Even if cities across San Diego County built every single last home or project allowed within their zoning plans over the next three decades – a very, very big “if” – the region still wouldn’t have homes for everyone.
That’s the conclusion of SANDAG officials who are working on the region’s long-term growth forecast, Lisa Halverstadt reports.
“SANDAG staffers have in recent months met with planners countywide to learn where their local plans allow for housing – and how much. They concluded city and county plans permit 357,000 more units between now and 2050, short of the 509,000 additional homes SANDAG estimates the region will need,” Halverstadt writes.
As San Diego and other communities have seen time and again, just because a plan allows for a certain number of homes doesn’t mean those homes will ever be built. There’s community opposition to contend with, and trouble cobbling together funding can also stymie projects.
Some city planners told SANDAG this week that they think granny flats – small units on existing lots – will be part of the solution in their communities.
• San Diego County Board of Education Trustee Mark Powell has an out-there idea for how to ease the homelessness crisis: House the homeless inside people’s homes, a sort-of foster care system for the homeless, he writes in a VOSD op-ed. His proposal would include “a rigorous screening process” for both the homeowners and homeless residents.
Lakeside Teachers Can Get Paid to Retire Every Year
Often when school districts are facing a budget crunch, they turn to early retirement incentives as a way to help – teachers nearing retirement get money to leave, giving them a nice cash infusion, and getting their higher salaries off the district’s books.
But in Lakeside, this option is available every year as part of teachers’ contracts, Ashly McGlone reports.
“Twenty-three teachers received retirement payouts totaling $1.3 million under the contract in effect from 2013 to 2016. Amounts paid to each person ranged from roughly $33,000 to $82,000, district records show,” McGlone writes.
District officials told McGlone they couldn’t explain why the offer was put in the contract because the deal “has been in existence prior to the employment of anyone that currently works at the district office.”
District officials plan to phase out parts of the deal over the coming years.
County Government Roundup
East County Magazine pressed County Supervisor Dianne Jacob’s office, following our report that local cities and the county were deleting public records before the two-year window required by the state.
An aide to Jacob wrote that “neither the (California Public Records Act) or state statutes related to the preservation and destruction of county records expressly address emails.”
East County Mag took the aide’s statements to a public records lawyer, who eviscerated that interpretation of the law.
• Former DA Bonnie Dumanis, who is running for the County Board of Supervisors, “has given $15,000 to a community safety fund over the past three years” to make up for donations she received for an earlier campaign as part of a huge campaign finance scandal, the U-T reports. A Mexican national was convicted of donating money to Dumanis and others – foreign citizens are barred from donating to U.S. politicians.
• Two county supervisors want to put tourniquets in public places in case of a mass shooting. (NBC San Diego)
Radio Host Is Getting Bashed Before His Show Even Starts
Padres execs on Tuesday condemned a radio host whose tweet made light of suicides on the San Diego-Coronado Bridge. After initially brushing off criticism about the tweet, the host eventually deleted the message and apologized.
Kevin Klein’s radio show on 97.3, the new radio home of Padres baseball, hasn’t even started yet. But it’s getting a lot of bad attention because of a tweet from Klein that included a photo of the bridge with the text “JUMP … to a new morning show.” (Klein’s San Diego show might be new, his dumb behavior is not.)
“We find the comments made last night by Entercom’s employee offensive, insensitive and completely unacceptable,” Padres Executive Chairman Ron Fowler and General Partner Peter Seidler said in a statement, referring to the company that owns the station. “Mental illness and suicide are not joking matters. Additionally, we’ve expressed our concerns to Entercom around the tone and direction of the station they have chosen to create.”
Caltrans is in the midst of evaluating projects to lower suicides on the bridge, which happen in double digits each year.
Quick News Hits
• The latest in the city’s botched water bills saga: CBS8 meteorologist Matt Baylow tweeted Tuesday that the city sent him a refund check for the amount he was overcharged.
• The Little Italy Association is quietly moving dockless bikes out of the neighborhood. (KPBS)
• The Reader has some more anecdotes about San Diego pot shops attracting Mexican customers. A Tijuana resident told The Reader he prefers to buy marijuana in San Diego but that it’s sometimes confiscated when he crosses back into Mexico. As VOSD’s Maya Srikrishnan reported, “Cannabis culture and advocacy from California is making its way south of the border and activists there are hopeful legalization here can shift Mexico’s politics.”
• Mexico will put more than $4 million toward cleaning the Tijuana River channel that causes sewage to spill into the U.S. (Associated Press)