A lot of eyebrows are being raised now that it’s been disclosed that Campland LLC contributed $10,000 to Mayor Kevin Faulconer’s charity a year and half ago only to have their sweetheart lease deal in Mission Bay extended for 5 years recently, over the vehement objections of environmentalists.
Is there somehow a connection between their generous giving and the City Council voting to extend their lease in northeast Mission Bay on June 24th this year?
Mayor Faulconer has just been slapped on the wrist for $4,000 by the City’s ethics commission for failing to disclose Campland’s donation to his One San Diego charity which he uses to burnish his image. He failed to make the deadline for disclosures by 16 months.
This was put together by the San Diego Reader today when it reported:
That saga began on February 9, 2018, when Campland came up with a $10,000 contribution for One San Diego at the mayor’s behest, according to a stipulated agreement between Faulconer and the ethics commission released August 8.
The document says the mayor failed to disclose Campland’s 2018 contribution until August 2 of this year, a full 16 months after the legally mandated 30-day deadline to reveal payments over the city ethics law’s $5000 threshold and safely after Campland bagged its deal in June.
The managers of the Campland resort – including lead owner Michael Gelfand – and his family – have poured “[m]ore than $10,000 of Gelfand family cash” into Faulconer’s campaign chest, “as the lease extension quietly made its way through city hall towards approval.”
And what was the excuse from the Mayor’s office?
The mayor’s emailed statement reported by the Union-Tribune that the late filings were “were the result of an unfortunate administrative error,” have failed to dispel suspicions of Campland lease foes that the ethics stipulation was released to the public only after the final council vote to extend the resort’s lease.
Donations from Campland weren’t the only monies Faulconer was tardy in reporting but this failure of transparency regarding Campland and the subsequent Council vote is the most troubling.
Many environmentalists were very disappointed in the Council vote to extend the lease for 5 years.
Let’s see if there is any more digging into this issue.
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So unfortunate the city counsel voted to keep Campland.
It sits between an existing nature preserve managed jointly by the city and UCSD and the empty De Anza mobile home park.
Closing Campland would allow these three adjoining areas to all be linked together for a continuous undeveloped area.
Directly inland from De Anza is Rose Creek and the De Anza Cove park. And on the other side is the less developed Crown Point and Ski Beach parks.
Closing Campland would thus have been the very last step to having the entire NE corner of Mission Bay returned to nature or lightly-developed parkland.