The Morning Report
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San Diego County is in the middle of its budget process for the fiscal year that starts in July 2021. It’s planning on doling out more than $7 billion dollars on COVID-19 response and recovery, public safety, homelessness services and more.
Our latest San Diego 101 video breaks down the county’s budget process and how the public can get involved.
The county will hear public comments on the budget on June 14 at 9 a.m. and on June 16 and 5:30 p.m.
The Board of Supervisors will deliberate and vote to adopt the budget on June 29.
- The city of San Diego, meanwhile, is also in the midst of hammering out its budget. In a new op-ed, Councilwoman Monica Montgomery Steppe details why she wants to see a $10 million cut to police overtime. “Let me be clear: This is not a cut in public safety, it’s an investment in crime prevention,” she writes.
Mark Your Calendars for VOSD Panel on Tijuana River Sewage Crisis
Join Voice of San Diego reporter MacKenzie Elmer and collaborator Vicente Calderón of TIjuanapress.com for an unpacking of the most pressing environmental crisis along the U.S.-Mexico border.
The polluted Tijuana River regularly spills trash and raw sewage from Tijuana into San Diego, and for decades no international treaty or action has stopped it. We can’t totally prevent a river from flowing but we can unpack the reasons why it’s such a problem.
Calderón and Elmer spent the last year following how the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency plans to spend $300 million promised toward finding a solution to the problem, a solution which hasn’t yet been reached.
The evening includes a panel composed of San Diego County Supervisor Nora Vargas, a native Tijuanese and newly elected San Diego leader, will join Fay Crevoshay, an environmental advocate at WILDCOAST, and environmental researcher and professor at Mexico’s Colegio de la Frontera Norte. There will be live Spanish translation.
The participating public will have a chance to ask both journalists and panelists questions during the event. Register here for the event.
In Other News
- San Diego High School’s contract to remain on its Balboa Park campus rent-free for another century is nearly finalized. (Union-Tribune)
- Mask rules are getting complicated as state workplace regulators clash with the precedent Gov. Gavin Newsom set for doing away with virtually all masking and social distancing in concert with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. (Associated Press)
- The state is appealing a San Diego judge’s ruling that California’s assault weapons ban is unconstitutional. (City News Service)
- Firefighters contained around 20 percent of the 1,000 acre fire on Camp Pendleton as of Thursday afternoon. (KPBS)
- A heat wave cometh next week and county deserts will get an excessive heat watch as early as Monday. (City News Service)
- Do you like baseball and getting vaccinated? You can score free Padres tickets at Petco Park’s pop-up vaccine site, and, you know, prevent a deadly virus from spreading to you and your loved ones. (NBC 7)
- A group of University of California, San Diego students want to abolish campus police. (Union-Tribune)
The Morning Report was written by Maya Srikrishnan and MacKenzie Elmer, and edited by Sara Libby.