Convention Center Catastrophe, Stadium Talk that Rocks and NIMBYism at its Worst: San Diego Summarized | 8-13-18
Welcome to San Diego Summarized where each week we examine headlines from around the city:
This past week San Diego failed spectacularly at the most recently proposed iteration of the expand the convention center project. The plan entailed a proposed tax increase of San Diego's transit occupancy tax, also known as TOT, in order to provide the funding for an expanded convention center and also raise funds for homeless services.
The mayor was on board, his office assembled a coalition that many truly believed would execute and see this ballot measure process opened up to the voters in November. It just didn't quite work out that way.
Voice of San Diego's Scott Lewis chronicled the debacle from start to finish, and the VoSD Politics Report shed further details on who helped and who hurt the project.
Whether you blame the mayor's leadership, labor union strife, political strategist ineptitude or any number of the myriad of things that went wrong in this failed campaign, the bottom line is that the mechanism to secure funding for an expanded Convention Center is NOT going to be decided on in 2018 and at best appears to be another tick in the "San Diego can't get anything right" column.
One potential tick in the "San Diego CAN get something done" column is the outcome of the Mission Valley stadium saga. This past week, the two stadium-centric ballot initiatives were green-lit for the November 2018 ballot after the appellate court that received City Attorney Mara Elliott's twin lawsuits opted to let the voters decide the outcome of the current SDCCU Stadium site.
In the aftermath of that decision, I sat down with The Kept Faith's Nick McCann and Travis Russell, along with Andy Keatts from VOSD to summarize the situation in Mission Valley on the latest TKF United Podcast which you can listen to here:
There are several
With less than 90 days to go until the November election, stay tuned to the Chronicle and TKF United for the latest on Mission Valley, and be sure to check out Voice of San Diego's Politifest event in October for a wide-ranging day of discussion about all the most important political issues from around the wider San Diego region.
Outside of Mission Valley and the never-ending stadium debate, San Diego is also plagued by a severe housing shortage. It has been well-documented that San Diego is more than simply running low on housing units.
Regional planners project the county will fall 152,000 homes short of what it will need by 2050 even if San Diego cities build all the housing they expect to allow over the next three decades.
One hundred and fifty two thousand homes. Short. In just over 30 years. That is a significant number that fails to take into account some of the people in communities like Clairemont who react terribly to some of the most crucial types of housing that is badly needed in San Diego.
The dramatic reaction in Clairemont has played out as city leaders grapple with how to produce more permanent supportive housing, units that come with services meant to accommodate the most vulnerable homeless San Diegans. These are permanent homes rather than temporary shelter beds but often initially elicit many of the same fears from nearby residents.
Faulconer and other city leaders are increasingly saying they need to do whatever they can to push those projects forward anyway.
“You’re always gonna have some neighborhood folks that will not like whether it’s X, Y or Z, but what’s the flip side of that, if you don’t do anything?” Faulconer said.
At the rate we're going in San Diego, soon people won't need to ask what happens if nothing get done. They'll only need to look around themselves.
In related news the YIMBY Democrats of San Diego County endorsed several pro-housing candidates at the club's monthly meeting in August. *Full disclosure I'm a member of the YIMBY club*
Endorsements are as follows:
San Diego:
- Attorney Monica Montgomery, who is challenging Council President Myrtle Cole in District 4;
- Council staffer Vivian Moreno, running for District 8, where Councilman David Alvarez is termed out.
San Diego County:
- Former Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher, squaring off with former District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis for the District 3 seat.
National City:
- Councilwoman Alejandra Sotelo-Solis, running for mayor; Jose Rodriguez, running for City Council.
Imperial Beach:
- Nonprofit executive Paloma Aguirre, who’s running for City Council. (Aguirre is coastal and marine director for Wildcoast, the conservation group run by current IB Mayor Serge Dedina.)
U.S. Senate:
- Kevin de León, who’s challenging Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
