By Barbara Zaragoza / South Bay Compass
Water Rate Hikes
This week’s biggest news story had to do with the Otay Water District contending their recycled water rates will go up in order to subsidize water rates in the north. Ry Rivard at the Voice of San Diego delved deeper and the Times of San Diego also weighed in. By Tuesday, November 17, members of the San Diegans for Fair Water Rates Coalition rallied at the San Diego Civic Concourse Plaza asking the SD City Council to vote against the recycled water unitary rate proposal. They lost. The City Council approved a five-year, 40 percent increase to the price of city drinking water overall and then also approved the recycled water rate with a vote of 7-2, Alvarez and Kersey voting against it.
Chula Vista
- Sharp Health Care announced that it will spend $240 million to add a seven-story medical tower to its Sharp Chula Vista Medical Center. The future tower will add 138 beds, six operating rooms, and a rooftop cafe.
- The community activist group Crossroads II reported that the Chula Vista City Council gave final approval to a new ordinance that will allow neighborhood residents to control parking on their streets. The new ordinance sets out a process for residents to request establishment of a Residential Parking Permit District in their neighborhood, they explained.
- Bike/Walk Chula Vista asked the city of Chula Vista to improve its roads for cycling and walking. The city then contracted with Chen-Ryan & Associates to do a study and create multiple options for improved cycling along conjested Broadway.
- Susan Luzzaro at The San Diego Reader wrote an in-depth piece about Seven Mile Casino, its troubles with the FBI and the casino owner’s campaign contributions to city council members.
- The saga at the Eastlake III Homeowners association continues on Facebook with the president explaining on the facebook Eastlake Action Group that the homeowner’s board will put forth a new direction for the first time in 14 years. He says the board will save the community hundreds of thousands of dollars and they will put an end to the misuse of HOA dues. Meanwhile, the ECHO — Eastlake III Concerned Home Owners claim the opposite, saying: “Our lawyer has been making preparations for a law suit to remedy the hostile board’s unethical actions…”
National City
The Voice of San Diego reported that the youth arts education center A Reason To Survive, orARTS, is embarking on a placemaking effort in National City. Starting next year ARTS will launch an effort to create 30 public art projects within three square miles of its National City location over the next three years.
Imperial Beach
Vince Farnsworth at the San Diego Reader reported three dead dolphins washed up on the shores of Imperial Beach in the past month. Investigations are underway to determine whether their deaths were due to Navy sonar exercises. According to Earthjustice, there are only 323 bottlenose dolphins known to live in California coastal waters.
Otay Mesa
A 20-year legal dispute between businessman and presidential candidate Roque de la Fuente II and the City of San Diego over land-use issues in Otay Mesa was settled this week. Wanting to develop 300 acres of land near the U.S.-Mexico border, five lawsuits were filed back in the 1990’s instead. The lawsuits were dismissed and developers now hope to create Border Business Park into a world-class property.
The Border
The Front Art Gallery featured a sneak preview of Bordertown, a cartoon created by Lalo Alcaraz and writer Gustavo Arellano. The TV series launches on Fox in January and represents one of the few Latino shows on television today.
A Gringo In Mexico wrote Why I Feel Safe In Tijuana. Although he usually focuses on all the fabulous art, culture and food bursting throughout the city, he stopped for a moment to address the stereotypes.
The Union Tribune journalist for the border, Sandra Dibble, reported that two American scholars from UCSD in the urban studies department envision transforming the concrete channel in Tijuana into a solar energy farm and a place to treat runoff and wastewater.
Pakistani and several Afghan men were detained by U.S. Border Patrol agents in western San Diego County in October, the San Diego Reader reported last week.
And finally, the Pew Research Center found that more Mexicans are leaving than coming to the U.S. From 2009-2014 the U.S. had a net loss of 140,000 of Mexicans. You can read the full article here.
Barbara Zaragoza,thank you for the link to the Pew Research Center.
There are 100,000 children under the age of 5 who had been born in the U.S. and now living in Mexico(2014)and because of the byzantine rules of Mexican and U.S. bureaucracies, tens of thousands of those children without Mexican citizenship now find themselves without access to basic services in Mexico — unable to officially register in school or sign up for health care at public hospitals and clinics that give free check-ups and medicines.
A very important fact, papertrail.
There are so many under reported issues in our U.S.-Mexican relations. Thank you for pointing this one out.