Fairgrounds Kills Del Mar Housing Deal

The board that runs the Del Mar Fairgrounds has put a stake through the heart of an already ailing deal to build affordable housing on a portion of Fairgrounds property.

The board voted 5-3 on Tuesday to terminate an exclusive negotiating agreement it signed in 2024 with the city of Del Mar to locate part of an affordable housing project on Fairgrounds land currently occupied by an RV park.

Board members cited economic and political uncertainties as reasons they voted to terminate the agreement.

Even before the vote, the housing deal’s future appeared uncertain.

Fairgrounds and Del Mar officials have sparred repeatedly over the project, while wider debates over housing loom in the background.

Recently, the City Council held a hastily arranged meeting to demand an investigation into California Attorney General Rob Bonta and a member of the Fairgrounds board.

Councilmembers wanted to know whether the two officials were biased against the Fairgrounds project because of ties to the developer of a rival project.

Board members voting to kill the deal cited what they called “animosity” surrounding the project. In what was perhaps the discussion’s greatest understatement, one board member called project negotiations “messy.”

Read the full story here. 

The Learning Curve: What New City Hall?

A leading San Diego Unified School District trustee is pouring cold water on a plan to transform San Diego’s ailing Civic Center into an arts district.

Richard Barrera, who is currently a frontrunner in the race to become California’s State Superintendent of Public Instruction, tells our Jakob McWhinney he’s on the fence at best about the deal, first reported by the U-T, which he said will be difficult to pull off and wouldn’t offer much benefit to the school district.

“When it comes to what we would get out of being part of a partnership that includes governance from the city, I just don’t see it,” Barrera said.

Barrera said he likes the concept – but it’s just a concept. “I would start with a skepticism that the school district gets anything out of that,” he said.

Also in the Learning Curve: A local school district wants the UC system to bring back the use of standardized testing in admissions for math. 

Read the Learning Curve here.

Mexican Government Selects Rosarito Desalination Plant Builder 

Mexico’s top water agency chose a Spanish company to build a new desalination plant in Rosarito.

Tijuanapress.com reported this week that Mexico’s National Water Commission selected Cox Energy, S.A.B. de C.V. to build the plant which could produce 50 million gallons of de-salted water per day. The U.S. is helping to support the project by lending up to $114 million to build and reinforce the pipes and pumps the plant needs to get water around rapidly-growing urban cities in Baja California. 

The plan is pitched as a way to reduce Mexico’s demand on the dwindling Colorado River, which is facing intense drought this year. 

The plant could take three years to build, Tijuanapress.com reports. It’s unclear when construction might start. 

County Supes Approve New Polling Policies

The county now has a policy mandating public postings of county-funded polling and will get written reports from consultants who conducted three recent surveys. Those polls were first revealed by Voice of San Diego earlier this year. 

The board voted unanimously Tuesday to approve the polling policy pushed by Supervisor Joel Anderson, which also requires that county lawyers review poll questions.

On Wednesday, the board took up Anderson’s separate ask for public presentations from consultants the county has paid tens of thousands of dollars to poll-test potential ballot measures, including a county governance reform measure that voters will consider in November and tax hike options.

Board Chair Terra Lawson-Remer, who had a role in all three polls, said she supported increased transparency but worried public presentations and related conversations before the November election could fuel electioneering allegations.

Anderson and Lawson-Remer ultimately agreed on a compromise most of their colleagues backed: future board presentations on any county-funded polling meant to support legislative research and written reports from consultants who conducted more recent polling by Sept. 30. The reports will address questions submitted by supervisors and their constituents.

Also: Supervisors voted unanimously Wednesday to back Lawson-Remer’s proposal to direct county staff to work on a policy setting a two-year ban on lobbying for former county employees and updates to the county’s conflict-of-interest code.

Rich Uncle Hangs Ten

Listen to the radio long enough in San Diego, and you’ll stumble upon what is perhaps the world’s most poetic surf report.

For more than a decade, Encinitas resident and former Surfer Magazine staffer Scott Bass has kept KPBS listeners up to speed about the “Liliputian,” “crumbly,” “toddler”-like, “tin foil”-colored or even “Belfastian” waves of the day.

On Wednesday, Bass, who, according to the Union-Tribune, now earns his living selling vintage surfboards and organizing an annual surfboard trade show, outdid himself.

After describing the height of Wednesday morning’s swell (“let’s say waist or chest high”), the quality of the surfing (“very fun”), Bass delivered the coup de grace.

The waves, he said, were downright munificent: “Like a rich uncle dispensing gifts at Thanksgiving.”

I, for one, will never look at the surf the same again.

In Other News

• Mayor Todd Gloria on Wednesday attended the opening of a newly expanded homeless shelter for women and children in downtown San Diego. The renovated Rachel’s Promise for Women and Children, a joint project of the city of San Diego and Catholic Charities, now features 210 beds and play spaces for children in an airy, sleekly furnished historic building. (Union-Tribune)

• San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond this week ramped up his opposition to a proposed 500-kilovolt SDG&E transmission line slated to run through portions of North County and the Anza Borrego Desert. “I am going to do everything I can to stop it,” Desmond said of the powerline in a message to supporters.

• Oceanside’s harbor manager is considering installing a shipping-container-sized ice vending machine at the harbor for use by commercial fishing operators who store fresh-caught fish in containers filled with flaked ice. (Union-Tribune)

• The cities of Chula Vista and Imperial Beach on Tuesday inked an agreement that will enable homeless people in I.B. to use shelter space and other services in Chula Vista. I.B. has roughly one-tenth the population of Chula Vista and does not provide such services on its own.

• The National City Council on Tuesday postponed a decision to purchase AI-powered budgeting software that City Manager Doug Schultze said could help the city close a multimillion-dollar budget gap. Councilmembers said they needed more information before voting to spend $250,000 on the software.

• Two housing advocacy groups are suing the city of San Diego, alleging the city is placing improper restraints on high-density housing projects near transit centers in violation of a state law meant to boost the state’s housing supply. (Times of San Diego)

• A San Ysidro recreation center is getting an eye-catching makeover. (inewsource)

• Bad day to be an SDSU alum! San Diego State University slipped to a pitiful number 15 in USA Today’s most recent ranking of America’s top party schools. Did the “AI-Empowered CSU” initiative somehow make the campus blander?

The Morning Report was written by Jim Hinch, MacKenzie Elmer and Lisa Halverstadt. It was edited by Will Huntsberry.