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Balboa Park 2015 – What Went Wrong?

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By David Lundin

Plans for the Balboa Park Centennial in 2015 are non-existent. The Official Centennial management entity, Balboa Park Celebration, Inc. [“BPCI”], is closing its doors and transferring all its powers and obligations to the City.

More than three million dollars in public funds and donations have been spent on inflated salaries, consultant’s fees, payments to Board member’s friends, and other expenses having little if any salvage value. Time, credibility and opportunity have all been irrevocably lost.

What went wrong ? How could this major debacle for the City and Balboa Park have been prevented ? The story for most total failures begins at the beginning. This is no exception. In a perfect world, or at least one better than San Diego, what should have happened ?   [Read more…]

Remembering the UC San Diego Cookout, the Noose, and their Aftermath

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An Open Letter, Four Years After the “Winter of our Discontent”

Jorge Mariscal / UCSD Professor of Literature
Fnann Keflezighi / UCSD ‘11
Patrick Velásquez /San Diego Chicano/Latino Concilio

Four years ago, the fragile tranquility of the La Jolla campus was shattered by a series of events now known as the “Compton Cookout.” Cutting-edge scholarship on campus climate emphasizes the need for universities to continually revisit their ‘historical legacy’ as a benchmark for progress. Therefore, as much as administrators would like to erase the “Cookout” and its aftermath, it is crucial that we remember the events of February 2010.

We view calls to “move beyond” the past and erase any memory of the events that transpired as nothing more than an attempt to release newly installed administrators from their responsibilities. It is time to hold accountable everyone involved in the “strategic planning” that will determine the future of UCSD and impact the lived experiences of future generations of students.   [Read more…]

One Woman’s Thoughts on ‘A Day of Honor’

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By Judi Curry

At the risk of alienating a lot of people, I am absolutely incensed by the City Council naming a day after Peggy Shannon for the “harassment suffered by the mayor of San Diego.”  A day in her honor? For what?  What did she do that was so honorable?  Stop a thief? Adopt orphan children; Save people from a burning building? Fund a scholarship for children that can’t afford to go to college?

She is having a “day of honor” so that the city does not have to pay out any money from the harassment of the former mayor?  She is having a “day of honor” because she told the world about the mayor’s flirting with her? She is having a “day of honor” because she “. . . had butterflies in her stomach because she didn’t know what was going to happen the next time the mayor came to her desk”?   [Read more…]

Reader’s Response to “What Does City Heights Lose when Albertsons Closes?”

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“The branch doesn’t fall far from the tree” vis á vis City Heights and Albertson’s

By Remigia Bermúdez’ 

“The branch doesn’t fall far from the tree” comes to mind in so many respects as I read with great care the insightful article written by SDFP’s Anna Daniels on the economic prospect’s and livelihood of City Heights residents without a clear direction as to who does what about City Heights’ concerns losing a major supermarket, jobs, economic base and faith in local government.

My comments are my professional/personal opinions in an attempt to answer the original questions posed by Anna Daniels in her outstanding article on the impact of Albertsons departure from the City Heights redeveloped project area:

  • 1) Who benefited most from the original redevelopment project in City Heights
  • 2) Who are the parties of interest?

  [Read more…]

Readers Write: San Diego’s Fall From “Finest”

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By Timothy P. Holmberg

Eds Note: The following commentary was submitted as a comment on Jim Miller’s column Selling Kevin Faulconer: The Big Bamboozle. We liked it and, with the author’s permission, decided to give the essay its own post.

As a former reporter, I have watched mayors of both parties come and go, and with them their various constituencies (in fairness, most have been Republican). I have also watched the heavy onset of partisan apparatuses. Over the years, these partisan machines have polarized this city and hijacked its legislative agenda. In its place, they have pressed agendas that have little if any affect on the quality of life of the citizens this government is supposed to serve.

But underneath that cyclone of hyper-partisanship, this city has slowly rusted. Streets have all but crumbled, sidewalks turned to rubble, sewer pipes spew their stew and traffic has slowly ground to a state of molasses. We have seen our city’s reputation tarnished and our credit rating trashed. Our treasures have either been plundered or are crumbling in disrepair. While John Moores, Corky McMillan, Doug Manchester and Dean Spanos prospered, San Diego’s small business community has received less attention than a stray dog.   [Read more…]

Readers Write: Time for a 21st Century City

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By Christian Ramirez

Three generations of my family call the 8th District of the City of San Diego home. We love San Diego but could never live far from Tijuana; in fact, our clan has an unspoken rule that to live north of I-8 is akin to falling off the face of Earth. Our roots are intertwined with the border; we are proud fronterizos, borderlanders.

