In the process of trying to put together my own website, I've realized I have a lot of interesting images that never make it onto the pages of voiceofsandiego.org. Friends and family will tell you that it's hard to get me to put my camera down. The result of this is a massive body of personal work that may or may not make it onto the web.
So, every now and then, I'll share a bit of personal work with you here as a Photo of the Day. This one is from a 2006 trip to New Zealand, where I worked for 6 weeks on a farm near Christchurch (where I was born). Over the years, many friends and family have commented that it's one of their favorite images of mine, so I thought it I'd share it with all of you.
A few questions weren't answered in my story about San Diego's largest water users today:
How much water does it take to keep the Balboa Park Golf Course green? The city used 116 million gallons in the last year -- enough for 700 families. That's down 15 percent from the previous year, when 137 million gallons were used.
As a standalone facility, the course would be the city's 14th-largest user, consuming more than three Marriott hotels (downtown, La Jolla and Mission Valley) or the Poway Unified School District.
What role do cruise ships play in the Unified Port of San Diego's consumption? They consume about 27 percent of the water the port buys from the city. The agency, which is the city's ninth-largest user, bought 216 million gallons of water in the last year, according to city statistics.
Port spokesman Ron Powell said the district cut consumption in its buildings by 25 percent and in its parks by 35 percent -- conservation gains he said were outweighed by thirsty cruise ships filling up their potable water tanks before leaving port.
San Diego Unified has spelled out new guidelines on school fees, 10News reports. We also wrote about this issue a few weeks ago, as parents raised concerns that schools were crossing the legal line when hitting them up for art supplies, uniforms and other costs.
The California Constitution mandates that public education be provided to students free of charge, unless a charge is specifically authorized by law for a particular program or activity ... whether curricular or extracurricular, and regardless of whether credit is awarded for the educational activity. The right of free access also prohibits mandated purchases of materials, supplies, equipment or uniforms associated with the activity, as well as the payment of security deposits for access, participation, materials or equipment
Finally, a process that allows for a waiver process for an otherwise mandatory fee, charge or deposit does not render it constitutionally permissible.
The guidelines go on to lay out exceptions to the rules, including charging kids for loaned books or supplies that they fail to return, fees for parking vehicles on school grounds and school camp programs.
The almighty dollar strikes again in your morning newsblitz! It ain't pretty out there:
We blog on two clashing views on what it takes to do "zero-based budgeting" -- one way that San Diego Unified wants to revamp its financial planning -- and how the school board is nudging labor unions to look at ways to save money on health and welfare benefits.
Gov. Schwarzenegger is being asked to roll back funding for an after-school initiative that ties up more than $500 million annually -- an idea that he vetoed last year, the Associated Press reports.
Meanwhile, the Gates Foundation is spending millions on the question: What makes a good teacher a good teacher? The New York Times explains how they're looking for the answer.
The Christian Science Monitor writes about how the Obama Administration wants to make better preschools for disadvantaged kids, how they'd pay for it and what the skeptics say.
The feds are getting a lot of complaints about the rules tied to their school innovation grants, which critics say could make foundations the gatekeepers for crucial school dollars, Education Week writes.
And finally, a piece of positive news in the midst of all this dour budget talk: Education Week reports that more children worldwide are in school and fewer are dying, two decades after the United Nations launched a treaty on children's rights.
At the Balboa Park Golf Course, the greens are still green, but the driving range is turning brown. Nowadays, it just gets watered once a month. And that's just fine by the city of San Diego, which runs the course.
Other cutbacks -- including less irrigation at its 400 parks -- helped the city lower its overall water use more than any other single user in San Diego over the past two years.
But the city doesn't seem to have much company among the largest users when it comes to saving lots of water. "While the region has consistently been told to use 10 percent less, San Diego's 96 largest users collectively haven't hit the mark," we report.
In other news:
San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders wants the police and fire departments to come up with $107 million in cuts. In a follow-up to yesterday's examination of public safety on the chopping block, we take a closer look at how much that is. For one thing, it's 20 percent of the city's public-safety budget.
Pink slips for hundreds of scientists who work for the Pfizer pharmaceutical company could translate to profits for small local biotechs that may be recruited to fill the void. And it looks like local Pfizer employees will be spared the ax.
A geological fault line traverses the proposed downtown site for a new football stadium. It's in what's known as Tailgate Park, near the baseball stadium. The fault worried the folks looking for a site to handle an expansion of the convention center, but the Chargers general counsel says stadium architects can work around it.
Also: We have more details about the land deal that provides space for the convention center to expand. We explain "zero-based budgeting" and what it means for San Diego schools. And our Photo of the Day is a sneak peak at the subject of tomorrow's Q&A feature. The photo soundtrack is courtesy of Linkin Park.
Elsewhere:
Jeff Schemmel, San Diego State's athletic director, resigned yesterday amid a scandal involving a reported extramarital affair and what's described as an attempt to make the university pay the cost of traveling to Alabama for a romantic rendezvous. Yes, Alabama.
