Morning Report: Wednesday, Politics Day

From now through the primary election, we’ll put up a Wednesday politics update in addition to the Politics Report that comes out every Saturday.

City attorney is not not not supporting Council president’s opponent: Terry Hoskins, the retired police officer who is running against Council President Sean Elo-Rivera, is holding a “Rally for Terry” Feb. 16.

“Thus far, former Councilmember Marti Emerald will be in attendance, along with City Attorney Mara Elliott and possibly one of the Assistant Chiefs of Police. Chief Nisleit will not be in San Diego that day,” he wrote in an email promoting the event.

We asked Elliott if she had endorsed Hoskins. Her campaign consultant Dan Rottenstreich passed along that she had not endorsed the candidate but had known him for more than a decade as a friend and colleague. She would be attending the rally only as a guest.

Elliott accused Elo-Rivera of trying to silence her in September 2022.  He also supported a significant change to the role of city attorney and she had some significant criticisms about how that went.

Silly mailer season: We have our first bank-shot mailer of the season. Remember, this is when a mailer seems like it’s trying to do one thing but actually is advocating something else. New San Diego, the independent expenditure committee supporting Mayor Todd Gloria’s re-election sent mailers that tout Jane Glasson as the “ONLY Republican for San Diego Mayor.”

The mayor did not attract any well-funded opponents and no high-profile Republicans but Jane Glasson is a Republican and she is running and it appears the mayor’s friends would like her to be the one to go to the runoff with him instead of, say, police officer Larry Turner and attorney Genevieve Jones-Wright.

The Police Officers Association sent mailers supporting Councilman Stephen Whitburn and opposing Elo-Rivera.

U-T still in the endorsement game: When a subsidiary of Alden Global Capital purchased the Union-Tribune many of us wondered if that would be the end of political endorsements for the paper. In October 2022, the company made news of its own when it announced it would stop endorsing federal and state candidates.

But it began rolling out its endorsements this week in local races, supporting Gloria’s re-election and Chief Deputy City Attorney Heather Ferbert for city attorney over Assemblyman Brian Maienschein. The rule is that the newspaper’s endorsements don’t matter unless your favored candidates get them, then they’re a huge honor from a paper you’ve read your whole life.

It’ll be interesting to see who the depleted editorial board chooses for county supervisor between incumbent Terra Lawson-Remer and former Mayor Kevin Faulconer. Lawson-Remer has worked hard to win over older institutions of San Diego politics but Faulconer got the U-T’s nod in 2014 and 2014 for mayor and they always like to mix up their party picks.

Why We Came Up with Our Own Schools Metric

Test scores are tricky. While some people assume they’re a cold, objective measure of a student’s knowledge, that’s not quite right. Research has long shown that scores are inextricably linked to income. 

Wealthier communities, almost without fail, score better than poorer communities. That correlation is so close that when we look at how a school fares on standardized tests, we’re often seeing the income of its students’ families reflected. 

That bothered us at Voice of San Diego. So, a few years ago, in partnership with UC San Diego Extended Studies Center for Research and Evaluation, Voice created a new metric that seeks to disentangle income from scores. Our income vs. test score metric controls test scores for poverty, allowing a glimpse at how well schools are educating children without the all-important economic angle. 

We’ve included that metric in every Parent’s Guide to San Diego Schools since. The metric gives parents a way to dig deeper than topline scores and even find schools that, despite what on the surface may seem like just-OK scores, are going above and beyond to prepare kids for whatever’s next.  

Read our story and more about the one school that is still standing out.

After-School Care 101

It seems like the price of everything is rising, and after-school care is no different. For working parents countywide who rely on after-school care, that’s bad news. Last year, we told the story of one parent whose work life was turned upside down because of his son’s school schedule and an endless waitlist for district-provided after-school care. 

For each Parent’s Guide to San Diego Schools, Voice is on the lookout for stories and explainers that can make local families’ lives easier. This year, we included an FAQ about after-school care with local YMCA child care guru Laurie Han and a rundown of district-provided after-school care options.

From information about local waitlists, when parents should start looking and how to find scholarships or subsidies, Voice has you covered. 

Read more here. 

PSA: This post was featured in our latest Parent’s Guide to San Diego Schools. You can download the guide for free here and check out more schools guide content here.

Want a print copy? You can get one from our distribution partners. View the list here. 

