If Gloria thinks parking program is going well, why did he suspend fees?

The first step toward addressing San Diego’s dysfunction is admitting it exists. That’s why Councilmember Raul Campillo’s call for reforms in November in response to City Hall’s tawdry bait-and-switch scheme to get more than 220,000 San Diego homeowners to pay trash collection fees was welcome.

And it’s why Councilmembers Sean Elo-Rivera and Kent Lee’s joint criticism of Mayor Todd Gloria’s implementation of new parking fees at Balboa Park as “haphazard” was appreciated. In a Tuesday memo that called for suspending the fees until many problems had been fixed, they detailed how hard it was for residents to get the sharp discounts they were promised because of the city’s confusing, complex and poorly explained program.

“The fact that San Diegans can only qualify for the resident discount if they register their vehicles 48 hours before their first visit to Balboa Park, and purchase passes in advance of each subsequent visit, underscores why ample time for public education is so important,” Elo-Rivera and Lee wrote. They also noted the indefensible failure of the city to have put up signs by Monday — the day the new rules took effect — that let visitors know they could park for free for three hours in the lower Inspiration Point parking lot.

This led to a sharp rebuke from Gloria, who said Thursday that the City Council had “shaped, amended and approved” the program now being critiqued. As the U-T reported, he argued that “the new system is functioning well and being ‘actively adopted’” and that calls to suspend the program reflected “erratic decision-making.”

Huh? The fact that Gloria himself had suspended the issuing of citations for parking violations until next month shows that the program is not functioning well and confirms the accuracy of Elo-Rivera and Lee’s assessment. And that he would fault someone else for the quality of their decision-making is rich.

Remember, Gloria denies that charging residents far more for trash collection than they expected to pay when passing a 2022 ballot measure allowing the fees was a bait and switch. Last February, he even argued that the higher fees reflected the higher level of service that residents said they wanted at “hundreds of community meetings” held since Measure B was narrowly approved. And even though outsourcing trash collection to private contractors is an obvious, voter-approved and legal way to save money — believe the City Charter, not City Attorney Heather Ferbert — the city instead might hire up to 130 new employees “to boost efficiency and handle new services.”

Was this also demanded in all those community meetings — that the city make its crippling pension burden even bigger?

When Campillo, Elo-Rivera, Lee and other city leaders begin supporting trash service outsourcing, then San Diegans will finally have substantial reasons for optimism.

The fact that this is considered unthinkable is a comment on the union-first decision-making of everyone at City Hall — Gloria and his critics alike.