Why We’re Launching ‘District 3 for Barbara Bry’

Neighborhoods of San Diego Council District 3

By Kate Callen and Tom Mullaney

The people who live and work in San Diego’s City Council District 3 have a long tradition of upholding the livability of their neighborhoods. From Golden Hill to Normal Heights and North Park to Mission Hills, these have been communities of modest homes, small businesses, and a family-friendly human scale.

Or that’s how they used to be. Today, District 3 is where City Hall’s worst policy decisions have come home to roost. Our neighborhoods are declining because the politicians who were elected to represent us did not provide the courageous leadership we needed.

We support responsible growth.  We believe in development that plays to neighborhood strengths and includes affordable housing. Instead, we have been force-fed massive high-priced condo projects that dwarf surrounding homes.

The City’s push to solve “San Diego’s housing crisis” through District 3 upzoning and density bonuses makes no sense. North Park and Uptown together have capacity in their existing community plans for 20,000 more homes, more than a 20-year supply.  We’d like to know the rationale for adding even more capacity. Nobody at City Hall will give us one.

Our last four Councilmembers easily won election because they persuaded residents they cared about our neighborhoods. For each of them, the District 3 Council seat quickly became a springboard to bigger arenas.

One of them is running for Mayor. Many of us supported Todd Gloria early in his career. We held fund-raisers for him and put out his yard signs. We thought he showed great promise, and back then, he did.

Then higher office beckoned, and special interests came calling.

Many years and many disappointments later, we can’t help feeling we were sold out. Community leaders across this district can cite too many examples of broken pledges and jettisoned agreements.

There was the Uptown Community Plan, crafted over seven years by city planners and community representatives. During the final days, with Gloria’s consent, City Hall scuttled the consensus. They rammed through changes to scrap the Land Use plan,  raise height limits, and eliminate  the schedule for reviewing historic districts.

And there was the North Park Jack-in-the-Box outlet, which flouted the terms of its remodeling permit by razing the building. Because the subsequent reconstruction violated the law, the eatery’s drive-through lane at the busy 30th & Upas intersection should have been closed. It’s still open.

Both episodes ended the same way: Community groups sued their own city government for failing to uphold its own laws. And Gloria, who had earlier assured District 3 constituents that he was in their corner, took sides against those constituents and told them to accept defeat and move on.

We began to feel that we could never trust another candidate for city office. Then Barbara Bry came to visit.

Over the past 18 months, Bry has spent time in neighborhoods across District 3 doing something that hasn’t happened here in a long time. She has really listened to us.

In numerous conversations with District 3 residents and business owners, Barbara has taken notes, asked probing questions, and understood the root causes of our concerns. Best of all, she has always followed up. This woman is as good as her word.

Bry is showing enormous courage in going up against a political machine with a big war chest. And she is taking on tough issues that resonate with neighborhoods, like the money drain of 101 Ash, the AB5 war on independent contractors, Sacramento dictating local land use policies, and short-term rental “party houses” that disrupt the peace.

The more we have spoken with and learned about Barbara, the more she has renewed our hope that strong leadership at City Hall can finally give us a functional, transparent, and accountable government.

That’s why we have formally launched “District 3 for Barbara Bry” (D3 for Bry), a coalition of nearly 100 (and growing) residents and small business owners who will work from now until Election Day to spread the word about Barbara and her commitment to neighborhoods, residents, and small businesses.

Based on our District 3 experiences, we are uniquely positioned to explain to the rest of the city what is at stake in this mayoral election. And we are uniquely motivated. The future of our neighborhoods is hanging in the balance.