Morning Report: Assuming Their Positions

If you’ve got thoughts about plans for a new football stadium, new City Hall and expanded convention center, listen up: We’ve compiled the positions of the four City Council candidates so you can see if they line up with yours.

In short, everybody likes the Convention Center expansion but there are differences in the other positions, with the sole Republican candidate perhaps the most skeptical of them all.

In Other News:

• A judge says a school board incumbent who lost the primary election can continue with her write-in campaign. A victory for the incumbent? Well, not entirely: There’s a really big — red-lights-flashing, aoooogah-alarm-sounding — complication.

• A Carlsbad councilman who wants to be mayor declared in campaign materials that he’s the only councilmember who’s directly accessible by email and phone. But is his claim true? The Fact Check verdict: Nope.

• We’re poring through the latest batch of campaign finance statements, which show an incumbent county supervisor thwacking his rival in the fundraising race, while an incumbent school board member and his rival are about neck and neck.

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• “We get organizations all the time coming here. We call them grant-sucking agencies.” That’s what an investigator heard from a local resident during research into encouraging community involvement in poor neighborhoods. We’ve got more details on what the investigator discovered.

• Columnist Scott Lewis, our CEO, picks the brain of Dick Vortmann, the former president of a local shipbuilder who’s long been an influential voice in city affairs. Vortmann offers his perspective on Prop. D, the Mudd report and the idea that municipal workers should “set a standard of living for the rest of the world and enjoy much better benefits than the rest of the world.”

• Lewis also reports that the Center on Policy Initiatives has finally endorsed Prop. D., after first turning in a neutral opinion on it. Murtaza Baxamusa, deputy director, writes, “The only stragglers it appears are those who have an ideologically-driven intent to diminish the role of democratically empowered and funded governance.”

• Our San Diego Explained TV series offers a look at the most powerful person in city politics that you’ve never heard of (unless you saw our big story last week).

Elsewhere:

• Big news in North County: The teeny city of Del Mar is slated to buy the Del Mar fairgrounds and fabled racetrack for $120 million, the U-T reports. Del Mar, a city of fewer than 5,000 people, plans to raise the money, in part, through bonds and leasing.

• San Diego’s police chief is warning of more than 100 police officer layoffs and the closure of two police stations if certain budget cuts come to pass. (U-T)

• There’s an odd story out of Riverside County that’s recapped in the NCT: “A veteran San Diego police officer and his wife denied allegations Wednesday that they illegally removed fixtures and caused damage estimated at $165,000 to their two-story French Valley home this summer, which was in foreclosure.”

An investigator reported finding spray-painted walls and carpets, missing countertops and cabinets, black paint or hair dye poured on floors, a damaged sprinkler system, and trees and bushes thrown in the pool. The garage door was also missing, along with appliances, air conditioners, and more.

The cop has been placed on leave. His attorney described him and his wife as “nice people, really decent people.”

• Also in the U-T: “The Coast Guard petty officer piloting the boat that killed an eight-year-old Rancho Peñasquitos boy will face a general court-martial, while his two fellow crew members get lesser trials that mean only up to a year in jail if convicted.”

• Several local organizations have sent a letter to a local congressman “debunking allegations in a recent KPBS series that East African asylum seekers may be connected to Al-Shabab, a Somalia-based Islamic terrorist group,” CityBeat reports. The congressman wants hearings on the matter.

• KPBS relates the tale of Jose Galicot, whose heart trouble turned into a revelation and a two-week-long promotional conference about Tijuana’s thriving manufacturing base.

• Finally: Boom goes the … something. But what? Around 1:45 p.m. yesterday, people in the Del Mar, Poway and Normal Heights areas and beyond heard a big boom that sounded like thunder. Channel 10 called around and couldn’t find anyone who knew what it was.

Somewhere a dog who barked at a mail carrier at the same time thinks it’s the king of the world.

Please contact Randy Dotinga directly at randydotinga@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter: twitter.com/rdotinga.