Convention Center Vote, Climate Change And Migration, Black Resource Center Vandalized

Speaker 1: 00:00 A majority of the San Diego City Council say a public vote on expanding the convention center is too urgent to wait for November, 2020 on a five four vote. The council gave approval for the measure to appear next year on the March presidential primary ballot. That proposal would increase the hotel tax to raise funds for the convention center, homeless services and city infrastructure repair. But opponents say the plan to move the vote up from November to march sets a bad precedent. Joining me as Kpbs Metro reporter Andrew Bowen. Andrew, welcome. Thanks. This was not the typical partisan split on the city council. Some Democrats voted with Republicans. What were their reasons? Yes, the two Democrats who've, who sided with the Republicans where Jen Campbell, a district two and city council, President Georgia at Gomes district nine. So Campbell said the funding for homeless services, that's included in the measure as needed. Now it's an urgent crisis. Speaker 1: 00:56 Gomez said things a to a similar effect and also that the council has this authority. So, um, you know, there's nothing illegal or improper about them using it. Uh, you could take a cynical view of this. Uh, Jen Campbell was elected with strong support from unions who were urging her to vote to move the vote up. Uh, and you know, you could say that she was kind of owing them. Gomez also won the chair position of the MTS board with the support from Mayor Kevin Faulkner. And so you could say maybe she owed him as well. And also she's pursuing a tax measure for mts. That would be on the November, 2020 ballot. And so there is a fear that too many tax measures on one ballot could doom them all to fail. So if the convention center measure has moved up to march, it will have less competition for a voters' attention and support. Speaker 1: 01:46 Let's take a step or two back. Remind us how much the increase in the hotel tax is expected to raise and where that money will go. The estimates are that it would generate a little over $6 billion over 42 years. More than half of the revenue, about three points. $78 billion would go toward funding. The convention center expansion, $2 billion about we'll go to homelessness. It could be used for both affordable housing and services to help the homeless. And those funds are to an extent front loaded some more, more funding in earlier years. And uh, with that scaling back a little bit as, as time goes on and road repair then would become part of the mix starting in 2025. So about $600 million over the life of the measure for road repair. The point of contention in this vote is the city's measure l, which says votes like this should take place on the November ballot. Speaker 1: 02:39 Why is that a big deal? It has to do with who shows up to the polls. The electorate that shows up to primaries tends to skew wider, wealthier, and more conservative while the, uh, larger turnout in November general elections when there are bigger races like congress and the presidential election, um, include, uh, a swath and more representative swath of, of society prior to measure l passing citizens' initiatives generally had to go on the first ballot that was available. So critics said that special interests could very easily time their signature gathering efforts so that the measure would appear on a primary if they wanted a, you know, a more conservative electorate or a general election if they wanted a more liberal electorate. So measure l made November elections the default. But as I mentioned, it also gave the council have the authority to decide when something should go to the voters sooner. Speaker 1: 03:33 The campaign for measure l and a similar measureK in 2016 was more voters, better decisions. So there was definitely this argument being made that we should make our biggest decisions when the largest number of people show up. But next March isn't a typical sleepy primary though there are lots of issues on the ballot. It's a presidential primary. Yeah. And that's perhaps the biggest issue in California. Who Will the state choose a four to nominate for the Democratic ticket for president? Uh, California has an earlier primary this year, so it matters more than in previous years. We also have local locutions, so, um, San Diego mayor and five city council districts as well as the city attorney. Some of those races are more active than others perhaps, but those will be primary elections. So the top two finishers, we'll go on to the November ballot. And we also have a few county supervisor elections that overlap with the city of San Diego. Speaker 1: 04:25 Andrew, you mentioned Labor supports the March vote on the convention center. Also, the Chamber of Commerce supports a March vote. Why? Well, they are both of the backers of the initiative itself and they want this taken care of as soon as possible. They all have this fear that the measure could potentially compete for other, you know, the voters will a to pass taxes if it's on the November ballot. I mentioned the mts tax measure. There's also a proposal to raise property taxes to fund affordable housing. So, uh, the convention center expansion has long been a priority for the Chamber of Commerce for the hotel and tourism industry. They say it will attract more conventions, bigger conventions, overall, more visitors paying hotel taxes, paying sales taxes, and it'll just be a great stimulus to the economy. They also say construction costs are rising. So the longer we wait, the more expensive this will actually be. And Labor supports this because there are some labor friendly, a hiring provisions baked into the measure in construction. And also some of this affordable housing dollars, uh, in the measure could go toward a unionized workforce. Does the city council have to have a second vote on moving up the election? Yes. The official action was to simply express support for moving the vote to March. The city attorney will now have to draft an ordinance that the city council will vote on later this year. I've