It was a packed house last night as one of SeaWorld’s top scientists faced off with one of the top scientists criticizing the company in a lively discussion on stage at the Museum of Contemporary Art. The discussion also featured a top SeaWorld trainer, an author of a book about the company and Voice of San Diego’s Scott Lewis and Lisa Halverstadt. People from all over the world tuned into the live stream and that recording is now available here. We’ll have a recap post later today.
Same Names, Different Ballot
Some political races were decided during Tuesday’s primary election, like the District Attorney race and one of the city council races. But despite some confusion, the San Diego Unified School Board election was not among the races that we can now say are behind us, That’s because the school board elections require a run-off between the top two vote-getters of a neighborhood district, no matter how big of a portion of the vote they win in the primary.
Even if a candidate ran unopposed, she would have to appear on the ballot twice, once in the primary and then again in the general. In fact, that exact circumstance happened on Tuesday in another school board race. Candidate Michael McQuary won 100 percent of the vote in his race. “But because of the election rules, you’ll see his name on the ballot again in November, too,” Dillon wrote.
Steps for a “New Economy”
The loss of a couple of big-name tech companies got our business blogger Blair Giesen thinking about what San Diego needs to do to foster a new, startup-friendly economy. “We don’t need to arm wrestle Texas Gov. Rick Perry,” Giesen wrote. “This kind of economy requires entrepreneurs, innovative technologies, talent and investment.”
Community Plan Usurped by City
It’s hard to tell why exactly San Diegans overwhelmingly rejected the Barrio Logan community plan update that was on the ballot Tuesday in the form of Propositions B and C. Opponents of those propositions said a lot of things about the plan, some legit, others not. But one thing is now clear: residents of Barrio Logan approved the plan on voting day by an even wider margin than city-wide voters rejected it, according to a story by inewsource. Within that neighborhood, “Proposition B passed with 69 percent of the vote. Proposition C passed with 66 percent of the vote,” inewsource reported. Those measures failed to pass with 58 and 61 percent of San Diegans opposed, respectively, with many thousands of ballots still to count.
Our Andrew Keatts noted how the Tuesday vote offered the first real look at what residents of the Barrio Logan neighborhood actually wanted for themselves. Before then, the only glimpse we had of that community’s preference was a stakeholder committee who voted 16-6 to recommend the plan.
News Nibbles
• Most theme parks did well last year, but SeaWorld’s attendance went down.
• In response to a previous report that said individual San Diegans need to make a minimum wage of $13.09 per hour to survive on their own, the San Diego Taxpayers Association and Chamber of Commerce released a report warning that raising the minimum wage as proposed would hurt more than help.
• The appearance of construction equipment just north of the border fence has some people hoping groundbreaking on a new connection from the Tijuana airport directly to a border crossing may be imminent. We recently told you all about the big plans.
• Now that we’ve begun regulating medical marijuana storefronts in the city, it’s time to start looking at the numerous illegal mobile marijuana delivery services, the Daily Transcript reported.
• The Sheriff’s Department arrested two San Diego Police Department officers on drug charges on Thursday.
• Some people are trying to bring art back into the lives of inmates of San Diego County prisons.
• U-T San Diego followed up with their investigation that found $1 million missing from San Diego police coffers. A preliminary investigation suggests the discrepancy is due to paperwork and accounting errors.
• Finally, someone has looked into Why A Pack Of Peanut Butter M&M’s Weighs A Tiny Bit Less Than A Regular Pack (NPR).
If that nod to candy has your tummy grumbling, you won’t want to miss a new FiveThirtyEight blog which purports to be in search of our nation’s best burrito. No San Diegan will be surprised to learn that our city has a strong showing on the list, which was compiled by analyzing data on Yelp. Four San Diego restaurants make the list, none of them ending in the name “bertos,” which threw the legitimacy of the methodology into question for some aficionados on Twitter.
FiveThirtyEight will be publishing a bracket and visiting all chosen restaurants to assist in their decision. Just sayin’: it is acceptable to wear Mexican wrestling masks and act strangely at Luche Libre Taco Shop.
Seth Hall is a local writer and technologist. You can contact him at voice@s3th.com or follow him on Twitter: @loteck.