Opinion: Leasing mess that costs San Diego millions was reported in 2017. It's still not fixed. [Opinion]
San Diego, the eighth largest city in the nation, continues to illustrate that population size doesn’t correlate with government competence.from the Office of the City Auditor hammers that home. It shows that the $80 million the city gets in lease payments for the roughly 800 properties it owns — everything from SeaWorld to small offices to cellphone antenna sites — likely would be millions higher if the city didn’t allow nearly one in four leases to expire but remain in effect.
Auditors say that setting up processes to ensure leases be negotiated before they expire could allow the city to get significantly more lucrative deals and to have competitive bidding on properties. They also noted that having so many leases expire but stay in effect creates the appearance of favoritism — though no evidence of this was found.is understaffing in the city’s Department of Real Estate and Airports Management — the same issue identified in 2017 by the county grand jury.