Residents of a new housing development under construction in National City shouldn’t have a hard time getting around without a car. Paradise Creek is close to transit options, and it’s in a dense, walkable neighborhood.
The development shouldn’t need a lot of parking – but it’s getting plenty of it anyway, much to the frustration of city planners, writes Maya Srikrishnan.
The city encouraged the developers to cut down on parking in favor of more housing units or other amenities. But the developers declined. They said the suggestion came too late in the process, and that fewer parking spots would put the development at a competitive disadvantage.
“The struggle reveals one of the region’s biggest challenges when it comes to providing affordable housing and encouraging the use of public transit,” Srikrishnan writes.
• Speaking of zoning, a long-simmering dispute in North Park about the drive-thru at a Jack in the Box restaurant has new life: A state appellate court says the residents who sued deserve a trial. Here’s the ruling, if that’s your bag.
The Day in Sport
• NFL owners are expected to re-up their commitment this week to bringing the Super Bowl to San Diego if a new stadium is built here. (ESPN)
• After a couple days of national ridicule, the Padres announced that Major League Baseball will investigate the snafu that led to the team playing a recording of a woman singing the national anthem instead of the San Diego Gay Men’s Chorus. (KPBS)
• A pro soccer league that’s not the MLS might be close to putting an expansion franchise in San Diego. (NBC San Diego)
• The family of Tony Gwynn has filed a lawsuit against the tobacco industry for the role it played in his death. The suit charges that Gwynn, who died in 2014 after battling cancer in his cheek, “was the victim of a scheme to get him, a rising star athlete, addicted to smokeless tobacco, while knowing the dangers it posed to him.” (New York Times)
Sanders Meets With Border Stakeholders
In the latest Border Report, Brooke Binkowski details Sen. Bernie Sanders’ visit to San Diego this weekend, which included a stop at Friendship Park and a few meetings with folks whose lives have been impacted by the border, including the widow of a man who was killed in an encounter with border agents.
Also in our roundup of cross-border news: Details on the state’s Medi-Cal expansion that will cover undocumented immigrants under 19, and an Oceanside soccer tournament that benefits a movement aimed at ending violence in Mexico.
• The L.A. Times’ Robin Abcarian tried to use Uber Passport, the service that’s supposed to give you a ride across the border and which Mayor Kevin Faulconer and Uber executives announced in a flashy press conference in March. She found the service a bit lacking – in that, well, it couldn’t do the thing it was designed to do.
Opinion: Don’t Go Backward on Pension Reform
City Council candidates across the city seem to be uniformly opposed to public funding for a new Chargers stadium. But on other issues, there’s some daylight between folks, and from district to district.
In District 9, all of the candidates have said they support restoring city pensions for at least some new workers.
But Ray Ellis, a Republican who’s running in District 1, says in a new VOSD op-ed that city officials shouldn’t give an inch when it comes to the reforms laid out in 2012’s Prop. B. Nor does he think that giving pensions to certain workers, like 911 dispatchers, would help lure new hires.
“We need to respond to market conditions. That includes boosting pay and offering longevity and related bonuses,” Ellis writes. “Creating a long-term liability would not help recruit more dispatchers.”
• Councilman Scott Sherman’s op-ed yesterday in which he announced his opposition to the stadium unless the Chargers can prove him wrong about the project generated quite a discussion in the comments.
Quick News Hits
• A man died in San Diego’s Central Jail in August 2015 from drinking too much water, raising questions about whether he was monitored properly. (Union-Tribune)
• Voter registration in San Diego County is higher than it was at this point in 2008, KPBS reports. Registration statewide is surging, data guru Paul Mitchell noted last week.
• Another day, another twist in the “Will Gannett Soon Own the Union-Tribune?” saga. (Shoutout to my good friend James Rufus Koren, who has the very strange job of covering the L.A. Times ownership as a reporter for the L.A. Times.)
Correction: The wrong URL was posted with the link to the piece by Councilman Scott Sherman due to an editing error. It has been corrected.