Don’t forget! Tonight’s the night for VOSD’s next Meeting of the Minds arts and culture event. Click here to get details.
A compromise proposal for Barrio Logan’s community plan orchestrated by Councilman David Alvarez passed Tuesday night in a vote that broke down along party lines, with Democrats voting in favor and Republicans against.
The Council chambers were packed with workers from the maritime industry, who donned bright yellow T-shirts to show support for the industry-backed plan. Some, in fact, were getting paid to be there.
VOSD reporter Andrew Keatts was at the endless Council meeting, which devoted hours to hearing from residents and workers on both sides of the big divide over the future of the south San Diego neighborhood.
Also in City Hall news:
• CityBeat tells the remarkable inside story of how three Filner allies learned about his behavior toward women and began to work together to get him out of office.
• Ex-Mayor Bob Filner gave raises to several mayor’s office employees before resigning, 10News reports. The biggest raise went to his press secretary, Lená Lewis, whose annual salary jumped from $82,500 in July to $115,000 in August.
Several of the Filner employees who got raises continue to work for the city. However, Council President Todd Gloria, who’s taken on some mayoral responsibilities, has adjusted some of the salaries.
• KPBS has details about the financial troubles facing the city as it tries to keep its homeless shelters open year-round, as promised by Filner.
Help Us Fill Out a Report Card
Public schools like to give out thousands upon thousands of grades, but the people who work at them aren’t always enthusiastic about being graded themselves. Still, they need to be held accountable too, especially those at the very top. Like, say, the new chief of San Diego schools.
We’ve launched a project called Grading Cindy Marten to develop ways to track her progress as she tries to reform a sprawling and stubborn school district, one of the largest in the nation. Many readers — including teachers, parents and other stakeholders — have already weighed in. Their suggestions include ways to measure curriculum broadening, and whether Marten is assembling a crack leadership team.
• Marten is pushing to eliminate some district positions, including the post of deputy superintendent, and redistribute much of their work. New positions will be created too. U-T San Diego has details.
Saldaña Likely Out of Mayor’s Race
There’s good news for Democrats who fear the mayoral election would pit Dem against Dem against Dem against Dem against … Well, you get the idea. Former Assemblywoman Lori Saldaña looks to be out of the race that she was never entirely in. She is scheduled to appear with Councilman David Alvarez later today, likely to endorse his candidacy.
• Also in the mayor’s race: VOSD Overheard, our new feature, summarizes the critical reaction to our Fact Check of Councilman Kevin Faulconer, who made a claim about how he and voters are pretty darned sympatico.
Quick News Hits
• This week’s VOSD Culture Report links to a slew of stories about local art and culture, including looks at art at the new Central Library, an expanded definition of literature at SDSU, the role of art in the vision for Barrio Logan and a “cinema church” in Missions Hills where plenty of us have “worshiped” over the years.
• The Poway school district has been in hot water (and lost some of its reputation as a highly respected operation) over how it raises money through property taxes. Now, the district has “promised to pay back its Mello-Roos accounts after iNewsource found it was spending the special tax dollars to pay a consultant to help sell land it owns outside the Mello-Roos area,” the investigative journalism outlet reports. “The consultant has been billing the Poway Unified School District $150 an hour to evaluate land in Rancho Bernardo, meet with potential buyers, and ‘review offers’ months before the school district decided it didn’t need the property and more than a year before it decided to sell it.”
• They had me at “San Diego Zoo’s Baby Sloth Needs a Name.”
Yup, another critter is playing the name game, NBC San Diego reports. This one is a baby female sloth who will likely spend 15 hours a day asleep.
The potential names are: Xena, Dulce, Guiana and Subida.
Those aren’t bad. They’re certainly better than the name — and this is true — that I would have gotten if I’d been a girl: Trudelle. I would need 15 hours a sleep a day just to get over that.
Randy Dotinga is a freelance contributor to Voice of San Diego and vice president of the American Society of Journalists & Authors. Please contact him directly at randydotinga@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter: twitter.com/rdotinga.
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