Civic San Diego holds a Downtown Community Planning Council meeting. / Photo by Adriana Heldiz

Big changes are coming at Civic San Diego, the city’s downtown development agency.

Reese Jarrett, Civic’s president and CEO since 2014, announced his retirement Wednesday. It isn’t clear when he’ll leave, but he broke the news following a one-hour closed session meeting of the agency’s board.

The departure comes as Civic is engulfed in crisis due to a lawsuit from Murtaza Baxamusa, a former Civic San Diego board member who is associated with the region’s largest construction workers union.

During his lawsuit, Baxamusa found four current and former Civic staffers who alleged a range of improper actions by Jarrett, other Civic leaders and their board of directors, as Andy Keatts and Lisa Halverstadt outline in a new in-depth story about the turmoil in the agency that we posted after Jarrett’s announcement.

Civic leaders deny all of the allegations, and none compare to the criminal charges that brought down agencies that existed before Civic. But they have nonetheless been enough to create a sense of chaos around the agency. Mayor Kevin Faulconer and officials who work for him are now negotiating with Baxamusa to resolve his lawsuit. It could mean a dramatic change to the agency.

Since its creation, Civic has moved from one political crisis to the next. It was created from the husks of two scandal plagued agencies: the Southeastern Development Corp., where two leaders pleaded guilty to embezzlement, and the Centre City Development Corp., which lost its leader to criminal charges after she was involved in approving a project with a company in which she had a financial stake.

Escondido Backs Out of DOJ Grant

I was looking forward to watching how Escondido sorted out a small grant it was expecting from the Department of Justice.

It seemed like a chance to figure out how much there was to the dispute between California and the Trump administration on immigration.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions says municipalities that are so-called sanctuary cities shouldn’t get DOJ grants like this. But there is no accepted definition of a sanctuary city. Since then, California also added new restrictions on how local law enforcement can cooperate with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.

But to get the grant, Escondido officials had to pledge to cooperate with ICE. It seemed like quite the pickle, although Escondido officials said they were confident the grant requirements didn’t run afoul of California law.

For now, we’re unlikely to find out for sure if they were right. As Maya Srikrishnan reports, Escondido decided to pass on the grant. Officials said they couldn’t come up with the money for a required match. Immigrant activists had also lobbied the city hard not to take the money.

North County Report: That news and more is in this week’s North County Report. It has been quite the North County week for Voice of San Diego. We had this news, an update on the fish hatchery in Carlsbad, lots of coverage of the race to replace Rep. Darrell Issa and evidence of Republicans turning against Rep. Duncan Hunter, Jr.

Trump blasts California: The president hit California in the most unusual way Wednesday. Trump said he is going to punish California by not building the wall here, at least for a while. This is unusual because California literally just lost in court trying to block construction of the wall in California.

Also in the North: A horse-rescue group in Valley Center is mired in accusations of fraud and animal cruelty. (inewsource)

Faced With Ballot Move, Chula Vista Sets Pot Rules

Chula Vista became the first South Bay city to create rules for the state’s recreational marijuana trade.

The ordinance allows for three retail dispensaries in each of Chula Vista’s four council districts. Four of those 12 available licenses will be set aside for independent deliverers whose facilities are confined to industrial areas and not open to the public.

Officials have placed no limits on manufacturing and distribution facilities — so long as those sites meet certain zoning requirements — but they did place a cap on the number and size of cultivation sites.

Chula Vista has reluctantly crafted a marijuana ordinance in response to an industry-funded ballot measure. Activists and professionals have been gathering signatures in several cities across San Diego County, putting pressure on elected officials to adopt regulations on their own instead.

“It is definitely not everything we wanted, but it is a small step in the right direction,” Manny Biezunski, a San Diego-based marijuana consultant, said in an email.

He and others have complained that the rules seem to favor out-of-state professionals over local newcomers. In response, officials tweaked their earlier draft.

The city is requiring that applicants employ at least one manager with 12 months of legal marijuana experience. At least one owner must also meet certain requirements, such as running a lawful business in Chula Vista for three years with more than 10 employees.

The city is also asking prospective license-holders to show $250,000 worth of assets and identify a location upfront. On a per capita basis, as the Union-Tribune noted, Chula Vista is poised to create the county’s largest legal marijuana marketplace.

City officials plan to put an initiative to tax cannabis, which could generate as much as $6 million annually, on the November ballot.

But don’t get too excited: Although marijuana is going to help Chula Vista’s bottom line, it won’t solve the city’s long-term financial problems. The U-T also quotes an expert who helped write Denver’s regulations and warned locals at a recent business forum that pot revenue is not an economic savior; it’ll pay for enforcement and then some special projects.

— Jesse Marx

Opinion: School Choice Is Bad for … the Environment

Gary London, a consultant who helps builders scope out the economics of their visions, reacted to our Parents Guide to Public Schools with a commentary. He understands why some parents in San Diego Unified School District may want to take their kids outside their neighborhood because of concerns about school quality, but he argues that not enough people are thinking of the negative effect that’ll have on our transportation system and the environment.

“My specific concern is that the school district’s practice, which now engages almost half of its student population, has serious traffic and environmental consequences that conflict with avowed San Diego policies on climate change and reducing our carbon footprint,” he wrote. “I have not seen nor heard any active discussion about how inappropriate this is.”

Quick News Hits

• KPBS: “San Diego County is planning to build a residential rehabilitation center aimed at helping former criminals and recovering addicts become self-sufficient, Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Kristin Gaspar announced Tuesday during her ‘State of the County’ address.”

• A report found that San Diego is one of the worst areas for pedestrian deaths. (10 News)

• Yet another woman has come forward — now 15 — to allege that a sheriff’s deputy mistreated her. The latest says the deputy groped at her home.

