Agenda item 9.2 at Tuesday evening’s National City Council meeting sounded like the kind of routine bureaucratic business most people are glad someone else takes care of: “Reappoint Incumbent to the Port Commissioner Position for a 4-year Term.”
Judging by the line of impassioned speakers in the packed Council chambers, the issue was anything but routine to city residents.
“The sharks are circling again,” one resident said, referring to the Port of San Diego’s seven-member Board of Commissioners, which sets policy for the port’s 34 miles of waterfront businesses, freight operations and recreational uses. National City needs “leadership unaffected by outside predatory influences,” the resident said.
Another speaker urged Councilmembers to appoint a tough advocate to the board, whose members represent the sometimes clashing interests of the port’s five member cities: Chula Vista, Coronado, Imperial Beach, National City and San Diego. “We need someone who will stand up for National City,” the speaker said.
The man at the center of the drama, a retired medical entrepreneur and National City resident named GilAnthony Ungab, wasn’t even present. The line of speakers, along with another dozen comments submitted in writing, suggest he nevertheless carries the hopes of a city that, in the words of Councilmember Marcus Bush, feels like it is being “oppressed” and “taken advantage of” by the port’s multi-million-dollar agenda.
In a separate interview, Bush listed a series of port policies that he said he and others in the city believe hurt National City’s disproportionately low-income and non-White residents. After years of passively accepting such policies, Bush said, the city now is trying to stand up for itself.
“The port has tentacles and they influence a lot of people,” he said. “I’ll keep fighting and I love my community.”
Port officials dispute that their policies adversely affect National City or that they ignore residents’ concerns. “We value diverse and various stakeholder perspectives and input, and we take community outreach seriously,” said Jason Giffen, vice president of planning and environment at the port. “We’re focused on making tomorrow even better than today.”
Giffen and other port officials pointed to an ongoing multi-million-dollar effort to modernize port operations and balance waterside uses that they said will reduce pollution throughout the San Diego region and make the port an international leader in environmental sustainability.
Many of the projects National City objects to, the officials said, in fact will help the city by reducing diesel pollution and streamlining freight operations. The city and the port recently agreed on a comprehensive development plan that includes expanded park facilities and opportunities for hotels and other revenue-generating amenities.
National City leaders say such claims sound beneficial but ignore a longstanding underlying pattern at the port of exposing city residents to disproportionate pollution and safety hazards and shortchanging the city for police, fire and other services at port facilities.
As a recent example, Bush pointed to a proposed electric truck charging station near the port’s National City marine terminal that city officials fear will draw more trucks to the area and expose residents to toxic fumes from potential battery fires.
National City is “90 percent people of color, the most diverse, the highest poverty rate of [portside] cities and has the highest rates of contamination, pollution and cancer,” Bush said. “I don’t think those are coincidences.”
Earlier this year, the city sent the port a letter detailing what it said was the port’s inadequate reimbursement for responding to hazardous fires, along with other high-cost city services such as police patrols and graffiti removal on port property.
Jeremy Day, a National City firefighter who leads the city’s firefighters’ union, said the amount the port pays the city for fire services doesn’t cover the full cost of training and preparing to fight complex industrial and maritime fires. “It doesn’t meet the needs of National City,” he said. “We just want to be fairly funded.”
In a written response to the city’s letter, the port said the city’s reimbursement analysis was flawed and would be taken into consideration when the current reimbursement arrangement is renegotiated next year.
Bush said the port also continues to ignore residents’ desire for waterfront access to San Diego Bay. National City, he said, is the only port member city with no beachfront and only one small portside park. That park, 5.2-acre Pepper Park, is on track to gain 2.5 acres as part of the recently adopted comprehensive development plan.
Mayor Ron Morrison said that, beyond specific projects, there is an overall sense among city residents that “the port has been condescending to National City” because the city is not as large or wealthy as other port-adjacent cities such as San Diego or Coronado.