Just when Escondido thought it was out, its mayor is pulling it back in. To the hunt for a new Chargers stadium, that is. Mayor Lori Holt Pfeiler is flying to Denver on a team jet Sunday and hopes to tell "Dean Spanos, whose family owns the Chargers, that Escondido would be a good location if a stadium site the team is considering in downtown San Diego falls through." (NCT)
I'm heading out in the morning for a little vacation and so the blog will be quiet for a few days. In the meantime, I'll leave you with one more piece from the numbers I posted earlier this week from MDA DataQuick:
We've been tracking how many of the current home sales in San Diego County are financed with FHA loans, and that percentage keeps growing.
In August, FHA financed 28.2 percent of the homes bought using mortgages. In the same month in 2007, a tiny 0.8 percent of the homes bought with loans were FHA-financed.
In September, 28.8 percent of the homes bought with loans were financed with FHA.
This week's numbers were for October, and 29.7 percent of the homes bought last month were financed with FHA loans.
Why does this matter?
The Federal Housing Administration is coming under increased scrutiny for the sustainability of its attempts to fill in the lending gaps left by the skittish private banking sector. Last week, an audit of the agency revealed it has fallen far below the minimum level of cash reserves the federal government requires it to have. (More on that announcement here.)
Because such a big chunk of San Diego County transactions use FHA loans, changes at the agency could dramatically affect the local market. Though no specific changes have been announced, some analysts have warned the agency could follow the lead of other big players in the mortgage sector -- implementing more requirements for borrowers like higher down payments, for example. If the federal government does make the loans more difficult to get, then a significant percentage of local buyers will face new hurdles to getting a home, potentially changing the face of demand
I'd love to hear your thoughts on this growing share -- leave a comment below (head to Survival if you're not there already). I'll be back after Thanksgiving. Enjoy your holiday.
Faced with a colossal deficit, the school board is nudging labor unions at San Diego Unified to find ways to save money on health and welfare benefits.
The unions have a shared committee that handles benefits, which recommended earlier this week that no changes be made to health or welfare benefits for this school year. School Board President Shelia Jackson and Vice President Richard Barrera responded yesterday:
It is becoming clear, however, that in the current economic environment, and in the wake of the substantial cuts that have already been made, there are very few, if any, painless options remaining.
For these reasons, and regretfully, through this letter we ask that [the committee] commit to working out the details [for four suggested changes to the benefits plans] and/or other alternatives that result in equal or greater savings in health and welfare benefits costs.
Barrera said changes would need to be negotiated in the next three months. San Diego Unified faces a deficit for next school year that could range from $147 million to $203 million. It hasn't come up with enough cuts to cover that cost -- even if it makes every cut the administration has come up with.
Public officials are talking about serious reductions in public safety funding this year, which is a shift from previous budget discussions. You can read more about some of the potential cuts in my story today.
Mayor Jerry Sanders last month asked the public safety departments to submit budget-cut proposals that total $107 million, or about one-fifth of the city's total spending on police, fire and rescue services. Sanders is now considering those proposals, which includes eliminating about 400 vacant positions from the departments.
For some perspective, $107 million is about one-tenth of the city's total operating budget. Officials are talking about public safety cutbacks because it’s simply the largest pool of money. About half of the city's operating budget goes to the Police Department and the Fire-Rescue Department every year.
I mentioned in my story that police officials have been less forthcoming than fire officials when talking about potential budget cuts. Alan Arrollado, secretary treasurer for the local firefighter's union, said he expects to see significant cuts.
"I'm almost positive there's going to be less fire engines responding to emergencies starting Jan. 1," Arrollado said. "We understand the difficult position that [policymakers are] in."
In response to my questions about potential cuts, the police union sent me a statement from October. The statement was a response to the city's new five-year financial forecast.
"The San Diego Police Officers Association fully appreciates the difficult financial choices confronting the mayor and City Council. This budget shortfall will test their past promises to the citizens of San Diego that they will always make public safety their top budget priority."
Today's Photo of the Day is a silhouette of tomorrow's Q&A subject. I can't say this shot was intentional. This happens on almost every shoot when my flash fails to fire. Readers: Can you guess who tomorrow's Q&A is with or what it's about?
With the Chargers downtown stadium search continuing to move quickly, I wanted to address a couple of issues that readers and commenters are raising.
Last Friday, team special counsel and stadium point man Mark Fabiani told me the stadium's capacity would be 64,000. Commenters and readers noted that the NFL requires 70,000 seats for a stadium to host the Super Bowl.
I asked Fabiani about that issue this week and he said stadium plans include expandable temporary seating to reach the Super Bowl threshold.
"It's designed to be expanded," Fabiani said. "It's not like you're setting up a bunch of folding chairs."
