Dear Editor:

The logic you employ regarding Councilmember Donna Frye’s candidacy for mayor of San Diego is flawed and misguided. If that unnamed member at the recent San Diego Democratic Party meeting wants to support a moderate Republican, then why is he/she a member of the Democrat Party?

Next, you mention Frye’s connections to Labor as if she is precluded from forming alliances with Business interests. A creative, smart, and cutting edge politician can’t do both? A Gavin Newsom or Antonio Villaraigosa will never be elected in San Diego if the small-minded thinking embraced by an editorial like yours is allowed to flourish. But alas, I suspect your mindset will win the day and we’ll be saddled with another “who is our Mayor” mentality well into the second decade of the 21st century.

To quote your editorial: “Our community has a responsibility to listen beyond Frye’s stances on issues like same-sex marriage and the Boy Scouts land lease, and determine whether she indeed has answers to the most important questions of the day. If she can’t convince our community, how will she ever capture the city?” The fact is, Donna Frye wouldn’t have to “convince our community” of anything if she was a “Surfer-Chick” Lesbian and if she were, you would never have written the “Frye Factor” editorial in the first place.

David Harrington Campbell

Dear Editor:

I had to write after reading the article in the May 12 issue of your paper on the North County Coordinated Service Center of which I was the former director. I thought it interesting to read that the executive director, Shannon Wagner, my seventh executive director in eleven years, states that “No one can run a center for $50K, so no one had applied for it before”. No one had applied for it before because I created the concept of “coordinated service centers” back in 1998 and raised a quarter of a million dollars on my own to expand the program. The county didn’t come up with funding for this program because the category didn’t exist until after I created it. Once the funding for this category was created, Being Alive San Diego still did not apply for the funds. It is unfortunate that the executive director and the board of directors don’t know the history of the agency they are suppose to be managing. The fact that this funding, which I had secured, was expiring this past year should have been of no surprise to her, since she also is the accountant of Being Alive as well as the executive director, nor to the Board of Directors. What is a surprise is the fact that since they knew five years ago that this funding was going to expire this past year and did nothing to find new funding sources to replace it. The executive director and the board should have been working with the county a long time ago and advocating for an increase in funding as well as finding private funding to continue the program. It was the only program of its kind in the underserved North County. She states that she wishes the board hadn’t come to this conclusion while she was director, but then, since she had been director for a couple of years, why hadn’t she and the board been working on solving this problem some time ago? Since Ms. Wagner has been at the helm of this agency, funding and contributions to this agency, according to the agencies tax returns, has dropped over a million dollars. Yes, the food voucher program as a large sum of this, but again, it was no surprise that this was going to occur and why weren’t new programs implemented or existing ones, like North County, expanded to secure new funding?

She conceded that the transition could have been handled “better” but that “the responsibility of communicating that information lay with “Finnell”. I must say that it would be very hard to communicate the information regarding the move since no one, including Ms. Wagner, knew where we were moving for sure until they received the keys to the new site on February 3, 2005. Had this transition been handled properly, all agencies we were collaborating with would have relocated with us. I find it amazing how she pushes the blame for this mess on to me and my staff. I think someone who is making $75K a year in the HIV/AIDS non-profit arena with a large administration staff, should know what is going on and face up to their mistakes. I resigned, not because I am a disgruntled employee and have “hard feelings”, but because of mismanagement of the agency, irregular business practices and malfeasance of fiduciary duty by the board of directors. One only has to remember the disgraceful demise of AIDS Foundation San Diego. She says I should not be discussing this due to disclosure and confidentiality agreements. I find this very interesting when she talks about confidentiality and disclosure. This isn’t a private corporation, but a public non-profit. What are they hiding? I think it is time for a major investigation of this agency which has been mismanaged for the past several years. Being Alive San Diego was at one time the finest HIV/AIDS service agency in the county. However, they seem to have lost the purpose of why they exist, which is to serve the HIV/AIDS community in San Diego County, rather than just to receive their pay checks.

Dennis Finnell

Dear Editor:

Bonnie Dumanis, San Diego’s openly lesbian District Attorney, elected by a large percentage, recently helped to rescue San Diego from rampant fraud inside the city.

The City Pension Board, in debt by over a billion dollars, was recently indicted on felony charges. Individual members face up to 9 years in prison, each.

The six members of the Board were not even investigated by Federal Officials, also known as “Good Olde Boys.” Dumanis is helping the cause of all Americans. That’s why a huge percentage of us “straight” people helped elect her D.A.

John Schlitz