Liberty Station, the big complex in Point Loma that used to be the Naval Training Center, is hardly lacking for amenities. There are nice restaurants, pretty parks and even a school, among lots of other neat stuff.
Yet the city of San Diego seems to think Liberty Station fits into the category of “economically depressed older neighborhoods.” It fits so well, the city believes, that it deserves to have another $81 million in redevelopment funds thrown at it. That’s more than the $32 million that Barrio Logan, which is nobody’s idea of upscale, might get.
Our commentator Scott Lewis says he adores Liberty Station but wonders what the heck the city is thinking. “It is not an economically depressed older neighborhood. Redevelopment’s job is done,” he says on Twitter.
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Maybe not. I feel economically depressed whenever I look at the prices of the salads at the Tender Greens restaurant in Liberty Station. Hey city, where’s my redevelopment money?
Talk about Overdue
The San Diego school district is seven months late on paying the $5 million it owes to the city on the construction of the new downtown library. (The district will open a charter school there.) Why? Because the district says the city hasn’t lived up to its part of the deal, at least at the moment, on an issue regarding collateral. But both sides predict things will work out.
Not Close and No Cigar
Yesterday, the Morning Report linked to a CityBeat story that said the county Republican party had spent $800 on cigars last May. That’s incorrect, it turns out. The party’s chairman, Tony Kvaric, says the cigars were actually a donation.
What does CityBeat’s John Lamb, who wrote the story, have to say for himself? He blames himself but also zings the party’s disclosure paperwork, which noted the “in-kind donation”: “Mea culpa. I should have put on my reading glasses for the small-print note. Typically, in-kind contributions are noted clearly — not 45 pages removed from the listed item. Apparently the local GOP is as tidy with its paperwork as it is with its office-moving skills.”
Better News for Community Gardeners
The city is picking up the pace as it moves toward making it easier for residents to launch community gardens. In the past, they had a long row to hoe (sorry, it is futile to resist saying that) to get permission.
School Scorecard
The results of science testing show that San Diego’s performance compared to other big school districts isn’t too shabby: our district ranked fourth out of 17 in the number of kids scoring proficient or better. Not terribly surprising, considering that we seem to have fewer poor kids than some of the other districts. There was bad news too: the district “also had some of the biggest achievement gaps between its white students and their Hispanic and black classmates, as well as economically disadvantaged students and better off ones, according to an analysis done by the school district itself,” education reporter Emily Alpert notes. “Boys also outperform girls.”
Naughty, Naughty!
The reviews are in, and art writers are thrilled about the dual art exhibit — a past-and-present combination — of work by British painters Howard Hodgkin and Thomas Gainsborough at the San Diego Museum of Art. A museum curatorial staff member has this to say to KPBS about Gainsborough’s subjects: “Most of these women were not just famous, they were sort of naughty. And they each lived a life very much in the public sphere at a time when publicity was beginning to create and unmake people’s reputations.”
One in Ever … Oh Never Mind
San Diego Explained, our video series in conjunction with news partner NBC San Diego, heads to the waterfront to examine the port and the big decisions that loom in its future.
Riverside-San Berdoo? Seriously?
Realtor.com is out with a list of the metro areas that drew the most searches for homes. Chicago was No. 1, followed by Detroit (!) and Los Angeles. Poor San Diego ranked down at 15th, just ahead of Orange County (17th) but behind Riverside-San Bernardino (11th).
Hey! What have they got that we haven’t besides 110-degree summer days?
So What’s the Sheboygan of the West Coast, Mister?
Lazy-minded pundits have been busy comparing the Midwest (the city of Madison in particular) to Egypt and Tunisia lately, drawing a nice slap from Jon Stewart. But here’s a new comparison, courtesy of a former U-T opinion columnist: “Who would have thought it? Wisconsin is the San Diego of the Midwest.”
Huh? Oh, it’s a reference to our municipal pension troubles.
The Sounds of (Employee) Silence
National Public Radio considers the matter of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and the five-year anniversary of the last time he said something during an argument before the court. What’s up with “Quiet People,” a separate breed from loners and introverts? A UCSD psychology professor has some answers.
He says “there are people who wish to talk, but are too timid to do so” and people who “simply choose not to say much.” One theory is that their minds are “at least as productive” as louder people, “but their threshold for saying things out loud is much higher. In this case, the average utterance of a Quiet Person should be of higher quality than that of a talkative one. They have had mediocre thoughts, but declined to share them.”
So that’s why some people still aren’t on Twitter.
Please contact Randy Dotinga directly at randydotinga@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter: twitter.com/rdotinga.