C I T Y L I G H T S NEWS TICKER
Mission Valley soccer deal spiel Take a look at who’s on “Taxpayers” board As the big-money politics behind the drive to turn over the Qualcomm Stadium site to a secretive syndicate of La Jolla money- men mounts, one of the city’s mightiest pro- developer lobbies has jumped into the fray, raising questions about the motives behind
C I T Y L I G H T S By Reader staff writers The board is also populated by repre-
sentatives of government agencies whose interests do not always coincide with those of San Diego’s taxpaying and ratepaying public, including the San Diego Regional Airport Authority; San Diego County Water Authority; and the L.A-based Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. Another member is Michael Zucchet, the
ex-city councilman and interim San Diego mayor forced to resign from office follow- ing his federal criminal indictment during the Cheetahs strip club influence-peddling scandal of the early 2000s. Convicted by jury in 2005, he was subse-
You see Qualcomm
Stadium...developers see something else
the putative land-grab. “Inaction in Mission Valley is costly for
taxpayers, so our elected leaders should be appropriately deliberative, but also decisive,” says a February 13 statement from Haney Hong, president and CEO of the San Diego County Taxpayers Association. Just the day before, two ex-chairs of the
self-styled taxpayer advocacy group made clear their desired destiny for the property. “Simply put, a Major League Soccer team
makes many public benefits possible that are unlikely to be offered in any other scenario because this investor group is the only one in San Diego with the exclusive right to pursue an MLS franchise,” asserted April Boling and Mike McDowell. “In an ideal world, we could spend years
talking about what to do with Qualcomm Stadium, as we did in the past,” they write. “In the real world, an opportunity sits in front of us today that will expire if we do not act.” Then the pair came to the payoff: the
choice public land could be turned into a high-dollar developer’s dreamland. “We know San Diego is in a housing
affordability crisis that leaves many San Diegans unable to own a home, or worse, living on the street and in shelters. Adding housing along the existing trolley line at the Mission Valley site is exactly the kind of smart growth development envisioned by the city’s Climate Action Plan.” Besides Boling — a longtime campaign
treasurer for Republican causes and a for- mer city-council hopeful — the so-called watchdog group is controlled by a board of powerful city hall influence-peddlers, including representatives of Sempra Energy; San Diego Gas & Electric; SeaWorld; Kilroy Realty; the GOP Lincoln Club; Westfield Corp; and Pardee Homes.
quently acquitted of seven counts of fraud and extortion by a judge who cited inade- quate evidence. Prosecutors later dismissed two remaining counts.
Matt Potter
Thousands to Faulconer: sanctuary city now Mayor warned about taking “soft stance” Thousands of San Diegans took to the streets downtown on February 18, calling on mayor Kevin Faulconer to establish San Diego as a sanctuary city and specifically offer sup- port for Senate Bill 54, a proposal in the statehouse that would block state and local resources from being used to cooperate with federal immigration officials.
Rainy winter causes streets to crumble
City inundated with pothole complaints and lawsuits
By Dorian Hargrove O
n C Street in San Diego’s Golden Hill neighbor-
hood, cracks in the asphalt meander like fault lines. Near C Street’s intersection with 23rd Street, in a block where single-family homes are valued anywhere from $750,000 to $1.2 million, jagged chunks of asphalt resembling stone tools used by early man lie next to car- crippling potholes. Ten miles away, on Golf-
crest Drive near the base of Cowles Mountain in San Diego’s San Carlos neigh- borhood, a crack in the pavement runs for several blocks. Every dozen or so feet, the fissure runs into a soccer-ball-sized hole in the pavement. San Diego’s roads, only
Neal Obermeyer The crowd was estimated at between 4000 and 10,000.
C I T Y L I G H T S During the strongest suc-
cession of storms, over the five-day span from January 16 through January 21, a city spokesperson says, the city received 1300 notifications of new potholes. Since the beginning of the year, says the spokesperson, there have been a total of 6859 requests for pothole repair.
Golden Hill, cracked: near C Street and 23rd
40 percent of which are rated in fair condition, are crum- bling at a faster-than-usual rate after multiple storms dropped several inches of rain on San Diego in Janu- ary of this year. The streets are causing damage to vehicles and pose a hazard for cyclists.
The majority of com-
plaints originated from council districts 2, 3, and 6, among the city’s most densely populated areas, including downtown, Ocean Beach, Pacific Beach, Mis- sion Beach, Golden Hill, North Park, Hillcrest, Claire- mont, and Kearny Mesa.
The march ended in front of federal buildings downtown. “We are promising that if Mayor Faul-
coner takes a soft stance on protecting the hard-working immigrants and refugees that live in his own city, he will have no political future in San Diego or California,” reads an excerpt from the organizers’ Facebook page. “Today we say no to a ban, yes to building
bridges, no to building walls,” former Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa told a continued on page 31
PHOTOGRAPH BY CHRIS WOO
2 San Diego Reader February 23, 2017
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