The City Council is making a push this week to get some action from Mayor Kevin Faulconer on the Climate Action Plan.
One of the biggest parts of that plan is also the most confusing. It’s called Community Choice Aggregation, and advocates of the plan think it’s crucial.
The gist, Andy Keatts explains: Residents band together and use their collective buying power to get good deals on energy, including energy from renewable sources.
• Rest easy, voters: You won’t have to decide this fall whether to boost taxes on hotel guests to pay for an expansion of the Convention Center, the U-T reports.
The Business That Left but Returned
As we continue our quest to understand the reality of how San Diego treats its businesses, we look at a company that left town but is now returning. It’s Kashi, which makes natural foods like breakfast cereals.
A Kellogg’s spokesperson suggested Kashi is coming back to take advantage of a more innovative atmosphere. Lisa Halverstadt reports: “Kellogg’s CEO John Bryant said last year that the company wasn’t ‘happy with the performance of our Kashi business’ and planned to work to ‘get it back in the right direction.’”
Fixing Neighborhoods Hit with Ugly Stick
In some parts of the city, they’re everywhere: Small apartment buildings, some of them Melrose Place-style, with unattractive parking spots out front.
Many are leftovers from the 1960s and 1970s. The smaller ones are called “Huffman six-packs,” and they’re all over urban-core neighborhoods like City Heights. Now, CityBeat reports, there’s a move afoot to rehab these apartment buildings, improving their “footprint” and “street appeal.” (Not so improved: Addiction to jargon.)
• CityBeat has not one but two stories about star city planning chief Bill Fulton, who’s getting the heck out of Dodge. The city says he found a higher-paying job, and Fulton isn’t blaming anyone for his departure. But critics hint that the city’s dysfunction and antagonism sent him running.
“We suspect that it was a little from Column A and a little from Column B: a great opportunity to helm a prestigious think tank and a somewhat diminished leadership role in San Diego,” CityBeat says in an editorial.
Student from SD Takes Stand on Carrying Gun
In a commentary for the Fox News website, San Diego-area student Taylor Woolrich calls for Dartmouth College to allow her to carry a permitted gun in order to protect herself against a man who allegedly began stalking her here.
“I feel that I have no control over my life,” she writes. “My family was forced to move. I have had stay indoors, keep drapes closed, avoid posting on social media sites, and even change my car. It’s almost like being held hostage.”
The alleged stalker is in San Diego jail, facing several charges, including a major one regarding stalking and a restraining order, according to the sheriff’s Who’s in Jail website. “A restraining order didn’t stop him from approaching me countless times in the three years since it was issued,” Woolrich writes.
Quick News Hits: Rank This, Forbes!
• The Padres have a new general manager. He’s A.J. Preller, an executive from the Texas Rangers. (U-T)
• A Chula Vista man “has spent more than 26 years lobbying government officials, drafting plans, and negotiating with landowners to link” the cities of San Diego and Tijuana, the Reader reports.
Now, a cross-border airport terminal is nearly reality. “Without Ralph Nieders there most likely would never be such a groundbreaking event, or a cross-border terminal, for that matter.” So why’s he being frozen out? The Reader explains.
• Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a quick and easy way to get to L.A. instead of the current options of car (two hours or half a day depending on soul-sucking OC traffic), train (three hours, or more if there’s a hold-up and not too cheap), or airplane (quick but ultra-expensive)?
A high-speed train might do the trick, at least when it comes to speed. “Within 25 years, our goal is to give 80 percent of Americans access to high-speed rail,” President Obama declared more than three years ago. How’s that going? Not well, the New York Times reports.
• Outrage! The highest-rated American zoo on TripAdvisor isn’t our own (it’s only No. 2). Instead, a zoo in Omaha is at the top.
• Speaking of rankings, we’re at No. 6 on a new Forbes list of America’s Coolest Cities. Excellent! But the boiling-hot and ever-congested city of Riverside places eighth. Bogus!
Uh-oh. Santa Ana is on here too, at No. 20. Santa Ana? These folks must have stopped in Anaheim and never left Fantasyland.
Randy Dotinga is a freelance contributor to Voice of San Diego and president of the American Society of Journalists & Authors. Please contact him directly at randydotinga@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter: twitter.com/rdotinga.