The state’s political ethics watchdogs told County Supervisor Bill Horn that he shouldn’t vote on a big North County housing project, but the developer-friendly GOP politician isn’t going to give up easily.
After sending out a blistering letter complaining of an attack on American democracy, Horn declared Friday that he’ll stand down — but first, he wants the state to check itself before it wrecks itself. He’s seeking a reconsideration of the ruling and “clarified guidelines as to when I can and cannot vote on land use items within my district.”
Horn isn’t on his own. As VOSD’s Andrew Keatts and Maya Srikrishnan report, the county is with him. But a spokesman for the watchdog agency says there’s little chance of a new result when there’s no new information.
Horn faces questions because he owns property near the proposed Lilac Hills Ranch development in the Valley Center area near Escondido.
Logan Heights Might Go Urbanist
“Logan Heights might get a shot to push itself toward a more transit-friendly future after all,” VOSD’s Andrew Keatts reports. A community planning group is supporting a plan that would encourage more walkable development in an area with the transit to support it but currently dominated by light industrial uses.
The City Council will have the final say, however.
• Want to retire in a Logan Heights that’s more friendly to residents? Start saving. You’ll need more than $1 million, plus Social Security, to retire here, Lifehacker reports. That makes us the 8th most expensive city in the country. NYC is No. 1 at $2.3 million.
11 Cops Sacked, but Details Secret
The U-T caught something interesting in a talk Police Chief Shelly Zimmerman recently gave. She declared that 11 police officers have been fired over the 2014-2015 fiscal year, but no one’s saying who they are or why they got sacked.
The SDPD did say that three officers had been fired in each of the previous fiscal years. “Several others” quit before being fired, Zimmerman said.
• The president of the deputy sheriffs union “has stepped down amid an investigation into his spending of union funds,” the U-T reports. According to the paper, the union makes $2 million a year from dues and has $7 million in assets. The president, Matt Clay, remains employed as a deputy.
• Former police chief William Landsdowne joins other critics who are attacking a big, San Diego-centered Washington Post story questioning the outcomes of Prop. 47. The measure tried to reduce jail and prison overcrowding by reclassifying crimes; the story suggests the leniency has created other big problems.
• In other law-and-order news, the state is making it easier for victims of revenge porn to report abuse (which often occurs via intimate photos posted publicly) and it’s helping local law enforcement understand the problem.
More on the SANDAG-Bored Mayor
CityBeat columnist John Lamb picks up on our thread last week about Mayor Faulconer’s decision to skip out on a regional planning agency’s big transit vote: “political duckery,” he calls it. Also: Lamb reports that GOP types are rushing to oppose a hike in the sales tax countywide. Sounds like they’ve found a cause liberals can support too.
Nature Report: Ready(ish) for the Floods
Armed with new hotlines, sandbags and the clearing of culverts, the city is preparing for a potentially wet winter, the U-T reports. But the city can’t clear as many drains as it might like because of environmental red tape, and some businesses say the city must do more to protect them from floods.
The El Niño, by the way, is now considered to be “too big to fail.”
• Quake and shake: Almost 1 million people in the county have reportedly signed up to take part in today’s massive earthquake drill at 10:15 a.m. (U-T)
San Diego actually has a pretty quiet history on the earthquake front, with only one death in recorded history (of a hoarder downtown whose thousands of books fell on him in a 1986 quake).
Quick News Hits: Dating with a Twist
• We helped ABC’s World News Tonight produce a report on Trey Enloe, the La Jolla High School student who suffered a head injury in a football game. We revealed the situation several months ago and now Enloe’s family is suing the school district.
• VOSD’s weekly North County Report has links to news about Carlsbad, Poway, Solana Beach, Encinitas, Lake Hodges, San Marcos, Escondido and Oceanside. Yahtzee!
• In an editorial, the newspaper at San Diego City College questions why students were left out of the campus distribution of a video called “RUN. HIDE. FIGHT. Surviving an Active Shooter Event.”
• The Next City blog follows up on our story about potential trouble for the county’s bid to get money for affordable housing.
• San Diego attorney and government nemesis Cory Briggs, meet your L.A. twin who’s helped kill off an uber-Target, a residential tower and more. (LA Times)
• Remember when a local restaurant owner banned tipping, tacked on service charges, got national attention and then skipped town in a cloud of fury about how terrible San Diego is?
Well, the no-tipping thing isn”t dead. Now, the founder of Shake Shack wants to kill off tips at his chain’s upscale restaurants, and Slate thinks it’s a great idea.
• A Pacific Beach man is co-creator of a new dating app called Voujo. Voulez vous Voujo? Maybe, maybe not. It promises to allow users to rate the people they’ve dated in person: “Voujo allows you to see what other members think of someone’s personality,” the co-creator tells sdnews.com.
Excuse me, I have to go rent a better personality. I can order that via Uber, right?
Randy Dotinga is a freelance contributor to Voice of San Diego and national president of the 1,200-member American Society of Journalists and Authors (asja.org). Please contact him directly at randydotinga@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter: twitter.com/rdotinga.