• San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer is asking the City Council to approve changes to housing codes, specifically allowing more units to be built if a project has more affordable housing.

• Social media and conservative news outlets were abuzz about a course San Diego State University offered to the general public through its extended studies program called “Trump: Impeachment, Removal, or Conviction?” Now, the U-T reports that the university decided to drop “Trump” from the name of the course.

The Chula Vista Police Department. / Photo by Sam Hodgson

There is a public safety crisis in Chula Vista.

The police department has been understaffed for about a decade. It is dead last in sworn officer-to-population ratio when compared to all other law enforcement agencies in San Diego County.

As a result, felony arrests in Chula Vista are down 41 percent. Misdemeanor arrests are down 26 percent. Traffic citations are down 49 percent. The number of school resource officers has been cut in half.

At the department, I supervise the violent crimes unit and the detectives who follow up on robberies, carjacking’s, assaults and other violent crimes. At any given time, there is a backlog of more than 100 violent crime investigations and victims who we cannot contact because we do not have enough detectives to work their cases.

About once a week, for instance, we’re called to investigate an unknown suspect accused of committing assault and battery.

Here’s one such scenario. A family spending time at one of our neighborhood parks has an issue with a transient. The family reserved a picnic table and benches to host a party, but the person, who probably calls the park home, refuses to move on. He becomes belligerent with the dad; there’s a scuffle and dad ends up being punched in the face and gets a bloody nose.

The mom calls 911 to report the incident. However, there are not enough patrol officers working to respond right away. By the time the officer arrives, the transient is gone. He now becomes an unknown suspect; the officer takes a report, then hands off the case to investigators. If the officer had gotten there sooner, they could have been in time to catch the suspect. The delay in responding to calls like this prevents our ability to make arrests.

A few days go by and the victim calls to see what’s happening with the investigation. The short answer is nothing. We can’t follow up. Even if we could, we probably can’t make an arrest. It gets frustrating for the crime victims, and the detectives who take pride in helping our citizens. This is happening in every investigative unit within the department.

It’s a domino effect that begins with the first call to dispatch and ends with an overburdened investigative division. The most important staffing that we can add is to uniformed patrol for better response times. We need to catch suspects when crimes are occurring.

This is not an attempt to scare Chula Vistans. It’s not a publicity stunt by a disgruntled union official. We are not trying to get more salary or benefits. We are not crying wolf. It’s a reality check. We are being honest and forthright with the public. We want to meet their needs.

The Chula Vista City Council addressed the crisis by unanimously voting to place a measure on the June 5 ballot. It will increase staffing for both the police and fire departments and is fully endorsed by the Chula Vista Police Officers Association.

The public may be hesitant to support another sales tax measure. But consider that, while Chula Vista’s population has grown 9 percent since the recession, staffing levels have fallen 11 percent below pre-recession levels. It will get worse as the city’s population continues to grow and there is no identified funding to keep pace with that growth.

Chula Vista has a reputation for being a safe city. The staffing crisis is causing us to not meet our response times for priority 1 emergency calls, but the truth is that we haven’t met our emergency response time standard in four years. Our targeted response time to priority 2 urgent calls has not been met in 19 years and that’s embarrassing to admit to the public.

In my 18 years on the department, I have never seen it this bad. We should not be last in the county in officers per capita. Chula Vistans should not have to wait hours for an officer. It’s not OK that we don’t have enough investigators to take on misdemeanor cases.

We have to move as quickly as possible in finding a solution to our staffing crisis. It is extremely important to our community. Let’s work together to solve this problem.

The citizens deserve a fix now.

David Oyos is president of the Chula Vista Police Officers Association and works as a sergeant for the department. See anything in there we should fact check? Tell us what to check out here.

Chula Vista Mayor Mary Salas / Photo by Gabriel Ellison-Scowcroft

In 2016, Chula Vista officials told residents the city direly needed new revenue to address its crumbling infrastructure. Now, residents are being asked to raise the sales tax for the second time in two years, citing a hair-on-fire need for additional police and fire personnel.

Measure A would increase Chula Vista’s sales tax from 8.25 percent to 8.75 percent, which would put the city in a tie with neighboring National City for the highest sales tax in the county.

More than $120,000 has been donated to the Yes on Measure A for Public Safety committee, campaign filings show. The firefighters and police unions donated $20,000 apiece. Another $15,000 came from RIDA, the developer behind the recently approved $1.1 billion bayfront hotel and convention center.

Paula Whitsell, a member of the opposition group Just Say No on A, says there is no guarantee the funds will only be used for public safety.

“They’re selling it as a specific tax, but it goes into the general fund,” she said.

Indeed, Measure A is a general tax. That means there’s a trade-off involved: A general tax – one where revenues aren’t designated for a specific purpose – only needs a simple majority to pass. But it means voters are taking a leap of faith that city leaders would really spend the money on public safety needs. A specific tax would guarantee the money would only be spent on public safety, but those require the approval of two-thirds of voters.

Measure P was also a general tax; it has a 10-year expiration date. Measure A is a permanent tax.

The San Diego County Taxpayers Association, which supported Measure P, has come out against Measure A, saying that it does not include sufficient taxpayer protections and that the city isn’t legally obligated to spend the funds on public safety.

Assistant City Manager Maria Kachadoorian disputes that there would be a lack of oversight.

“Both Measure A and Measure P are general tax measures,” she said. “We would have an oversight committee … it’s in the ordinance. They’re very similar, except one is temporary, one is ongoing.”

Chula Vista Mayor Mary Casillas Salas downplayed concerns about how the increased revenue would be spent. She said the city is committed to hiring more police officers and firefighters.

“Once you hire a police officer or firefighter, you have to pay them,” she said. “These people opposed … it’s a small group of people. I’ve invited critics to come to my office and go over our budget. They haven’t come.”

