San Diego (special) -- Invocations at San Diego City Council meetings should be inclusive and reflect the religious diversity of the city, both candidates for San Diego mayor told the Downtown Breakfast Club of the United Jewish Federation on Wednesday, Sept. 20, thatb

Moderator Marty Block, himself a candidate for the San Diego Community College board, told mayoral opponents Ron Roberts and Dick Murphy before asking about the invocations that the Jewish community is sensitive about such issues as the separation of church and state.

Prayers at the start of council meetings should be "messages of blessing, if you will, for those elected officials, and those people who are there," said Roberts, a member of the county Board of Supervisors. "I would expect to see that we are not just talking about any single religion or group, but ... see the diversity throughout this community represented."

Murphy, a Superior Court judge on leave during the campaign, said he supports invocations because "government needs guidance. 

"I think the invocation should be inclusive and diverse as to the religions that offer the invocation," Murphy added. "I do not see that as a First Amendment violation. People who don't like the invocations at a City Council meeting, they can go stand out in the hallway during the invocation. This is a governments that was founded on Judeo-Christian principles and I can see no harm in having an invocation..."

In their opening and closing comments, the candidates, who are both Christians, sought to emphasize their ties with the Jewish community. For the rest of the forum held at the U.S. Grant Hotel, the candidates answered written questions from the audience that focused largely on the same infrastructure issues-- airports, highways, growth, electricity and ballparks -- that Murphy and Roberts have been discussing at every other forum around San Diego.

Murphy said during his service on the San Diego City Council between 1981 and 1985, "I had what I considered to be a significant relationship with the Jewish community....For three of my five years on the council, I chaired the city's public facilities and recreation committee and I played a major role in the acquisition of the land for the (Lawrence Family) Jewish Community Center ... At the time, Morris Casuto, Al Hutler and some other people wanted the city to lease the land to them at a dollar a year...to build the Jewish Community Center there. The city staff was against it.... To me, it made a lot of sense ....The city had no money to build the park, and it was gong to sit there idle for 20 years, and the Jewish community was willing to come in and build a park, a recreation center open to the public, and paid for construction and paid to operate it...."

The Superior Court judge also recalled a trip he made to Israel in 1984 under the auspices of the United Jewish Federation. "It was a touching experience, I must say. I stood on the Golan Heights and saw where the Syrians used to shell the villages of Israel. We went to Kiryat Shimona and looked at the bunkers that the kids had to go to school in, in order not to be hit by rocket attacks from Lebanon, visited the Museum of the Diaspora in Tel Aviv where you really get a feeling for the struggle of the Jewish people over the centuries; went to 'Vad Yashem' "-- he meant 'Yad Vashem,' Israel's Holocaust Memorial Museum --and as the leader of the city's delegation on that trip laid a wreath at the eternal fire in honor of the Holocaust victims, and stood at the Western Wall of the Temple on sundown of the Sabbath, touched that wall, and you could almost feel 2,000 years of history."

Tina Friedman, the UJF's community relations director who served as a timekeeper, rang a bell, preventing Murphy from concluding his travelogue.

Roberts recalled that six years before, when he ran a successful race for a seat on the Board of Supervisors against economics professor Peter Navarro, he had spoken to the same club in the same room. He mentioned three endorsements he has from leaders in the Jewish community: Irwin Jacobs, Murray Galinson, and Stan Foster.

"I don't want you leaving here without realizing that I too have been to Israel. I was fortunate to go with Gary Rotto (regional director of the American Jewish Committee) not too long ago," he said. "That was a very important trip for me in a lot of ways, but I won't get into that this morning."

On the infrastructure issues, the candidates had this to say:

AIRPORT -- Both men support exploring the possibility of building a joint Orange County-San Diego County regional airport on a small portion of Camp Pendleton. Murphy believes a cargo facility at Brown Field near the Mexican border could reduce congestion at Lindbergh Field. He also supported the concept of a cross border terminal at Tijuana's Rodriguez Field. Roberts said the cargo facility at Brown Field could be counter productive, decreasing the momentum necessary to get a full service international airport. Both men called for a higher degree of cooperation among the various government entities now sharing some jurisdiction over potential airport lands.

BALLPARK -- Roberts said a downtown ballpark will be "an incredible catalyst for redevelopment" of downtown San Diego. He said it has attracted $3 billion in private investment even before being built. Rather than fund its share with transit occupancy taxes levied on hotel guests, the city should utilize redevelopment dollars. Murphy said if the ballpark had been built next to Qualcomm Stadium, the land could have been purchased for $30 million, which he added was some $100 million less than it costs downtown. "But downtown is the second best choice, and I support that." As for the recent decision by the Padres to stop construction because of cash flow problems, Murphy said, "I happen to think that the city ought not to be advancing any more money until it resolves its legal problems with those bonds."

CONGESTION -- Murphy said there are three steps which must be taken to solve traffic congestion. 1) Build new freeways and mass transit; 2) manage rush hour demand with staggered work hours and tele-commuting; and 3) control growth and development by emphasizing high density development in the urban core. Roberts said the creation of the Uptown shopping center and housing development at what was once the main Sears site in the Hillcrest/ North Park area has been a model for smart growth. "You can't just put in housing," he cautioned. "You have to do like we are doing....in Spring Valley where we are putting up 120 units. The county is also building a library, a gymnasium and a teen center all jointly with the school district in the area....It's about building communities."

ELECTRICTY -- Roberts said he and his fellow county supervisors successfully lobbied the state Legislature for a three-year rate freeze on soaring electricty rate -- which he contended will prevent many small businesses from being bankrupted. Long-term, he said, new power plants must be constructed in the county, and the federal government must be persuaded to redesign the way the utilities market works. "It's not a competitive market," Roberts said. He opposed putting caps on prices -- which Murphy supports. Murphy said the rate freeze was "nothing more than a bandaid on a serious problem" In the long run, he said, the federal government must be persuaded to place a cap of 10 cents per kilowatt hour on electricity in the western United States.

FIRST 100 DAYS -- Asked what they would do their first 100 days in office, Murphy said he would spend a lot of time trying to develop a sense among the City Council members that they are all part of a team. Roberts said he wouldn't wait to do that till after taking office, but would meet in advance with council members to learn what their priorities are for their districts, and to urge upon them such city-wide programs as creating a new mechanism for examining the operations of the city sewer and water departments, and developing new revenue streams for the city.