It All Adds Up...

TILL IT HURTS: For the few among us who watch San Diego city council meetings on public-access television, it can be painful to view the sceene as the speakers come before that august body. In the background, over the speakers’ shoulders, are framed photos of former mayors Susan Golding and Dick Murphy. At the current clip, taxpayers are footing a bill of more than $4,000 a day in legal fees for Murphy and four councilmembers as federal investigations continue into the civic financial crisis that took root on Golding’s watch. Lawyers for the five have charged the city more than $2 million since January 2005, when City Attorney Mike Aguirre decided he’d rather prosecute them than defend them, forcing Murphy and the four councilmembers to hire outside attorneys.

SAN DIEGO SHUFFLE: Former San Diego Councilman Byron Wear may have been evicted from politics, but his heart is still at City Hall. Weeks before the November election, two campaign signs appeared in the front yard of Wear’s Point Loma home, urging voters to back Mayor Jerry Sanders with “yes” votes on Propositions B and C, the mayor’s reform measures. They might have contributed something to the landslide . . . The Chargers’ numbers on the scoreboard this season are robust, to say the least. But the company ledger isn’t quite keeping up. Forbes magazine’s annual estimated values for the 32 teams in the NFL saw the Chargers drop from 29th to 30th in the rankings this year. Not that anybody’s heading for the poorhouse. Despite that drop, the Chargers’ estimated value was up from $678 million last year to $731 million in 2006. But there is bad news here for the Raiders-haters among us. The Oakland franchise leapfrogged our team to land at number 26 ($736 million) this year—up from 30th in 2005. Must be owner Al Davis’ “Commitment to Excellence.” . . . San Diego, already a magnet for jazz artists, is becoming a bigtime purveyor of recorded jazz. And SD-based Reelin’ in the Years Productions has become the major player in jazz on DVD. Jazz Icons, its series of nine discs—featuring vintage performances by the likes of Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Quincy Jones and Ella Fitzgerald—is a jazz aficionado’s Christmas dream.

THE WANDERING I: Qualcomm founder Irwin Jacobs and his wife Joan won notice for “Gift of the Week” in a recent edition of The Wall Street Journal. The Jacobs’ gift: a $30 million donation to a university in Israel . . . Four years after dropping the name “Christmas on the Prado,” organizers are sticking with “December Nights” for this year’s holiday festival in Balboa Park—despite protesters who want it to revert to its original name. But across town at the new NTC Promenade at Liberty Station, they’re launching their own holiday celebration—with no such religious correctness. It’s set for December 8 and 9, and they’re calling it “Christmas on the Promenade.” . . . John Mann attended a concert at the Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla and spied a sign above the lobby drinking fountain: “BEWARE: FOUNTAIN IS SPRAYING VERY POWERFUL STREAM!” Underneath that, some wag had penned: “IT IS A VERY YOUNG FOUNTAIN.”

SISTER CITIES? San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders has told the Chargers we can’t afford to help them build a new stadium. Meanwhile, the newly elected mayors in Chula Vista and National City say they’re eager to meet with Chargers representatives for ongoing talks about possible stadium sites in their cities. But then, Chula Vista may not be any more flush than San Diego. TaxpayersAdvocate.org says that South Bay city is facing its own “self-inflicted fiscal crisis.” According to the advocacy group’s president, Scott Barnett, the crisis stems from three factors: city spending that consistently outstrips revenue growth, increased general fund debt and increased pension liability. Sound familiar?

WITHOUT COMMENT: An outfit called L.A.T. Money Centers is out with a new program that may or may not find an eager market in our border city. L.A.T. is the first mortgage company to offer a nationwide financing program for illegal immigrants who want to buy homes in the United States.

HOLLYWOOD SOUTH: The generation gap has been showing at Borrego Springs’ posh La Casa del Zorro Resort in recent weeks. Hollywood trio on the guest list: 80-something Hal Holbrook, 40-something Sean Penn and 20-something Emile Hirsch. The Penn-directed Into the Wild, based on Jon Krakauer’s bestseller, has been shooting in the Borrego outback. In the film, Hirsch plays Christopher McCandless, a 1992 college grad who abandons his possessions and hitchhikes to Alaska to live in the wilderness. The last person he meets before he begins his odyssey is a wise old Southern California desert dude (Holbrook).

PARTING SHOT: Bari Butler figures the Padres not only saved about a million a year in salary but picked up some small change, too, by jettisoning veteran baseball manager Bruce Bochy for Buddy Black. “Hey,” she says, “they don’t even have to change the monogram on the towels in the manager’s shower.”

LISTEN FOR TOM BLAIR’S FRIDAY REPORTS on KOGO News Radio (600 AM) at 7:25 a.m. You can also hear his radio column at sandiegomag.com. Items for the magazine or radio may be e-mailed to tblair@sandiegomag.com.

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