Good morning from Hillcrest.
- We’ll lead off with Chargers news from Friday. The city of San Diego and the team appear to be zeroing in on a downtown location for a possible stadium site. The spot is east of Petco Park and would include the Wonder Bread building. The biggest challenge facing the Chargers in San Diego, Escondido or should the team look north to Los Angeles would be private financing of the stadium.
- The U-T has a story on the job cuts the city of San Diego has made over the last five years. They’re almost exclusively in vacant positions, not layoffs.
- The paper also reports on a California Supreme Court hearing this week in the conflict-of-interest cases against former San Diego pension board members charged in the city’s pension fiasco.
- The conservative SDRostra blog has news about a challenger for Dianne Jacob’s San Diego County supervisors seat in 2012.
- Lots of news in, uh, historic home preservation. The U-T starts with a piece on the city-funded $1 million in renovations to the 122-year-old Villa Montezuma. U-T columnist Michael Stetz writes about the need to preserve city landmarks. Not to be outdone, Chula Vista’s City Council will discuss a historic homes ordinance this week.
- Airport board chairman Bob Watkins has been correcting some of the problems with conflict-of-interest forms and business taxes reported in the last few months.
- In news from other cities around San Diego County, the North County Times reviews the first year in office for outsider Escondido City Councilwoman Olga Diaz. The NCT also reports on fundraising in a recall attempt in Oceanside and on the possible closure of Encinitas’ Chamber of Commerce should it no longer receive city funding. The U-T says a fight over ski park and restaurant in Santee isn’t over despite City Council approval of the project.
- In opinion news, the U-T comes out strong against the San Diego City Council decision last week to reject the mayor’s offer to settle a labor dispute on outsourcing. The paper also weighs in on city street repair, a plan for a new $660 million county courthouse in downtown San Diego and breaks down the players in the coming debate on preserving or building on 16,000 untapped acres in North County.
- We’ll end with one of my favorite local columnists anywhere in the country, Steve Lopez of the Los Angeles Times, writing about his quest to become a medical marijuana patient.