The Morning Report
Get the news and information you need to take on the day.
The city is breathing a little easier now that a soon-to-be-opened permanent homeless shelter isn’t in jeopardy of closing before it even opened its doors.
The San Diego city attorney’s office announced it successfully challenged an attempt by the state Department of Finance to pull $4.3 million in funding from the project, a move that the city said could have triggered up to $15 million in losses.
“We are heartened that the DOF has since reversed its decision which would have placed the City’s homeless population — the third-highest of any city in the country — in jeopardy,” Goldsmith said in a press release.
Our Kelly Bennett has been on a quest to understand the scope of homelessness in San Diego, including downtown.
What We Learned This Week
Barrio Logan Will Face Some Tough Decisions: Barrio Logan is set to become the first San Diego neighborhood to update its community plan since the city overhauled its approach to growth and development in 2008.
As it tackles the process, Barrio Logan must try to untangle its current mix of residences and industry.
The San Diego Opera’s poster designer has a unique resume: Artist R. Black’s work designing for the Occupy movement in Oakland gave him national recognition. He harnessed that to snag an unlikely dream gig — designing posters for the San Diego Opera.
If you think those two movements aren’t compatible, think again. Black told Kelly Bennett in a Q-and-A: “When I view opera, I view the stage. I view the artists. I view how stage theater has been so instrumental in changing people’s minds, and working with movements, and creating revolutions.”
District 4 Is the City’s Most Diverse: One of the likely candidates to replace District 4 City Councilman Tony Young said he appreciated the district’s incredible diversity — it was, he said, the most diverse district in the city. Lisa Halverstadt crunched the demographic statistics and rendered a verdict: “Though District 8 has more non-white residents, District 4 has a more diverse population, so we’ve rated his statement True.”
San Diego Had a News-Filled Year: We’ve packaged some of our most impactful work from the past year for our readers to take stock of 2012: There’s our 10 most popular stories of 2012; a collection of our photographer Sam Hodgson’s favorite images of the year; a rundown of the record number of live events we held with newsmakers from across San Diego; a recap of the stories that drew the most reader comments a look back at our most notorious Fact Checks of the year; our staff members’ picks for their favorite stories of the year (with cameos from some departed VOSD staffers!) and the best quotes of the year.
Quick News Hits
• A neighborhood group in Pacific Beach is urging police to specify when arrests are alcohol-related. “The goal is to build a case for a permitting process in higher crime areas to help recoup the cost of increased law enforcement,” according to U-T San Diego.
• Victory Pharma Inc., a San Diego-based pharmacy, will pay $11.4 million to resolve charges that it gave doctors kickbacks in exchange for prescribing their products, the Justice Department announced. According to NBC San Diego, the alleged kickbacks included tickets to sports events, concerts and plays, spa, golf and ski outings, expensive dinners and other events.
Quote of the Week
“They just didn’t seem to understand that [veterans were] a constituency that was ours if we showed that we cared.” — Bob Filner, voicing grievances with former fellow Democrats in Congress.