Re “Housing emerges as key issue in District 6 election” (Sept. 27): Councilmember Kent Lee, whose only experience has been in the nonprofit world, recently claimed that San Diego is run more like a nonprofit than a business. As a former City Council member who also served as the head of a nonprofit, I find that depiction a troubling misunderstanding of city government.
Nonprofits must earn donors’ trust. Donors choose whether to give, expect their money to be spent as promised and often require reports showing where their money went. A city government works nothing like that. Residents can’t opt out of taxes, have little say in how their money is spent and see little accountability when it’s wasted. When City Hall needs more, it simply finds new ways to extract it from residents.
Business experience isn’t about profit. It’s about managing budgets, measuring results and saying no to spending that doesn’t deliver. If San Diego really were run like a nonprofit, its donors would have walked away years ago.
— Lorie Zapf, Ocean Beach