Expandable seating is also part of the San Francisco 49ers plan for a new stadium in Santa Clara. Its capacity is 68,500 seats with potential expansion to 75,000.
Another reason for the Chargers to build 64,000-seat stadium, Fabiani said, would be to keep construction costs down.
"It's pretty much a direct and proportional reduction in cost the fewer seats that you have," he said.
In last Friday's post, I mentioned briefly a geological fault line that's located in the Tailgate Park portion of the stadium site. Fabiani said he was unconcerned.
But the fault line was part of the reason the task force that examined the city's Convention Center rejected Tailgate Park as a potential expansion site.
A task force consultant, Tucker Sadler, explained the problem at a June meeting.
The one thing we found in looking at this is there is a fault that goes right through the site. It actually severs the site. While we thought we had a contiguous site, what we have is a site that's divided in half. There's also some very large culverts that run right through Tailgate Park making it a little more difficult to work through.
A slide showing the fault line is on page 13 of this document.
I brought up the matter to Fabiani again and he said the team has been aware of the fault line since it began looking at the site in January.
"It's the first thing we checked," he said.
The team's architects are convinced they could design a stadium around it, he added.
Earlier this week, the San Diego Unified school board decided to go about its budget cuts in a completely different way, building the budget from scratch instead of deciding what to cut from an existing budget loaded with programs and people.
It's called zero-based budgeting. School district staff balked at the idea of doing it by mid-December, the deadline for a financial report on balancing the current school year budget. But the board majority said they wanted it done eventually. The question is whether it can happen quickly enough -- and produce enough savings -- to be a worthwhile step in the middle of coping with the budget crisis.
So what does it take to get to zero? I got an interesting e-mail from Florence Samuels in Santee, who wrote that she worked for the county engineer in the 1970s when it switched to zero-based budgeting. She wrote a manual to help do it:
Once program managers knew exactly what to do and how, plus realizing their excuses no longer were valid, we got the results we needed -- budgets that held people accountable. This also flushed out the fat because it was very difficult to hide money that had nothing to support its expenditure. ... Something is going on and the school board is clueless.
An alternate viewpoint comes from Rick Knott, a former San Diego Unified finance chief and consultant, who sent an analysis to school board member John de Beck. Zero-based budgeting "cannot be used for the entire budget," he wrote. "It works over activities the district has some discretion over."
He also noted that it tended to be time-consuming and couldn't be done quickly. And if other big changes were underway at the same time, "it is highly unlikely the organization can support both at the same time," Knott wrote.
In an e-mail, De Beck wrote that the staffers "looked like a deer caught in the headlights of a 80 mph truck [Tuesday] night" when the idea arose.
"I would go for this if we started it as a plan for 2012! But for now we are mired in our own trap!" he wrote.
Tuesday we reported that the San Diego Convention Center Corp. purchased the land needed for a potential expansion for $13.5 million from a private developer. I should have been clearer about what the nonprofit city-run corporation actually bought.
The Convention Center acquired a lease -- not the land -- from the developer, Fifth Avenue Landing LLC. The developer leased the land from the Port Commission, which controls 2,500 acres of land along San Diego Bay on behalf of the state. That's a reason, as I noted in my blog post, the Port needs to sign off on the Convention Center deal before it's final.
The Port is also involved is because it receives money each year from the leaseholders. That's the main difference between buying a lease and buying the land outright. Port spokesman Ron Powell said Fifth Avenue Landing was paying the Port $470,000 annually for the rights it transferred to the Convention Center.
Now the Convention Center will be paying the Port for that land on top of the $13.5 million it used to buy the lease.
"There will be terms that will be worked out," Powell said.
The Port will address the item at its Dec. 1 meeting.
My apologies for the lack of an Agenda yesterday. I've doubled up to catch you up on news from the last two days.
We'll lead off with the budget. Our own Keegan Kyle writes about what police and fire cuts mean for the city of San Diego. I have a piece on a financial report that's coming from a private task force of dozen of Mayor Jerry Sanders' business backers. The task force's chairman says it's not going away until the deficit is solved. The U-T's opinion page has an interview with Councilman Todd Gloria where it's all budget talk, all the time.
Other big news this week continues to be the Chargers stadium search. The city's downtown redevelopment arm hired a financial consultant yesterday to evaluate a site in East Village. CityBeat reports that East Village's character could be changed for the worse with a new stadium.
Meantime, the L.A. contender for the Chargers has interesting developments, too. The Los Angeles District Attorney is investigating conflict of interest allegations involving the business connections of the city of Industry's mayor. The Minnesota Vikings, another possible L.A. target, are beyond angry at their stadium situation in Minneapolis.
Another major building project in San Diego, the Convention Center expansion, received a boost this week with the $13.5 million purchase of a lease to the land the city needs. CityBeat blogs that San Diego could use more Comic-Con conventions.
In water news, City Council hiked rates another 7.75 percent this week. Our own Rob Davisbreaksdown how the city's water use continues to drop.
