Morning Report: Eyesores or Lifesavers?

San Diego’s ham-radio operators have a message to send to the world: SOS.

They say the city’s planned ordinance to restrict the height of ham-radio antennas will threaten their ability to serve as crucial communication links during emergencies.

Indeed, a La Jolla man gathered information from other operators during the 2007 wildfires and passed it on to emergency crews. The problem: his antenna is 85 feet high, and neighbors — call them the Not In Your Back Yard crowd — have complained that it blocks their views.

Do something, the neighbors demanded, and the city responded by drafting a law that would restrict newly built antennas depending on where people live.

• In education, San Diego school board members listed their spending priorities yesterday, putting student achievement at the top and staff training at the bottom. They got to play with sticky dots too. Lucky! Also: parents are wondering why San Diego schools are sitting out of a competition for federal money.
• Alert: We have another edition of San Diego Explained to show you. The topic of the innovative partnership between us and NBC 7/39 this week: The city’s strong mayor form of government. Never quite sure what that meant? Or just very interested in whether voters will renew it? Give the video a look.
• Local investor John Chalker is the latest mover-and-shaker to answer questions in our series of interviews with San Diego’s top thinkers. He talks about the fate of the airport authority (keep it but give someone else the reigns), the top strategy to solve the local economy’s problems in 2010 (more help for small businesses and startups) and where the library ranks among city priorities (at the very bottom).
• As you may have noticed, we’re fascinated by borders around here, how they divide people and sometimes bring them together. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the Photos of the Day take another look — the last one in a series — at Border Field State Park.
• Senior reporter Rob Davis, who took these pictures of sunsets at the border, writes that one of them “highlights just how narrow the actual border itself is — it really is just a small line, even if what it represents radiates outward.” Sticking with the sunset theme, today’s photo soundtrack is a Ray Charles song called “In the Evening (When the Sun Goes Down).”

Elsewhere:

• The county Citizens Law Enforcement Board is dismissing eight misconduct complaints against officers because it didn’t have the resources to look into them. The people who complained are “getting a letter saying we’re sorry but time’s up,” the board’s executive officer says. (CityBeat)
• Paging Hester Prynne! Is your scarlet letter missing? Out of Rady Children’s Hospital’s 3,500 employees, 140 have refused to get flu shots, and they’re paying the price: They have to wear surgical masks and special green badges on their name tags. They can’t even take the masks off in the workplace outside the cafeteria to get a drink of water.
• So far, CityBeat reports, the workers haven’t had any luck fighting the requirement in court. A local law professor brings up the Holocaust.
• San Diego has made the semi-semifinals. It’s one of 18 cities that will become part of the U.S. bid to host the World Cup in 2018 or 2022. The city will be one of about 12 cities hosting the soccer tournament in the U.S. — if the country gets named as host and if San Diego makes the cut at that point. (U-T)
• Finally, actor Matthew Perry, the guy who played Chandler on “Friends,” will star in a pilot for an ABC comedy series about “the manager of an aging local sports stadium in San Diego who realizes on his 40th birthday that he cannot just get by on his charming, funny, noncommittal ways anymore.”

This brings two thoughts to mind. First, who stole the story of my personal life? I’d better get some royalties out of this.

And second, an “aging local sports stadium”? Wow. Wherever does Hollywood get these zany ideas?

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— RANDY DOTINGA