On Friday, one of our reporters woke up to quite a few messages from the mayor’s office. The mayor’s people thought that a story we’d published the day before was both “dangerous” and “harmful.”
The story — you can read it here — was about pervasive distrust among flood survivors. City officials have admitted they knew canals in southeastern San Diego needed to be cleared, but hadn’t gotten around to clearing them. That has led flood survivors to conclude that A) city leaders either don’t care what happens to them or B) intentionally neglected the area in order to push out poor people.
Rachel Laing, a spokeswoman for the mayor, acknowledged a “trust deficit,” but argued that our reporter, Will Huntsberry, left crucial context out of the story.
The crucial context: acknowledging all the work city leaders have done in disaster relief. City officials have spent untold millions — perhaps as much as $60 million — on disaster relief, Laing wrote. The city has “deployed operations teams at a level never seen before.”
The flood survivors Huntsberry spoke to didn’t mean to imply city leaders had done nothing. They meant to imply that what was done before the flood and what was done after the flood have all been woefully inadequate. They wanted apologies and for city leaders to start doing right by their neighborhoods.
“We believe reporting on people’s perceptions without context is harmful to them and the broader community,” Laing wrote.
Huntsberry reached out to a few of the survivors to get their responses.
The Learning Curve: A Guide to Our Schools Guide
A guide to the guide. It might sound annoying, but it’s everything you didn’t know you needed.
We recently published our annual “A Parent’s Guide to Public Schools” and it is chalk full of information designed to help parents demystify the complex world of education. It’s also full of raw data on most public schools in San Diego County.
In this week’s Learning Curve, education reporter Jakob McWhinney gives you the highlights of the guide.
IEPs: A special education expert breaks down the ins and outs of Individualized Education Programs.
Chronic Absenteeism: McWhinney has been beating the drum on the explosion of chronic absenteeism since the pandemic for months. The guide provides an update on where it stands now and efforts to improve it.
Data: The guide has all sorts of great information about each school, including a metric we created ourselves that looks at a school’s test scores while controlling for its poverty level.
After-school programs: The schools guide team tracked down as much information as they could about which schools offer after-school programs and also spoke to a local after-school insider about what to look for in a program.
The State of the County: Vargas Says Feds Need to Step Up
During her State of the County address, Chair Nora Vargas announced that the county’s migrant center has officially run out of money and closed this week.
“People are being displaced as we speak,” she said.
Background: The county allocated $6 million to support a migrant center to offer asylum seekers services. Since September, Border Patrol has released nearly 100,000 asylum seekers at transit stations and San Diego communities, according to county officials.
“Until the federal government steps in and provides additional funding, many will be impacted,” Vargas said. She announced that she sent a letter to President Joe Biden requesting that the federal government step up and provide $1.5 million a month to operate the center.
A look ahead: Vargas also spoke about the county’s efforts to address homelessness, improve air quality and expand access to behavioral health services. She said there’s a lot of work the county needs to do to help flood victims recover, but she praised the work of nonprofit organizations and volunteers who helped communities impacted by the Jan. 22 floods.
In Other News
- San Diego voters in November will consider whether to fund transit, highway and road projects with a half-cent sales tax increase. But as Axios reports, it seems the agency tasked with building one of the measure’s major selling points — building a rail connection to the airport — is still considering how to make the project happen. The San Diego Association of Government’s board is set to discuss Friday if it should spend more time studying how to make that connection possible.
- And speaking of ballot measures, a City Council committee on Wednesday asked staff to take a look at how a stormwater tax would work, if the city chooses to pursue it. Remember: That’s the ballot measure Council President Sean Elo-Rivera is pushing that would raise a tax on properties to pay for stormwater system improvements. (CBS 8, Voice of San Diego)
- The Chula Vista City Council on Monday will begin the process of filling in the seat vacated by former Councilwoman Andrea Cardenas. The Council must first officially declare the seat vacant then they have 45 days to appoint someone to the seat. (Union-Tribune)
The Morning Report was written by Will Huntsberry and Andrea Lopez-Villafaña. It was edited by Andrea Lopez-Villafaña.
“City officials have spent untold millions — perhaps as much as $60 million — on disaster relief…”
aw shucks, ya got us — first you say untold, then ya TOLD us.