“If there’s something they need to do to be a legitimate port but no one wants it, [they] put it in National City,” Morrison said. “We’re trying to break that.”
Such concerns came to a head with Tuesday’s port commissioner appointment vote. Last year, the port board censured National City’s then-commissioner Sandy Naranjo, who had clashed repeatedly with other commissioners and port staff. Following the censure, the City Council removed Naranjo from the board, saying she was no longer able to represent the city effectively.
Ungab was appointed as a temporary replacement. Tuesday’s vote was to award him a full four-year term ending in 2028. After heated discussion with raised voices, crosstalk and members of the audience shouting to be heard, the Council voted 3-2 to move forward with awarding Ungab a full term. The chamber erupted in applause.
Morrison said the vote felt especially fraught because he and other Councilmembers suspected the port had been working behind the scenes to derail Ungab’s appointment. Morrison said Ungab is viewed as an effective advocate who is not afraid to ask questions or promote the city’s interests.
“That’s big business down there,” he said of the port commission. “You need someone with savvy and some integrity, otherwise the city’s interests get compromised.”
Less than a month before Tuesday’s Council meeting, Councilmembers received a letter urging them to postpone the commissioner vote from the Environmental Health Coalition, a National City-based environmental group that for decades has fought the port in an effort to reduce pollution and boost public health in some of the San Diego region’s poorest neighborhoods.
The Oct. 31 letter said the vote delay was needed because community members and the Health Coalition needed more time to assess other potential candidates and “because any future [port] commissioner must be ready to continue progress on electrification of port operations and funding for community projects that past commissioners have supported.”
Two days before the letter was sent, the port announced it had secured a $59 million grant from the federal Environmental Protection Agency to accelerate electrification projects. As part of the grant, the port planned to pay the Health Coalition $400,000 to conduct a four-year “community outreach” program informing the public about the electrification work.
“Talk about putting the coyote in charge of the chicken coop,” Morrison said of the Health Coalition’s financial relationship with the port. “Because [the Health Coalition’s] office is in National City, they keep claiming they represent National City. I say, ‘No, you don’t.’”
Kyle Heiskala, policy co-director for the Health Coalition, said the Coalition’s letter had nothing to do with the grant award from the port and was simply an effort to ensure that the city gets the best possible representation at the port commission.
“The Environmental Health Coalition was founded in 1980 as the Coalition Against Cancer, and our work is and has always been about public health and addressing the air pollution that plagues National City,” Heiskala said. “This EPA funding…doesn’t change our mission or goals.”
Heiskala said the Coalition urged National City to reopen the port commissioner application not to promote a more port-friendly candidate but “to ensure that there is an open, transparent community process [and] that the best candidate for this full four-year term would be selected.”
Heiskala pointed out that both recently ousted port commissioner Sandy Naranjo and Ungab during his five months on the commission voted to advance projects National City now objects to, including the electric truck charging station.
“We’re not dumping something in National City,” Heiskala said of the port’s electrification efforts. “There are claims being made that this is a city that is so under-resourced. That’s why we’re working to bring clean investments to the city.”
In a wide-ranging interview, port officials said they, too, are committed to what vice president Jason Giffen called “health equity for all.”
Giffen ticked off a list of upcoming projects that he said would benefit National City’s most vulnerable residents, including electric onshore power facilities that will cut diesel pollution from docked ships, a new fleet of electric shuttles for port workers and upgrades to roads and lighting near port operations.
The electric truck charging station, Giffen said, would help to eliminate diesel pollution not only in National City but throughout the San Diego region.
“We’ve brought quite a lot of funding to the region,” Giffen said. “Infrastructure doesn’t steal headlines, but it’s a critical component of moving forward to make sure we have a sustainable waterfront.”
Judging by Tuesday’s City Council meeting, city residents remain unconvinced. “The process that got us here are the same forces that unfairly got rid of Sandy Naranjo,” resident and frequent Council critic Edward Nieto said at the meeting. “Let’s have a port that works for all of us.”