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Sitting in on Papa Doug’s Gathering of the Elite to Chew on the Election of Kevin Faulconer

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By Jay Powell

Last week Voice of San Diego CEO Scott Lewis reported (“Stadiums and Pensions,” November 27) that he had been informed by a reliable source that Papa Doug Manchester was hosting a lunch for “a group of the city elite” on Monday, December 2nd to “strategize on how we can best move San Diego forward in support of Kevin Faulconer as Mayor.”

He confirmed that the invite was authentic and quoted from it:

“ We all know the need to preserve and protect San Diego from losing the Chargers, fix the pension system, and create incentives that will allow San Diego to reach its full potential and recover from what we have experienced over these past several years…”.

Scott did a fine job showing the irony of some other these assertions and reprised the exchange between Sanders and Manchester when they last convened in La Jolla to pick Kevin Faulconer as the candidate for the elite. Scott then queried his readers to write him and let him know “if you were at this U-T (lunch) meeting, what would you say should be the top priorities for city government in coming years?”

I dutifully replied that if I was at the lunch meeting with Papa Doug and the other “city elite” this day (Dec 2), it wouldn’t be me…

but let’s just pretend for a moment that I was a person who was invited and attending…   [Read more…]

21st Century Revitalization for San Diego’s Neighborhoods

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Part II: Challenges and Opportunities for Promoting Sustainable Neighborhoods in the Mayoral Campaign

By Jay Powell /Part One is Here

Sometime last year the street grinders and asphalt layers showed up in our neighborhood in Normal Heights. They did a great job right in front of our house– which really didn’t seem to need any repair, but around the corner, the worst, most traveled portion of the street wasn’t touched. Still hasn’t been.

After some considerable neighborhood wondering and grumbling it became apparent that the bumps and rolling topography and potholes actually served as a kind of regimen of reverse speed bumps to slow down some of those folks who thought the curves on Mountain View Drive were there to test the adhesion of their Mini Cooper’s tires at high speed.

This repair was a part of the much ballyhooed “streets-are-sexy” resurfacing and slurry program touted by City Councilmembers and Mayor Sanders at the start of this decade. But the infrastructure issue in San Diego goes far deeper than neighborhood potholes.   [Read more…]

Challenges and Opportunities for San Diego’s Next Mayor

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Forming the Basis of a Sustainable Neighborhoods Initiative

By Jay Powell / Part One of a Two Part Series

As things stand now Kevin Faulconer, a two term City Councilman, appears to be the choice of establishment Republicans, while Nathan Fletcher, former State Assemblyman and David Alvarez, City Councilman, will be vying for the support of the Democratic Party faithful.

Questions still remain about IF other credible candidates will throw their hat in ring in the days remaining to declare and file as candidates for this accelerated special election.

While we hold our breath, I suggest that those of us who have embraced a platform that was characterized as “neighborhoods first” during the last Mayoral election take the initiative to define what we mean by that phrase.   [Read more…]

Sempra Wants to “Fix” Your Energy Bill

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By Jay Powell

Hold on to your wallets, you are about to get walloped. International energy giant Sempra Energy, owners of SDG&E, have set up a front group called “Fix My Energy Bill” to promote a whopping $120 per year fixed charge on every residential electric customer bill in the State of California. It is pending in the State Senate in the waning days of this legislative session.

What started out as a bill sponsored by Assemblyman Perea from Fresno to ostensibly help poor elderly folks sweltering in the Central Valley heat be able to afford air conditioning, AB 327 has morphed into a full blown attack on working families ability to control their energy bills and to make homeowner investments in energy efficiency devices and improvements including roof top solar much more difficult.

NEWS FLASH: Run with the Sun will be joining California Solar Energy Industry Association representatives and Supervisor Diane Jacob at a news conference Wednesday, August 28 at 11 am at the steps of SEMPRA, 101 Ash Street to address the problems with this attempt to “fix “your energy bill in Sacramento.   [Read more…]

How Land Use Abuse Fits into the Current San Diego Drama

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By Jay Powell

The news this week via the “Utterly-Terrible” news machine (August 6 edition) is that when asked the “push-poll” question: “What story about Filner concerns you more: the charge of sexual misconduct or the charge that he improperly extracted monetary concessions for the city from developers in return for approving their projects?” the result was a dead heat at 44% for each.

Never mind that in both cases the “story” is about a “charge”. And that the only so-called “extraction” was from the now infamous Sunroad developer for donations to two City sanctioned projects.

Yes, there should have been a nexus to the impacts of that project, so the money was returned. It’s important to bear in mind that all the projects that the current Mayor has questioned or impeded were due to violating either community plans or municipal code provisions and initiated under the previous Mayor’s regime.   [Read more…]

About That Recall Filner Idea…

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By Jay Powell

Like a lot of people who strongly support the “neighborhoods first” policy commitment set forth by Mayor Bob Filner I have been on the revoltin’ remain-recall-resign roller coaster oscillating between disgust, disappointment, despair, dedication and determination regarding the daily drumbeat of “revelations” and political attacks on Bob Filner.

