Morning Report: Tracks Everyone Needs But Nobody Wants

There’s a lot of heartache in North County over 1.7 miles of train track currently running along the crumbling cliffs of Del Mar. 

The San Diego Association of Governments (which decides how to expand public transportation) really thinks boring a train tunnel below Del Mar neighborhoods is the best plan. Most Del Martians and their elected leaders aren’t fans of that idea. 

They’d prefer SANDAG to push the train tracks further north so they run along Interstate 5, writes Tigist Layne. That route impacts the fewest homes and won’t require any government land takeovers to dig. And now the community of Solana Beach has been roped into the dispute, once they discovered SANDAG’s re-release of limited route options includes one that runs through their territory. 

It’s the tracks everybody needs but nobody wants, and their time is running short as sea levels rise, storms intensify and the sandy cliffs erode.

Read and subscribe to the North County Report here. 

The Face of Public Health Disasters Is Retiring

Dr. Wilma Wooten has been at the center of more intense story lines over the last 17 years than nearly any other government official in San Diego County. Wooten, the county’s public health director, has been front and center for the Hepatitis A outbreak, the Covid-19 pandemic and even how poop is measured in the water. 

Wooten will retire from her post, county officials announced Tuesday. 

Both the county and the city were widely criticized for their poor handling of the 2017 hepatitis A outbreak. That experience with hepatitis A helped inform Wooten for how she would handle the even deadlier Covid pandemic in 2020, she said, when she was a near daily presence on local television. 

History: Wooten grew up in segregated schools in a small town in Alabama. The county did a short video on her life you can check out here.

Poll Has Not Great News for Stormwater Tax Fans

The San Diego City Council appears poised to put a stormwater tax on the November ballot. It would likely put a few cents charge on every square foot of impermeable land that someone owns within the city of San Diego. A business like Solar Turbines could have to pay tens of thousands of dollars per year. 

Or they could decide to phase it in or give businesses exemptions for work they’ve already done to clean or capture rainfall. The money would be used for the pumps, channels, culverts and drains that protect against flooding and polluted coastlines. 

No matter what, voters will have to approve it. What’s interesting is just how many voters will have to approve it. And that leads us to some sobering news for supporters of the tax…

The news: The Public Policy Institute of California is out with new polling on a range of issues. The U-T’s Michael Smolens got a hold of one interesting finding: Voters surveyed by PPIC pollsters are not that supportive of a statewide ballot measure that would make it possible to pass taxes like this (for special, specific government infrastructure projects) with support from anything more than 55 percent of voters. 

That would be crucial for the stormwater tax. Supporters think the 55 percent threshold would be immediately relevant to the measure and help it pass. However, without it, the measure would require two-thirds support from voters. That’s a notoriously difficult threshold to meet. 

More: Mayor Todd Gloria came into the podcast studio this week and had some things to say about the stormwater tax. He’s not not supportive of it. But he’s also not totally supportive of it either. That interview will post Friday.  

Yet Another Closed Door Briefing on the Mega Shelter Pitch

On Monday, the City Council is set to get its fourth closed-door briefing on a proposed lease with the owner of a Middletown warehouse the mayor wants to make a 1,000 bed homeless shelter.

Refresher: Mayor Todd Gloria’s team wants to transform the warehouse property into the city’s largest-ever long-term shelter campus. The concept has faced lots of pushback, as have the lease terms that have been publicly reported. 

The latest: The City Council is set to get an update on proposed lease terms on Monday. After another closed-door briefing June 10, Gloria and Council President Sean Elo-Rivera wrote in a joint statement that city officials continue to “negotiate aggressively on behalf of San Diegans as we consider new and impactful solutions to address homelessness.” 

Before that closed-door meeting, council members heard nearly an hour of public comments Monday morning raising concerns about the proposed shelter plan and lease – and the decision to do another closed-door briefing on the pitch.

In Other News

• Prosecutors are continuing to weigh whether to file charges against pro-Palestinian protesters arrested during demonstrations at UC San Diego. (Union-Tribune) 
• A recent study shows that San Diego County is one of the least prepared counties for natural disasters nationwide. (Axios)
• County officials will drop mosquito larvicide from planes on about 50 bodies of water in the Tijuana River Valley next week. (KPBS) 
• Say goodbye to the YIMBY movement and hello to the YIGBY (Yes in God’s backyard) movement. Vox profiled an affordable housing project being built on land owned by historically Black San Diego church Bethel AME. (Vox)

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