Salas pointed to the city’s relatively low officer-per-resident ratio — 0.9 officers for every 1,000 people, according to SANDAG — and fire department response times as reasons that those departments need to expand.

“We have a critical staffing crisis in police and fire departments,” she said.

David Oyos, president of Chula Vista’s police union, made a similar argument in a Voice of San Diego op-ed in March.

“In my 18 years on the department, I have never seen it this bad,” he wrote. “We are not crying wolf. It’s a reality check.”

The city, as Oyos pointed out, hasn’t been meeting its targeted 911 call response times.

Crime rates, however, have been in steady decline for decades, and the city has appeared on numerous “safest cities” lists over the last several years.

Chula Vista has undergone rapid development and growth since the 1990s, but has not captured the revenue necessary to keep up. Residential growth has outpaced commercial growth.

“Seventy percent of residents work outside Chula Vista,” Salas said. “That results in people buying goods and services outside of the city.”

Salas also responded to criticism that Measure A is a “regressive” tax — one that presents more of a burden on low-income residents – noting that the tax wouldn’t apply to groceries.

“This is something that can be shared equally with everyone,” she said.

A 250-page report submitted to the City Council by Damon French, a former Chula Vista librarian, points elsewhere to explain the city’s fiscal woes. In the report, French notes that some of the city’s highest paid employees are in public safety.

According to the city’s 2017-2018 budget, police and fire departments account for 49 percent of its general fund expenditures. Irvine — a city with a comparable population and budget — had a public safety expenditure of about 40 percent in 2016, the last year for which that data was published.

Yet the ballot language for Measure A uses a different, and much higher, figure. It lists the cost of public safety as a percentage of discretionary revenues – its sales and property taxes and whatnot – and through that lens, it accounts for 67 percent.

“We operate very lean as a city,” Salas said. “A half-cent sales tax is a small price to pay for the safety of our community.”

Voters who skip the June 5 primary will miss the chance to weigh in on some important local decisions.

The race for San Diego district attorney is one of them.

Interim DA Summer Stephan is fighting to keep her post against Geneviéve Jones-Wright, a public defender. The stark contrast between the candidates and fiery debates throughout the campaign have propelled the race into the national spotlight.

San Diego County sheriff is also up for grabs. Dave Myers, a commander in the Sheriff’s Department, is challenging his boss Bill Gore.

In my latest video, I explain five key local races and measures that will be decided in the June election.

Kystina Tinker voted in Chula Vista on Tuesday. / Photo by Andrew Dyer

A months-long effort to increase sales taxes in Chula Vista was one of the top issues driving voter turnout at several polling precincts across the city Tuesday.

Voters told Voice of San Diego that the proposed sales tax increase — Measure A — along with the races for governor and San Diego County district attorney were the contests most important to them.

In the eastern Chula Vista neighborhood Otay Ranch, Krystina Tinker said she thought taxes were high enough already.

“I feel any type of (tax) increase is just bad for everyday people,” she said.

Measure A has been sold to residents as a fix for a “public safety crisis.” Tinker was skeptical of those claims.

“I personally do not feel unsafe,” she said. “I feel that maybe it’s a bit of an exaggeration.”

Ed Mann, who also lives in Otay Ranch, was more blunt.

“I don’t like taxes,” he said. “Jerry Brown has too many of them.”

In western Chula Vista, Diana Delarosa, said she also voted no on Measure A.

“I think we’ve had enough of that recently,” she said. “I like the idea of it but I don’t really feel like they have control over what they’re going to do with those funds. We don’t have proof they’re going to use those funds for exactly what they say they’re going to.”

While much of the opposition to Measure A has come from the right, Frank Hernandez, who said he voted for several Republicans, voted in favor of the measure.

“We need Measure A because our city has almost tripled,” he said.

Hernandez, who lives on the west side of the city, said he was unhappy with Mayor Mary Salas’ efforts to deal with the homeless population. The race for mayor was the most important to him, he said.

Frank Hernandez said the mayor’s race was the contest he considered most important on Tuesday’s primary ballot. / Photo by Andrew Dyer

“She’s opened the doors to free this, free that — services for the homeless,” he said, referring to Salas. “They’ve overpowered the city. You can’t even walk down Broadway. They need a hand, not a handout.”

Hernandez said he voted for Republican John Cox for governor. As for mayor, he said he voted for one of Salas’ Republican challengers, but declined to say who.

Experience was the top critique voters who spoke to VOSD had with district attorney candidate Geneviéve Jones-Wright, a deputy public defender.

“I did vote for Summer (Stephan),” Tinker said, referring to the interim district attorney. “Nothing against Geneviéve, I’m sure she does a great job, but at the end I do find experience a bit more comforting.”

Tinker said she was open to voting for Jones-Wright, but not until she had a few more years’ experience.

Delarosa also voted for Stephan.

“Originally, I was thinking I was going to go the other way, and then (I) found out she didn’t have much experience,” she said. “It’s important that that person have something going into that position.”

Measure A, along with the county district attorney’s race, will be decided Tuesday.

Chula Vista’s mayoral race, like the race for governor, will be decided in November, with the top-two finishers in each moving on.

Didn’t make it to our conversation with incoming San Diego Unified School District Superintendent Cindy Marten? In the latest edition of VOSD Radio, Scott Lewis and Will Carless analyze the chat with Marten (watch selections here or read a recap) and discuss questions Marten will face as her tenure gets under way.

Also in education news, Carless has updates on:

• the labor battle between Ramona Unified School District and its teachers union; and

• San Diego Unified CFO Stan “Data” Dobbs’ statements about “excess employees” in the district.

Plus:

• the Number of the Week: $8 million. That’s what the city of Chula Vista must pay to cell phone users who said they were illegally taxed.

