Baking Up Border Successes

The batter is ready; let's put these cakes in the oven.

The lesson of 2001 is how abruptly our lives can change, how false some of our values were, how painful it is to see the pain of others and how much we truly love our country. We greeted 2001 counting our money; we ended it counting our blessings.

Early in 2000, the nation's economy began a slow downward turn led by the near demise of the dot-coms, then manufacturing began to slide, trade deficits added up and experts began their warning rituals. The rather dull presidential campaign gave way to the earth shaking election-day results - did the right man win? The nation was evenly split; the court made the final decision.

So we entered 2001 with a new President and a sputtering economy. Signs of an economic downturn that had appeared as tiny blips in economic radar screens grew bigger and more persistent until they took over the screen signaling a recession.

We began to fear the future, and began postponing some expenditures. Then came Sept. 11, changing our lives, and plunging the nation into near economic despair while uniting us behind our new President. We became a nation at war.

There is no going back; nothing we can do will erase that day. Within the context of that reality, life must go on.

For San Diego and Baja California the immediate effect was the collapse of their respective visitor industries. Although as 2002 begins tourism is recuperating in both regions, full recovery is a long way off. With thousands of layoffs and hundreds of millions of dollars lost, the fall was so sudden and dramatic that it became a topic of daily news coverage. Border crossing waits shot up to three and four hours, discouraging all but those who had to brave the journey.

The events of 9/11 did not cause a recession, but they did greatly exacerbate its severity. Like dominos falling, the United States recession prior to September had plunged Mexico into its own.

The San Diego-Baja California region stands at a crossroad. Does it go forward on its own or crawl into a dark corner and wait for outsiders to bring the light?

Nearly 47 cents of each dollar generated in the state of California is due to trade, with a large portion coming from foreign trade. San Diego is no exception. And neither is Baja California, where the dependence on trade is greater, whether from foreign payrolls or tourism dollars.

It stands to reason that our combined regions must move swiftly to accommodate and promote greater trade, first between ourselves and then to reach out. The economic benefit to the binational region is tremendous.

Numerous projects have been in the making for far too many years. If they come online, the combined regions would share a long and prosperous future. The unleashed investments for these developments would create thousands of construction jobs; on completion, they would generate tens of thousands of new permanent positions.

The destiny of the San Diego-Baja California region is squarely on the shoulders of today's generation. Hopefully, 2002 will bring with it a renaissance of spirit and a can-do/must-do attitude propelling us to a greater future.

A Few Of The Projects: (excerpted) …

Bajagua: A private sector investment secondary sewage treatment plant in Tijuana, which would go a long way to clean up San Diego beaches (and attract more tourism), has been approved by the U.S. Congress and is held up by bureaucratic squabbling.