San Diego City Wire

San Diego faces one of the most challenging chapters in the city's history following the COVID-19 pandemic.

Like many other cities and towns across the country, San Diego is battling budget shortfalls that will last for the next three years, city council members, many of them newly elected, have been told.

It is estimated that the city will post a deficit of $86.1 million in the fiscal year beginning next July, according to a report in the San Diego Union Tribune. The five-year forward analysis estimates the deficit will be $75.1 million in the following budget year and $58.6 million the year after that.

After Mayor Todd Garcia and the new 73rd City Council was sworn in, District 2 member Jennifer Campbell was voted in as the next council president by a 5-4 vote over Monica Montgomery Steppe.

Georgette Gomez, Barbara Bry, Chris Ward, Mark Kersey and Scott Sherman, all departing, attending the swearing in of new members Joe LaCava, Stephen Whitburn, Marni von Wilpert, Raul Campillo and Sean Elo-Rivera.

Apart from the budget deficits, the council, although officially non-partisan but with a 8-1 Democratic Party majority, will also face other challenging issues including implementing the city's climate action plan, tackling homelessness and rising housing prices.

Elo-Rivera, who replaces former president Gomez, promised radical reform while acknowledging the crises caused by coronavirus is "unprecedented," CBS 8 reported.

"For too many San Diegan families, the challenges presented by COVID-19 are not unprecedented but all too typical," he said following the swearing in, as reported by CBS 8. "We must not go back to normal. Normal is not good enough."

La Cava echoed the sentiments on the impact of coronavirus, stating: "Successful navigation of these uncertain pandemic waters will take all of us working together," CBS 8 reported.

District 3's Whitburn was sworn in by former Councilwoman Christine Kehoe, the first openly LGBT person elected to office in San Diego County in 1993, the Times of San Diego noted. In attendance were all the LGBT former District 3 councilmembers, Kehoe, Senate President Pro Tempore Toni Atkins and Ward.

"We need to advance past the us versus them mentality," Whitburn said, as reported by CBS 8.

CBS 8 said outgoing District 7 member Sherman warned his successors, "It's not your money. We are stewards of the taxpayers' money."