• a Fact Check on whether police protest every alcohol license application in the city (the verdict: “Mostly True”).

• some big changes at VOSD: Carless is leaving his job here to move his family to Uruguay (which means we’re hiring).

Find out why VOSD Radio named San Diego Regional Data Library’s Eric Busboom Hero of the Week and Mayor Bob Filner’s office Goat of the Week. Listen here.

Dagny Salas is the web editor at Voice of San Diego. You can contact her directly at dagny.salas@voiceofsandiego.org or 619.550.5669.

Follow @dagnysalas

Follow @voiceofsandiego

Like VOSD on Facebook.

Voice of San Diego is a nonprofit that depends on you, our readers. Please donate to keep the service strong. Click here to find out more about our supporters and how we operate independently.

In the middle of a Chula Vista City Council meeting last week, Councilwoman Jill Galvez announced she was firing her only aide. He was not happy.

It wasn’t because she didn’t like him, she clarified. Instead she wanted free up money to hire firefighters and police officers.

Her colleagues, however, declined to follow her lead. But, as the Union-Tribune first reported, the money was not reallocated to public safety budgets. So a man is out of a job and nothing came from it.

Galvez’s stunt has triggered a recall effort. And all of the drama she kicked up overshadowed an important point: The city is not yet making good on promises it made to voters last year in a campaign to increase the city’s sales tax. City leaders offer a variety of excuses. But lack of money is not yet one of them.

Supporters of the tax hike centered their campaign on the city’s need for police officers and firefighters. A lot of that was based on the city’s own presentation about what it could do with the funds.

“We need to hire more officers to keep our community safe,” read one mailer sent to homes by supporters of the tax increase.

Galvez said the budget does not include what was promised.

If the city had not hired new police officers or firefighters as it promised voters, that would indeed be a big story. It would mean that the city was merely plugging a budget hole from the past with a tax increase and just treading water as opposed to increasing city services.

The Money

First, Chula Vista is projecting that it will get more money in the next year than it did before the sales tax increase: $18.3 million to be exact.

So did it actually hire more police officers and firefighters?

Well, yes and no.

The Promise

The groups that supported Measure A promised major investments in public safety. The tax would lower response times to emergency calls, increase police patrols, reduce crime and more.

A projected $18 million each year was planned to fund 43 positions in the city’s police department by 2023 and 36 positions in its fire department by 2025.

The collection of the Measure A sales tax began on Oct. 1, 2018. Now that the tax is in place, it is collecting money. And just like it thought, the city is projecting $18.3 million in revenue from it in the upcoming fiscal year.

What’s Actually Happening

So far, Measure A has helped Chula Vista create five new positions for sworn police officers. But the city was only able to fill one of those positions.

(Remember: In government budgets, a position is not necessarily a person. Positions are measured as “full-time equivalents.” So if one person works part time, 20 hours a week, and another person works part time, 20 hours a week, they equal one full-time equivalent. And those positions sometimes sit unfilled.)

The city also created four new civilian positions, like police dispatchers and community service officers. Two of those positions have been filled.

There are now 234 sworn police officers. That is up from 231 in 2018. But in neither year was the city able to fill all its available positions. This year, the city could have 15 more officers on staff but officials say they simply can’t fill the positions.

“The funds are there. The efforts are there,” finance director David Bilby said. “But the number of people that make it through the academy and pass all of the background checks and want to be police officers right now, it’s just not enough.”

The fire department numbers are a bit more straightforward. The city only has one additional firefighter compared to before the tax increase. But the department also now has several unfilled vacancies.

Last year, it could have paid 141 firefighters but only had 137 on staff. This year, it could have 149 firefighters but only has 138 on staff as of Wednesday.

The city will continue trying to fill those positions. And, in addition, starting July 1, the next year’s staffing goals will kick in. City officials have budgeted for 10 more positions in its police department and seven more in its fire department.

So it will have been a year since taxes were increased but there has been very little change to the number of people patrolling Chula Vista’s streets or responding to emergency calls. That doesn’t seem to be due to financial struggles, however.

Chula Vistans are worried about escalating crime in their city.

The only problem: Crime isn’t escalating in Chula Vista.

The results of a survey from the Chula Vista Police Department and the San Diego Association of Governments highlights a disconnect between what’s actually happening in the city, and what residents think is happening. And the messaging coming from Chula Vista officials themselves might be contributing to the confusion.

In March, the Chula Vista Police Department and the San Diego Association of Governments teamed up to ask households throughout the city a series of questions related to law enforcement. They received 814 responses.

Some of the notable findings showed that nine out of 10 residents reported being “very satisfied” with Chula Vista police and that an increase in homelessness and traffic issues were among top concerns.

The findings also showed that while crime has decreased in the city by 6 percent over the last year, an overwhelming majority of residents, 87 percent, thought it had stayed the same or increased.

“There’s an opportunity for us to be more engaged and be able to show people that the crime rate is lower,” said Councilman John McCann during a July 23 City Council meeting.

City leaders have long touted Chula Vista’s reputation as safe city, but while advocating for Measure A in 2018, a sales tax increase meant to raise funds to hire more police officers and firefighters, they painted a different picture. While urging the public to vote yes, city leaders stressed the need for more officers to fight and bring down crime.

“What that will mean is the ability to hire 53 new public safety personnel and 36 firefighters,” Mayor Mary Salas told NBC San Diego 7 last year. “We desperately need them in the city.”

Mailers sent to voters also noted the need for more officers.

“Our police need backup,” read one mailer.

In an opinion piece for Voice of San Diego, Sgt. David Oyos, president of the Chula Vista Police Officers Association, said the city was experiencing “a public safety crisis.”

“At any given time,” he wrote, “there is a backlog of more than 100 violent crime investigations and victims who we cannot contact because we do not have enough detectives to work their cases.”

