Todd Gloria’s council district changes this year. So he relocated from City Heights to Hillcrest to stay within it. But there was a problem: He couldn’t sell his old place.
So now he’s leasing an attic to live in while renting out his own condo. And he’s dealing with a perennial problem for residents of Hillcrest: finding a place to park.
But he’s got other things on his mind, like his political goals. We take a look at them — including tackling homelessness and making it easier for non-drivers who get around in our latest council candidate reader’s guide.
Also in District 3, our reporter Kelly Bennett continues looking at the hot issues. Her latest dispatch is from Little Italy, where some residents are none too pleased about plans to build a lot where bus drivers can take a break and use the restroom.
The opposition says the lot doesn’t belong in a neighborhood where people live. “It’s a frequent refrain in uptown and downtown neighborhoods: Just because we’re living in an urban center doesn’t mean we’re not a residential neighborhood,” Bennett writes. “San Diego regional planners expect downtown to absorb much of the population growth for the city’s next decades.”
Convention Center Plan Moves Ahead, Sort of
In a formality, the City Council approved the $1 billon increase in hotel taxes to fund a convention center expansion, a move that sends it on to court so a judge can figure out if it’s legal. Our reporter Liam Dillon offers three takeaways from the decision.
• If you somehow missed Dillon’s explanation yesterday of how Councilman Carl DeMaio made the fortune he’s now investing in the mayor’s race, check it out.
VOSD Radio: A Spat and a Plan
VOSD Radio takes a look at the fight between the U-T and Nathan Fletcher, the assemblyman/mayoral candidate/man-without-a-party.
The hosts, our Scott Lewis and Andrew Donohue, also find reasons to praise the U-T’s editorial page editor and zing the DEA for being mightily (and scarily) forgetful. And they examine a mayoral rival’s past-due pension reform plan, which has finally arrived.
• In an LA Times commentary, former guv Arnold Schwarzenegger bemoans his party’s loss of Fletcher, saying “it’s time to stop thinking of the Republican Party as an exclusive club where your ideological card is checked at the door.” DeMaio’s allies launched a site attacking Fletcher yesterday as well.
• For more on some of these stories, check our Best of the Week feature, which lists the most popular posts of the last seven days.
Fact Check TV: Bad Roads and Strong Diversity
Fact Check TV recaps a couple recent mayoral race claims that went under our microscope: Is Councilman Carl DeMaio right about San Diego’s roads being the eighth worst in the country? And has District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis made diversity a priority?
Quick News Hits
• Probation and a $1,000 fine are the punishment for a 92-year-old La Mesa woman nabbed by the feds for selling kits that help people commit suicide. (U-T)
• KPBS aired a contentious debate over the city’s Prop. A, which would stick a finger in the eye of unions by banning labor-friendly deals known as project labor agreements. Former City Councilwoman Donna Frye faced contractors representative Eric Christen Check out the audio and video here. The words “bovine scatology” came up.
Not sure what a project labor agreement is? Here’s a handy San Diego Explained.
U-T’s Editor Responds to Controversy Over Candidate Comments
U-T San Diego Editor Jeff Light took to his Facebook page yesterday to address concerns about recent comments he made during a candidate interview. The candidate, Nathan Fletcher, made that audio public.
In the tape, Light is heard telling: “I think we, as an editorial board, do not want to see Bob Filner make it through to the general election.”
Later he adds: “This does create a great difficulty for us because I mean I think that there is a real danger in a Filner /Demaio race at the general election as the Presidential election is going on. Filner has a chance to win that and that is something that we do not want.”
On Facebook, Light was emphatic that the “we” did not necessarily mean him: “At that moment on the tape, I was simply expressing the sentiment of the editorial board, of which I am but a part.”
KPBS followed the story. Dean Nelson, a local journalism professor, told the station that the interview is “particularly disturbing.“
Nelson also complained to 10News about the U-T’s front-page endorsement — well, it was on the half-sheet covering the front page, at least — of mayoral candidate DeMaio on Sunday.
Clearly, the U-T’s new focus on front-page editorials is revealing how badly it wants to make you listen to it whether you want to or not. I’m waiting for the publisher to come to my door and yell his electoral endorsements into my face.
• Speaking of U-T publisher Doug Manchester, we’re learning more about his proposal to build a residential complex (with 198 units for people who want to live right next to the freeway), a big office building and a shopping center on its Mission Valley property. The Reader got a hold of a building plan that shows, as it puts it, an “‘iconic’ U-T logo with a ‘rotating mechanism to allow 360 degree rotation,’ a 14-ft by 48-ft ‘full color LED digital display,’ along with 3-ft by 4-ft sign cabinets containing an ‘LED ticker.’”
Padres Aren’t So Blessed
These aren’t good days for the friars of Mission Valley. Their season has stunk so far, and the U-T reports that they’re in danger of setting low-attendance records at the baseball stadium downtown.
Meanwhile, the Padres are among the 20 lowest-paid pro sports teams in North America, reports SportingIntelligence.com. They rank 14th with an average player salary of just $2 million.
Among pro sports teams worldwide, they’re at No. 152.
By contrast, the average pay for the Yankees (the highest in the major leagues) is $6.2 million, and the Barcelona soccer team (highest in the world among all pro teams) is $8.7 million.
What can we do to save the team? Here’s an idea: How about a new baseball stadium?
Just kidding!
Please contact Randy Dotinga directly at randydotinga@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter: twitter.com/rdotinga.