What You Pay For. . .

i On San Diego

MONEY, MONEY, MONEY: The docket item snuck up on us, but when San Diego City Council members voted on raising their own pay last month, the research was in. The proposal to boost councilmembers’ pay by 25 percent——while the city teeters on bankruptcy——was endorsed by the city’s Salary Setting Commission. Obviously, jabbed one City Hall wag, the formula was not performance-based. Councilmembers, to their political credit, voted against the raise from $75,000 a year to $93,750. But not before political gadfly Carl DeMaio and his Performance Institute had weighed in. After researching the salary structure in Phoenix——the major U.S. city whose population most closely mirrors San Diego’s——the institute found some fascinating stats. San Diego has eight councilmembers; Phoenix has eight. San Diego’s council serves 1.22 million residents; the Phoenix council serves 1.46 million. San Diego’s councilmembers employ 99 staffers; Phoenix employs about half as many (56). A San Diego councilmember’s pay is $75,000 a year; Phoenix pay is $61,600. San Diego’s council budget is $10.7 million a year; the Phoenix budget, $4.62 million. If Mayor Jerry Sanders is still looking for places to cut spending, this might be a good place to start.

SAN DIEGANS’ INK: Joe Wambaugh, back on the best-seller lists last fall with Hollywood Station, his first novel in eight years, is back at work at his Point Loma aerie, putting finishing touches on the sequel, due this fall . . . Gavin Kaysen, the celebrated chef at Rancho Bernardo Inn’s El Bizcocho, has been named one of Food & Wine magazine’s Best New Chefs for 2007. At 27, Kaysen is the first-ever San Diego chef to make the list . . . Howard Berkson, CEO of Berkson Realty Advisors, is aiming for an early-summer opening for Anthology, his 13,000-square-foot restaurant/nightclub in Little Italy aimed at Boomers and Gen-Xers. The $25 million project will seat 250 for dining and accommodate 650 for shows featuring jazz, rhythm-and-blues and classic rock. The project is part business, part pleasure for Berkson, who was a college music major before switching to finance.

ENTRE NEWS: San Diego Magazine columnist Thomas K. Arnold, who, in 25 years of local reporting, has covered scores of politicians, may soon be one. A longtime Carlsbad resident, Arnold confirms he’s considering a bid for city council. He recently formed an “Arnold for Carlsbad” committee, but hasn’t formally announced . . . By any other name: What opened near the University of California, San Diego in 1968 as the La Jolla Holiday Inn, became La Jolla Village Inn in 1978 and the Radisson Hotel La Jolla in 1992, is now, after a $5.5 million facelift, the Sheraton La Jolla Hotel . . . Carlsbad diet guru and fitness expert Jay Robb, who’s won national media attention (including an appearance on Oprah) with his Fruit Flush diet, now has his own TV series. The Fat Burning Chef debuted locally on My13 cable in April. It goes into national syndication on the Ion network in late spring . . . The return of the storied mock turtle soup to the menu at the Grant Grill is a lesson in culinary arts and economics. The new version, quite delicious, costs $10 a bowl. The original, introduced in the 1950s, sold for 30 cents a bowl——50 cents for a whole tureen.

FLASHBACK: The return of Padres baseball each spring marks the return of broadcaster Jerry Coleman, who’s been working the microphone for more than three decades. And at 82, with a new two-year contract, he’s still at the top of his game. Coleman, who knows as much about baseball as anyone in the broadcast booth, has adjusted to the fact that some fans will remember him for his Colemanisms, the malapropisms that pepper his play-by-play. Orville Anderson, who considers them collectibles, sends along a clip that appeared in my newspaper column a quarter-century ago this month: “BASIC ANATOMY: The Padres were tied 3-3 with the Cubs when a wild pitch hit catcher Terry Kennedy. And if announcer Jerry Coleman couldn’t quite pinpoint the problem, he did manage to lighten the moment for his radio listeners. ‘It hit him either in the groin or the toe,’ guessed Coleman. And then: ‘I think it was the toe, because he’s limping.’ ”

BASEBALL, TOO: Paul Menard was lunching with former Padres promotions director Andy Strasberg and Dale Petrosky, president of the Baseball Hall of Fame. And of course, they were swapping baseball stories. Petrosky had been trying to get the legendary Stan Musial to join him at a recent fund-raiser, he said, and Musial phoned to regret. Then, as an aside, Musial asked, “That event’s in Detroit, isn’t it?” Yes, Petrosky confirmed. “You know,” Musial went on, “the last time I was flying to Detroit, an airport security guard stopped me and asked my destination. I told him Detroit. ‘Are you carrying a gun?’ he asked me. ‘Of course not,’ I said. ‘Well, then,’ he said, ‘let me give you one. You can’t go to Detroit without a gun!’ ”

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