Some quick city of San Diego hits. City Council is backing a bid for soccer's World Cup in 2018 and 2022. The mayor will testify in a federal case seeking to overturn the state's ban against gay marriage. More community activists are upset at Councilwoman Marti Emerald's advisory board.
The U-T is staying on the case of state Rep. Joel Anderson, R-La Mesa. A GOP official has resigned over questionable campaign contributions that have led to an investigation.
Union leaders have turned in petitions for a term limits initiative for San Diego County Supervisors. Also in the county, a contractor for the public works department faces federal charges of falsifying his inspection work.
In news from other cities around San Diego county, Poway Councilwoman Betty Rexford weathered another maelstrom at a meeting this week. Signatures on a petition for her recall are gaining steam. San Marcos' mayor announced that he plans to seek re-election. A private contractor is offering more cost savings for Oceanside's trash pickup in exchange for a contract extension. Also in Oceanside, the city voted against allowing rowhouses in a city neighborhood. El Cajon's redevelopment saw some boosts this week.
Last, this week we came across the KUSI interview with Councilman Carl DeMaio that prompted Sanders to compare the first-term councilman to former nemesis City Attorney Mike Aguirre. Comments are welcome in The Hall.
San Marcos school trustees are revisiting the idea of a school construction and renovation bond, the North County Times reports.
A columnist opines in the Los Angeles Times that the confusing funding system for California schools is so badly broken that legislators can't even tell how they're shortchanging schools.
The California budget deficit is now expected to balloon to nearly three times what it was estimated to be four months ago, the San Jose Mercury News writes. California Capitol Network reports (via KPBS) on the debate over bills to make California eligible for more school stimulus dollars and fears of more budget cuts. The Merc reports that the legislature will reconvene in December to try to get a slice of those dollars. The Union-Tribune editorializes in favor of going for it -- against the wishes of teachers unions.
Also in the Merc: A popular custodian put on leave because of concerns about him recruiting students as models will switch schools but stay with his San Jose-area school district.
San Juan Unified is keeping a policy that requires parental consent for students to leave campus for confidential medical care -- even though the school district could lose state funding by keeping it, the Sacramento Bee reports.
Also in the Bee: Another Sacramento-area school district voted to cut all sports programs and eliminate all library staff and counselors to balance its budget -- though a district staffer cautioned that the cuts are "just on paper."
In the San Francisco Chronicle: Fee hikes for the University of California system are spurring protests in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and some students have been arrested.
The Washington Post questions how schools can tell if their students are really making progress if students switched to a different test.
Eduwonk writes that the small amounts up for grabs under Race to the Top, a competition for more school stimulus money, have diminished some of the enthusiasm in smaller states.
The Wall Street Journal gives a rundown of the clash between D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee and union leader Randi Weingarten over the question of teacher tenure.
San Diego Unified still has trouble tracking the dollars that are transferred to and from its student government groups, outside auditors found. Last year, the same group warned that while they found no fraud, failing to keep proper books could "provide an opportunity for irregularities that might go undetected." The school district plans to train staff on how to handle the money properly this year.
The auditors also found that the school district hasn't always used purchase orders when buying goods or services, which raises the risk that San Diego Unified might order something twice or order something that wasn't allowed. Staffers responded again that they were fixing the problem.
Other problems were fixed this year: Auditors found that overpayments for employees, a persistent problem in past years, had been addressed by making sure that the human resources and payroll departments communicated with each other when employees left or took leaves.
In past budget crunches, San Diego city officials tried to insulate public safety from cutbacks, but this time around things look very different.
The city's police and fire departments are being asked to come up with potential cuts of $108 million in the next budget. That's the equivalent of about $86 per resident.
So far, it's not clear how the city might go about this, but the fire chief has hinted that fire stations and lifeguards might take a major hit. He'd like however, to keep current levels of firefighters and paramedics. As for the cops, they haven't shown their hand yet.
In other news:
The term "structural deficit," which gets thrown around in discussions about San Diego's budget mess, hints at the problem: The city's financial foundation isn't on solid footing. In fact, every year things get worse.
Now, a task force of local businesspeople that advises Mayor Jerry Sanders has issued a new report with advice on what to do.
What does it say? We dunno. The report is under wraps, and even the city doesn't have a copy to give us.
If that seems odd to you, it does to me too. It turns out that the mayor and the task force disagree over who actually owns the thing.
Local newspapers reported this week that two workers at the San Onofre nuclear power plant say they were retaliated against for reporting safety violations. Earlier this year, a voiceofsandiego.org contributor, a former L.A. Times energy reporter, explored the plant's history of safety issues.
Last summer, the city of San Diego instituted water-use restrictions. Residents have made thousands of complaints about water hogs since then, but the number of fines so far is zero. Previous fines you may have read about weren't actually levied. Also: the city's water usage was down in October compared to last year. That's great news! I'm going to celebrate by washing my car.
