Morning Report: Search for Water Leader Continues

Mum’s the word on the new leader of the country’s biggest water distributor, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. 

Last week, Metropolitan’s governing board came out of a closed session to discuss their next leader with no decision to share. Its former leader, Adel Hagekhalil, was brought down by accusations of workplace discrimination.

San Diego needs Metropolitan’s new leader to sign off on any deals to sell the region’s abundance of water out of state. A new settlement agreement between the longtime foes laid the groundwork for San Diego to do the same thing within Metropolitan member agencies. 

But Adan Ortega, board chair of Metropolitan, told the Orange County Register that the decision on the general manager might not be made until “late September.” Ortega said at the end of the closed session last week that the board is continuing the recruitment process and scheduling interviews. 

Why it matters: Metropolitan provides water to 19 million people and has 26 member agencies, including San Diego’s Water Authority. It controls Southern California’s lifeline to the Colorado River and, without that lifeline, Los Angeles and San Diego would cease to exist. 

Metropolitan is one of the major players Southern California has in the Colorado River negotiations. Next year, many of the agreements seven U.S. states and Mexico made to share the river’s dwindling water supplies expire. Somehow, everyone is supposed to come to a consensus on how the river and its reservoirs should be managed by mid-November. And they’re nowhere close to an agreement, reports the Utah News Dispatch.

In other water leadership news, the board of the San Diego County Water Authority is happy with the job of its new leader, Dan Denham, who took over in August of 2023. 

He got a $33,170 bonus this year for his performance plus a 5 percent bump to his base salary which is now $442,270. 

Central Elementary Safe Parking May Open This Month

For more than two years, some officials at the city of San Diego and San Diego Unified have been trying to open up a safe parking lot at the now-vacant location of a City Heights school. 

That previously interminable slog may finally come to an end. The Union-Tribune reports the site could open as soon as this month.

The long-delayed project has been plagued by finger pointing and communication breakdowns. Earlier this year, the proposal was even left for dead by some city leaders because of funding woes. 

In June, the project was resurrected, after some fierce advocacy from district officials and community groups and some budget maneuvering by Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera. That new lease on life came with a new, significantly lower, price tag. 

Still, however, time ticked by without a clear open date for the site. That’s posed a significant problem, because district officials have planned to redevelop the former campus into affordable housing. That could happen as soon as mid-2026, district officials said. 

The latest news offers the first glimpse at a new, updated timeline for opening. It also offers new details. About half of the site’s cost will come from $250,000 Elo-Rivera was able to set aside during San Diego’s recent budget wrangling. The Regional Task Force on Homelessness will also pitch in, though the exact amount is unclear.

According to Elo-Rivera, the site will include up to 60 safe parking spots reserved for families with children. Families of San Diego Unified students would get priority, but families with children in other school districts could also use the site if space allows.

Slow Start for CARE Court Statewide

CalMatters took a deep dive into the state’s CARE Court initiative and found that counties across the state – including San Diego – have enrolled far fewer Californians with serious mental illnesses than Gov. Gavin Newsom promised.

San Diego County alone predicted it’d get 1,000 petitions in the program’s first year and establish 250 court-ordered treatment plans. Yet since the county rolled out its CARE program in fall 2023, CalMatters reports it’s received 384 petitions and established 134 voluntary agreements.

CalMatters also spotlighted a big misunderstanding about CARE Court that our Lisa Halverstadt described in a series of stories earlier this year: Supporters of the initiative expected it to force people with untreated psychotic disorders into treatment. Counties interpreted state law differently and rolled out voluntary programs.

ICYMI: Halverstadt also detailed a San Diego family’s disappointing experience with CARE Court, the city of San Diego’s push for legislative reforms and how the program has served people exiting involuntary treatment. 

In Other News 

• Street parking near Petco Park on event days just got more expensive. (City News Service) If you park near the stadium on special event days, you’ll pay $10 an hour. The city of San Diego has more information on those dates here. 
• Reporters with the Union-Tribune spoke to families with relatives who have been detained and deported by immigration officials. “The day they took him away, the house felt sad. It felt almost like when someone dies,” one woman told the U-T. 
• The city of San Diego has put the old Central Library on the market. (Union-Tribune) 

The Morning Report was written by MacKenzie Elmer, Jakob McWhinney and Lisa Halverstadt. It was edited by Andrea Sanchez-Villafaña and Scott Lewis. 

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