Category: San Diego

On Tuesday, February, 10th, San Diego students need you support. Please come to the School Board meeting, where youth of conscience throughout the school district will be demanding that shooting ranges be eliminated from our school campuses. Several new Board members have been elected and they might listen to reason…or at least, to their students and supporters. The gathering at the Education Center, 4100 Normal Street, San Diego, will begin at 4 p.m.

The internal division within the Services Employees International Union (SEIU) has taken a serious turn for the worst, breaking out in open warfare between the factions. This new trench to trench in-fighting has resulted in a new national healthcare workers’ union, but has also disrupted local labor negotiations at Tri-City Hospital, already beset with its own internal battles.

San Diego’s libraries are back on the local issues burner, as the City of San Diego begins a new round of meetings that seek community input on the City’s budget. And this means the libraries and other social services. The community input meetings begin this Wednesday evening, Feb 4, in Council District 4.

Crews started cutting down more than a dozen trees surrounding the Jolly Roger restaurant at the Oceanside Harbor this week, displacing some birds that had nearly taken over the property and prompting a debate over whether the action was an outrage or a relief.

Twelve eucalyptus and two Torrey pine trees are being removed this week due to what restaurant officials said was a health and safety issue involving excessive amounts of bird feces accumulating in the area.

Late last night (Feb. 10th) around 9pm, in a 3-2 vote, the School Board of the San Diego Unified School District voted to removed JROTC shooting ranges from district high school campuses.

Congratulations are due the Education Not Arms Coalition which has been fighting this for a year and to the 150 students from Lincoln, Mission Bay and other high schools who were at the school district offices and board meeting today for over 6 hours.

by Frank Gormlie and Patty Jones

When we heard what the Encinitas tree-sitter was doing, Patty and I wanted to meet him. So we drove up the coast on a beautiful day to do just that. We found Orpheus Park – about halfway between the freeway and the coast – denuded of most of its trees.

And there was Andrew Watkins hanging upside down from a large branch, along with a few other friends who had climbed up to the platform that Watkins had assembled.

With today’s announcement by the Union-Tribune of the latest San Diego area teacher to be accused of having sex with a student being arraigned in the South County Court, we turn to our archives. Now, with Carmina Erica Lopez charged with molesting and having sex with a boy who was a one-time student, we add her to our rolls of area teachers – which now add up to twelve – who have had sex with students in the last few years. Helix High School has been getting all the attention, as four of the teachers taught there. But the focus by the mainstream media on that singular fact misses an even greater issue.

The debate over the recent vote of the San Diego Unified School District Board of Education on a Project Stabilization Agreement with the local Building Trades continues here. Pat Flannery – blogger, city gadfly, community activist – has been very critical of the PSA, and we re-post his most recent comments. The Center for Policy Initiatives speaks up for organized labor, and we re-post their website comments.

The right not to associate – union shop or merit shop
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Fight the barrage of lies with facts: School board vote is good for San Diego

San Diego environmental activists are split over the compromise between a few major environmental groups and San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders on the City obtaining a waiver for the secondary treatment of its wastewater.

On January 19th it was announced that Mayor Sanders and the Sierra Club, the Surfrider Foundation and San Diego Coastkeeper had all come to an agreement on the waiver. In December of last year, the Environmental Protection Agency had granted the City a five-year waiver on having to upgrade the sewage treatment.

On February 25 of last year, professional skydiver Alan (Buzz) Fink and his wife Kristina, who are not residents of San Diego, gave a total of $640 to Jan Goldsmith in his run for city attorney. On July 23, Fink, president of Jamul’s Skydive San Diego, gave Goldsmith another $320.

Goldsmith won the election, and on January 8 he fired deputy city attorney John Serrano, who worked on real estate property. He is one of nine deputy city attorneys who have been fired by Goldsmith. Serrano is an experienced government lawyer, having served as a deputy city attorney in Los Angeles and assistant city attorney in Escondido, among many things.

Local beach residents want no part of the recent elimination of trash cans by the City of San Diego along walkways and viewpoints at the cliffs and beaches. They are registering their opposition by leaving mounds of rubbish and trash where trash cans once gallantly stood.

Nearly two weeks ago, the City of San Diego announced that it was permanently removing about two dozen trash receptacles from Ocean Beach to La Jolla. The cans removed were at walkways and viewpoints – not the actual beach and parks in between.

Water rationing probably will be imposed in San Diego by July 1, Mayor Jerry Sanders said yesterday. The reduction would vary per household depending on factors including how much water is used for landscaping. Sanders said residential and business customers alike would face “fairly significant penalties” for using too much water in the face of a drought and spring cutbacks expected from the wholesaler that provides water to the city. Sanders didn’t elaborate on what the penalties might be.

Water administrator Alex Ruiz said the rationing plan would try to take into account customers’ past conservation efforts and seek to distinguish between “discretionary” outdoor water uses and indoor uses, such as cooking and cleaning.