City of San Diego will no longer go to court to force county to aid vulnerable people
Good Morning, I’m Lawrence K. Jackson…it’s THURSDAY, OCTOBER 2ND
>>>> THE CITY OF SAN DIEGO IS NO LONGER GOING TO COURT TO TRY TO FORCE THE COUNTY TO AID VULNERABLE PEOPLE…More on that next. But first... the headlines….#######
IN THE WAKE OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SHUT DOWN, A NUMBER OF SAN DIEGO ORGANIZATIONS HAVE COME TOGETHER TO HELP MEMBERS OF THE MILITARY, THEIR FAMILIES AND OTHERS WHO DEPEND ON GOVERNMENT-FUNDED JOBS.
ON WEDNESDAY A COALITION CALLED THE EMERGENCY ACTION GROUP SAID THERE IS PLENTY OF HELP AVAILABLE, FROM FOOD TO FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE.
DAVID BOONE IS PRESIDENT AND CEO OF THE SAN DIEGO MILITARY ADVISORY COUNCIL, OR SD-MAC…WHICH IS PART OF THE COALITION.
HE SAYS THEY KNOW LIFE IS MADE MORE STRESSFUL BY THE SHUTDOWN.
MILHELP 2A :11
“We’re concerned about military families and how they sustain themselves over the next period of time, whether it’s a day or a month, or whatever the duration is.”
IF YOU OR SOMEONE YOU KNOW NEEDS ASSISTANCE, YOU CAN GO TO SD-MAC DOT ORG. THEY HAVE LINKS TO ALL THE OTHER GROUPS OFFERING HELP.
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SAN DIEGO’S BAN ON DIGITAL-ONLY COUPONS STARTED YESTERDAY!
THE FIRST-IN-THE-NATION GROCERY PRICING TRANSPARENCY LAW ORIGINALLY PASSED IN APRIL
THE BAN AIMS TO GIVE EQUAL ACCESS FOR SHOPPERS WHO CAN EASILY USE DIGITAL COUPONS AND THOSE WHO CANNOT
STORES ARE ADAPTING TO THE CITY ORDINANCE IN DIFFERENT WAYS
SOME ARE DOUBLING DOWN BY OFFERING SHOPPERS PRINTED VERSION OF DIGITAL DISCOUNTS WHILE OTHERS ARE CANCELLING THE DIGITAL COUPONS THAT AREN’T PRINTED
BOTH APPROACHES FOLLOW THE LAW
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GAME 3 AND A CHANCE AT MAKING HISTORY KICKS OFF TODAY FOR YOUR FRIAR FAITHFUL
THE PADRES LIVE TO FIGHT ANOTHER DAY AFTER WINNING GAME 2 AGAINST THE CHICAGO CUBS WITH A FINAL SCORE OF 3 TO ZERO
THE BEST OF THREE SERIES IS ALL TIED UP NOW AT ONE GAME A PIECE
THE ODDS ARE STACKED AGAINST THE PADRES. UNDER THE CURRENT M-L-B WILD CARD FORMAT, WHICH STARTED IN 2022, NO TEAM HAS GONE ON TO WIN THE ENTIRE SERIES AFTER LOSING THE FIRST GAME
PETCO PARK IS HOSTING ANOTHER WATCH PARTY TODAY AT GALLAGHER SQUARE
WILL HISTORY BE MADE? WE WILL SEE!
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From KPBS, you’re listening to San Diego News Now.Stay with me for more of the local news you need.
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THE CITY OF SAN DIEGO IS NO LONGER GOING TO COURT TO TRY TO FORCE THE COUNTY TO AID VULNERABLE PEOPLE.
FOR THE LATEST WHY IT MATTERS SEGMENT, VOICE OF SAN DIEGO REPORTER LISA HALVERSTADT EXPLAINS THE CONTROVERSIAL APPROACH AND CONCERNS ABOUT THE PAUSE.
VOSDCONSERVATOR 1 (public matters) TRT: (1:09) last words “why it matters”
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"For the past four years, the city’s had a program called Lifesaving Intervention for Treatment.
It focuses on people who constantly need help from police and paramedics. They often have complex physical and mental health challenges.
Until recently, the city’s last-ditch move to save these people was to go to probate court. A city attorney would ask a judge for a conservatorship. Then the county could be forced to provide care.
In 2022, council members increased the city budget to support this work.
City lawyers successfully argued for 26 probate conservatorships in the past four years.
Before City Attorney Heather Ferbert took office last December, she supported this tactic. County officials did not.
But Ferbert recently changed her mind.
She said her office would pause conservatorship filings. Her team said budget and resource concerns spurred that decision.
But current and former city officials who work with the LIFT program are concerned. They fear some people could die without legal intervention. They saw the filings as a way to help people whose lives are at risk who also drain public safety resources.
I’m Lisa Halverstadt for Voice of San Diego and that’s why it matters."
