April 24, 2002
Vocational Services Day
This week, we all met around town at various venues hosted by members. After the one “proposed new member” announcement, brief write-ups of each venue follow.
ProPOSED New Member
The following person has been proposed as a new member and will be inducted under the classification listed below unless written objection is received by our Club Secretary within ten days of the date of this Bulletin:
Ø Name: Melissa Armstrong
Ø Employer: Mulvaney, Kahan & Barry LLP
Ø Classification: Law, Banking
Ø Proposer: Melissa Blackburn, Mike Jones
San Diego Police Department (written By jane barry)
Seven fellow Rotarians gathered at the SD Police Department at 14th and Broadway and were given an excellent tour of the facility by Lou Scanlon. The facility takes up more than 300,000 square feet and was completed about 15 years ago.
The tour began with viewing the Records Room where information about crimes is stored for, in some cases, more than 30 years. We proceeded to the 7th floor where the Chief's and Assistant Chiefs' offices are housed and where we enjoyed a continental breakfast. Lou told the members that the Department made the decision to decentralize many years ago due to the geographic size of the City and the tremendous increase in population. This decision has been not only well received by the community but has saved significant money and time for the Department. The newest facilities will be located in East Otay Lakes and Carmel Valley.
While New York City has 5 officers per 1,000 in population and Washington, DC has 7, San Diego has only 1.6 placing a heavy burden on the force. At one time, there were more than 300 reserve officers who volunteered their time; there are now about 50 because the reservists have to pay for their training and complete the police academy, which is both time consuming and expensive.
Part of the tour included the lab which we viewed from the outside (contamination fears) and Lou had fascinating stories about the minute details that can be obtained from a single strand of clothing and how extremely precise DNA testing results are.
We really enjoyed the tour and learning more about "San Diego's Finest"!
San diego convention center (written by tom sayer)
Our hostess, Maureen Eberle, was joined for this fabulous “back of the house” tour by Tom Sayer, Leah Swearingen-Millet, Alan Talbott, LeeAnne Owens, Christine Thompson, Jose Hernandez and Steve Bridge. We were briefed during breakfast by staff members Joe Psuik and Dee Anne Snyder and later by Chef Brett Lewis. The Convention Center is run by a non-profit public benefit corporation with a board of 9 member, including representatives (non-voting) from ConVIS and the San Diego Hotel-Motel Association. Its 723 employees are responsible for pulling off an 80+% occupancy level which contributes $1.5 Billion in first dollar economic impacts to San Diego. Over 10,000 jobs are directly and indirectly created from the Center. The newly expanded Center boasts 525,701 gross square feet of contiguous exhibit space on the Ground Level plus 90,000 square feet of column-free exhibit space in the Sails Pavilion on the upper level. In addition, there are 72 meeting/banquet rooms totaling 204,114 square feet of space including two Ballrooms totaling 80,706 square feet of space. All of this space is supported by 50 loading docks with 8 direct-drive accesses to the Exhibit Halls, a 30-foot high elephant door, and on-site crate storage. We toured the kitchen facilities which can accommodate as many as 16,000 sit-down patrons at one time with silver service for 32,000. All of this space is tastefully adapted to maximize exposure to sweeping views of both downtown San Diego and the San Diego Bay.
The only weaknesses of the Center stem from San Diego’s strength as a city. The high cost of living in San Diego translates into higher labor and service costs as well as higher hotel room rates. Partially offsetting these costs is a slightly lower bed tax which helps in keeping San Diego competitive with San Francisco, Denver, Las Vegas and Anaheim.
If you haven’t already been, take the time to be a tourist in your own town and check out the Convention Center. It is truly one of the greatest wonders of America’s Finest City.
Regional Transportation Center (written by hugh largey)
The Pearson ford Regional Transportation Center Tour greatly exceeded the expectations of all those who made it! Our thanks to Bill Poirier for coordinating and Mike Lewis, GM of the Pearson ford Regional Transportation Center Project who presented.
Mike gave a fascinating history of Pearson Ford from it's early days headquartered at the still in use downtown San Diego Salvation Army Building to it's move to City Heights, the fire of '67 after which owner John McCallum generously guaranteed ALL employees would not earn less in '68 than they earned the year prior to the fire.
Club President Melissa Blackburn and Lynn Hamilton early on declared their love for the new retro Thunderbird models - but then learned they're in such short supply that Pearson holds the record for selling the last one for $17,000 OVER sticker price! That's more than the group's soon to be new Rotarian Realtor "Cap" Tablang is used to seeing even in the currently hot real estate market! Pearson also maintains Ford's largest parts department in the Southwest and the 7th largest parts center in the entire U.S.
We learned why used cars are so much more profitable than new cars! We also learned futuristic electric cars can go an average of 40-50 miles for a 50 cent "fill-up" at a 110 volt re-charge outlet!
But the real fun started when Mike had us each take a turn driving the Ford electric cars (glorified golf carts) to Pearson's Highway 15 & El Cajon Boulevard future RTC site. Besides being a major neighborhood renewal project, the RTC will boast an education center featuring 9 alternative fuel vehicles, a 180 car underground parking facility, and be highly visible to hundreds of thousands driving by each day. It sounds as though the hybrid (combination gas & electric cars) coming from Ford next year will make the most impact, though with 40 mpg on an SUV.
All in all we felt we learned as much and probably had more fun than the kids who attended "National Take Your Children to Work Day" the next day!
USS Constellation (written by margaret oppliger)
Thanks to Joe Ciokon, a group of Rotarians and guests were
able to have breakfast and a tour of the aircraft carrier USS Constellation. Breakfast was in the Officer's dining
room with Capt. John Miller and Lt. Charlie Brown.
Capt. Miller's presentation informed us that this was the
oldest aircraft carrier in service, having been commissioned in 1961. It is the
Flagship for the Constellation Battle Group and can carry up to 5300 personnel
when deployed. Average age is 20 years.
The service life of an aircraft carrier is 50 years, and the
Constellation is scheduled to be decommissioned Dec. '03.
The logistics of the numbers are quite the management
challenge. When deployed, over 18,000 meals a day are served. The monthly
payroll is $3.8 million. Annual operating budget is $138 million.
Those of us that think collateral learned that the cost to replace
the ship is $4.5 billion and the cost to replace the aircraft on board is $3.1 billion.
Visitors to the carrier are almost a daily routine. The day
before our visit, Wolfgang Puck was there cooking for the sailors. He fixed
Navy Bean soup. Is he funny or what!!
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