The Morning Report
Get the news and information you need to take on the day.
Somebody called the cops on congressional candidate Francine Busby’s fundraiser. But nearly a week after the soiree-turned-catastrophe, the public still has no idea whom he or she was.
The sheriff’s department won’t even confirm that the reporting party had a legitimate reason to make a noise complaint.
Maybe it was the man who reportedly heckled the congressional candidate, but that’s not clear.
For their part, neighbors are talking, telling us what they did — or didn’t — hear and disclosing their party registration.
Rainfall shortages, earthquakes, endangered fish, climate change, state vs. state battles. And more.
Maureen Stapleton, general manager of the San Diego County Water Authority, has a lot to worry about, and she acknowledges that her agency’s mission is under threat as water restrictions go into effect.
“It is very troubling for me,” she tells us in this weekend’s Q&A feature, especially considering that “tremendous progress” didn’t come in time.
In education, San Diego schools are mulling ways to spend stimulus money destined to help poor children. One idea: all-day preschool.
Elsewhere, seriousness is taking a long weekend off. A city councilman tells sdnn.com that “to an infrastructure geek like me, there are few things sexier than a freshly paved street.”
We’re wonks too, but come on.
The Coffee Collection (If you missed these good reads this week, check them out over a cup of java).
— Money for (Almost) Nothing: An investigation reveals that San Diego schools put teachers on paid leave and let them work in non-teaching jobs or, in some cases, do no work at all.
This happens for a number of reasons, sometimes as “part of a settlement to avoid the expensive process of firing them.”
— A Tarnished Golden Hill: One of San Diego’s most unheralded — and oldest — neighborhoods is having a rebirth of sorts. But it’s not coming quickly or easily.
Quote of the week: “… he was an oasis of consideration and sympathy in a Teutonic desert of heel clicks and ‘Yes, sirs.’— Time Magazine’s Hugh Sidey in a 1973 story on local newspaperman and Nixon aide Herb Klein, who died this week.
Term of the week: “Acquisition rehabilitation.”
This refers to the practice of renovating affordable housing. San Diego-based The Amerland Group specializes in this sort of thing. But, as our story reveals, the developer has been having many problems.
One last note: The San Francisco Chronicle recently reviewed a new biography of rock singer Tom Waits, who grew up in “the San Diego border suburb of Chula Vista.”
Waits is a graduate of Chula Vista’s Hilltop High School, which also produced such luminaries as Chula Vista Mayor Cheryl Cox and Brent Wilkes and Kyle Dustin “Dusty” Fogg, who both figured in the Randy “Duke” Cunningham scandal. And last and perhaps least, the writer of this digest.