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THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION HAS REVOKED A GRANT OF MORE THAN 1 MILLION DOLLARS TO FUND A ROAD SAFETY PROJECT IN EAST SAN DIEGO COUNTY.
METRO REPORTER ANDREW BOWEN SAYS IT'S PART OF A NATIONAL TREND.
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GRANTS 1 (ab) 2:01 SOQ
*car noise*
LS: Campo Road, at one point in time, used to be the main road from San Diego to Campo.
AB: I'm walking with Lisa Steward on Campo Road. She's the president of the Casa de Oro Alliance, a nonprofit that advocates for the neighborhood. Campo Road is dotted with strip malls and drive-thrus. It's busy, fast, even chaotic.
LS: So a pedestrian is constantly looking, looking behind them to see who's coming, looking in front to see who's going to turn … because a lot of time the cars are trying to see the traffic and they're not really paying attention to pedestrians.
AB: Last year, San Diego County won a grant of $1.2 million to implement a "road diet." For one block, they would reduce the lanes to one in each direction, add a median, bike lanes and a temporary roundabout. But last month, the Trump administration sent the county a letter revoking the funds. The reason: The project was QUOTE "hostile to motor vehicles."
LS: Disappointed, I think, is the politest thing that I can say. … We could have learned a lot and proven that roundabouts and traffic calming actually does help make it safer for not only pedestrians, but for all drivers, because the accidents that have taken place in Casa de Oro have been car accidents.
CS: Really this is just a brand new front for the whole culture war around road safety.
AB: Corrigan Salerno is policy manager at Transportation for America, a think tank based in DC. The Trump administration has revoked hundreds of road safety grants, saying its priority is widening roads to make room for more cars. But Salerno says wider roads lead to faster driving.
CS: And it's very well documented both in research and also by basic physics, the faster a car goes, when it hits somebody or something, the more energy is exchanged and the more likely people are to be killed or injured.
AB: The county says it's still committed to finding alternative funding sources for road safety improvements. Andrew Bowen, KPBS news.
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COUNTY SUPERVISORS WEDNESDAY APPROVED A PROPOSED HOUSING DEVELOPMENT IN HARMONY GROVE, NEAR ESCONDIDO.
NORTH COUNTY REPORTER ALEXANDER NGUYEN SAYS THE SUPERVISORS ADDED A CONDITION THAT THE H-O-A SUBMIT A BI-ANNUAL REPORT ON FIRE SAFETY MEASURES.
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HARMONYVOTE :50 SOC
NATS “the vote passes unanimously”
There was some grumbling from the crowd after the vote. Some residents opposed the Harmony Grove Village South project because there is only one evacuation route.
That was also a concern for the supervisors … who questioned staff and the developers about fire mitigation for the project.
Here’s board chair Terra Lawson-Remer questioning developer David Kovach
SOT “woudl you live in Harmony Grove Village South and Elfin Forest, where a lot of the concerns are.
Yes, I would live Harmony Grove and Elfin Forest.”
Supervisor Paloma Aguirre added a stipulation that the H-O-A give bi-annual reports to the county on fuel management to make sure they comply with the fire protection plan.
AN/KPBS
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FOR SOME PEOPLE WHO SUFFER FROM DEPRESSION, SOMETIMES COUNSELING AND MEDICATION AREN'T ENOUGH. FOR SOME OF THOSE PEOPLE AN ANSWER CAN BE FOUND IN BRAIN STIMULATION.
SCI-TECH REPORTER THOMAS FUDGE TELLS US ABOUT A TREATMENT CALLED T-M-S.
TMS (tf) 4:26 ….soq.
When Katharine Unetic was a little girl, growing up in San Diego, she spent a lot of time crying. Especially when she was in school.
KATHARINE UNETIC, SAN DIEGO RESIDENT
3983-01/00-04-04 “There was this one art project in the first grade that I still remember when I broke down crying. We had to tear pieces of paper to make penguins. And I couldn’t get the shapes to be, like, uniform, and I hated it.”
What she calls her “crying fits” continued and she was prescribed medication for depression while still a child. Now an adult, she got pregnant and became a mom about a year ago. She says her postpartum depression was practically unbearable. She remembers get togethers with other moms who’d given birth about the same time.
3983-01/00-12-52 “And they would be talking about all these things they were doing with their kids and I could barely get up and out of bed to do anything with him. And I felt I was failing at it.
For people like Katherine, there’s hope in something called TMS, which stands for Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation. It’s one of a handful of treatments for patients who can’t find relief in pills and counseling.
UCSD psychiatry professor Cory Weissman says in TMS they apply what he calls a coil to a person’s scalp. It creates a magnetic field that enters the brain, stimulating neurons. Treatment takes place at a clinic, sometimes over the course of several weeks. He says they aren’t quite sure why it works but they know that it does. The treatment’s response rate, where there’s at least a 50 percent improvement, is seen in up to 60 percent of patients.
CORY WEISSMAN/UC SAN DIEGO PSYCHIATRIST
8:34 “So most people get somewhat better. And about a third of people get what we call remission, so full resolution of their depression.”
