Often, the sources of systemic inequity aren’t obvious. They’re given boring names like “development impact fee” and forgotten except by the privileged few with time and energy to spend pulling the right bureaucratic levers.
That’s what MacKenzie Elmer discovered when she looked at a proposed plan to redefine how the city values – and more importantly, pays for – improvements to the public green spaces San Diego has left.
Developers paid the North University City neighborhood – adjacent to University of California, San Diego – upward of $230 million in one-time fees to build there. The neighborhood exhausted its list of desired parks projects for which this fee money is typically used. So now it’s spending on its streets.
Yet poorer and older neighborhoods, like Sherman Heights in southeastern San Diego, have little to no arable land left for the kind of new development that triggers large fees. Thus, their half a park sits treeless and untended, though well-used.
The city of San Diego has a plan to change that if neighborhoods, primarily those benefiting from these fees, don’t raise hell.
Politics Update
- If you want a dose of nostalgia from the pre-coronavirus times, the latest Politics Report has details on Councilwoman Jen Campbell’s compromise plan to regulate short-term vacation rentals.
- Cory Briggs spoke to Scott Lewis on the VOSD Podcast about his run for city attorney.
- Oceanside Councilman Christopher Rodriguez, who pushed to reopen businesses amid the pandemic, announced he’s running for mayor. (San Diego)
The Weekend in COVID
- The city of San Diego’s decision to defy a state request to close its beach parking lots over July 4 weekend could have financial repercussions. (NBC San Diego)
- The Union-Tribune checked in with restaurant owners as the industry faces the prospect of indoor dining soon shutting down again.
- An SDSU professor argues in an op-ed that the school’s decision to move forward with a football season disregards Black athletes’ lives. (Times of San Diego)
- A death row inmate convicted in one of San Diego County’s most notorious murder cases died from coronavirus complications. (Union-Tribune)
The Morning Report was written by Sara Libby, and edited by Scott Lewis.