San Diego Winter Is Wetter Than Most And More Local News

Speaker 1: 00:00 Good morning. It's April 16th I'm Deb Welch and you're listening to San Diego news matters. San Diego's rainy season will end up being wetter than average this year. KPBS reporter Eric Anderson as details Speaker 2: 00:14 this past winter was notable for the number of storms that rolled through the region. National Weather Service forecast or Alex Tardy, So San Diego typically gets 10 or 12 storm systems each winter and this year there have been more than 30 Speaker 3: 00:27 we saw rain that started in December and then it wouldn't let up. It went right through New Year's Eve, picked up hard in the middle of January, and then it was really the grand finale in February and early March where we had big rain events that was a little too much. In some places, Speaker 2: 00:45 rainfall totals are already about 15% above normal. The state snowpack also got a major boost this year with totals running about 70% above normal. The winter rainy season ends on May 1st paternity says there could still be rain during the summer and fall. Eric Anderson, Kpbs News Speaker 1: 01:02 San Diego voters will decide on a measure to fund an expansion of the convention center. In March, 2020 Kpbs Metro reporter Andrew Bowen says that was the outcome of a city council meeting Monday. Speaker 3: 01:14 The citizens' initiative. Yes, for a better San Diego would fund to the convention center expansion and homeless programs through a hike in the hotel room. Tax Support wanted it on the march ballot. Saying too many tax measures on the November, 2020 ballot could hurt its chances of passing. Councilwoman Jenn Campbell, it says homelessness is also an urgent crisis. Speaker 4: 01:35 We can have better solutions now in these modern times for our citizens in need, and we need to get to it as quickly as we can. Speaker 3: 01:45 The council has to cast another vote to officially placed to measure on the march ballot, but a majority of five did express their intent. The convention center expansion has long been one of Mayor Kevin Faulkner's top priorities. Andrew Bowen, Kpbs News, Speaker 1: 02:00 a marine died over the weekend at Camp Pendleton. KPBS military reporter Steve Walsh says he was part of a special operations unit. Speaker 5: 02:08 A Marine Raider was killed at Camp Pendleton during a training exercise. Two other marines from the elite Special Operations Unit received a minor injuries. The accident happened on Saturday at Pendleton. The Marine who died was in critical condition when he was evacuated by helicopter. He later died Sunday night. The Marines are withholding his identity pending notification of the family. The Raiders are attached to the First Marine Division based at Camp Pendleton and investigation into the cause of the accident is underway. The accident involved a tactical vehicle which looks similar to a Dune buggy. It was the only vehicle involved in 2015 a member of the first marine raider support battalion was partly crushed by an ATV while teaching a class at Pendleton, Steve Walsh, KPBS news, Speaker 1: 02:56 California Governor Gavin Newsom. As responded, president Trump's call to send migrant seeking asylum to sanctuary cities. He said it's already happening but Newsome isn't ready to agree. There's a state of emergency at the border. Capital. Public radio has been Adler reports Speaker 6: 03:13 over the last several days. President Trump has repeatedly said the federal government should play Central American migrants in sanctuary cities. He also called out California and by name in an interview with capital public radio. Governor Newsome said the Trump administration is already dumping people on the streets of San Diego. Speaker 7: 03:29 Many ways policy is unwritten. Uh, that's what they're doing. They're sending folks to the street corners, Greyhound bus stations in a sanctuary state disproportionately in our state, a legal asylum seekers. The governor says Speaker 6: 03:43 California, we'll take in its fair share and quote, continue to defend an embrace sanctuary policies, but Newsome does not call the surgeon migrants a national emergency. Instead, he says the president is inviting a crisis of his own making by failing to adequately staff and fund the processing of asylum seekers at the state capitol. I'm Ben Adler. Speaker 1: 04:03 100 days ago today, Gavin Newson became California's 40 of governor. He sat down with capital public radio's been Adler yesterday for a wide ranging interview. Here's their conversation about taxes. Speaker 6: 04:16 You've called for a nine one one feet of modernize the state system from, as you say, analog to digital, a clean drinking water fee for poor communities with dirty water. And you've said you want the state individual health insurance mandate. And penalty to replace the federal one. A lot of regular Californians is with all those tax increases. Can California is afford this? Speaker 7: 04:36 Yeah, I don't think we can afford not to modernize our emergency communications. Uh, the fact that a, for seniors, people mobile ability of pyramid, the lack of access to Geo spacing, a gps technology, the ability for first responders to, uh, get, uh, location mapping done because of our, uh, old analog system. Uh, is it embarrassment candidly? And by the way, there's been efforts in the past, none of this is novel or there were efforts in previous administrations to do exactly this. They fell short. Uh, we're trying to get it done, um, on the issue of safe drinking water. Yeah. Close to a million people that don't have it. There's Flint, Michigan's all across California. Uh, that's unacceptable. I don't think we can afford to live a good life in an unjust society. As Aristotle said, there is no injustice or no justice rather when people can't bathe, let alone drink water and they're still paying for that water more than they are in Beverly Hills. Speaker 7: 05:29 And, uh, I think, uh, there's been efforts in the past that I picked up on, uh, not new again, uh, that I want to see if we can get across the finish line. So in both those issues, I feel like previous administration, I was on the right track. I want to see if I can help, uh, accomplish those things. Um, and ultimately on the broader issue of individual mandate, Trump administration is vandalized, the affordable