The Morning Report
Get the news and information you need to take on the day.
January 11 was an atypical trash day on L Street in the Grant Hill neighborhood.
Green bins appeared on curbsides and door steps. Just what belongs in this mysterious new bin? Turns out, not many residents knew the day the city of San Diego first rolled out its food waste recycling program.
Environment reporter MacKenzie Elmer followed up with residents on that street to see how the new program is going. She found that just two weeks after bin delivery, the 18,000 residents that got their bins had doubled their food waste disposal – all part of an effort to prevent planet-warming gasses generated by rotting food waste from leaking out landfills.
North County Report: A Look Into This Year’s Point-In-Time Count in Vista
On Jan. 26, hundreds of people volunteered to count and survey homeless people across San Diego County. North County reporter Tigist Layne was one of them.
She tagged along with a group of volunteers in Vista and spent hours searching for and speaking to homeless people.
Beginning at 4 a.m., volunteers surveyed homeless people about how long they’ve been unhoused, their mental health, the factors that contributed to where they are now and more.
In this week’s North County Report, Layne shares the challenges that come with the Point-in-Time Count, the stories of first-time homelessness and the extreme lack of resources that revealed themselves during her experience.
Read the North County Report here.
In Other News
- Several law enforcement agencies are investigating the possible theft and mishandling of firearm transactions at the San Diego County Deputy Sheriff’s Association store. NBC 7 reports that a union employee has been terminated but no arrest has been made.
- UC San Diego acknowledged in a public report that women at Scripps Institution of Oceanography have disproportionately less office space and have been given far less research than male researchers. (Union-Tribune)
- As the federal Covid-19 emergency declaration comes to an end later this month, additional food stamp assistance that more than 350,000 San Diegans now rely on will also come to an end. (CBS 8)
- The Board of Supervisors approved minimum wage requirements for traffic control workers on privately funded projects on San Diego County roads. (City News Service)
- The repeal of a state constitutional amendment requiring a community vote on public housing projects is headed yet again to the 2024 ballot. U-T columnist Michael Smolens argues that, while repeal seems like a sure thing, it’s never wise to underestimate the appeal of local control in politics. The last time around, a majority of San Diego County voters opposed a similar ballot measure.
- Love is in the air in Vegas. One happy local couple shared their elopement story this week with San Diego Magazine. Congratulations to the Marxes.
The Morning Report was written by MacKenzie Elmer, Tigist Layne, Jesse Marx and Jakob McWhinney. It was edited by Andrea Lopez-Villafaña.