Also: yesterday was the anniversary of an important day in voiceofsandiego.org history. And our Photos of the Day are of passersby posing in front of a brick wall in the Little Italy area that intrigues our photographer to no end. Here's a photo soundtrack, courtesy of Oasis.
Elsewhere:
San Diego's downtown homeless shelter may open as early as next week. (U-T)
Why is local U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa standing up for the waterproof ski and snowboard apparel industry? And how come Senator Dianne Feinstein wanted (at least for a while) to get a tariff exemption for a pesticide linked to the big bee die-off? CityBeat investigates.
CityBeat also drops by a mini comics convention in San Diego -- the clunkily titled Quarterly Con -- that drew a few hundred fans last weekend and may keep comic geeks off the streets between Comic-Cons.
The mayor of the city of Industry, which would like to build a stadium and woo the Chargers, is under investigation. (LAT)
Finally, the LAT reports that a provision in the health-care bill before Congress increases Medicare payments to doctors in California. Physicians had complained that outdated reimbursements hurt docs in places like San Diego.
According to the Times, the San Diego County Medical Society says the city of San Diego "is still considered a rural farm town under the Medicare payment system."
After nearly three weeks without a blog post (I swear I was on vacation for some of that time), this is my second of the day. Watch out.
A couple of tidbits:
Today is the first anniversary of a fun day around VOSD headquarters: Last year on this day The New York Times ran a front-page story about us and the movement of local nonprofit news outfits. The story changed things for us. For one, we reached a whole new audience here in San Diego that didn't know about us. And since then my buddy Scott Lewis and I have been fortunate enough to be invited to great discussions around the country to talk about what we do, learn from the smartest people around, and help others create similar organizations.
We here at VOSD are having the time of our lives trying to build an organization that does meaningful stories and engages San Diegans in important conversations. Thanks for making it all possible with your readership and your support.
I'm putting together an institutional plan right now for how we cover wildfires in the future. We're proud of our coverage of the 2007 fires but, as a young organization, we were in large part just flying by the seat of our pants to be honest.
I'd like to get your help: I'm interested in hearing if there's anything that a news organization should provide that wasn't available during the last two wildfires, or stories you would've liked to see get done.
We leave the constant reports of road and school closures and public announcements to those who can do that the best. What we are going to focus on is going out to find the best human and nature stories we can and hold public officials accountable by fact-checking their statements and keeping tabs on their actions.
What else would you like to see get done? Thanks.
Lastly, we're not the only ones with a long, drawn-out football stadium search. And we don't have the only team that's speculated to covet Los Angeles. Things are erupting in the Twin Cities, too.
The Sheriff's Department reported a significant drop in the number of hate crime incidents in 2008, which I reported in the blog Monday. Department spokeswoman Jan Caldwell got back to me today about the statistical trend. This is Caldwell's written explanation:
Awareness, prosecutions and a cohesive law enforcement team in San Diego may partially explain this decrease.
Awareness within the department, I believe, has also helped make a difference. The San Diego Sheriff’s Department has provided and continues to present hate crime training in both academy and in-service settings and we participate in the Hate Crimes Coalition.
While two whistleblower complaints at San Onofre nuclear plant made big newslocally today, the plant has been dogged by numerous safety issues in the past, as our in-depth piece from former Los Angeles Times energy reporter Elizabeth Douglass found earlier this year.
From her story:
Mistakes and management problems continue to mount at the San Onofre nuclear plant, despite an unprecedented executive shake-up and a year-long effort to convince federal regulators and an industry ratings group that things are improving.
... Still, internal reports and Nuclear Regulatory Commission assessments indicate that the plant's shortcomings include a degraded safety culture; falling behind on preventive maintenance; allowing equipment to become less reliable; not finding, analyzing and fixing problems adequately; not providing employees with sufficient training and written procedures to prevent mistakes; and lagging well behind its peers in worker safety.
Those problems have led to falsified fire watch records and caused such problems as a loose battery connection on a safety system to go undiscovered for years.
The news today only added to that. From the North County Times:
Two career San Onofre employees have charged that top managers at the nuclear power plant retaliated against them after they reported a willful violation of federal regulations by a plant welder who helped make steel containers that hold highly-radioactive spent uranium fuel.
As Colina Park residents, businesses, and nonprofits roll out the neighborhood's first quality-of-life plan, which I wrote about Tuesday, its coordinators are trying to figure out how best to engage the large immigrant and refugee community there. They want residents to feel like they have a stake in ensuring the plan's success.
I noted in the story that they'll have to overcome the effects of very low rates of resident homeownership. If they don't own their own homes, residents are less likely to think about making long-term improvements in their communities. Set that aside and you have large numbers of first-generation immigrants from disparate parts of the globe arriving in the United States via Colina Park.
