The Morning Report
Get the news and information you need to take on the day.
Last year, Tony Young, the sitting City Council president, abruptly resigned and was named the CEO of the local chapter of the American Red Cross.
Recently, Young became the voluntary co-chairman of Mayor Kevin Faulconer’s transition team.
Friday, we learned that Young was suddenly no longer CEO of the local Red Cross. The national Red Cross alerted the local board Young was done working for the organization. They would not say what happened.
Young did speak to me. He would only it was a difference of opinion.
Young’s premature exit from the City Council led to Todd Gloria’s election as president.
• Just recently, members of the city’s Salary Setting Commission recommended a major re-evaluation of City Council salaries in part because of Young’s departure to a higher-paying job in the private sector.
Legislator Wants to End Shamu
A California assemblyman representing Santa Monica and Malibu has introduced a bill that would devastate San Diego’s SeaWorld by banning killer whale performances. SeaWorld is the only place in California that offers the shows.
Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez is ready to vote for it. Toni Atkins, who will soon be speaker, is not. Lisa Halverstadt has the details and local reaction.
• Halverstadt also went out recently with a SeaWorld team as they returned a once-dying, now-thriving sea lion to the ocean. She breaks down what SeaWorld actually does to support sea life in the area.
But the company would not reveal how much of its budget it spends on these efforts.
• The U-T and 10News released a public opinion poll that showed a plurality of 49 percent of San Diegans support keeping the orca shows at SeaWorld legal compared to 34 percent who want to outlaw them and 17 percent who don’t know.
Flood of Requests to Carry Guns
A court’s recent decision about concealed carry weapons permitting in San Diego made national news, especially when we learned that the sheriff, who is in charge of granting permissions, would not appeal.
Randy Dotinga has the five things you should know about the issue.
This Week in Being Able to Afford Shelter
Tuesday, the City Council rescinded its decision to dramatically increase the affordable housing fee on new commercial construction in the face of a referendum against it. Andrew Keatts earlier wrote about what might come next.
And Friday, Keatts caught up with Councilman David Alvarez, who explained why he supported rescinding the fee hike because of the referendum it provoked but not the Barrio Logan Community Plan, which also led to a referendum.
• VOSD member David Gatzke, who’s in the nonprofit affordable housing industry, gave us a thought-provoking op-ed on the three things he would do to make homes affordable in San Diego.
“Affordable housing advocates are missing an opportunity to create a coalition with market-rate housing providers to bring down the high cost of production,” he wrote.
• In a U-T op-ed, Jerry Sanders, the CEO of the Chamber of Commerce, wrote that it was critically important to fund this sort of subsidized housing construction. He hinted that not all the members of his own coalition were in agreement, however.
• Related, we reported this week that data shows the lowest-priced homes were actually going up in price the fastest of all segments in the local market. A different measure shows housing prices going down.
• Andrew Keatts and I were on KPBS’s Friday Roundtable talking about that affordable housing fee hike reversal, the Balboa Park 2015 party fail and hopes for the Padres’ new season.
What We Learned This Week
• San Diego Police Department’s new leadership will have to choose between prioritizing crime response or crime prevention. The U-T says the new chief will also be reinstating the covert internal affairs unit. KPBS also got an interview with her. (Not us, pobrecitos.)
• San Diego schools Superintendent Cindy Marten has a different vision for transitional kindergarten than the state.
• Marten also has some potentially sticky situations coming up with all of the foundations raising money for schools in her district. There may be oversight and equity issues on the horizon.
• The mayor put on hold a decision to purge San Diego City Hall of all emails older than a year.
• The Padres shouldn’t feel too bad about their investments in young players in 2011.
• SeaWorld paid $14 million in rent to the city in 2013. That and more interesting numbers here.
• San Diego may get those smart parking meters after all.
• Sheriff Bill Gore supports Bonnie Dumanis for re-election. The people who work for him? Not so much.
• The county’s unemployment rate has gone up.
Quick News Hits
• Carlsbad has a new city manager.
• You might remember our stories about a missing sidewalk by a San Ysidro elementary school. It’s a rather treacherous path and the city promised to build a sidewalk. Well, now the new mayor has promised again, NBC reports.
Quote of the Week
“You’re never hindered. And this was the first time in my now 28 years in law enforcement that I’d ever seen anything like that.”
— DA Investigator Susan Rodriguez, on her inability to get the San Diego Police Department to execute a search warrant in an investigation of one if its own officers.