Democrats Duke It Out In What Was Once A Swing Council District And More Local News

January 23, 2020 at 2:52 AM PST

Speaker 1: 00:00 Speaker 2: 00:38 Speaker 1: 00:38 Speaker 3: 01:10 Speaker 1: 01:26 Speaker 4: 01:45 Speaker 3: 01:59 Speaker 4: 02:12 Speaker 1: 02:30 Speaker 5: 02:46 Speaker 1: 02:53 Speaker 6: 03:00 Speaker 5: 03:04 Speaker 6: 03:15 Speaker 1: 03:34 Speaker 7: 04:16 Speaker 1: 04:26 Speaker 8: 04:55 Speaker 6: 05:00 Speaker 8: 05:11 Speaker 6: 05:26 Speaker 7: 05:40 Speaker 6: 05:54 Speaker 1: 06:09 Speaker 9: 06:38 Speaker 10: 06:48 Speaker 9: 06:58 Speaker 10: 07:04 Speaker 9: 07:12 Speaker 10: 07:25 Speaker 10: 08:15 Speaker 11: 09:00 Speaker 10: 09:13 Speaker 11: 09:17 Speaker 10: 09:25 Speaker 11: 09:39 Speaker 10: 10:01 Speaker 11: 10:08 Speaker 10: 10:20 Speaker 1: 10:33 It's Thursday, January 23rd I'm Deb Welsh and you're listening to San Diego news matters from KPBS coming up. The point in time homeless count takes place in San Diego County and city council. District one was once a partisan battleground attracting heavy spending and organizing from local Republican and conservative groups, but times have changed that and more San Diego news stories coming up right after the break. [inaudible] at 4:00 AM this morning, volunteers fanned out across the County to count those who don't have a home to call their own. Last year's point in time count identified over 8,000 people who were living on the street or in canyons, tents, cars, RVs or shelters in San Diego County, San Diego city council and Chris ward is the chairman of the regional task force on the homeless. It carries out the count. He told KPBS PVS that the actual number of homeless people in the County is believed to be much higher. There is no one best hundred percent estimate, but what we try to do is keep our methodology constant. We know that the number is probably North of about 20,000 individuals that are, uh, engaging homeless services throughout the course of the year in the County. Councilman ward says drones will help aid this year. Search to hear the entire interview listened to the mid day edition podcast. San Diego County is taking steps to make sure everyone who lives here gets counted in the upcoming U S census. KPBS reporter Eric Anderson has more the once a decade tally of the country's population officially got underway this week. And for the first time San Diego County officials are helping get an accurate count. Supervisor Nathan Fletcher says, it is vital that everyone is accounted for. Our census data determines the funds that are allocated for things like headstart, foster care, health center programs, Medicaid, national school lunch, uh, and many other vital programs, uh, that helps. San Diego. [inaudible] Fletcher says informative mailers in five languages are being sent to all the counties registered voters starting this week. He says just one person not being counted costs the County $2,000 a year in lost funding for public services. Eric Anderson KPBS news, the number of students in California schools is expected to decrease over the next decade. Capitol public radio. Scott Rob looks at why overall school attendance has dropped every year since 2013 that's according to a new report from the state legislative analyst's office. It's declining in particularly pronounced ways and portions of Southern California, Los Angeles, orange County, Jennifer patella is with the Lao. She says some parts of the state such as the central Valley, have experienced an uptick in student populations, but that trend may reverse over the next decade. When we look out and do projections, we see a continued decline statewide and attendance, and then actually an increasing number of counties projected to decline moving forward. Patella says the trend is partly due to lower birth rates and families leaving the state school funding in California is largely based on attendance per student spending is at an all time high and continues to grow, but the concern is that if the number of students goes down, some districts could see less funding in Sacramento. I'm Scott rod. A new pilot program is being launched for residents in the unincorporated parts of San Diego County, helping them come up with disaster preparedness plans. KPBS reporter Prius Schreder explains the program aims to help vulnerable people in the unincorporated areas of San Diego County come up with an emergency response plan before disaster strikes. Residents can visit ready San diego.gov/get involved and fill out a form. A volunteer from the community emergency response team will then make contact with the person and either schedule a visit or have a phone conversation to come up with a plan. Jeff, Tony is from the county's office of emergency services. A lot of it is is what do you need if you have to go and your, your important papers, your medications. What about your pets? They're often overlooked. A $260,000 state grant is funding the pilot program that County officials are hoping will extend beyond the unincorporated areas by July [inaudible] K PBS news, San Diego city attorney Maura Elliott faces two challengers in the March primary election who would bring very different approaches to the city's top legal job. KPBS reporter Joe Hong spoke to all of the candidates about their promises and priorities. Well, 11,000 plus employees count on the city attorney for legal advice. I was elected in 2016 city attorney Mara Elliott says she's most proud of her work in gun safety. She spoke to KPBS at the mission Bay playground where she first announced the safe storage of firearms ordinance. We are the lead agency in the state of California when it comes to protecting people from folks who are dangerous and have access to guns. We're removing guns from the streets were protecting children so people don't have to worry when they send their kids to school. Her main opponent. Corey Briggs has filed dozens of open records lawsuits against the city and he says his work as a