"They don't come to this country wanting to advocate," said Sakara Tear, the plan's coordinator.
So how have Tear and her partners engaged?
Slowly, she said. First, they had to offer a primer on process.
"A lot of our residents don't understand process," Tear said. "When we talk about improvements, they think things are going to change overnight."
They conducted individual meetings with residents and asked if they would be interested in helping draft the community's quality-of-life plan. They looked for residents who were comfortable discussing their needs with staff and with their neighbors. Then they asked them to lead small group meetings, where Somalis would interact with Vietnamese residents. They were asked to bring a friend or neighbor or two.
They asked residents to draw their ideal neighborhoods. They were met with skeptical looks.
"They were saying 'I'm 40 years old, and you want me to draw a picture with crayons?'," Tear said. "But then they started saying, 'OK, we want a park,' and they drew it and really enjoyed it." They discussed their challenges, like transportation or affordable housing and proposed projects to address them.
Many made it into the quality of life planning document, which was presented at a community-wide meeting. More than 300 residents were included in the process.
This is all an experiment for the CDC. It's the first time, Tear said, that Colina Park has tried to improve quality of life on a comprehensive, neighborhood-wide basis. You can imagine some of the logistical complications arising from that approach in Colina Park, a gateway to the United States. At the neighborhood meetings, Tear, who is Cambodian, did her best to juggle translations for all the languages represented.
She feared much could have been lost in the translations they provided.
"But it's a step forward from where we started, which was no community dialogue at all," she said.
On Monday, I posted a picture of a wall on Washington Street that I've been scoping out as a location for more than a year.
I promised that by the end of the week, I would have portraits of people in front of this wall. So, I headed down to Washington Street today and planted myself right in front of the wall. As the light ducked down below the horizon, I started to get nervous about getting a shot today.
Two seperate people walked past who kindly obliged to photos. The first image is of 32-year-old Peter Roepke, who at first declined a photo, then turned around a few minutes later and stood in for this shot.
The second image is of Chris B. Cornell, a gaffer, lighting designer and electrician from University Heights.
Since San Diego began enforcing water-use restrictions June 1, here's what has happened with enforcement:
3,100: Complaints the city has received about water waste.
39: Repeat offenders referred to water cops (city code enforcement) for investigation. That means they've gotten three complaints.
5: Repeat scofflaws who've gotten warnings telling them that fines were imminent.
4: Former scofflaws who fixed their problems after getting those warnings.
1: Scofflaws who haven't. It's a homeowner's association with a noncompliant fountain. Alex Roth, spokesman for Mayor Jerry Sanders, said the city is "monitoring the situation."
0: Fines the city has issued since regulations went into effect.
The city earlier said that it had issued three fines, but it hasn't, Roth said.
Water consumption in San Diego was down 9.5 percent in October from a year earlier, Mayor Jerry Sanders announced this morning.
The city's residential users cut consumption 8.6 percent; irrigation-only customers cut 14.7 percent; commercial users were down 8.5 percent. The city government -- the largest user -- cut consumption 10.8 percent.
City-wide water use is down about 13 percent overall since June 1 when the city's mandatory water restrictions went into effect.
The city is under a mandate to cut consumption by 8 percent this year or face potential penalties from the San Diego County Water Authority, the region's water wholesaler. Its supplies have been restricted by drought and protections in place for endangered fish on the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, a major source of San Diego's water.
I spent last night tweeting the school board meeting and boy, is my beak tired. You can catch up on all the gritty details here. Now for your morning newsblitz:
We blog about another objection to the cuts that an internal team has scrounged up for San Diego Unified: Auditors say a recommendation to cut "non-financial auditors" is just plain impossible because they don't exist. They also argue that cutting the fraud hotline doesn't make sense because it has recovered more money than it costs. (Want an example? 10News reported on this employee who was rooted out by the anti-fraud team.)
San Diego State is urging local teens to apply to the college, despite new rules that could make it harder for them to get in than before, the Union-Tribune reports.
10News explains what the heck San Diego Unified means by "zero-based budgeting" and why they want it.
The California Teachers Association is deciding whether or not to go after two ballot initiatives it has filed which would extract money for schools from big businesses, the Sacramento Bee writes.
In Los Angeles, the teachers union is at odds with the school district over the ideas of layoffs, pay cuts and furloughs, the Daily News reports. Its mantra? Cut bureaucracy first.
The Gates Foundation is doling out some serious cash to school districts that study and enhance teacher effectiveness, including Pittsburgh, Memphis and Hillsborough County in Florida.
In Education Week, historian Diane Ravitch opines that the Obama Administration is using the stimulus money to bribe school systems to pursue untested remedies, and questions the gains of charter schools.
And Jay Mathews at the Washington Post asks: What if some schools just can't be saved?
There are 16 communities in San Diego's City Heights neighborhood, and all of them have local associations of their own -- except one.