More recently, City Councilwoman Jill Galvez faced backlash after she announced that she had fired a staff aide so that the city could hire five more police officers and three more firefighters.

The money saved from firing the aide would not have been enough money to hire even one officer.

Chula Vista has the lowest amount of sworn officers-to-population ratio in the county, but since Measure A went into effect earlier this year, CVPD has been struggling to hire more safety personnel. The Police Department has also struggled to meet its response rate for emergency calls for the last couple of years.

While the union has insisted that Chula Vista is facing a public safety crisis, CVPD Police Chief Roxana Kennedy says otherwise.

“I don’t want to use the word ‘crisis’ because it scares our community,” she said. “We’re doing a good job, but we want to do a great job.”

McCann, who supported Measure A, said online community groups have a lot to do with the perception that crime is high.

“Social media plays a big part,” he said. “Smaller issues are put on social, so everybody sees those.”

Salas agreed that social media can influence how people perceive crime, but acknowledged to VOSD that messaging from Measure A could have contributed as well.

“I would hope that it didn’t, but it may have,” she said. “The message that we were trying got conveyed to the public was that ‘Yes, we have terribly low staffing ratios in the Police Department … but it’s a matter of not be able to do proactive policing and a matter imposing so much overtime on our officers that it leads to a great deal of other consequences.’”

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, San Diego’s South Bay has been hit disproportionately hard.

Back in May, hospitals in Chula Vista saw higher rates of coronavirus patients than their counterpart facilities in other parts of the county. ZIP codes in Otay Mesa, Chula Vista, National City and San Ysidro continue to have among the highest case rates and cumulative numbers of cases in the county.

The situation in South Bay has revealed deep-seated disparities in race, socioeconomic status and health care that exist in the region. That part of the county is majority-Latino, has high numbers of essential workers and multi-generational family households. Testing has been expanded in the region, as well as other efforts to help quell the spread of the virus, but South Bay residents continue to be impacted more by the virus than other parts of San Diego County.

We talked to several South Bay residents and people who work in the region about how the pandemic has changed their reality.

Ana Canales

Seeing fear in everyone is the biggest change that Ana Canales has experienced since the start of the pandemic.

Canales is a child care provider in Chula Vista. Initially when the pandemic began, parents completely stopped sending their children to her. Since then she’s been able to re-open, though with fewer children, since some parents have lost their jobs and no longer need her services. She’s gone from caring for 11 children to seven.

Even though parents know that she takes necessary precautions, there is still a constant air of fear and uncertainty that taints everything.

Canales has a new cleaning regimen to disinfect toys every day. She can’t let parents enter her home to drop the children off and pick them up – she used to love chatting with them during those moments. If the parents need to talk to her about something, they have to contact her by phone or text. When she needs parents to sign something, she leaves a paper in a clear plastic bag outside for them.

“I have a ‘No Visitors’ sign at my door,” Canales said in Spanish. “That makes me sad because I’m a very friendly person. I used to love to host people.”

Her neighbors can’t stop by. She couldn’t have a gathering of family and friends for Thanksgiving. She’s had friends who’ve gotten sick, and even one who lost her husband to the virus.

“I’m worried, but more than worried, I’m sad because everything has changed,” Canales said.

Much of the warmth and affection has also been taken out of her job with the precautions that she’s needed to take with her children.

“When my kids arrived, I used to greet them with a hug. Now I greet them with this and a thermometer,” Canales said, gesturing to her mask. “I love to hug. And the kids notice. They want me to hug them.”

Sara Dove

Sara Dove is a 30-year-old nurse at Sharp Chula Vista Medical Center. She was healthy, exercised regularly, had no pre-existing conditions and did everything she was supposed to in order to not get COVID.

But she did get the virus in July while working and five months later, her life has completely changed.

Dove is what is called a long-hauler. Months after initially getting the coronavirus, she is still experiencing symptoms that have completely transformed her life.

“When I tested positive, I thought ‘OK, there are really only two ways this can go: this virus is either going to kill me or I will recover in a few weeks,” Dove said. That is what she had consistently seen in hospital patients for months. “Never in my life did I expect that five months after I would be out of work and still wouldn’t be able to do most things for myself. I’m pretty much handicapped.”

Researchers estimate that roughly 10 percent of COVID-19 patients become long-haulers.

Since July, Dove has had two ER visit for chest pain and shortness of breath. She’s had multiple lab draws, EKGs, an e-patch to monitor her heart rhythm and pulmonary rehab.

“I’m taking so many medications, inhalers, nebulizers and pills and no one can give me a concrete answer of why this is happening,’ Dove said. “I’ve lost my independence. I’ve lost everything that basically brings someone joy.”

Dove’s symptoms have changed over the course of the past five months, but currently she experiences a constant chemical, melting plastic taste and smell, which makes it hard to eat. She also has terrible heartburn and nausea. She gets random stabbing heart pains, often at night, and her lungs ache when she lies down for too long. She gets muscle tremors, suffers from muscle weakness and has poor coordination, so her legs sometimes give and things like raising a glass to her lips can be challenging. Sometimes walking around the grocery store is too much.

“Really when you get COVID, it’s a true coin flip,” she said. “It’s a total gamble and it’s not guaranteed that you will just get over it.”

Mary Salas

Parts of Chula Vista have been among the hardest hit in the county by COVID-19 this past year. That reality has transformed the job for Mayor Mary Salas.

Recently, she had to send a letter to a Chula Vista neighborhood where the homeowners adorn their houses in elaborate Christmas decorations encouraging them to minimize the decorations. People from throughout the city descend on the neighborhood during the holidays to see the decorations, but with the pandemic, Salas is trying to prevent situations where people congregate.

“I’m a grinch,” Salas told me.

