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As we told you this week, construction on a Point Loma house has kept going and going and going, with no end in sight. Construction began years ago and it’s nowhere near done.
How infamous is this house? Check this: We called the city’s neighborhood code compliance chief, and he knew exactly what house we were talking about without even needing an address: “I drive right by it every day.”
This might inspire you to think: Well, don’t just drive by, do something! And while you’re at it, take care of the other eyesores — homes-under-construction-for-life — that our readers have turned up.
But it’s not that easy, as we discovered. The city’s hands are largely tied when it comes to these kinds of homes. Another city official explained that homeowners can now ask for exemptions to the rules requiring them to finish home construction in a timely manner.
“If it’s there and it just looks ugly, we can’t do anything about it,” the official said. “I’ve had one of those in our neighborhood, and the house has been under construction for many, many years. And it looks ugly but it’s not a public nuisance.”
In other news:
- The head of the San Diego teachers union explains its endorsement of a GOP candidate for school board this way: “We’re not just looking for ‘yes’ people.” But the candidate said in 2003 that unions were “shifting public wealth to one segment of the populations — public employees — at the expense of the public citizenry.” That sounds like a “no” person.
- Stephen Whitburn, who failed in his bid for San Diego City Council in 2008, has his eyes on a new prize: the county board of supervisors. We take a look at what’s shaping up to be a very interesting race. And we catch up with his views at his press conference.
- We’ve got a follow-up on our in-depth story about why black students are so rare at UCSD. This post explores even more possible reasons and includes more comments from students and faculty.
- Remember “Strippergate”? Some of the players were back in court recently as convicted former strip club owner Michael Galardi asked to get out of supervised release early.
- We look at San Diego’s homicide rate from a new perspective that suggests things are a bit less rosy than the usual national rankings suggest.
- By the way, earlier this year, we created a map showing where homicides happened in the county over the past 10 years.
- Everybody wants a shot in the Photo of the Day.
Elsewhere:
- The AP had a big scoop: it reports that Chelsea King murder suspect John Albert Gardner III ” could have been sent back to prison for violating his parole” but wasn’t.
“It was just an incompetent decision that didn’t protect public safety,” said a state senator.
- You may think Twitter isn’t good for anything except hearing about what people ate for lunch. Au contraire! The San Diego city clerk is on Twitter now and yesterday tweeted the identities of people who’d filed to run for City Council by the deadline.
- In the U-T: “Fasten your seat belts: Lindbergh Field is launching a $1 billion terminal expansion that will make the airport tougher to navigate during construction.”
- San Diego’s original City Hall in the Gaslamp Quarter, which served that purpose until 1938, has been sold for $3.3 million. The building was built in 1874. (U-T)
- San Diego attorney Charles Sevilla is helping famed record producer Phil Spector in his appeal of his conviction of murdering an actress in 2003. (AP)
- The Jalopnik blog looks into the history of the local man who claims his Toyota Prius accelerated out of control and finds some interesting things. Among them: $700,000 in debt due to a bankruptcy.
- We have no winner yet in the Morning Report’s Identify-That-Accent contest, although one person came awfully close. To sweeten the pot, our City Hall reporter promises to buy his hometown’s most famous delicacy for the first person who correctly guesses where he’s from. (You can watch him speak on video here and email me your guess.)
- So how wacko are San Diegans? (Judging by my family, very. But I digress.) The Daily Beast website puts a number on it: we rank at No. 22 among the top 57 metropolitan areas when it comes to overall craziness. (Cincinnati, of all places, is first on the loony scale. Guess WKRP didn’t chill them out.)
The rankings are based on psychiatrists per capita (we’re seventh out of 57), stress (53), eccentricity (18!) and drinking (22).
Maybe we see so many shrinks because we’ve got to deal with so many eccentric, stress-free lushes.