care act. I think the affordable care act is overwhelmingly supportive by California. So I want to put it back together. I think that's an appropriate response. And to the extent that people need subsidies, that what's so significant about the individual mandate, the third leg of the stool is that we're able to deepen subsidies into the middle class, uh, expand them rather in the middle class and deepen them for people blowing come means, so there's a direct correlation there to affordability and access. Speaker 7: 06:20 But I can assure you this, without the mandate healthcare premiums for everybody began to go up and I don't think we can afford that. Why not do some of the new revenue increases out of the general fund. You projected at $21 billion surplus in January and will need to pay down pension obligations. We need to pay off all of our debt. I want to pay up 100% of our debt. I don't want to begin to address restfully pay a pension obligations where there's a huge return on that investment, a stork, rainy day reserved cause I want to make sure we're ready for an economic downturn. I want to be wise and thoughtful about one time surplus as being used for one time investments. And there's a distinction there. Um, we put developer I think a very thoughtful budget that was fairly well received by all sides of the political aisle. Speaker 7: 07:05 I was pleased that I'm more conservative minded. People thought there were aspects that made sense and we'll progressively minded people like the investments in preschool and keeping the cost of education, higher education flat by investments in higher education and childcare programs. Obviously healthcare expanding, uh, not just the opportunities, uh, as it relates to the ACA. But reimbursement rates for more early childhood screenings and the likes. So, uh, I think you'll see that reflected in the May revise and that same kind of discipline, but same kind of progressive framework of investment. I think the budget, um, as well, uh, equipped to address. But I think if you start adding all these other things, these ongoing expenses, using one time money, you're going to end up back to where we were. And with all due respect, I'm not willing to go back to the battle days of budgeting. Uh, I like what Governor Brown did and the new approach to budgeting and we want to build on that. Speaker 1: 07:58 California Governor Gavin Newsom speaking with capital public radio has been Adler in Rokita Magonia an immigrant from Mexico, heads up a farm crew in the eastern Coachella valley. And for three weekends a year the crew pulls double shifts picking up trash from thousands of concert goers at the Coachella valley music festival. The festival is now underway working. There is a sometimes fraud experience that both leaves Magalia exhausted and occasionally disrespected. Rebecca Plevin, a reporter with the Desert Sun did this story for the California report. Speaker 8: 08:33 It's 6:30 AM and the sun is just beginning to rise over a vineyard about 15 miles from the city of Coachella and it get that is giving instructions to about a dozen far more carbs there. So condom or if she's working at vineyards for 20 years as a field supervisor for the past nine today, she's demonstrating how to thin the vines using both hands to snap off small branches because they come over your phone. Ms. Dot. Manno, who's an immigrant from mutual con Mexico says bar mark was the first thing she learned to do in California and leading a crew of workers has given her a lot of confidence that I am seeing took a tango Sophie, he email Wooster or cal Osea safe, but it's not easy in the desert. Temperatures can soar into the triple digits by April. So, and we kept on her crew were pants, long sleeved shirts, big hats and Bandanas to shield themselves from the sun. They start early to beat the heat. Speaker 8: 09:39 You're going to work hard. She tells recru it's for the good of all of us. She'll give them similar instructions as they collect trash at the Coachella festival. She says it's not as hard as field work in that mass comm Bella's volts as a law Sueur. It's nothing more than changing the trash bag. She says like you do in your own house. What is difficult, she says is the schedule Joe Yeager, that is on Friday nights. She returned from the vineyard around four in the afternoon, showers and eats and then heads out to the festival grounds at the Empire Polo Club. She and her crew cleanup after the performances and by the morning the grounds are spotless again, instances. Jayco cafe. She says she arrives home on Saturday morning in time to sleep for an hour or so and have a cup of coffee before starting her field shift. Then she's back the festival Saturday night and again on Sunday night and back to the field. Monday morning she maintains the schedule for three weekends. He's mes epistles, battles Si comprendo case, bizarre and by the end she admits the routine becomes tiring. The first year she worked at the festival. She experienced some culture shock. People smoked so much marijuana and war, so little clothing [inaudible] she wondered why are they wearing bikinis if it's not a beach? Now, after working at the festival for a decade, she's used to the outfits and she's grown accustomed to how concert goers treat her crew. She says some people offer them tips. Others though, make the workers feel unwelcome Speaker 9: 11:22 and see. Is this email on Speaker 8: 11:25 the show better saunas a [inaudible]. She says concert goers have said to her, don't pass by here until we finished eating. She says they just don't want to see the cleaning crew. She says back some of the audience act like this because they are drunk or high, but still their behaviors, things. Cynthia said this and also [inaudible] sociales. They make us feel like we're the trash people. She says like we're dirty and we kept that and her crew make the same amount of money at the festival as they do in the fields. Both jobs pay minimum wage, $11 an hour, but since she and her husband have one kid applying for medical school, one in graduate school, one in college, and one in high school, she takes any extra work she can get for the California report. I'm Rebecca Plevin in the eastern Coachella valley. Thanks for listening to KPBS is San Diego News batters podcast. For more local stories, go to k pbs.org.