San Diego Grapples with Flood Aftermath

The impact of the devastating Jan. 22 storms that displaced more than 1,000 San Diego families is still reverberating throughout the region and local governments are still ramping up efforts to help victims get back on their feet.

The county announced this week that it began providing 30 days of temporary housing for flood victims but the fledgling program is struggling to accommodate everyone requesting help. Displaced residents on Tuesday told the San Diego City Council their hotel vouchers will soon expire and they are unsure where their families will go next. A Mountain View resident also shared her family’s story with CBS 8.

Housing Commission CEO Lisa Jones and Council President Sean Elo-Rivera pledged to speak with county officials to help them get answers. Jones said those who spoke to the City Council had vouchers from community agencies and weren’t relying on the city’s hotel program.

County spokesman Michael Workman told Voice the county’s goal is to transition displaced residents into its program before they become displaced again.

“Realistically speaking, some won’t meet that timeline,” Workman wrote in an email. “We are asking those who issued their vouchers to extend them until they can transition into (the) county program.”

Earlier this week: The City Council greenlit a plan by Mayor Todd Gloria to waive building and demolition fees for people whose homes were damaged. Gloria’s plan is projected to knock off millions in fees for people repairing or rebuilding their homes and will reimburse residents who’ve already paid those fees out of pocket.

Councilmembers voted Monday to include flood recovery and stormwater infrastructure repairs in a list of budget priorities it’s sending Gloria before he releases his proposed annual budget in April. The call for increased funding may be a hard sell. San Diego is already staring down $1.6 billion in unfunded stormwater infrastructure needs and the city projects a $115 million budget deficit in the coming year. Officials project that deficit will nearly double over the next five years. 

Meanwhile: In the southeastern San Diego neighborhoods hardest hit by the floods – one of the locations U.S Department of Agriculture officials toured this week as they weighed providing aid – residents are claiming that so-called “vulture investors,” are looking to purchase damaged homes from families at bargain-bin prices.

Further north: North County’s Lake Hodges dam is old – more than 100 years old. Safety concerns have led state officials to require the dam to be no more than 30 percent full, so after weeks of heavy rain, the city has repeatedly drained water from the dam. Officials have released more than 600 million gallons since late January and they’re still not done.

Song of the Week

Wavves, “No Hope Kids”: Though much of Wavves’ early output has to do with being young and hopeless, there are perhaps no songs as direct as “No Hope Kids.” The track is a wash of sunburnt guitar, blown-out vocals and a no-frills drum line, that felt almost like an anthem for dirtbag kids like me. It was a soundtrack to a summer of house shows, alleyway cigarettes and light beer. 

Like with most of Williams’ music, the lyrics aren’t particularly deep or poetic, but in exclusively one and two-syllable words, they expressed the essence of a youth that felt both empty and like it was slipping away. All these years later, it feels silly to admit how much songs like these meant to me. But then I put on a pair of headphones, crank up the volume and stop caring. 

Read more about this week’s pick.

Like what you hear? Check out Wavves at Soma on Saturday, February 17. 

Do you have a “Song of the Week” suggestion? Shoot us an email and a sentence or two about why you’ve been bumping this song lately. Friendly reminder: All songs should be by local artists! 

In Other News

• San Diego State University researchers released a report Tuesday calling the decades-old issue of pollution from the Tijuana River a “public health crisis.” According to the report, “toxic chemicals and microbes in raw untreated sewage, industrial waste, and urban run-off, once thought to remain isolated to just the water, can also be airborne and linger in soils, which may have much larger and farther reaching environmental health impacts.” (Union-Tribune)
• Despite being a step in the right direction, City Auditor Andy Hanau wrote in a new report that San Diego’s plan to repave city streets is missing important details like how fixes would be paid for and where funding would come from. (Union-Tribune)
• A 1,300 acre plot of land in East County initially slated to be turned into a 1,266-home development will instead be incorporated into the Rancho Jamul Ecological Reserve after a contingent of government agencies and the Sierra Club bought the parcel. (NBC 7)
• The developer of a proposed 485-unit apartment complex in Encinitas is pumping the brakes on the project to give it time to reassess the development. (Union-Tribune)

The Morning Report was written by Jakob McWhinney, Scott Lewis and Lisa Halverstadt. It was edited by Lisa Halverstadt and Scott Lewis.