By Kate Callen
Here are my four favorite moments during that comic opera of a San Diego City Council hearing on Tuesday on Uptown planning.
Von Wilpert reciting Council policy that “the City does not direct or recommend the election, appointment, or removal of voting members of CPGs” and telling her chastened colleagues, “What I feel I’m being asked to do today is to vote on who should sit in what seat.”
The razor-sharp Uptown Planners presentation revealing that, on the diversity front, their group and Vibrant match the Uptown district closely in all but one demographic: Vibrant skews wealthy on the socioeconomic scale. As noted by Matt Driver, “50 percent of Vibrant members earn more than $200,000 a year, a far cry from the media income of $84,000 in our district.”
Stephen Whitburn, who had complained that existing community planning groups (CPGs) lack diversity, coming up with a new rationale breathtaking in its irony: Pro-density Vibrant Uptown is really all about empowering neighborhoods.
The smackdown of Whitburn by Scripps Ranch CPG Chair Victoria LaBruzzo: “This move by Councilmember Whitburn is not about the difference in group applications but about the difference in individual leaders and their priorities for changes to housing.”
Vibrant has 90 days to hold a board election. The group has chosen a slice-and-dice matrix of six neighborhood elections with separate candidate categories for “renters” and “property owners.”
Ocean Beach CPG Chair Andrea Schlageter warned Vibrant from her own experience that “it’s kind of a nightmare to run elections within districts when you have a completely volunteer board without much experience running elections.”
Based on my experience with North Park CPG elections, the pressures of verifying in-person voter eligibility and the risks of making mistakes that could result in a contested election can be rather hellish. And our North Park ballots weren’t categorized by neighborhoods.
Good luck, Vibrant. You’ll need it. You have no idea what a damn mess you’ve created for yourselves.
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I love opera, but I sure wish, after all the comedy, this one had had a happy ending, instead of a knife in the back of Uptown Planners. Thanks for your honest review of the proceedings.