The mayor may have ramped up the rhetoric, but we’ve been building up an immunity to unwarranted enthusiasm over any politician’s glowing predictions about the city’s street-sidewalk-and-sewer crisis. As we explain in a series of charts, the city’s a long, long way from getting things fixed.
For one thing, the city needs $700 million to fix how it handles disposing of storm water, but it doesn’t have it and doesn’t have any way to get it. There’s hope that maybe the city will get the rule-makers to change the rules.
Then there’s the regular water and sewage pipe system. They’ll be repaired, but taxpayers will foot the bill. Finally, there’s the matter of all those pothole-ridden streets. Mayor Kevin Faulconer’s plan to divert new tax money to roads is just “a drop in the bucket compared with what’s needed to make things better.”
Opinion: Hey, We’re No Nimbys
In a VOSD commentary, Carmel Valley resident Bill Chatwell says opponents of the big One Paseo project shouldn’t be dismissed as whiners: “Some projects really are flawed and ill-suited for a community.”
In fact, he writes, “many of the individuals, businesses, governments and advocacy groups that oppose One Paseo don’t have a blanket opposition to development. In fact, they’re open to development and are flexible on the size and shape of a new project.”
Higher Pensions, Fewer Cops?
Bloomberg News examines San Diego in a story about how high pension costs for municipal employees are hobbling cities as they try to “rebuild police forces thinned by the recession.” More money for pensions, the story contends, translate to less money to hire cops.
On the other hand, the head of the San Diego police union says the city’s pension-cutting is a problem since it’s spurred an exodus: “Some employees will go 10 years without a pensionable pay increase.” The situation painted by the story is this: Keep paying high pensions and you can’t hire new officers. Cut high pensions, and you can’t keep the ones you have.
Bloomberg also mentions that SDPD “recently began tracking racial data on traffic stops.” Just a reminder: That’s because we revealed they’d stopped, violating their own policy.
• KPBS examines the controversy over an old racist newspaper cartoon and a black SDPD officer.
• “A federal program allowing police to seize money and assets related to drug trafficking has been good to San Diego County’s cops and prosecutors, providing nearly $30 million to their agencies between 2007 and 2014,” Inewsource reports. These kinds of seizures are a hot topic in the news, and the U.S. attorney general is cracking down on their use.
• No, “60 Minutes,” cops don’t have a much shorter life expectancy than the typical American. In fact, in California, they live a bit longer than state employees. (Politifact)
Quick News Hits: Look Out! Ferris Wheel Ahead!
• The county may rein in campaign contributions: Supervisor Ron Roberts wants a $20,000 limit. (KPBS)
• Uh-oh: That proposed waterfront ferris wheel could be a hazard to aviation. (NBC 7)
• A Peruvian child mummy from the San Diego Museum of Man is visiting Cincinnati and will undergo a CT scan that could uncover its gender and cause of death. “It does show evidence of artificial cranial modification,” a Cincinnati museum spokeswoman says. “Many South American cultures believed that a long, narrow head was beautiful, leading them to bind the skulls from birth to form them.”
• A CityBeat columnist went to a local dive bar — sorry to be redundant, because of course he did — and ran into a “reverse snob,” a switch from the usual barfly in San Diego “where the craft-cocktail and microbrew aficionados give you grief for ordering beverages that aren’t metrosexual enough.” Refreshing! But it got worse from there.
• A bunch of people and pooches gathered in Carmel Valley to try to break a record for the largest canine-human crowd ever gathered for yoga. (No, I am not making this up. Yes, the world records people have totally lost it.) The U-T has a fun photo gallery of the event but no answers to the big question: Did the dogs do the “Upward Human”?
Randy Dotinga is a freelance contributor to Voice of San Diego and president of the American Society of Journalists and Authors. Please contact him directly at randydotinga@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter: twitter.com/rdotinga.