The exception is Colina Park, a community between 48th and 54th streets that's home to poor immigrants from places like Somalia, Southeast Asia and Mexico.
But now, with the help of a non-profit group, residents are banding together to improve safety, housing, education and even the community's appearance. The challenge is to bring people together in a place where people often don't live for long -- 95 percent are renters. And many residents come from places where neighborhood advocacy is a foreign concept.
In other news:
Ace education reporter Emily Alpert had live coverage via Twitter of last night's San Diego school board meeting. We also looked at the complex decisions facing San Diego's Gompers schools. And we report on how "auditors say there's one small problem with the idea of San Diego Unified saving money by cutting auditors who look at issues other than finances: It doesn't have any."
Also: The proposed Convention Center expansion got a lease on life thanks to a land purchase. The housing market continues to show strength. The number of arrests for smuggling people via the ocean is way up. And our Photo of the Day is a look at Christmas decorations in paradise.
Elsewhere:
The U-T updates the saga of Assemblyman Joel Anderson's "unusual campaign transactions" with news that a Placer County GOP official has resigned as a result of the scandal.
The City Council gave the go-ahead to San Diego's bid to host World Cup matches in 2018 or 2022, although a couple council members are skeptical about claims that the city won't need to spend any money on this. (U-T)
In Imperial County, activists angry about immigrant drownings in the All-American Canal protested by jumping into it. They say 17 people have drowned since local water officials voted to make the canal safer; an official says the San Diego County Water Authority needs to pay for the improvements, since it gets the water. During the protest, a crew from "60 Minutes" looked on. (Imperial Valley Press)
CityBeat talks to architect and developer Graham Downes, a "vanguard in East Village's redevelopment," who says he hates the idea of building a football stadium in the downtown neighborhood. "It needs to be out in the sticks," he said, "where there's lots of parking, where cars can queue in line for ages without impacting the area."
Finally: Glitches often happen when journalists switch to new technology. Trust us on this. Boy, we can tell you stories. And so can the U-T.
Yesterday, the paper's obituary page in the early print edition noted the death of one Name Nameline. Wait, who? It was a boo-boo, and one of a few -- including the unwanted appearance of the word "yuppers" in a headline -- that cropped up as the paper switched to a computerized page layout system.
The dearly departed Mr. or Ms. Nameline vanished from the paper by its later editions, gone but not forgotten.
Remember the Convention Center expansion? The $1 billion project that caused lots of hubbub at the end of the summer? It received a long lease on its life today.
The Convention Center Corp., the city-created nonprofit that operates the center, agreed to pay $13.5 million to purchase the waterfront land needed for the expansion. The decision beats a Dec. 2 deadline when the option agreement between the corporation and its owners, Fifth Avenue Landing, LLC, would have expired.
"This is the successful conclusion of a due diligence process begun a year ago which has resulted in the preservation of the site for a second expansion of the Convention Center," Board Chairman Chris Cramer said in a statement.
The above raises the obvious question: What happens if the city decides not to expand the Convention Center?
The deal's terms take non-expansion into account. The corporation owes Fifth Avenue Landing $1 million now and then $500,000 annually over the next four years. At the end of the following year, the remaining $10.5 million will be due. If the city decides not to expand, the corporation stops making payments and the parcel reverts back to Fifth Avenue Landing.
No financing plans from Mayor Jerry Sanders' Office have emerged since a task force recommended expansion in August. These issues remain at the heart of the project's viability, and the task force faced both internal and external criticism for not addressing them. Contributions from hoteliers and other tourism-based interest groups are expected.
The Port Commission also has to sign off on the land deal. It is expected to be placed on the commission's Dec. 1 agenda, a Convention Center spokesman said.
Today's Photo of the Day is for you San Diegans to share with your friends in places like Boston, where it is currently 42 degrees. Perhaps the only thing more absurd than holiday decorations going up already is that they're going up on palm trees.
Auditors say there's one small problem with the idea of San Diego Unified saving money by cutting auditors who look at issues other than finances: It doesn’t have any.
Eliminating those employees was one recommendation from the BRACE Team, which scrubbed the school district budget for savings that will impact the fewest number of children possible. It also recommended ending the fraud hotline, which allows anonymous callers to report financial waste and abuse. Cuts to the audits and investigations department would save the district $448,000, according to the report.
But Andrea Niehaus, who oversees internal audits and investigations, said the department doesn't have any auditors who handle non-financial issues. She also questioned how financially sound it was to eliminate the hotline, which she estimated costs just $11,000 a year. It has helped the district terminate more than a dozen employees (including this woman) and recoup roughly $4 million over the past two and a half years, Niehaus said.
I phoned Phil Stover, who headed up BRACE, to ask about her complaint. Stover insisted that the school district has several auditors who don't focus on financial issues. His proposal calls to cut two of them and 1.7 clerical workers. I called back Niehaus. She reiterated that no, she didn't have any "non-financial auditors," as the report refers to them, and added that she has no clerical staff at all.