No matter what she does to respond to the pandemic, it upsets someone. Some people think the closure of the city’s businesses and parks isn’t enough to quell the spread of COVID-19, while others think it’s going too far.

“I understand that people have fatigue,” she said. “But I just have to continue the message that we won’t get over this if we don’t maintain some discipline. A sacrifice for a time now will lead us to a better outcome sooner.”

Salas said she particularly misses the personal interactions she used to have with constituents. Now City Council meetings and engagement with community members happens via Zoom or email.

“We adapt and change, but I sure wish we could go back to meeting in person,” she said.

Living in Chula Vista during the pandemic has also deeply impacted her personally. She’s had several close friends lose their mothers and fathers to the virus. One friend’s brother is currently in the intensive care unit, intubated. Even some of her colleagues on the City Council have gotten sick, like Councilman Steve Padilla. She walks her dog down the city’s Third Avenue, which was once vibrant with businesses, but is now vacant as businesses have had to close their doors.

“I’ve seen a lot of tragedy personally,” Salas said. “It’s affected me.”

Valeria Archibald

The isolation has been the toughest part of the pandemic for Valeria Archibald.

“All the stores are closed and there is nothing to do,” she said. “That’s affecting a lot of people. You have to keep up in spirit.”

Archibald said her son calls her every day to say, “Good morning, Mom. How are you doing? Are you feeling down?”

That’s when she’ll realize that sometimes she’s been in bed for three days and thinks, “OK, I need to get up because it has all started affecting me. It’s been so long.”

But Archibald sees some bright spots. Places like restaurants are cleaner than they used to be, and she’s also noticed that people seem to be kinder to one another than they used to be

“Everybody is seeing God,” she said. And with the virus impacting everyone’s life, we’re all left thinking, ‘What is going on in this world?’ We’re all on the same level now.”

Dr. Gilanthony Ungab

For Dr. Gilanthony Ungab, a cardiologist at Sharp Chula Vista, COVID-19 has laid bare the disparities in health care facing Filipinos and Latinos in South Bay.

Ungab recalls seeing the mayor of National City on television, asking the community to participate in COVID-19 vaccine trials in temporary facilities in El Toyon Park and assuring people that they would be paid to do so.

Non-white communities have been hit harder by the pandemic, but a deep-seated distrust in medicine and government has made many in those communities hesitant to participate in vaccine trials or want to take the vaccine when it’s available. According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, of the nearly 1,200 San Diegans who enrolled in Moderna’s vaccine study, about 59 percent are White; 26 percent Hispanic or Latino; 7 percent Asian; 3 percent Black; 3 percent multiracial; and 1.4 percent Native American or Pacific Islander. By comparison, San Diego County’s population is 45 percent White; 33 percent Hispanic or Latino; 13 percent Asian; 5 percent Black; 3 percent multiracial and 1 percent Native American or Pacific Islander.

“Who wants to go to a park with temporary facilities for a vaccine trial?” Ungab said. “Where is the trust?”

Ungab realized he needed to create an outlet where communities of color could participate in medical research and receive care with dignity.

“You have to create a space where people feel safe,” he said. “You have to have people’s primary care physicians recommending they should participate in trials, not a politician. You have to give us dignity.”

So Ungab recently launched the Sharp Chula Vista Center for Inclusion and Diversity in Clinical Research to try and address those disparities. The center will bridge pharmaceutical companies conducting clinical trials and local physicians to help get more non-White South Bay residents involved in medical research.

Ungab is also part of a Filipino COVID-19 Task Force in San Diego that is trying to advocate for more specific COVID data and additional testing sites in places with high concentrations of Filipino residents. County data on how COVID is impacting Asians is disaggregated by nationality, but Ungab believes that Filipinos are disproportionately being impacted.

And he has reason to.

Statewide data compiled by the Los Angeles Times found that Filipino Americans account for at least 35 percent of COVID-19 deaths in California’s Asian population, when they only make up a quarter of Asian Americans in the state.

“COVID-19 has really exposed the disparities in the lack of care, the disparities in research,” Ungab said. “It drove me to do something.”

Kathy Sparks

For Kathy Sparks, the owner of Mangia Italiano on Third Avenue, the holidays once meant banquets, catering and groups of people coming together at her restaurant.

Now it’s a ghost town.

“It’s like you lived with a family member, then all of a sudden they move across the country,” she said.

She values her customers more than anything. Interacting with them was one of the best parts of her day and now she seldom sees a familiar face.

COVID-19 regulations have been killing small businesses like Mangia Italiano. A judge recently ruled that restaurants could reopen, but that decision has since been put on hold. For restaurants and many businesses, it’s been a constant rollercoaster amid a perpetual drop in clientele.

The pandemic has business owners doing backflips to stay afloat. Most joined DoorDash and other delivery services to make themselves accessible to customers, but those take as much as 30 percent of the cut. Sparks pointed out that after she buys supplies, food and pays her employees, she barely breaks even. She also had to cut all her employees’ hours in order to avoid laying anybody off.

“Do I feel in danger? Yes I do,” she said. “Every business that doesn’t have deep pockets is in danger.”

Manuel Santillan and Ezequiel Diaz

Manuel Santillan and his friend Ezequiel Diaz went out for a beer at Chula Vista Brewery the day after a judge ruled that restaurants could open for outdoor dining with some restrictions. (That ruling has since been put on hold.)

As they got their check, I asked how COVID-19 has affected their lives, and their stories aren’t so different from others. Santillan has a wife and son. Their family used to have two incomes to support them, but his wife was laid off. He is the only one who can make money right now, so his wife watches their son while he attends school at home.

His son is so scared of catching the coronavirus that he has embraced life at home with just school and YouTube to keep him busy. He used to play soccer, but sports have been taken off the table by schools.

