The prominent commercial real estate broker at the center of the city’s 101 Ash St. debacle now has a restricted real estate license.
Our Lisa Halverstadt reports that the state Department of Real Estate has reached a settlement with ex-city real estate adviser Jason Hughes after initially pushing to remove his license altogether. Hughes fought that attempt with a legal action to halt the removal. Last month, that court case was dismissed after a settlement allowing Hughes to keep his license was finalized.
The agreement called for Hughes to pay $8,500 in fees and penalties before receiving the restricted broker’s license, essentially a probationary label that doesn’t directly curtail real estate dealings.
A spokesperson for the state real estate agency confirmed Thursday that Hughes holds a restricted license after paying the fees. She noted that Hughes could seek to have the restriction lifted after a year though the agency will decide if “there is sufficient rehabilitation to grant the petition.”
Representatives for Hughes declined to comment on the deal.
City to Collect Higher Hotel Room Tax
Five years ago, a large majority of voters supported increasing the city of San Diego’s hotel-room tax. The ballot initiative, Measure C, promised to use the money collected to expand the Convention Center, fund homeless services and pay for road repair.
It got a majority but it did not quite reach the threshold of two-thirds support from voters. Since it was a citizen’s initiative, city lawyers argued it didn’t need to.
However, the city attorney had previously said, twice, it did need to. All of that made for a lengthy legal mess. The position that the measure passed and the hotel room tax should be increased has held up in court but there were some minor uncertainties.
What’s happening now: The city (not the mayor, city attorney or any actual official, just the city in general) announced that it would begin collecting the higher hotel-room tax in May.
There’s just one problem: Measure C passed in March 2020, before, you know, everything changed. One thing that changed is the cost of building stuff and now, even with the tax, the city could not afford the vast expansion of the Convention Center as boosters have envisioned for almost two decades.
The city announcement says that for the next five years, 59 percent of the funds collected will go to “finance Convention Center improvements and otherwise support Convention Center operations. ”
The rest will go to homelessness. After five years, 10 percent of the money collected will fund street repairs.
Departing County Behavioral Health Chief Remaining On Until Mid-April
San Diego County’s top behavioral health official will remain at the helm until April 11.
Our Lisa Halverstadt broke the news earlier this week that Luke Bergmann, the county’s behavioral health services director, is resigning at a time of significant uncertainty around funding for those services and as the county works on a raft of new initiatives.
So why’s he leaving? Bergmann told the Union-Tribune he’s taking a job at an unnamed organization that works on mental health issues with a “national footprint” that will allow him to spend more time with his family, including two young children. Departing the county role was “anguishingly difficult decision,” Bergmann said.
Parting thoughts on CARE Court: At a Thursday executive committee meeting of the county’s Behavioral Health Advisory Board, Bergmann weighed in on concerns raised about the county’s CARE Court rollout in recent Voice of San Diego stories.
Though many Californians expected the program to force people with untreated psychotic disorders into treatment, Bergmann said the program was always understood to be voluntary and that the county follows the law. He said county officials have also approached outreach tied to the program in the way they think will be most effective: repeatedly engaging people who are the subject of petitions in hopes they will agree to participate – and have had success with that approach.
“There isn’t controversy around the fact that the CARE Act program is voluntary,” Bergmann said Thursday. “It’s voluntary everywhere. There isn’t, I would say, anything peculiar about the San Diego County approach to the CARE Act program that leans farther into voluntary as opposed to involuntary engagement.”
As Halverstadt has reported, many families of people with serious mental illnesses and advocates expected something different – and Mayor Todd Gloria is now pushing for statewide reforms.
In Other News
- A San Diego nonprofit is convening meetings between rival gangs to try to prevent violence. (KPBS)
- The Trump administration is taking steps to put up border fencing along areas of San Diego’s border with Mexico where there aren’t any barriers. (Union-Tribune)
- The EPA administrator again rebuffed a proposed superfund designation to combat the border sewage crisis but is pledging to visit the area to get a close-up look at the debacle. (NBC 7)
The Morning Report was written by Lisa Halverstadt. It was edited by Andrea Lopez-Villafaña.