Tag: San Diego

But also this week, he finally achieved something that had alluded him: He got a majority on the City Council to support the effort to raise hotel-room taxes. We kid the mayor. Democratic leaders in San Diego County do not like what their former party chair is doing. According to Lisa Halverstadt he brought up several concerns about the process going forward if not the vision As one observer noted to us about Ward: It is quite a week when you help end Irwin Jacobs’ almost decade-long effort to remake the infrastructure of the park and pick a fight with labor. And the first Democratic Club went for Gloria: Democrats for Equality. They’re not the only two candidates: Cory Briggs seems intent on this lane: “We don’t need to ruin San Diego by turning it into San Francisco in order to meet our local housing needs. The agency has pushed its recent committee meetings so they’ll all coincide with Friday’s board meeting. Hayes is now working for Hueso, it’s true. The Democrats take their rules seriously: Throughout the evening, I watched as various conversations dragged with every request for clarification and point of order. The board voted to charter the clubs via email.

Pyramid schemes are illegal, and the line between pyramids on the one hand and legitimate multi-level marketing schemes on the other can be a fine one. Some believe that Herbalife has crossed that line.

It wasn’t that long ago we were, uh, not having the best time with SANDAG. A tunnel instead: “If you want to build transit, build it where people live and work. That’s why I don’t think SANDAG is ready to go for a sales tax measure any time soon simply because we need to do the work first.” Cool with being fired: “You know, I might get into trouble, but I’ll tell you this, the worst thing is not being fired. That’s OK.” ??? Interlude ??? Ken Stone at Times of San Diego did a piece about how Andrew Keatts got the story of four men accusing Kevin Beiser of sexual misconduct and assault and a bizarre claim talk show host Carl DeMaio made about it. ??? End Interlude ??? Republicans in San Diego are having the opposite of a moment. He worked in politics until 2001 and then joined the Marines at age 27. About the deal between the city and SDSU in Mission Valley: “There is some concern that this is an adversarial process but SDSU West still has to uphold its side of the bargain and make sure it pays fair value for the land.” Batten’s consultant … will be Tom Shepard. Leventhal’s consultant … Will be Stephen Puetz, who was chief of staff for Faulconer and … worked for SoccerCity and Measure E. Yes, I am hinting there’s a kind of SDSU West vs. SoccerCity subtext here but I have no more evidence for it than that so I decided to recklessly just float it out there because this is my column and I can do whatever I want, especially when Andy is doing work on an apparently more important story than this, the most prestigious and important political newsletter sent out of downtown San Diego every Saturday. And the group decided to endorse Republican Steve Vaus for the county supervisor seat, District 2, currently held by Dianne Jacob. But the club has not picked a candidate in the San Diego City Council District 5 race.

Eleven years since he lost re-election, former San Diego City Attorney Mike Aguirre remains in the psyche of the city attorney’s office. We have now seen two city attorneys elected since then promising that they would never do that. She is running for the District 3 seat on the County Board of Supervisors, and that will be a race we and everyone else who cares about the county will follow intensely. Civic San Diego Lawsuit Resolution? The City Council is getting briefed in closed session Tuesday on the state of two lawsuits that have challenged the legality of the city’s downtown redevelopment agency. The first lawsuit, and the one we’ve had our eye on for years, was filed by Murtaza Baxamusa, a former board member at Civic. We don’t know what the city’s attorneys plan to tell the City Council in closed session Tuesday about the suit, but a settlement has been looming for months. – Cory Briggs has filed his own lawsuit against Civic, again over the legality of the city delegating some planning responsibility to the agency. The lawsuit is over a year old, but somehow we hadn’t previously known – and it doesn’t look like anyone else has yet reported – that Briggs was also involved in the legal challenge to Civic. What’s at stake: Backing up a bit, a major settlement could fundamentally change Civic’s role in city development.

Eleven years since he lost re-election, former San Diego City Attorney Mike Aguirre remains in the psyche of the city attorney’s office. We have now seen two city attorneys elected since then promising that they would never do that. She is running for the District 3 seat on the County Board of Supervisors, and that will be a race we and everyone else who cares about the county will follow intensely. Civic San Diego Lawsuit Resolution? The City Council is getting briefed in closed session Tuesday on the state of two lawsuits that have challenged the legality of the city’s downtown redevelopment agency. The first lawsuit, and the one we’ve had our eye on for years, was filed by Murtaza Baxamusa, a former board member at Civic. We don’t know what the city’s attorneys plan to tell the City Council in closed session Tuesday about the suit, but a settlement has been looming for months. – Cory Briggs has filed his own lawsuit against Civic, again over the legality of the city delegating some planning responsibility to the agency. The lawsuit is over a year old, but somehow we hadn’t previously known – and it doesn’t look like anyone else has yet reported – that Briggs was also involved in the legal challenge to Civic. What’s at stake: Backing up a bit, a major settlement could fundamentally change Civic’s role in city development.