been speaking with Kpbs Metro reporter Andrew Bowen. Andrew, thank you. Thank you. Speaker 1: 00:00 More people dealing with a mental health crisis are seeking help at county emergency rooms and staying longer due to a lack of next step facilities in the county. The shortage forces some patients to go without the care they need. Thus repeating the cycle at UC San Diego Health La Hoya and Hillcrest Ers, they saw a 22% increase last year as compared to 2014 that's according to reporting by Jared Whitlock of the San Diego Business Journal is three part series on mental health care and the county wrapped up yesterday. He joins me now to discuss his reporting. Welcome Jared. Thanks for having me. So how has UC San Diego specifically responded to the increase they're seeing? Speaker 2: 00:39 Like other hospitals, Uc San Diego Health has added behavioral health workers to make the rounds in ers for a quicker triage. Uc San Diego Health has also sought to cut down on Er readmissions. That's through expanding outpatient services as well as greater numbers of case management workers who connect patients and an er with the appropriate services. And Palomar hospital has come up with a unique way to handle the increased. To tell me about that. Yeah. They have a crisis stabilization unit, which is specially designed for behavioral health. I'm told the environment is more relaxed than a typical er and the unit allows patients to stay for up to 24 hours under the watch of specially trained behavioral health workers. So after the Er, a patient would typically go on to an inpatient facility. Are there enough of those in the county? San Diego has roughly 700 inpatient beds or stated another way. That's 21 inpatient beds per 100,000 people. The goal is 50 beds per 100,000 people. So we have a shortage and the shortage has grown more acute over time. We had a peak of 1000 beds in San Diego in 1999 and uh, so from 1000 to 700 meanwhile, the population has grown in that span. But the area where Speaker 1: 02:08 we're seeing the largest shortage is in longer term facilities. Is it clear if, if this is caused by the increased need for services or does it predate that even Speaker 2: 02:17 there's been an increase in behavioral health cases while the number of facilities catering to a longterm care fell? So there's this, a supply demand imbalance has grown over time. Uh, it didn't happen overnight, but over the last decade it's grown more acute. And when would someone need to go to one of these longer term facilities and what services do they provide? Yeah, so some patients after inpatient care they will go home. Uh, but some patients will need continuing care. That includes a boarding care facility. These are licensed homes for someone who can function outside of a locked in patient unit, but they still need medication assistance and other support. You also have IMD beds which are for more severe cases. And that's for longer term care. Those are just two of the continuing care bed categories there. There are a few others as well. But those, those are two major ones. Speaker 2: 03:18 So bottom line, not having enough of the longer term mental health treatment facilities, uh, ends up causing those patients to stay. At the hospitals for longer periods of time. How long is the typical stay and how does this impact the hospitals? So in San Diego last year, nearly 1400 medical behavioral health patients experienced at least one day waiting for continuing care. That's more than five times. The number of medical patients who waited a decade prior and their weight for a continuing care bed averaged almost two weeks. And so how do these longer stays impact the patient's physicians say that it can lead to poor patient outcomes because these patients do get discouraged when they're just in limbo waiting. Is the shortage in longterm beds, uh, causing this cycle to be repeated? Yes. I did speak with a hospital officials and they said that sometimes a behavioral health patient who needs a continuing care bed, they get tired of waiting and they'll settle for a facility that's incompatible with their needs. Speaker 2: 04:25 And that means that their chances of being successful aren't so great and they could cycle through the system again. And what are the reasons for this shortage and longer term mental health facilities? The reason is because those who operate these facilities over time have found it's a tougher area to pencil out. The reimbursement hasn't kept up with the growing expenses in this area and hospitals are posing a solution and that's to have the county cover the additional cost. How does the county feel about that idea? Yeah, so I spoke with a supervisor, Dianne Jacob about this and she said that all options are on the table here. But I will say that the county sent over data showing increased funding for continuing behavioral health beds over time. And uh, I will also say that the hospitals would like to see the scout county spend more from the mental health services act, a ballot measure that it was approved in 2004. We'll see if that happens and how much money is available from the mental health services act. So there's 99 million in unspent revenue. It's hospitals have said that they would like to see more of that revenue spent on this continuing care phase. But, uh, it does appear that this, uh, these funds will run out in a few years. I've been speaking with Jared Whitlock of the San Diego Business Journal. Jared, thanks so much for joining us. Thanks. Speaker 1: 00:00 Sometime over the weekend, someone broke into San Diego State University's Black Resource Center and vandalize the building. This is one of a few recent incidents targeting black students and faculty on campus. The university says there are efforts to find those responsible while maintaining a safe and inclusive environment. Jay Luke Wood is the associate vice president for academic affairs and chief diversity officer at Sdsu. Professor would welcome. Thank you. It's good to be here. So the black resource center is fairly new on campus. It just opened a year ago. What exactly happened