By Doug Porter
Assertions being made by opponents of the Barrio Logan Community Plan in mailers to San Diego residents are under fire this week. At issue is an attempt by multinational corporations to overrule a five year process involving residents and businesses to address the lack of consistent zoning in one of San Diego’s most economically challenged communities.
Telling the truth has always been problematic for the group now calling itself ‘No On B and C’, and stories at two local media outlets over the past day indicate not much has changed. But when you’ve got enough money to flood the city with fliers, truth is hardly a concern for these folks.
San Diego City Councilman David Alvarez, who lives in and represents Barrio Logan, told KPBS that mailers headlined ‘Wrong Place for Housing Next to Shipyards’ “just aren’t true.”
Via Claire Trageser’s report at KPBS:
The Barrio Logan plan update does not place any housing next to shipyards, Alvarez said.
“The shipyards are on the bay. There are no homes close to the shipyards. There’s no plan to put homes close to shipyards. This is about the rest of the industrial uses,” he said.
The Barrio Logan plan update was passed by the City Council last year. It would install a five-block-long commercial buffer zone that separates residential and industrial zones. The plan allows “community and neighborhood commercial uses” in the buffer area, but no houses, according to a city staff report.
Voice of San Diego’s Andy Keatts fact checked a flyer asserting the community plan “increases pollution and health hazards in Barrio Logan” and found it to be “A Stretch” after determining that pollution would be increasing no matter what plan was implemented.
Via VOSD:
As evidence, the mailer cites the “Air Quality and Health Risk Technical Analyses” conducted as part of the state-mandated environmental impact report for the new plan. The idea was to get a sense of how either of the plans on the table at the time might affect air quality.
One plan was favored by residents and certain local nonprofits, the other was championed by shipbuilders and affiliated businesses. The plan that ultimately passed the City Council included some compromises, but it closely resembled the resident-backed plan that was studied for the report.
The analysis offers a pretty direct conclusion: “certain criteria pollutant emissions of concern under the proposed (new community plans) are greater than those anticipated to occur under the adopted community plan.” That is: There will be more bad air pollutants in Barrio Logan under either new plan compared with the status quo.
Last Friday, Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins, Councilwoman Sherri Lightner, and Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez held a press conference in La Jolla, warning that voter rejection of the plan could ultimately impact other communities’ development efforts.
Via UT-San Diego:
Councilwoman Sherri Lightner, who represents La Jolla, said if B and C lose, a precedent might be set that would encourage opponents of community plans in other areas to take a similar route. As an example, she said developers might mount a referendum to stop residential land from being converted to open space use.
“By supporting the propositions, you are saying you stand with all neighborhoods in San Diego to respect and protect a public planning process in our city,” Lightner said. “There is a lot here at stake with this arrogant challenge to our community planning process, to our most local and basic grass roots democracy.”
San Diego Becoming Even Less Affordable
While San Diego is weighing a proposal to raise the minimum wage, 10News has a report posted indicating it is getting even more expensive to live here.
Via 10News:
A new report has found that San Diego is the second least-affordable metropolitan area in the nation to own a home.
According to numbers released this week by real estate research company HSH.com, the annual salary required to afford a median-priced home in San Diego is $98,534. San Diego was cheaper than only one other metropolitan area, San Francisco, which came in at $137,129.
The report — which ranked 27 metro areas — considers the salary it would take to afford the principal, interest, taxes and insurance on a home.
HSN.com found that the median home price in San Diego was $483,000, a 17.1 percent increase over last year. The median monthly payment was $2,299. The median mortgage rate was 4.56 percent.
Doing a little back of the envelope calculating, I’ve determined that (with ⅓ of the salary going towards housing) the minimum wage needed to own a median priced home in San Diego is: $43.10 per hour.
Oh, and by the way– If you see somebody with petitions at your local retailer who’s claiming to be supportive of a minimum wage increase, DON’T SIGN.
Via San Diego Politico:
Be careful! The person at the grocery store asking you to sign a minimum wage petition is a fraud! It EXEMPTS 93% of businesses in San Diego and invalidates the REAL Minimum Wage ordinance proposed by Council President Todd Gloria and supported by Raise Up San Diego.