Unetic says wearing the coil was kind of like wearing a helmet.
3983-02/00-013-57 “And it produces, like, little shock waves. Can you feel them on your scalp when it’s working? Oh yeah. You can fell it and you can hear it. They’ll give you headphones because some people don’t like the sound. You can still hear it. It’s just a little more muffled. It’s like a little ZIT-ZIT-ZIT.”
TMS doesn’t work for everyone, but it worked for Unetic.
3983-02/00-15-23 “So the first couple of days I had just an intense amount of energy. It was amazing just to feel, like, happy and just to feel elevated in mood. It was just amazing. I'd never felt like that before.”
TMS is one example of interventional brain medicine, fast acting treatments for people who are treatment resistant. Another example, for severe depression, is what we used to call shock therapy. Now called electro-convulsive therapy, it’s been around for about 80 years, and it remains in use because it can be very effective.
Weissman says UC San Diego is doing research to learn why stimulating some neural networks in the brain helps people with depression.
“There are a lot of imaging studies, and we’re doing an imagine study at UCSD, trying to tease apart how individuals’ brains at baseline are different from those that don’t have depression or other conditions and how TMS changes the way their brains are functioning afterwards.”
UCSD is also involved in clinical trials to find out if TMS can help cure bipolar disorder or anorexia. Lincoln Fish is the CEO of a company called Neurobella, that provides interventional medicine like TMS. He says one of his success stories came from treating a retired Marine Lieutenant Colonel called Ben, who suffered depression and PTSD. Fish says treating Ben’s depression made him a different person.
LINCOLN FISH/CEO OF NEUROBELLA
FISH 1 11:26 “He, ah, all of a sudden, and this is a military guy, has trouble swearing. He didn’t realize it but he’s so used to dropping F-bombs because he’s a military guy, but then he’d start to and he just couldn’t do it. So he, like, said something different!”
For Katherine Unetic, treating her depression has allowed her to enjoy her one-year-old boy as he plays games and learns to take a few steps.
3083-02/00-23-23 “He’s super cute. He smiles a lot and he’s always laughing. I adore him.”
For all its advantages, TMS is not cheap. Unetic says she couldn’t have done it if her insurance had not covered it. But – Weissman says – if you look at a cost-benefit analysis it can be a lot cheaper than lingering in a depressed, disabled state for years or even decades. SOQ.
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MORE THAN A HUNDRED ELITE WOMEN ATHLETES FROM AROUND THE WORLD WERE SUPPOSED TO COME TO OCEANSIDE AT THE END OF THIS MONTH... FOR THE FIRST SPORTS ILLUSTRATED WOMEN’S GAMES.
BUT REPORTER JACOB AERE SAYS LAST WEEK, THE GAMES WERE SUDDENLY POSTPONED.
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SIGAMES 1 (:55)
The SI Women’s Games would have featured Olympic athletes and top level professionals competing in sports like basketball, tennis and volleyball over six days at Frontwave Arena. But that's been put on hold for the time being.
Sports Illustrated Editor in Chief Steve Cannella says one of the organizing challenges was bringing in international athletes, who require US visas.
“As we got a little bit closer to opening night this fall, we were experiencing some scheduling difficulties and logistical challenges in getting all those athletes to Oceanside the way we need them to.”
People who bought tickets can hold onto them and wait for the event to be rescheduled, or request a refund within 30 days from receiving the postponement notice.
Canella says they have not yet committed to any new dates, but they hope to reschedule the SI Women's Games in the second half of 2026. JA, KPBS News.
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KIDS CAN GO TO MUSEUMS, AQUARIUMS AND OTHER LOCAL ATTRACTIONS FOR FREE THIS MONTH.
MORE THAN SIXTY MUSEUMS, AQUARIUMS, GARDENS AND HISTORIC SITES ARE OFFERING FREE ADMISSION TO KIDS THROUGH THE END OF OCTOBER.
SAN DIEGO MAYOR TODD GLORIA SAYS IT’S AN OPPORTUNITY FOR LOCAL FAMILIES TO HAVE FUN AND SAVE MONEY.
KIDSFREE2A [13s]
At a time when I know so many San Diegans are concerned about their wallets and their family budgets, this is one small way that we can support families to make sure that they can make ends meet and still be able to enjoy the very, very best of San Diego.
PARTICIPATING ATTRACTIONS INCLUDE THE ZOO, LEGOLAND, THE SAN DIEGO BOTANIC GARDEN AND WHALE-WATCHING TOURS.
THE BRAND-NEW NAVY SEAL MUSEUM IS ALSO OFFERING FREE ADMISSION TO KIDS THIS MONTH. THAT MUSEUM OPENS ITS DOORS ON SATURDAY.
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That’s it for the podcast today. As always you can find more San Diego news online at KPBS dot org. I’m Lawrence K. Jackson. Thanks for listening and have a great day.