America’s Finest City has not always embraced our border identity; in fact many of us who live in the southern part of San Diego have always had the uneasy feeling that City Hall had its back turned towards us. That is until we elected David Alvarez as our councilmember. As soon as he took office David got to work, he understood that the border region is an economic engine and celebrated our unique cultural heritage.

When we learned that David was running for mayor, my family knew that we could finally have the opportunity to fully be engaged in the civic life of our city. A mayor that understands us, can you imagine!   [Read more…]

Readers Write: An Impassioned Plea for ‘Proposition F’

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By Matt Valenti 

What do school bathrooms have to do with San Diego’s mayoral candidates?

Well, some of the same people who brought us Proposition 8 are at it again, having gathered enough signatures to place an initiative on the 2014 ballot that would repeal California’s transgender students’ rights bill. That law is to take effect in January and will provide transgender students with equal access to school programs and facilities.

But if there’s to be a law meant to prevent people from passing themselves off as something they’re not, perhaps it should be a law to prevent conservative Republicans from passing themselves off as progressives. This is a phenomenon that San Diego has seen a lot of lately.

What we need is a local ballot initiative we could call “Proposition F,” after the two mayoral candidates who are the worst offenders: Nathan Fletcher and Kevin Faulconer.   [Read more…]

Latino Voters Could Determine the Future … If We Vote

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By Andrea Guerrero

A couple of weeks ago my nine-year-old son and I got into a friendly argument about who should be the next mayor of San Diego. He seemed to get the same thrill out of talking about his favorite candidate as he gets out of talking about his favorite superhero. If you have a child, you may have been asked a thousand (or maybe a million) times what your favorite this or that is and then told why it should be something else.

In our conversation, my son reminded me that he could not vote, but that I could and should vote (for his favorite candidate, of course). It made me think of others who cannot vote, like friends and family whose immigration status prevents them from voting, and why I can and must vote in every election for the candidate or the ballot measure that will move my family and my community forward.   [Read more…]

The New Main Library: A Benefit for All

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Richard Rider, a local libertarian, called the new library “a monument to an era that is ending — a structure that in a few years will have little more utility value than a Pharaoh’s pyramid in Egypt. The only difference is that the library will have high operating costs — the pyramids need no such annual funding.”
–UT San Diego article “New library: Is this monument necessary?”

By Joe Flynn

Odd isn’t it? The self professed “cheerleaders” for San Diego preview the grand opening of the new library with this article puffed up with a quote from San Diego’s Dr. No, Richard Rider, libertarian. I wanted to get the spelling right, but after reading his remarks no one will mistake him for a librarian.   [Read more…]

A Post-Labor Day Tribute To My Sister

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By Judi Curry

Labor Day means a lot of different things to a lot of different people.  In my case, at the age of seven, the first time I knew about “Labor Day” was on September 2nd, 1946, because that was the day my mother went into labor with my sister, Andy. (Andrea Jane.)  The house was a flutter and my own governess was going to take care of my sister, leaving me for the first time in my life.

I was going to be “a big girl” now, and I no longer needed to have Nanny Parsons monitor my every move.  All of that was fine with me, except for one small thing – I did not know that my mother was pregnant.  I do not want to say that she kept it a secret from me – but it was not talked about in my presence.   [Read more…]

Readers Write: Walk a Mile in Their Shoes

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By Tom Hunter

I spent five years living in vehicles at the beach in San Diego.

I knew the cops, I knew the dealers and I knew the homeless.

I was upper class, because I managed to hang onto a vehicle.  I made gas money by driving a hooker to her johns.  I was elated when the courts told the SDPD to stop ticketing people for being on the streets.  (The police have decided in practice that court order no longer applies).   [Read more…]

You Don’t Need a Weatherman to Kick Bob Filner

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By Paul Broadway

I woke up this morning thinking about the Bob Dylan lyric, “you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows”.  This lyric is a good explanation about my view of the Mayor Filner issue that is being orchestrated by the rich, powerful, and connected in San Diego.

You see, I supported Carl DeMaio in the Mayoral election.

I should feel vindicated that Mayor Filner is proving that he was not the right choice for Mayor of America’s finest city.  I should feel that way, but I don’t.  From my point of view, I see something that scares me.  I see a political machine that is using its power to force an elected official out of office.   [Read more…]

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