Ring of Fire

It may not be attracting the same attention as the mayor's move to shut down library and rec centers, but another piece of what makes San Diego special is biting the dust this week - or, the sand. In an effort to save $173,000 in what remains a $43 million budget gap, the city has begun removing the beach fire pits that were apparently sucking the city's bank accounts dry. The possibility of removing the fire rings had been raised a few months ago, but fell by the wayside as the debate over libraries and police funds rose to a fever pitch. And so, with little fanfare, the city has begun the long (and presumably not free) process of uprooting and transferring the 186 pits to some undisclosed and secure location, where no doubt they'll sit until another administration comes along and figures out some way to allow the citizens of the nation's 8th largest city to roast marshmallows and warm their hands along the shore without crippling the local economy.

This isn't the first time budget pinches have torn into the wasteful excess that is the San Diego Fire Ring. In 1990, the city boasted 450 fire pits. As I noted above, as of last week, we were down to 186 - the effects of previous initiatives to curb spending costs. The plan is for the Park and Recreation Department to remove 18 per week until the end of the year, by which time all pits will be gone from Fiesta Island, Ocean Beach, Mission Beach, Pacific Beach, Mission Bay and La Jolla.

$173,000 isn't a totally insignificant sum, but it does seem rather drop-in-the-bucket-ish compared to the $43 million the city's casting about for. One suspects that if city council members simply brought sack lunches to work for a few months instead of patronizing downtown San Diego's finer dining establishments, one might arrive at the same fiscal result.

With the banning of alcohol on the city's beaches passed into law last month, the city claimed it was staking a claim for making the beaches more family-friendly, a loaded term if ever there was one. With the beaches now safely cleared of any and all binge drinkers or romantics toasting the sunset with Merlot, the removal of the fire pits seems a double blow. I've spent several memorable evenings in front of bonfires on the sand, and Jane and I took an armful's worth of old bills and patient records down to the beach just last October to send them up in flames and smoke. It is truly sad to watch as this city removes more and more of the features that once made it special in order to avoid confronting it's own fiscal irresponsibility. I'm not sure if losing the fire rings could be labeled a tragedy, but it's certainly the pits.