transparency advocate won't change once he's elected. He said he'd establish a residence advisory committee that will hold weekly meetings with the city of Tony's office and every month they will get to homie into a room public meeting. You're welcome to go. Press's welcome to be there. At least folks will get to ask questions about how I'm operating with city attorney's office. Why did I do this? Why am I not focusing on that? The third candidate is Peter message, who has as a deputy city attorney in both the civil and criminal divisions. He said he will improve the city attorney's outreach to communities, focusing on relationships between neighborhoods and law enforcement. Joe Hong K PBS news in 2016 San Diego city council district one was a partisan battleground. Republicans felt like they had a shot at taking the seat and with it, the council majority. What a difference four years makes this year, not a single Republican will be on the ballot in district one, which includes LA Jolla and university city. KPBS Metro reporter Andrew Bowen spoke to the four major candidates, all Democrats, about their priorities. Over the course of my career, I had the privilege of working all over San Diego and kind of seeing, you know, front row seat what was good and what was bad about how the city does things and I think we can do better. Erin Brennan is a retired firefighter and Navy reservist. He says he wants to focus on increasing the number of police officers and fire stations in San Diego and repaving streets. Let's take a drive around and just about any part of San Diego. And, and you feel like you need a Humvee in lots of parts of the city. Well, housing affordability often gets the most attention at city hall. Brendan says, district one has other things to worry about. Hardly anybody in district one is suffering from a housing affordability issue. And so for the voters of district one, they're not as concerned about it. From a personal standpoint, they are concerned about, Oh, you're going to build affordable housing. Where are you going to build it? Brennan says neighborhoods with access to mass transit like university city and Sorento Valley are good places to start adding density. I've watched us here in San Diego chase our tails or bunch around a bunch of side issues for a long time such as spending 20 years arguing about football teams while our roads don't get paved and people end up homeless will more is a small business attorney. We meet him at UCFD where he says thousands of talented students are ready to leave San Diego because it's too expensive. When we start telling our best and brightest college students who come here from all over the country to attend college here that they can't stay. Then we are crippling our future as a city and as a region and the parents in this district are painfully aware that that's the problem their kids are facing because their kids tell them every day. Another top issue for more is climate change, which he says is a serious threat to district ones, low lying coastal neighborhoods like LA Jolla shores. The most important thing we can probably do on climate is move people from out of town where they have two hour commute. It's from Temecula to live here in San Diego, close to where they work because those commutes make up a full half of our carbon emissions in this city. You know, I've got a five and a half month old little daughter. I want to make sure we leave this place better than how we found it for the next generation. I'd eat [inaudible] who goes by age recently led a project to create, connect all a startup accelerator in Southeast San Diego for low to moderate and minority entrepreneurs. He says that's the kind of leadership he would bring to city government. And that is an example of how we thought differently. Uh, thought creatively. We were able to build consensus around the idea, uh, between what was happening up here on the Mesa and the innovation that's happening, uh, and bring that down South of the aid point. They says he also wants to focus on modernizing the city's technology. Look at our performance and analytics department, give our chief data officer a little bit more teeth so that we're much more responsive to to what citizens need. No other candidate has. The breadth and depth of experience that I have. Joe LaCava is a civil engineer by trade and a longtime activist on civic issues. Housing is one of his top issues and he says the city is doing some things right. The devil is in the details, but I think generally making it a little bit easier, a little bit less expensive to build housing is what we need to do to support the homebuilding industry because ultimately they're the ones that produce the majority of the homes. The concern that I have is that we're not really addressing the needs of the folks that are at the moderate income or the lower income. LaCava says he has a track record of building coalitions and bringing people together on divisive issues like growth and development. What I've demonstrated over the years is the ability to bring people from different sides, not the polarized conversation, but to bring people together. Not point fingers or point blame to any individual group or stakeholder district. One will have the most candidates of any other race on the city ballot, only the top two finishers in March. We'll make it through to the general election on November 3rd Andrew Bowen KPBS news. For more election coverage, go to kpbs.org/election thanks for listening to San Diego news matters. If you like the show, do us a favor and tell your friends and family to subscribe to the show.

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San Diego City Council District 1 used to be a district that could swing Republican. But now four Democratic men are trying to distinguish themselves in the March primary. Plus, the point-in-time homeless count takes place in San Diego County. And California school enrollment has been dropping every year since 2013.