Last week, our Lisa Halverstadt broke down budget-related tensions between Mayor Todd Gloria’s team and the San Diego Housing Commission over what the housing agency views as a proposed 42 percent cut in funding for city homeless programs it oversees.
This Wednesday, the Housing Commission board sent a letter to the City Council reiterating the housing agency’s own budget crunch as the city faces a separate $137 million deficit – and calling for the city to fully fund its homelessness programs if it doesn’t proceed with a controversial proposed mega shelter in Middletown.
“If the $18 million is not reallocated to SDHC’s budget to restore funds for homelessness shelters and services, we will need to reduce or, in some cases, eliminate some vital programs and initiatives,” five of seven appointed housing commissioners wrote in their Wednesday letter.
What Gloria’s team is saying: Gloria spokesperson Rachel Laing said late last week that city and Housing Commission officials are working together to address budget issues without service cuts.
But she suggested Thursday the housing agency shouldn’t count on getting the $52 million for homelessness programs it requested ahead of Gloria’s proposed budget release earlier this month.
“Whether it’s at the Kettner and Vine site or elsewhere, we fully intend to site a new, large shelter in the coming year and will need to plan for funding accordingly,” Laing wrote in a text message.
What’s next: City Council budget hearings start next Wednesday. Gloria will release a revised budget in mid-May and the City Council must approve the final budget by the end of June.
A Court Says Agencies Can Delay Records Responses Indefinitely. Help Us Fight It
For years, Voice of San Diego doggedly pursued public records about teacher misconduct, repeatedly going to court to fight for those records. We recently got some bad news about a court fight involving the San Diego Unified School District.
Superior Court Judge Keri Katz issued a ruling that essentially suggests public agencies can indefinitely delay releasing records or fail to release them for any reason. That’s despite the state Public Records Act’s requirement that says records should be distributed promptly.
Katz decided San Diego Unified wasn’t out of line for delaying production of records about an educator whom former students accused of sexual harassment and assault – or other requests it was taking the district an average of 399 to respond to.
Now, as our Scott Lewis writes, Voice needs your help. We want to appeal this ruling and ask a higher court to clarify that agencies can’t indefinitely delay releasing or distributing records – and San Diego Unified is demanding that we cover thousands of dollars in existing legal fees.
Want to help? You can donate here.
Major Trash Clean-Up in Tijuana River
This winter’s rains washed a mountain of trash from Tijuana into San Diego via the cross-border Tijuana River. But the federal agency that manages border water issues is making headway cleaning it up.
So far, the International Boundary and Water Commission says it has collected 12 shipping containers full of trash – about 126 tons of debris. And the job is only one-fourth of the way done, said Frank Fisher, spokesperson for the IBWC.
The clean-up began March 25 and could take another month to finish. All that waste went to the Otay Landfill, managed by Republic Services, in Chula Vista.
The river carries all kinds of polluted goodies from the Mexican city’s streets and channels. Fisher said the most of the waste is paper, plastics and wood.
“We had to clean up this site as it was not only an eyesore, but it gave the perception of an unhealthy and unsafe environment. The community wanted us to do something as soon as possible, and we responded,” Fisher wrote in an email. “ It was more efficient in cost and timing to get our own in-house crews to conduct the clean-up. We won’t know the exact cost until the job is finished.”
The Progress Report: The Art of Teaching Reading
Whether reading programs are successful for the most critical age groups (3rd and 4th graders) takes deep work.
DEEP or the Diamond Educational Excellence Partnership has success in how it targets and lifts up early readers at four elementary schools in San Diego’s underserved neighborhoods.
The organization ties-in community groups that bring pre-literacy skills to chlidcare providers and families before kids start school. DEEP supports reading teachers with extra phonetic curriculum and techniques to convey how using the English language actually feels in the throat, or sounds off the tongue.
Jakob McWhinney shares insights into this novel community-based educational partnership in his latest Progress Report.
Read the Progress Report here.
In Other News
- inewsource profiled the homeless residents of a small island in the middle of the San Diego River who have left more populated areas to avoid police enforcement.
- KPBS reports that Customs and Border Protection officials are dropping hundreds of migrants at San Ysidro’s Iris Transit Center following the closure of the county’s migrant transit center and the recent influx of federal funding.
- The Union-Tribune reports that mayoral candidate Larry Turner held court at a Wednesday forum that Mayor Todd Gloria declined to attend – and notes that Gloria skipped multiple similar events ahead of the March primary race. Gloria’s team says he plans to join multiple debates later this year.
- inewsource reports that the Port of San Diego is not a fan of Assemblymember David Alvarez’s bill aiming to reform the agency – namely, its proposed ethics mandates and governance changes.
- Parts of a decomposed gray whale washed up in La Jolla on Thursday. The remains were taken to Miramar Landfill, owned by the city of San Diego, after the national Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration analyzed the whale’s skull and took samples to determine cause of death. Our MacKenzie Elmer wrote about why it’s dumb that whales are disposed in landfills.
The Morning Report was written by Lisa Halverstadt and MacKenzie Elmer. It was edited by Andrea Lopez-Villafaña.