there over the weekend? Well, what we know at this time is that, um, someone or a group of people were unsure broken to the black resource center and vandalize the center and on the inside, um, breaking, um, one of the televisions in there and some other things. Uh, at this point there's the ongoing police investigation to determine exactly what occurred when it occurred. Speaker 1: 00:56 We do know that, so occurred sometime between Friday evening and Sunday morning. We believe it was Saturday evening, but we're not sure yet. Um, so once we have more details, we're going to be released in that as they come forward. But at this time or really doing is being focused on our students who have are of course, uh, affected by this incident. All right. And this isn't the first incident on campus. Can you tell me about some of the other incidents in, in recent events that have happened? Well, I think that the main incident would be the, a few weeks ago, uh, there was a group of men who drove by the black resource center and a car. And as they were driving by, they yelled the inward out of the car and we're laughing and yelling the n word. It just so happened that there was a person who was there who was livestreaming at that time on social media. Speaker 1: 01:45 And so the incident was caught on social media and then, um, it was of course shared. And then as a result, there were a number of different things that we did as a campus community. We put together several healing circles where we had students, faculty, staff come together and talk about how the incident made them feel. And as part of that we learned that, you know, there were, you know, this people have, you know, difficult, you know, time that some people do it have at times had difficulties on campus. And so as part of that, what we wanted to do was make sure that there was some sort of action that came out of it. So we had another, a discussion group where we brought students together and we asked them, what do you want to see, what is it that you would like to see the campus do? And they came up with the list of recommendations and what we did was we took those recommendations. We worked with one of the university centers, actually two senators, uh, Nola Butler bird and Mark Wheeler, and brought that to the University of sin as a resolution. And that was passed unanimously last week. And we actually spoke with one Sdsu student Tamil mccaby, uh, who's a sophomore from Chicago. Here's what she had to say. Speaker 2: 02:49 I don't want to be here anymore. And as a student, when I came to Sdsu, I came here. I wasn't in a rush. I ready to get the most out of my educational experience. I was ready to take all the classes I could take. I was ready to be involved in everything and every part of my community. And now I feel pushed into my black community, pushed into having to fight and struggle and constantly validate myself that I deserve to be here. Um, and it's taxing. It's traumatizing to wake up in the morning and have to come to a space, have to sit in these classrooms and know that you know, the people around you, they're not here to support you. They're not here to aid you in your success. And even if they put you on banners and flyers and you know, celebrate you all black history month after that, you're invisible again. Speaker 1: 03:44 Professor would, what's your reaction to that? Well, my, my reaction is one of hurt and pain. I mean I can tell by the way that Tamil is expressing her comments that she is affected by the situation now as are many of our students. Uh, this morning I had the opportunity to have a, uh, an a conversation in the black resource center with a number of our student leaders where we talked about it. And, um, I think that her cinnamon is cinnamon, you know, are widely reflected across at least a core of the students who are hurt, um, are angry or frustrated. And you know, it's my job as a chief diversity officer to help support and to help foster a climate where everyone feels welcome and safe and valued at this institution. And so it just shows that we have a lot more work to do. Speaker 3: 04:35 I mean, because it's one thing to support and to really champion diversity and inclusion, um, and to do so through making a black students and faculty feel welcome and offering them support. But then the other side of that coin, you have people who commit acts such as the one committed at the resource center. I mean, how do you combat that? Speaker 1: 04:55 Well, those are harder to combat. And you know, for example, uh, with the incident that occurred earlier this semester, you know, several weeks ago with the group of men driving by and yelling the n word, you can't prevent that from taking place. I mean, people are unfortunately going to have their viewpoints and they're going to express them and there can be things that people say that are hurtful, that don't necessarily rise to, um, to a level where we can do much about it. Um, that's the challenge of, of doing this work and being in the field of diversity inclusion when you know that are our weapons are weapons of essentially love and affirmation, but the individuals who may not appreciate the work that we do operate from a different set of dispositions in that makes it difficult to do the work. But it only further reinforces the importance of having a black resource center and all the other centers that we have on campus of having an office of diversity and the work that we're doing to change the face of Sdsu. Speaker 1: 06:01 Not In just in terms of demographics because I think that's a smaller part of it, but really in terms of of culture, all right. One where we are truly preparing, preparing individuals to go into a diverse world, and that involves us ensuring that students from different minorities backgrounds are being affirmed and supported. And we, again, like I said before, we have a lot of work to do. I had been speaking with Jay, Luke Wood, who is the associate vice president for academic affairs and chief diversity officer at Sdsu. Professor would thank you so much for joining us. Thank you.