A Satirical Take on San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria’s ‘State of the City Address.’

The “Real” 2022 State of the City Address

By Mat Wahlstrom

Good evening.

Council President Sean Elo-Rivera and select members of the City Council, City Attorney Mara Elliott, Underboss Jay Goldstone, City of La Mesa Councilmember Colin Parent, and Don Jerry Sanders.

I’d also like to welcome our local and transnational representatives of global capital and our outstanding City of San Diego political appointees from the previous administration.

My fellow San Diegans of means…

This will be my second State of the City address this year: the one that really counts. I’m also delivering it without public notice — thanks again, Mara! — so I can be totally honest with you, the donors who are my real constituents, and my fellow beneficiaries of your largesse.

Last year, I described the state of our city as “fragile.” Of course not as fragile as my ego, but still.

I did so amid rising COVID-19 cases, a housing and homelessness crisis, a budget emergency due to the pandemic, careless and possibly fraud-tainted real estate deals with no accountability, an uncertain economy and rock-bottom morale among our city workforce.

Today I’m pleased to tell you that these problems have gone away. And by gone away, I mean enough enablers in the media have provided sufficient spin to absolve me of responsibility for any of them.

I never tire of claiming the county is in charge of public health, and make sure to always tag Nathan Fletcher in my tweets. Enough people believe I’ll actually provide restrooms to eventually address the human waste on our sidewalks behind the shigella outbreak; and I’ve been getting a total pass on doing nothing to resolve the current garbage workers’ strike.

I’ve used federal relief funds to subsidize the Convention Center to provide unsafe congregate housing, which has helped to eliminate the homeless, and to reward my election PAC organizers and otherwise patch fiscal holes exposed by our crony schemes. And I’m using local public money to challenge the vote on Measure C, so that there’s still a chance we can expand the Convention Center and say it will help the homeless.

I’m still meeting with lobbyists representing opposing parties in our city’s lawsuits over 101 Ash Street to ensure that these scandals will be resolved without consequence to anyone involved, especially yours truly — again at taxpayer expense.

And our city employees are happier than when they were employed by Circulate San Diego, the Chamber of Commerce, or the Downtown Partnership, because now they get double the benefits for doing the same work.

This has allowed me to focus on what really matters: increasing opportunities for real estate speculation and gentrification.

But I see our city falling short of what it could and should be. And like you, I refuse to accept that this is the best we can do.

Our road network needs more intensive and costly repairs – I’m talking about repaving and reconstruction. And since this will result in more bike lanes, it will eliminate the vehicle traffic that puts the wear and tear on our roads as it eliminates spaces to park vehicles, saving us from needing to budget for more repairs in the future.

And for the first time ever, the City is using equity as a key factor in where we allocate our road-repair funding – ensuring that historically underserved neighborhoods get the investments they need. This will increase the property values in these naturally occurring affordable housing neighborhoods, making room for new neighbors such as out-of-state biotech workers and REITs.

Equally foundational to our quality of life is living up to our obligation to keep San Diegans safe.

Which is why I not only refused popular demands to defund our police, but increased spending for them. Of course crime is still up; but the important thing is that I’ve kept the endorsement of the police unions. I especially want to thank Gauleiter David Nisleit for understanding when I say we need a ‘compassionate approach to homelessness’ that this means stepping up criminalizing the unhoused — and for his keeping protestors away from where I live.

That’s why I’m working with City Attorney Mara Elliott to to change state law to use conservatorships in cases of extreme mental illness among our unsheltered neighbors. With Mara helping write the law, you can be sure it will rope in those opposed to locking up innocent people and anyone speaking out against The Establishment as mentally ill themselves.

In 2021, we issued building permits and entitlements that will create as many as 12,000 new homes, with more than 6,500 in the pipeline right now. On paper, at least. As you know, entitlements increase land value without requiring to pull any permits or make any improvements, so you can be sure of a return on your investment no matter what — and I can keep pretending I’m making a difference.

Building on that momentum, this past year, I launched my “Homes For All of Us” housing initiative – more than a dozen separate proposals aimed at making it easier to build homes that working and middle-class San Diegans can afford.

Okay, okay — you got me. I couldn’t read that last part without laughing either. But the takeaway is that there are only token requirements for affordable housing and we’ve defined affordable as 110% the area median income, so this lets you build the same market rate stuff you are already while assuming the mantle of social justice.

Tonight, I’m also announcing another City housing program – “Bridge to Home.”

This is a program administered by our City’s Economic Development Department – and is so named because it helps bridge the gap that affordable-housing builders face when trying to make their projects work financially.

We’re going to give you city-owned land and tax breaks, waive development fees, and subsidize your construction costs, so you can build projects that are deed restricted for a few years. Then when that time expires, you’ll own everything outright and be able to charge market rate or demo for luxury digs for pennies on the dollar of what it would have cost without gaming the system.

And we’re going to gut the community planning groups that might complain about any of this.

We are legally and morally obligated to plan to add more than 100,000 new homes during the next eight years, and folks, we are getting it done. People need to realize that these empty homes are more than investment vehicles for foreign or absentee landowners: they’re necessary to claim victory on our Climate Action Plan goal to reduce our carbon footprint by decimating the current population. #ForAllOfUs

Alright, I see I’m starting to lose more of you to the open bar, so I’ll skip over my remarks about charging admission to the Botanical Building in Balboa Park and in support of more taxes for SANDAG, etc. But rest assured that everything I do will be sufficiently regressive to not impact any of you here.

Thank you. May Mammon bless you. And may Mammon bless our great city.