“I tried to take him to the park when they opened to play catch or something, but he just said, ‘No way. COVID is out there. I’m staying inside.’”

Diaz said his kids act the same way.

“I try to push the kids to do something,” Diaz said. His daughter “is pale because she never goes outside. They’re just so unmotivated.”

School has been the biggest struggle for his family because he knows his kids are not learning anything. Diaz said their quality of education is diminished and is afraid of how behind they will be when things get back to normal, if they ever do.

Remember a few weeks back? Holidays were happening, Omicron was everywhere and at-home tests seemingly vanished. It sucked.

At that time, free COVID-19 testing sites were popping up at trolley stations. They were a relief to many who needed quick, accessible results so they could live their life.

But some results didn’t come for weeks — or ever.

Voice of San Diego intern Jakob McWhinney checked in on these sites to find out what was going on. On the podcast this week, he joined hosts Scott Lewis, Andrew Keatts and Andrea Lopez-Villafaña to explain the collage of companies behind the sites, the hot-potato blame shifting for failures and how much money could still be had should the test results ever come through.

Also…

• The race for sheriff just got more interesting. We thought for the first time in a while San Diego was definitely not going to elect a Republican as sheriff because no Republican was running. That’s no longer true.
• One of the biggest races in this year’s election is the Chula Vista mayor’s race. Two newcomers are raising lots of money.
• And the city of San Diego won a major legal victory that could have ramifications for the entire state but the city attorney has asked that it not have ramifications for the entire state.

Listen Now

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It’s been three weeks since a dispute between Republic Services, a private waste disposal company, and its sanitation workers concerning better pay, safety and benefits, halted all trash collection in the city of Chula Vista and threatened the public health and safety of citizens.  

With trash haulers now back at work, those of us concerned with future rate hikes and the ongoing environmental impacts of an outdated waste management system are left wondering, “What’s next?”

While the current contract, negotiated in 2014 was a good one then, the city’s lack of leadership in the intervening years and reluctance to hold the company accountable has led, not only to failure to implement programs but also reduced the amount of leverage the city brings to the contract negotiating table in 2024. 

But there’s good news. 

We can take charge and design a waste management system that will continue to provide affordable services for Chula Vistans and good jobs for Republic’s workers as we transition to a future where trash disposal serves are part of a thriving economy powered by renewable and green energy.  

Adopting regenerative principles, like “waste to energy” technology, prepares us for the future.   This kind of technology, which uses steam to generate electricity, has been used successfully around the globe in Southeast Asia and Europe. 

Here in the United States, biomass is part of Austin, Texas’ renewable energy portfolio and new “plastic to fuel” plants are coming online in California. These systems are viable and clean alternatives to landfills and fossil fuel energy generation.   

“Biomass” takes what would typically go into the landfill and converts it into electricity, biochar and medical-grade distilled water. Biochar, is produced by heating biomass in the total or partial absence of oxygen. 

It is a wonderful soil amendment with the ability to absorb carbon from the atmosphere and sequester it. Two of the byproducts of the “plastics to fuel” process (which recycles any type of plastic) are jet fuel and high-octane gasoline. The byproducts from both “waste to energy” systems could create multiple green revenue streams, from the sale of excess power to our neighboring cities, credits for carbon offset programs, and jet fuel to the Navy.  Not to mention both “green” gasoline and electricity that could be used to power the city’s vehicle fleet.

The city recently said it will consider other alternatives, including doing its own trash-hauling when the contract with Republic expires in 2024. There are currently 50 city-owned acres available near the landfill, which can be used to connect the electricity generated by a biomass system to the grid. With the right leadership, it is entirely possible for the city to capture the opportunity for the benefit of Chula Vistans. With global investors and state and federal governments eager to support and finance green infrastructure development, these projects could be executed quickly and with no additional financial strain or risk to the city.    

Now is the time to be proactive and bring innovation and community-wide collaboration with businesses, non-profits, school districts and government all taking part. Because we have a landfill, Chula Vista can be at the forefront of the regenerative movement where residents are empowered to recycle, compost and give new life to their waste. We, as Chula Vistans, living in the second-largest city in the county, can lead the transition to renewable energy generation and make an enormous positive impact on, not only, our economic and environmental health but that of the entire region. 

Correction: This op-ed has been updated to reflect that it was written by Rudy Ramirez and Ruth Jordan. A previous version only identified Ramirez as the author. 

The post Chula Vista’s Trash Service Debacle Should Push City Toward Possible Alternatives   appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

The San Diego City Council approved a set of rules Tuesday for how street vendors can operate on the city’s sidewalks. The vending regulations lay out a permitting process, ban vendors from certain areas and establish some entrepreneurship opportunities.  

The long-awaited rules were touted as a compromise between the needs of the community and business owners — many of whom have complained of safety issues and loss of public space — and vendors who rely on sales to make a living.  

“This ordinance will help provide the appropriate support to vendors while promoting equitable access to our public spaces and protecting the public health and safety of our communities,” Councilwoman Jennifer Campbell said during the meeting. 

While some advocates felt that the rules laid out were too restrictive, others saw the implementation of the ordinance as validation that these types of businesses play a role in the local economy.  

“Street vending is a legitimate form of entrepreneurship and it’s often the only viable path to start a business, especially those from less privileged backgrounds,” said Council President Sean Elo-Rivera.  “The folks who are street vendors, at least in my district, are extremely hardworking. They bring vibrancy, community character and support to our local economy just like small businesses do because at their core, street vendors are small businesses.”  

The ordinance passed 8 to 1 with Councilwoman Vivian Moreno voting no. 

Read more about San Diego’s new street vending rules and the community’s response here.

Chula Vista’s Nonprofit Problem

Several local nonprofits say they have had it with the city of Chula Vista.

KPBS reports that multiple groups have struggled to work with the South Bay city.

