Morning Report: Yep, Shipping Containers of PPE Went to the Dump
EM - News Moderator 
Remember those truckloads of Covid-era PPE the county of San Diego paid $5.2 million to store until it expired? Well, we got confirmation that most of it indeed ended up in the landfill.
County spokesman Tim McClain confirmed Thursday Junkluggers, LLC, a private trash hauler, took hundreds of pallets of plastic medical gowns to the dump.
The county also revealed that it doesn’t require reports on where or how its material is ultimately disposed. So, that basically means the county isn’t tracking large sources of its waste.
Our Environment Reporter MacKenzie Elmer asked how the county knows whether it’s meeting its goal of sending zero waste to the landfill. The county never got back to her.
Elmer posed the question to the office of Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer, a Democrat and proponent of the county’s Climate Action Plan, which contains this goal. She did not respond to a request for comment.
Pacific Beach Joint-Use Field Won’t be Shuttered for Good
On Friday, education reporter Jakob McWhinney revealed San Diego Unified officials had decided to end public access to the joint-use field at Pacific Beach’s Crown Point Junior Music Academy. Off-leash dog activity had left the field beset by poop and holes, district facilities spokesperson Samer Naji claimed.
This isn’t the first time. The district has had to close multiple fields it opens up to the public after school hours because of canine mischief, Naji wrote. Ninety-six of them are in the city of San Diego.
Within hours of the story publishing, neighbors emailed McWhinney expressing their dismay with the closure.
“This news is actually devastating to the 10-15 of us that treat that park like our second home and have been doing our best to respect it and take care of it,” one reader wrote.
Readers had two main questions: Is the field closed for good? And is there anything we can do to encourage officials to reopen it? McWhinney got answers.
Naji wrote in an email that the closure was a temporary measure meant to allow the field to “return to a clean, healthy, and safe facility for students and families, and to deter future misuse of the facility by individuals who permit their pets to run off-leash.”
The district is still committed to its joint use program, Naji assured. San Diego’s Parks and Recreation Department also has scheduled a maintenance project for October to restore the field.
Politics Monday: First Up, the Podcast with the President (of the Council)
San Diego City Council President Joe LaCava sat with our podcast hopes for this week’s show.
You can check out the podcast here.
He said some noteworthy things: Including that he fears the number of members of the Council who are willing to do things like impose paid parking at Balboa Park is “shrinking.”
Scott Turned That into a Politics Report
In just eight days, the San Diego City Council will have to vote on a series of major water rate increases. If the number of Council members willing to do those things is going down, it could be real interesting.
Scott Lewis wrote the Politics Report on why the city’s leadership is so depressing.
You can read it here if you’re a member.
Water Politics Is the Best: Valley Center Water District Gets New Leader
A titan in San Diego’s local water world is retiring and will be replaced by former city of Oceanside’s public utilities director, Lindsey Leahy.
Gary Arant has been general manager of the Valley Center Municipal Water District for over 36 years. When he arrived in the sleepy eastern San Diego County town, its vast avocado groves were the second-biggest water user in San Diego.
The town’s growing urban center and now-dwindling farmlands are still completely dependent on the San Diego County Water Authority for its water resources. Any spike in price reverberates across his community. And because of that, Arant has had to punch above his weight more than once against what he considered flashy, money-wasting projects some of his fellow board members wanted to pursue.
Like a proposal to build San Diego’s own pipeline to the Colorado River. San Diego relies on the aqueducts maintained by the Los Angeles-based Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, a fact San Diego has always resented.
When two water districts wanted to divorce the Water Authority and seek cheaper water elsewhere, Arant joined forces with the city of San Diego to fight it at the state legislature. The two cities aren’t typically on the same page. But Arant agreed to support the legislation as long as the state lawmaker running the bill would propose a big change to the Water Authority’s voting structure.
The change would have wrest power from the city of San Diego so smaller more rural water districts could have a larger say on Water Authority business. The bill didn’t get any traction, but the idea that the Water Authority should work more like Congress still has quiet support.
“What water people do isn’t recognized as amazingly important but it is,” Arant told me. “Quietly, to ourselves, we understand what we do and why.”
Arant said he may still stay involved in water politics after retiring. But he also plans to pick up guitar lessons and play with his grandchildren.
Leahy starts at Valley Center on November 3.
Finally, Sacramento Politics: Meet Our New Reporter
Our latest reporter to join the CalMatters and Voice of San Diego teams, Nadia Lathan, has hit the ground running at the state Capitol.
Lathan previously covered the people and politics of Texas for the Associated Press. She returns to her native California to explain how lawmakers are tackling San Diego issues. She will be based in Sacramento.
In her first Sacramento Report, Lathan outlines the ambitious legislative agenda presented by San Diego lawmakers to address housing, wildfire insurance, and AI regulation. Gov. Gavin Newsom has until Oct. 12 to sign or veto their bills.
It’s the eleventh-hour at the Capitol, indeed.
Read the Sacramento Report here.
Speaking of Mayors, Todd Gloria says Bonjour, Marseille!
San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria is looking forward to munching on some croissants with our new sister city, Marseille, France.
Gloria commemorated the budding friendship by sharing a photo of him signing a resolution on his Instagram feed. Naturally, the comments popped off.
“Trying to raise the parking fees for France too?” said one user. “What exactly does this do for all of us?” said another user.
Gloria said they’ll make it official next week alongside the Mayor of Marseille during their trade mission with World Trade Center San Diego.
The partnership is supposed to “create opportunities for cultural exchange, economic growth, and deeper connections that directly benefit San Diegans,” said Gloria.
Oui, oui to that Mr. Mayor.
In Other News:
- An investigation by NBC 7 reveals San Diego has seen a massive surge of old immigration cases being “recalendared.” It’s a tactic for the Trump administration to bring people back into deportation proceedings.
- New trash cans are scheduled to hit San Diego curbs in October as a result of the controversial trash fee passed in June, reports KPBS.
- A legal complaint has been filed against Coronado school district after a 13-year-old died by suicide reports CBS 8.
- The Union-Tribune reports San Diego county’s unemployment rate dipped to 5 percent as teachers return to classrooms, but still remains at one of its highest levels in four years.
The Morning Report was written by MacKenzie Elmer, Mariana Martínez Barba, and Jakob McWhinney. It was edited by Andrea Sanchez-Villafaña.
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