San Diego residents in City Council Districts 2 and 8 will go to the polls tomorrow. They'll vote to fill the seats left open by the resignations of Michael Zucchett and Ralph Inzunza. Zucchett and Inzunza were convicted on felony bribery charges earlier this year. There are 17 candidates running in District 2, and there are 8 candidates lined-up in District 8. We asked KPBS Producer Ana Tintocalis to explore the issues in those communities which stretch from downtown to the beaches to the border.
Residents in the San Ysidro neighborhood of District 8 are largely Latino. Spanish is the language of choice. Many people here work more than one job and it's common for them to go back-and-forth across the border. Andrea Skorepa is CEO and president of Casa Familiar, a social service agency. She says San Ysidro is overlooked as part of San Diego.
Skorepa: "Some of the good is that we're small and we care about where we live. It's a small enough place if you make changes, you can actually see the results of those changes. Some of the bad is we are off-to-the-side of a bigger political entity so we're not a mainstream player. "
Skorepa says families in San Ysidro are larger and younger than anywhere else in the county. In fact almost 50 percent of the San Ysidro population is under 18. That's why education is very important to residents here.
In the northern portion of District 8 is the community of Sherman Heights. Its located just outside downtown's East Village. Drug crimes and prostitution plagued this area during the 1980s and 90s. Residents like Louise Torio have helped turn the community around, but Torio says the downtown ballpark and East Village development have created a new problem by pushing the homeless into Sherman Heights.
Skorepa: "Many folks here want people to get help but they're not about to give a handout. So if you have homeless people taking things from a clothesline that's a family that will have to do without because someone is breaking the law and doing something not legal in our neighborhood. So we want everyone to get the help that they need, but we don't want a return of the bad days of prostitution, drug dealing and public drunkenness right in front of our homes."
Torio would like the new council member from District 8 to provide funding for code compliance officers in Sherman Heights. These officers look for neglected properties that attract crime and breed health and safety problems.
Heading North District 8 becomes District 2 as you venture past Sherman Heights into downtown. District 2 then spreads west to the beaches. One of the most popular destinations in District 2 is Pacific Beach where Benjamin Nicholls works. He directs the business organization Discover PB.
Nicholls: "You really have to think about Pacific Beach in a similar way as downtown - similar tourists, similar populations. We don't get the same services that downtown gets. Downtown is getting great services, lots of cops. PB gets the regular services that a regular neighborhood gets and we're not a regular neighborhood."
Nicholls says Pacific Beach has an extremely high concentration of bars, and drinking problems are a common source of neighborhood friction.
South of PB is OB - Ocean Beach where Deni Knox is the executive director of the OB Main Street Association. She's frustrated by the local transients. Knox: "If they're breaking the law .and if they're drinking to excess and hanging out .they just get into trouble. They ruin things, they break things, they accost people and its not good. Its just not a good situation and we do need to find a way to solve that. "
Knox also says the new city council member from District 2 should be prepared to make Ocean Beach's again infrastructure a top priority.
One of the densest commercial areas in District 2 is the Midway Area. Its located between Point Loma and Downtown. Its home to more than 900 businesses, many of which are adult entertainment establishments. Joe Mannino is president of the North Bay Business Association. He wants the next district council member to help improve Midway's image and help make it more livable.
Mannino: "Come and visit with us, be apart of our organization, come to certain meetings or an awards banquet and intermingle with people. There area variety of organization and opportunties to really get right down roll up your sleeves and say what do you think?"
With so many issues facing San Diego Districts 2 and 8, voters are fortunate to have so many candidates to choose from tomorrow. But in either district, its unlikely any one candidate will win outright. A run-off election will be held in January if none of the candidates in District 2 and District 8 gets more than 50 percent of the votes.
I'm Ana Tintocalis for KPBS News.