U.S. House majority leader Steny Hoyer toured the San Ysidro Port Of Entry Friday to evaluate a recent pilot program to return some asylum-seekers to Mexico while they await their day in U.S. court. San Diego Democratic Congressmen Juan Vargas, Scott Peters and Mike Levin were all there to welcome Hoyer for the visit with U.S. Customs and Border Protection. RELATED: San Diego Judge Considers Expanding Migrant Family Reunification Case Vargas condemned the pilot program, saying asylum seekers aren’t safe in Tijuana amid record homicides. Peters agreed with him. More than 70 asylum-seekers have been sent back to Mexico under the program. “It has a capacity to process people humanely … we should have infrastructure like this in all of our border entry points," he said. But due to a surge of families seeking asylum in the U.S., it faces a backlog of thousands of asylum-seekers who must wait weeks before they can speak with a Customs and Border Protection officer. RELATED: Mother's Journey Shows Some Asylum-Seekers Are Reaching The US The politicians said what is needed for greater border security isn’t a wall, but better technology, personnel and other investments in ports of entry. They rejected the idea that there is a national security crisis at the border, calling Trump's national emergency declaration "a fake crisis." They also toured a migrant shelter in San Diego operated by the San Diego Rapid Response Network, a coalition of human rights and legal advocacy groups.

After CNN reached out to KUSI-TV to see if reporter Dan Plante would come on the air Thursday to talk about how a border barrier was working in the San Diego area, the segment never happened. CNN said plans change all the time, and that the network chose to have its own reporters talk about border security. But KUSI saw other motivations. Steve Cohen, KUSI’s news director, said he told CNN that it might not want Plante because his reporting has concluded that a border wall there has worked well, and that such a conclusion might not fit the cable network’s “narrative” against the wall. He said he never got a call back. Cohen decided to inform KUSI’s viewers of the alleged rejection. “We believe CNN declined a report from KUSI because we informed them that most border patrol agents we have spoken to told us the barrier does in fact work,” the station said on its web site, and followed up with a report on its air. CNN said it had also reached out to reporters at other local stations about a possible segment but didn’t follow through when the plans changed. “It’s certainly plausible that they didn’t want it for the viewpoint, or they just didn’t want it,” he said. I made one rather than the other.” KUSI-TV is unaffiliated with any broadcast network and owned by McKinnon Broadcasting Co. Its general manager, Michael McKinnon, was described by the San Diego Business Journal as a “longtime supporter of conservative causes and candidates in the San Diego area.” CNN noted that it had aired another report from KUSI about border security in November.

Former ICE acting director reacts to Border Patrol agents' use of tear gas at the southern border Tuesday as dozens of rock-throwing migrants tried to breach the border fence in Tijuana. #AmericasNewsroom #FoxNews FOX News Channel (FNC) is a 24-hour…

And by the way, when you design a 30- or 40-year measure, you should build into it that we’re going to adjust as we go.” After overstating how much it expected to raise in revenue and understating the cost of everything it was set to build, SANDAG in late 2016 copped to the program’s financial shortcomings. But until now, officials have remained relentlessly optimistic the money would come and SANDAG would build everything voters expected. Ikhrata is not only ready to grapple with the alternative but he said doing so should be part of the agency’s conversation as it sketches out a new vision for a regional transit system. That would require a two-thirds vote of the board. It’s my job with my team to put information in front of them, and they’re going to have to decide, but yeah, I think everything should be on the table.” SANDAG assignments: Late Friday, Mayor Kevin Faulconer announced who would be representing the city on boards and commissions around the county and state. “The three of us represent the most underserved communities within the city of San Diego,” she said. During her campaign, Moreno took an unapologetic YIMBY stance on housing. Kersey will chair the Infrastructure Committee, which is being renamed the Committee on Active Transportation and Infrastructure. Court of Appeal: No thanks, Jan Goldsmith: The city of San Diego voted in October to appeal the stunning California State Supreme Court Proposition B ruling all the way to the Supreme Court. You look good though.” “Thanks, thanks.” Republicans are fine, actually: Tony Krvaric, the newly re-elected chairman of the Republican Party of San Diego County, tweeted some statistics he found.

Roundtable: Power Shift In San Diego Politics David Garrick, city hall reporter, San Diego Union-Tribune Andrew Bowen, metro reporter, KPBS News Brad Racino, reporter, iNewsource Maya Srikrishnan, immigration reporter, Voice of San Diego Transcript Balance of Power in San Diego Politics San Diego watched the changing of the guard this week inside city council chambers. In a move indicating a shift in the balance of power, council members elected Georgette Gomez to be the new council president. David Garrick takes a closer look at Gomez and her priorities as she presides over a new Democratic majority. There’s another change-up underway on the San Diego County Board of Supervisors. Andrew Bowen chats with Roberts about his three decades of service in public office. RELATED: County Supervisor Ron Roberts Looks Back On 31 Years In Government Security Gaps at San Diego Shipyards An inewsource investigation uncovered security gaps at San Diego shipyards that may be placing Navy warships at risk. Brad Racino heads out to the bay to see if anyone followed protocols aimed at securing the Navy’s billion-dollar assets. City leaders and residents are painting Haitians as the so-called model migrant population. Maya Srikrishnan talks with one Haitian author who warns against any narrative comparing one immigrant group against another.