For nearly two years, a North County family of five grappled with a daunting, all too familiar dilemma: how to get back on their feet and off the street?
Their story started in early 2023, when the father lost his job at a company that made parts for heavy trucks. Despite his wife picking up random shifts and receiving rental assistance, the family was evicted just months later.
Over the next 21 months, the couple did what they could to survive – staying in motels, the back of rented U-Hauls and at the North County Interfaith shelter. Even with the assistance and working four jobs between them, finding a new apartment was a tall order.
But last month, the family did it – they found a place to live. A local nonprofit even helped them furnish their new two-bedroom apartment in San Marcos. The family’s windy road back home was a testament to their perseverance, said those who worked with them along the way, and the steep barriers faced by those struggling to find stable housing.
Sweetwater Forever Chemicals Revelation Turning Into Forever Problem
Late last year, the Sweetwater Water Authority, the agency that provides water to about 200,000 people in South County, made a frightening announcement: testing had revealed its reservoirs contained elevated levels of toxic industrial chemicals.
Those chemicals, known as PFAS, are often referred to as “forever chemicals,” because the body cannot break them down. They are linked to an elevated risk of cancer.
When the agency announced the testing results, they said the elevated levels had been discovered in October of last year. But now, as South County reporter Jim Hinch writes, a former Sweetwater board member claims the agency has known about the danger since at least 2021, but did not divulge the information “because they didn’t want to expose themselves to liability or alarm the public.”
A spokesperson for the agency denied that claim, insisting they’d learned of the problem in October, like they’d previously claimed.
A New Firefighter Wellness Provider
The San Diego City Council approved a $12 million contract for a new contractor, Concentra, to provide preventative testing and wellness services for the San Diego fire department.
The previous company to hold the contract, San Diego Sports Medicine, vigorously protested the bidding process and said Concentra had made material misstatements during the bidding process. Representatives from Concentra said the misstatements in their initial bid were accidental and later corrected.
Several councilmembers pressed representatives from both companies, as well as the fire department, about the bidding process. Ultimately, fire department officials said they felt comfortable and secure awarding the contract to Concentra and most councilmembers at Tuesday’s meeting backed them. Only Councilmember Jen Campbell voted against the new contract.
LAFCO Claps Back
Yesterday, we learned that the city of San Diego plans to initiate litigation against the region’s boundary refs over their decision to allow La Jolla’s separation plans to proceed.
The Local Agency Formation Commission, or LAFCO, decision is just the beginning of a long and complicated process, as Keene Simonds, executive officer explained during a recent interview with Voice of San Diego.
A LAFCO representative told us that they haven’t seen the lawsuit, but they believe they addressed the city’s concerns in a May 2 letter and during a recent meeting.
“We remain committed to fulfilling the obligations and responsibilities outlined to San Diego LAFCO in state law, which grants LAFCO with the authority to be inclusive in enfranchising residents, rather than disenfranchising them,” wrote Priscilla Mumpower with LAFCO.
Only a Few Tickets Left for Off the Record
Join us on Thursday, May 29, for our first-ever Off the Record event in honor of our 20th anniversary. We’re hosting a cocktail reception and seated dinner.
No awards, just funny speeches and a chance to come together and laugh about the stories that never change in San Diego. Get your tickets here.
Song of the Week
Nebula, “Counting Clouds”: Soaked in effortless cool, “Counting Clouds,” is a jazzy R&B tune that feels a bit like an overcast day – a fitting companion to the “May gray,” we’ve been living through the past couple of days. That’s likely partly thanks to the rumbling rain clouds in the background.
But while the song’s simple, straightforward composition feels almost sunny, there’s a more meditative undercurrent lurking under the surface that brings to mind the feeling of watching rain pitter against your window. It’s a sublimely smooth jam impressively capped by Nebula Wade’s velvety sweet voice. The end-product may leave you asking, “Who needs the sun anyway?”
Like what you hear? Check out Nebula and the Cosmos at Music Box on Thursday, May 15.
Do you have a “Song of the Week” suggestion? Shoot us an email and a sentence or two about why you’ve been bumping this song lately. Friendly reminder: all songs should be by local artists!
In Other News
- When a real-estate investment firm purchased the ailing downtown Horton Plaza shopping center in 2018, they had plans to fill it with a ritzy campus filled with mixed-use office and retail space and hundreds of apartments. Half a decade later, there are no significant lessees, the firm still owes hundreds of millions of dollars to the lender that financed the construction project and the property is set to go up for auction next month. (Union-Tribune)
- California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced Tuesday that his office had opened a civil rights investigation into San Diego County and the San Diego County Office of Education into whether the entities had engaged in “a pattern or practice of unlawful treatment of youth at East Mesa Juvenile Detention Facility and Youth Transition Campus.”
- In 2020, a former San Diego County Sheriff’s Deputy Aaron Richard Russell shot an unarmed man in the back as he was fleeing, killing him. A San Diego federal grand jury indicted him on charges that he’d violated the man’s civil rights. Russell’s trial began this week. (Union-Tribune)
- On May 10, 1970, George Winne Jr., a fourth-year UC San Diego student, self-immolated in protest of Pres. Richard Nixon’s expansion of the Vietnam War. Fifty-five years later, the UCSD Guardian looks back on the legacy of Winne Jr. (The Guardian)
The Morning Report was written by Jakob McWhinney, Will Huntsberry and Andrea Lopez-Villafaña. It was edited by Andrea Lopez-Villafaña.
LAFCO fully documented their legislated authority to authorize signatures that didn’t meet the Registrar of Voter’s stricter requirements, but Gloria is going to waste money we don’t have, hiring his buddy lawyers and consultants, to take them to court so a series of judges can tell him to pound sand. Time to recall Mayor Gloria so we can use the money to keep our lakes and fire rings instead!