Regarding Mayor Jerry Sanders' speech calling for new San Diego city monument spending (The Daily Transcript, "Sanders addresses city's economic present, future," Sept. 16):
Mayor Sanders has developed a mental condition quite common among politicians -- an "edifice complex."
Seeing the end of his tour in office on the distant horizon, our mayor wants to leave a legacy. Several, actually.
Reining in city spending is good, but invisible, and provides no lasting monument to one's tenure in office. Hence the mayor has slipped into his predecessor's (Dick Murphy) mode -- putting fiscal frugality on the back burner while pushing numerous massive, unfundable bricks-and-mortar projects.
In fairness, this edifice complex afflicts most politicians -- damn near all, as a matter of fact. We should not be surprised that our "fiscal conservative" mayor has succumbed to this malady as well.