There is no denying that this effort is a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” and we ask that you not only avoid signing the petition but to post on FB or twitter that you ‘declined to sign’ the measure because it does nothing to help San Diegans make ends meet. We can’t let those who oppose a raise in the minimum wage to get away with their lies and deceptive tactics.
How Dry We Are…
Our drought is about to get real expensive, according to a report released by UC Davis yesterday:
Via Agence France-Presse:
One of California’s worst droughts in decades could cost the US state’s farmers $1.7 billion, a study warned, a week after alarmingly early wildfires forced tens of thousands of homeowners to evacuate.
The drought could leave 14,500 workers without jobs in California’s Central Valley, known as America’s food basket for providing vast supplies of fruit, vegetables and meat.
The new study, by the University of California’s Davis Center for Watershed Sciences, released on Monday, found that farmers in the Central Valley would get only two-thirds of their normal river water this year.
D’Souza’s America, 2014 Style
UT-San Diego Publisher Doug Manchester’s favorite film maker has another credit he can roll with in the future: convicted felon.
Conservative darling Dinesh D’Souza directed of “2016: Obama’s America,” an apocalyptic prediction of the future of the country should the GOP lose the 2012 election. The film was given extensive advertising support by Manchester. Its dark (and delusional) themes even worked their way into UT-San Diego editorials.
Via Reuters:
Conservative author and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza pleaded guilty on Tuesday to a campaign finance law violation, avoiding a trial that had been expected to begin the same day in a Manhattan federal court.
D’Souza, known for his biting criticism of President Barack Obama, pleaded guilty to one criminal count of making illegal contributions in the names of others. A second count concerning the making of false statements is expected to be dismissed once he is sentenced.
Nuts on a Roll – Right Wing Extremists Gin Up the Crazy
The desperation on the right these days is palpable. They’re six years into having a Kenyan/Muslim/Socialist guy in the White House and the promised uprising of Americans who want to ‘take their country back’ isn’t happening.
You probably missed it, but last weekend some between 10 and 30 million people were supposed to descend upon Washington DC to surround the White House and the Capital until President Obama’s “socialist-fascist-communist-
The crowd for Operation American Spring ended up numbering in -perhaps- the hundreds, leaving organizers to blame everything from the weather to radio host Glen Beck for the no-shows.
Here in California, the ‘take back our country’ types are coalescing around the candidacy of gubernatorial candidate Tim Donnelly. The leadership of the California GOP is in full panic mode, fearing an extremist candidacy will further alienate voters, who’ve been fleeing the party in droves in recent years.
At a recent educational conference in Orlando, Florida State Rep. Charles Van Zant warned participants that the upcoming Common Core educational standards being implemented in 44 states were a trojan horse designed to turn every schoolchild in Florida, if not America, gay.
Via Think Progress:
Their aim, Van Zant warned, was to “attract every one of your children to become as homosexual as they possibly can.” He then apologized to the crowd for having to be the bearer of bad news. “I really hate to bring you that news,” the Florida Republican said, “but you need to know.”
Finally, since the DC event was a fiasco last weekend, serial insurrectionist Larry Klayman is calling for a pre-emptive revolution to spare the republic from a Hillary Clinton presidency.
Yes, by the standards of yesteryear, Richard Nixon is not a crook, and whatever his shortcomings, Tricky Dick at least was not a traitor. Hillary Clinton, following the lead of her corrupt predecessors and her own felonious history and continuing modus operandi (and Benghazi is just one recent example during her tenure as Obama’s secretary of state), would make Nixon look like a saint.
All of this is why We the People must wage our Second American Revolution now, before it is too late, to free the nation and ourselves of the scourge of the likes of the Obamas and Clintons. If we do not do it now, then all is likely to be lost.
On This Day: 1926– The Railway Labor Act took effect. It is the first federal legislation protecting workers’ rights to form unions. 1932 – Amelia Earhart took off to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. She became the first woman to achieve the feat. 1990 – The Hubble Space Telescope sent back its first photographs.
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Doug Porter
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Sounds like Operation American Spring in D.C. this weekend was a huge success; all the people were successfully removed.