Cup of Chisme: To the Next 20

Tomorrow we will being rolling out stories for a new reporting project.

In honor of Voice of San Diego’s 20th anniversary (Whoa, 20 years!), we asked our reporters to look ahead at the next two decades. What will San Diego look like? Will our region solve its greatest problems? Can San Diego meet the moment?

The drafts that hit my desk on Friday are brilliant. Our reporters focused on the economy, homelessness, cost of living, transportation and more. It’s going to be a great week of Voice stories, you won’t want to miss it.

If you have any feedback on the stories, you can reach me at andrea.lopez@voiceofsandiego.org.

OK, grab some cafecito. Here’s what you need to know to start your week.

You’re Worth $100 Million, Baby!

One hundred million dollars is a lot. But that’s exactly what two power companies believe Californians are worth. (I’m assuming they don’t know my high school bully.)

Let me explain.

This week, our favorite environment reporter MacKenzie Elmer explained a morbid exercise: how California energy companies put a value on human life. It’s known as the value of a statistical life, which helps determine how much companies would spend to prevent a death.

As Elmer explains, San Diego Gas & Electric and Pacific Gas and Electric believe that dollar figure is $100 million. Regulators, though, don’t agree and want them to drop the price.

At the end of the day, the value these companies place on human life will determine how they spend and how much it will cost ratepayers.

You can read the full story here.

Voice Impact: We Got El Cajon Talkin’

In July, we broke the news that El Cajon Police Department leaders had made a policy change. They decided to no longer automatically send cops to some mental health crisis calls.

As our Lisa Halverstadt revealed, that policy change also meant county clinician teams couldn’t respond or couldn’t get police to back them up.

Halverstadt documented a time when a crisis team responding to a suicide attempt asked for help, but police refused to respond. She also wrote about a time when a firefighter was injured after tackling a woman for running toward a road. That went down while a police sergeant decided whether police would respond.

After our stories published, El Cajon Mayor Bill Wells requested that the City Council get a briefing on the policy change. Here’s how the discussion went.

More Chisme to Start Your Week

Here are more Voice stories you may have missed.

• San Diego city officials are considering creating a new permit system for groups that teach water-based activities at the beach. Organization leaders say the requirements the city is proposing would make it impossible for them to operate. City Hall reporter Mariana Martínez Barba explains what’s going on in a new story.
• North County Reporter Tigist Layne has been following a growing trend of cities only being interested in providing shelter for homeless people in their towns. She explains that Oceanside’s latest shelter operator switch points to another city falling in line with this trend.
• After Jakob McWhinney reported that there are far fewer kids in public schools now than there were a decade ago, he got a lot of emails from readers. Some offered theories on why that’s happening. Among those ideas, was a suggestion that private school and homeschool enrollment was playing a role in the drop. Not so, McWhinney reports.
• Voice intern Tessa Balc explains in a new story how a new approach to homelessness is proving to be a faster and cheaper way to get people housed. Read the full story here.

The post Cup of Chisme: To the Next 20 appeared first on Voice of San Diego.