads to me as if it is anti-incumbent, but does not ask you to actually vote for the challenger. Ortiz can keep asking for the vote and he has one week to make the case.
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