I am particularly wary of the recall option when I recollect two recalls that have affected San Diego within the last recent decades– a city councilmember in 1991 and, of course our Governor in 2003.

In each of these elections, the incumbent was voted out and the winner received less than a 50% plus one of the votes cast. Schwarzenegger (who incidentally was plagued by accusations of inappropriate behavior towards women in the final run up to election day) got almost 49%. Tom Behr won the Fifth District City Council seat with barely 25% of the votes cast. Done deal. No run off.

The main distinguishing and disturbing feature of a recall “election” is that the highest vote getter of the free-for-all alternative candidates listed after the yes or no on recall vote, wins it all.   [Read more…]

Gravity’s Rainbow: From the Mariana Islands to Brooklyn Heights/Golden Hill/South Park

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By Jay Powell

“An unarmed Minuteman-3 intercontinental ballistic missile was test-launched (on April 7, 2006) from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The missile’s single, unarmed re-entry vehicle traveled approximately 8,200 km (5,100 miles), striking a pre-determined water target near Guam in the Northern Mariana Islands. The launch was part of a developmental test to demonstrate the weapon’s effectiveness at an extended range. The Minuteman-3 missile originated from the 564th Missile Squadron at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana.” (from various news releases including “The Mercenary Missileer’s Missile News”).

It is a little under 5,000 miles to the Marianas (just above the equator between Longitudes 145-165 E to Brooklyn Heights, San Diego (Lat 32.724, Long – 117.129 W). But more about that later. Now, about this “Do I live in Golden Hill or South Park?” controversy. As the old Americana saying goes: “you can call me Jay or you can call me Ray, just don’t call me late for dinner. “ For a variety of political and geographic and geologic reasons, place names evolve. Sometimes it is very much a matter of branding for real estate purposes.

This name of place issue kind of parallels the name of the community of City Heights which was taken in 1981 by the Community Development Corporation founders led by Jim Bliesner from the name of the largest subdivision in what had been the “Golden Rule” city of East San Diego. Later there were some residents of the City Heights neighborhood of Cherokee Point who thought they ought to be a part of North Park because they had a 92104 zip code. But it was still in the officially adopted community plan area of City Heights. Regardless of what the real estate salesperson or the post office, or the subdivision map or the City says, the people who live in their neighborhood get to call it whatever they want.   [Read more…]

Dirty Wars and Drones: Real National Security?

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Author Jeremy Scahill Examines the Ugly Reality

By Jay Powell

Thursday night, Jeremy Scahill, author of “Blackwater” gave a preview of his new book “Dirty Wars” to a full house at Hoover High School auditorium in City Heights a community that is home to many refugees from countries torn by war. With a large scale model of an armed Predator drone provided by Veterans for Peace as a backdrop, a good portion of his talk focused on the use of drones, cruise missiles and cluster bombs to assassinate suspected terrorists in countries thousands of miles away.

The next morning, to no one’s surprise—no coverage by the UT-SD of the event. But there was a feature article about US Navy drones and copters program. Near the end reporter Jeanette Steele noted that “even though the military has seen the effectiveness of land-based Predator drones in making surgical strikes … some Americans have started to oppose the idea of ‘killer’ drones on moral grounds.”   [Read more…]

Neighborhood Solar Power

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By Jay Powell 

Last week state Public Utilities Commissioners at a March 21 hearing threw down the gauntlet. Declaring that the sun don’t always shine and we have to guarantee reliable power for SDGE customers, they said San Diego had two, maybe three years to convince them not to let SDGE charge its customers for two new proposed gas-fired “peaker” power plants.

Peaking power is needed usually on the hottest days when air conditioners and other appliances and equipment are cranked up full. This is, of course when solar photovoltaic panels are at their optimum output. But there is a purported catch. SDGE and conventional power plant developers claim that there is a lag time in the late afternoon when solar generators output is waning, but peak loads continue to require more electricity. That is one of their key arguments for a new kind of peaker plant that best runs in an “intermittent mode”. They even claim that these plants are essential to promote more renewable energy.

So what is it going to take to meet this challenge? First, we are going to have to recognize that the deck is heavily stacked in favor of SDGE and conventional power plant developers. In spite of the promise and demonstrated potential of solar energy and energy efficiency, the current energy supply paradigm favors building more power plants and more transmission lines. The regulatory framework is set to reward that kind of system. Since the PUC is required to provide the investor owned utilities (IOUs) like SDGE a guaranteed rate of return on their asset base, the more they build and own, the more they make.   [Read more…]

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