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San Diego’s streets are on the road to ruin, a voiceofsandiego.org investigation finds, and they’re going to keep getting worse.
Our analysis reveals that:
• The city hasn’t kept up with its pledges on street repairs. In fact, San Diego’s roads have gotten worse in the last three years as only a portion of the needed major and minor repairs have been addressed. (Look at the handy graph comparing what the city pledged to fix to what it was able to do.)
• New loans to the city and a push to fix more over the next couple of years aren’t likely to help the city catch up.
The mayor said last month that when he took office, the city’s streets were not only an embarrassment, but they were a problem for public safety. Now, according to the city’s own numbers, things are worse than when he began his term.
Remember we have previously explored the city’s misstatements about how long it takes for officials to respond to residents’ complaints about potholes.
In other news:
- Well, at least the folks at “Mad Men” would be happy: Our cartoonist envisions what we would see if public agencies were shamed to host more advertising to make a buck.
- Clop, clop, caption: The Photo of the Day wants to know what’s going on in an equine photo from downtown.
Elsewhere:
- His sentence (life in prison) is a foregone conclusion. But John Albert Gardner III, San Diego’s most notorious murderer since David Westerfield, will still face a judge today. The NCT and U-T have wrap-ups of the latest developments as the families of Amber Dubois and Chelsea King prepare for the court hearing.
- As you’ll recall, local elected officials have taken time off from dealing with local issues to express their upset with Arizona over its new law regarding suspected illegal immigrants.
Now, some Arizonans want to boycott San Diego, and the tourist industry is worried enough to take out an ad in the main Phoenix newspaper. Its message: Never mind all that. Look over here! Beaches! (U-T)
- They’re called “eye gnats” because they go after the eyes, and they’re driving people crazy, as pesky insects are prone to do, in North County and Jacumba. Now, the county grand jury is on the case. Wait. The grand jury? The folks who spend their time issuing scathing reports about corruption that often get ignored? Yes, those people.
The U-T reports that the grand jury thinks the gnats “should be declared a priority in the county’s program to eradicate pests. In the past, county officials have said they were not focusing attention on the gnats because the insects are considered only a nuisance, not a disease-carrying pest such as mosquitoes.”
- Mexican investigators have finished looking for signs of North County’s missing McStay family in a Baja California town. There’s no sign of them.
- Does a state legislator’s opinion about gays in the military mean a hill of beans in this crazy world? Yes, apparently, if he’s a Republican and former Marine. Nathan Fletcher, a young local assemblyman whose star is on the rise (perhaps even rocketing), told the Assembly yesterday that the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy should be eliminated.
The U-T gushed that Fletcher’s speech, which came before a resolution urging the feds to dump the policy, was described by witnesses as “one of the most eloquent on the floor for some time.”
- Finally: Yesterday’s Morning Report mentioned that teenybopper superstar Justin Bieber touted San Diego as one of his favorite places.
Turns out that he’s actually going to be here tonight at a concert in Chula Vista.
Somehow I missed the announcement about this. But it’s easy to understand why: My new Justin Bieber shaggy hairdo makes it really hard to see things (Ow! Where’d that door come from?), let alone read them.