Huh. Niehaus isn't the only one to question the options that BRACE has put together. Parents of gifted children are riled about the idea of shutting down the central offices that administer programs for the gifted and talented, even though schools would still have their own programs.
The school board will go over the BRACE report tonight. Expect fireworks.
First there was Gompers Charter Middle School, widely praised as safer and more scholarly since it became a charter school. Then there was Gompers Preparatory Academy, a high school for Gompers.
Now Gompers wants to consolidate the two schools into one and shut down the middle school, making a single school for grades 6 to 12.
Confused? Principal Vince Riveroll says the move is meant to simplify bookkeeping and keep the high school name intact. But doing so would also dodge a negative label under No Child Left Behind, raising questions about academic accountability for the charter school.
Gompers has fallen short of testing targets for several years. The school has been widely recognized for bettering the school climate and its scores have improved over time, but not enough to meet the state goals, which skyrocket dramatically higher every year.
If it continues to fall short, it could be forced to restructure. That's the same process under No Child Left Behind that led Gompers to become a charter school in the first place.
The end result of closing the middle school and expanding the new one would be a single school that would not bear the same label, turning back the clock on the testing targets. A similar switch happened years ago when Mann Middle split into three schools, two of which got a blank slate under the federal law. But Riveroll said the merger wasn't designed avoid No Child Left Behind's penalties.
"It was designed for what parents wanted -- a continuation of success," he said. "That's what this school was created for. We're going to keep doing what this charter set out to do -- to change and save the lives of our students."
Starting the new high school instead of expanding the middle school had other advantages: New charters can get state funding, while expanding a school doesn't get the same support. And Riveroll said parents wanted a new school with a new name to signify that it was going beyond what the kids had learned in middle school. Board members raised the idea of merging the schools after Gompers Preparatory Academy was already approved last spring, Riveroll said.
The San Diego Unified board would have to approve the expansion of Gompers Preparatory Academy to include middle school grades. Riveroll said that if the school board or the state deemed it appropriate, the merged school could keep the same code and the same record under No Child Left Behind.
The San Diego County housing market showed continued strength in the number of homes sold in October, according to new numbers from MDA DataQuick.
Last month, 3,671 homes sold, a 2 percent increase from the same month a year ago. October's sales were up more than 6 percent from September, and continued a streak of month-to-month sales total increases that began last fall.
Of those sales, 34.5 percent had been foreclosed on at some point in the previous year.
That's down quite a bit from October 2008, when 48.6 percent of the sales were foreclosures. In October 2007, 20.8 percent of sales in the county were foreclosures.
But the big news in DataQuick's release today was that the median price -- the midpoint price among all of the sales recorded in October -- rose 0.5 percent from the same month a year earlier to $325,000. It was the first such year-over-year increase since mid-2006. (More on median at the end of this post.)
The growing stability is in large part thanks to government intervention, said DataQuick's president, John Walsh, in a press release this morning. More from Walsh:
The government is playing a huge role in stabilizing and, to some extent, reinvigorating the housing market. Its actions have triggered ultra-low mortgage rates, plentiful low-down-payment (FHA) financing, an extended and expanded tax credit for home buyers, and programs and political pressure aimed at reducing foreclosures.
The real question now is how well can the market perform next year as some of the government stimulus disappears. The more upbeat outlooks suggest a strengthening economy and job market will help pick up the slack, and that demand for lower-cost foreclosures will remain robust. The more negative forecasts assume, among other things, a much slower economic recovery, more foreclosures than the market can readily digest, and more turbulence in the credit markets.
A note on the median price: You might remember we switched our emphasis in reporting pricing data at voiceofsandiego.org to the Case-Shiller index some time ago. (Read our explainer on that switch.) But I do think it's worth noting that the median price -- the price exactly at the midpoint of the prices recorded for all home sales in October, new or resale -- was up slightly last month compared to October 2008.
The last time the median price logged such a year-over-year increase was June 2006. Why did this change for the median catch my eye in particular? A little KB and VOSD history: I started covering the housing market and San Diego economy for voiceofsandiego.org in July 2006, and the first set of DataQuick numbers that came out after I got here showed June 2006's median price had fallen year-over-year from June 2005 -- the first year-over-year decrease in a decade. (My first story for VOSD focused on the condo piece of those numbers.)
Warning: Since then, DataQuick has revised its numbers to show that month's prices actually increased and that July 2006 -- not June -- was the first year-over-year drop. In any event, DataQuick has shown year-over-year drops each month for more than three years, and October's numbers ended that streak.
For more: The U-T includes more analysis from DataQuick's Andrew LePage. And DataQuick also reports that a six-county picture of Southern California also showed signs of strength in October.
Listen to voiceofsandiego.org's radio program on AM 600 KOGO: Latest Episode (November 8): Scott Lewis and Michael Zucchet talk about the city's budget
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