After months of mayoral candidate-jostling, industry signature-gathering, lawsuit-filing and public campaigning, voters will finally go to the polls on June 3 to decide whether Barrio Logan’s community plan will be updated. Andrew Keatts breaks down what’s really in question with Propositions B and C (they mostly go together), and what’s really at stake.
“Today, Barrio Logan is a free-for-all,” Keatts wrote. “Someone who owns one property is free to build a home or a machine shop on the same lot.”
Combined, Props. B and C imagine structuring the Barrio Logan neighborhood in a more traditional way: with residences buffered from industrial areas. But the devil is in the details of what can happen in the “buffer zone,” according to Keatts. “That’s where the negotiations broke down. That’s what this fight is about.”
• On the non-controversial side, Prop. A is a measure to apply a few fixes to the city charter that a broad coalition of people agree need to happen. It has no formal opposition.
Pushing Mandate or Not: Fact Check
One idea floating around as part of San Diego’s unfinalized Climate Action Plan is to mandate that homeowners perform specific upgrades to their homes prior to selling the home. It’s called a retrofit mandate, the broadstrokes of which we recently contemplated.
That retrofit mandate has become mud-slinging fodder between the candidates for City Council District 2. Candidate Lori Zapf sent out a mailer claiming candidate Sarah Boot “is pushing a mandatory retrofit law that will force homeowners to pay more than $3,000 for government-required renovations before they can remodel or sell their homes.” That claim “is a stretch”, Lisa Halverstadt found when she looked into it. “Zapf’s mailer claims that Boot ‘pushed’ for the retrofit mandate when she never specifically addressed it” until after the mailer was already out.
The Make-It Wage
With the minimum wage set to increase in July (and again in 2016), there’s been a lot of talk about how much it costs to live in San Diego. Based on one calculation, you need to make about $28,000 per year to make it on your own in San Diego, and some City Council members want to raise the minimum wage to be in that ballpark. Scott Lewis joined NBC San Diego’s Catherine Garcia to highlight what a dramatic increase to the minimum wage would look like for restaurants with tipped employees, who wouldn’t be exempt from the new minimum wage under the currently imagined plan.
• If local efforts to raise the minimum wage don’t pan out, the issue may not die. The state is already working on passing a similar increase that would take effect in 2017.
Out With the Inmates
So-called “immigration holds” are requests placed by U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcment to local jails, seeking to have suspected illegal immigrants detained past their release date so that ICE can act further on the immigration issue. The holds are in use all over the country, but Sheriff Bill Gore will no longer hold an inmate past his or her release date for that reason unless ICE has an arrest warrant. “Gore gave no reason for the policy change, but the American Civil Liberties Union attributed it to a recent federal court decision,” City News Service reports.
News Nibbles
• A bill by Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego) that would give all employees in the state at least three sick days per year has cleared the Assembly.
• KPBS highlighted a new website that keeps you updated on construction projects around San Diego with pictures.
• No Super Bowl for you, San Diego. At least not until you build the Chargers a new stadium.
• No more young people or self-brought booze at the annual Over the Line tournament, either.
• A project to eventually redevelop the Navy Broadway Complex cleared another hurdle on Thursday, the U-T reports.
• Californians should have the right to know the names of police officers who use deadly force, the California Supreme Court ruled Thursday.
• The San Diego Police Department placed an order for “250 AXON Body and 50 Flex cameras and a five-year subscription to EVIDENCE.com as the backend data management system,” Marketwatch reports.
It’s Bike Day
If you’re headed out to work Friday morning, consider pulling out your bicycle and huffing it to the office instead of your normal car commute. Today is Bike to Work day in San Diego, and over 100 support stations are planted all over the city to support cyclists as they pedal their way to work. Support stations will be staffed from 6 a.m and 9 a.m. I guess you’re on your own for the commute home, though.
If you work downtown, the city recently christened its new seven-mile bike loop to promote safety for cyclists. You’ll enjoy some dedicated lanes and little green circles marking your way throughout the loop.
And if, after all that, you still enjoy riding your bike, maybe you can hook up with these guys who will be riding their bikes from San Francisco to Los Angeles, all on single-gear bikes.
Seth Hall is a local writer and technologist. You can reach him at voice@s3th.com or follow him on Twitter: @loteck.