Homeless-serving nonprofit Community Through Hope told KPBS the city once backed out of an offer to allow her group to sublease space and that it dealt with late payments. Then, during the pandemic, federal COVID funds that the nonprofit thought the city was giving it to support its food distribution program instead covered police officers doing traffic control during those events.

And arts nonprofit Love Thy Neighbor, which focuses on underserved youth, said the city also didn’t provide promised space and backed out a plan to allow it to set up a coffee cart business at local libraries as part of a job training program. Instead, the nonprofit’s leader said he was left with “a storage full of coffee equipment we spent thousands on” when the city stopped communicating with him.

KPBS also featured the Lucky Duck Foundation, which focuses on homelessness. Our Lisa Halverstadt broke the news last October that Chula Vista had decided to return a homeless shelter tent that the foundation agreed to allow the city to use free of charge. The city had initially planned to use the shelter structure by December 2020. Last year, the city claimed the nonprofit set requirements that the nonprofit argues it didn’t actually set. 

In Other News 

• Months after students began complaining about water quality at a Carlsbad elementary school, NBC 7 reveals that the district is confirming that fresh and reclaimed water lines have been cross-contaminated.
• The Union-Tribune reports on a new audit that pans the city’s handling of its roughly 800 leased properties, arguing it isn’t getting the most bang for its buck and that it rarely inspected its properties. (Warning: This one’s only for subscribers only.)
• A lawsuit challenging the San Diego Humane Society’s policy of releasing cats without verifiable owners who are deemed healthy onto the streets is moving forward. (10 News)
• The city is doling out another $6 million in COVID relief grants to small businesses and nonprofits and the City Council on Tuesday voted to accept another $8.3 million in federal COVID rental and utility assistance. (City News Service, KPBS)
• The Union-Tribune pulled back the curtain on the downtown Seaport Village revamp that is now set to span 105 acres and include more than 2,000 hotel rooms, an observation tower, a public beach and more. (Warning: This one’s also only for subscribers.)
• Last month was one of the warmest and one of the coldest Februarys on record in San Diego. (City News Service)
• County supervisors on Tuesday voted to ban county investments in fossil fuels. (City News Service)

This Morning Report was written by Lisa Halverstadt and Andrea Lopez-Villafaña. It was edited by Megan Wood.

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One of the most important elections this year in San Diego — with implications across the region — is the race for mayor in Chula Vista. And the importance of it shows in the interest it has drawn from donors.  

Roughly two thirds of individual contributions supporting Chula Vista’s mayoral campaigns have come from outside the city, according to the latest filings covering all of 2021.  

Donations and endorsements are the only significant data we can get about how the race is shaping up. Candidates are touting their popularity with donors and dismissing their rivals’ success with claims about how many donors they’ve gotten and how many are local. After Voice of San Diego recently posted the contributions and cash flow totals of the five major candidates, several readers asked if we could dig deeper in those numbers.  

Republican John McCann, who serves on the Chula Vista City Council, reported that 22 out of 110 contributions he received last year came from Chula Vista residents. He also gave $65,000 to his own campaign and received $1,240 from the Republican Party of San Diego. 

Ammar Campa-Najjar, who raised about $109,000 last year, received contributions from 19 states. Similar to McCann, less than a quarter of his itemized contributions came from Chula Vista. Roughly $20,000 of the funding he received were contributions of less than $100, which do not require itemized reporting. 

Overall, filings show Chula Vista’s mayoral campaigns have so far received more than 850 donations from outside the city, including dozens of contributions from San Diego, Bonita, La Jolla, El Cajon and Carlsbad. 

Zaneta Encarnacion, chief of staff to Southwestern College President Mark Sanchez, received the most individual contributions last year. Of 515 donations, about 35 percent came from Chula Vista residents. 

“You just never know if your experience as a community leader is going to translate over, if those relationships will transition over and lead to financial support and I’m just so grateful and pleased that they have,” she told the Politics Report last month. 

Encarnacion received the Democratic Party endorsement. 

Of all the candidates, Rudy Ramirez and Jill Galvez had the highest proportions of local donors, with 56 percent and 49 percent of their individual contributions coming from within the city. Galvez also donated about $48,000 to her own campaign. 

If you enjoy reporting like this, become a Voice of San Diego member to get access to the weekly Politics Report written by our editors Andrew Keatts and Scott Lewis. See an example of their reporting on Chula Vista’s mayoral campaign here. 

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Will Rodriguez-Kennedy, the chair of the San Diego County Democratic Party, has agreed to take a leave of absence from the party following a sexual misconduct allegation.

Late Friday, Rodriguez-Kennedy confirmed to Voice of San Diego that he is taking leave. Rebecca Taylor has stepped in as acting chair.

In a Facebook post, he said a “person with whom I was in a committed relationship has made accusations against me.” Rodriguez-Kennedy said he would prove his innocence but said it was important to follow formal processes to deal with the claim.

He did not describe what he is accused of, and we don’t know details about the allegation, but he implied that it was a claim of sexual harassment or sexual assault.

“As a survivor of sexual harassment and sexual assault, I have always been an advocate for my belief that it is important that all people who make accusations are afforded respect, dignity, and that their claims are taken seriously,” he wrote.

Rodriguez-Kennedy in 2019 won $150,000 in a settlement of his lawsuit against Eric Bauman, the former state party chair, against whom he alleged sexual misconduct. The party paid a total of $380,000 to settle the lawsuit against Bauman.

The Money Races: Chula Vista

We have another series of charts on how candidates are doing in the money race as the June primary approaches. As a reminder, we prefer cash-on-hand, minus debt as our second data point on these charts. Even if a candidate loans themselves money, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll spend it.

First up, the big South Bay race: This week, we will feature some coverage of the much watched race for Chula Vista mayor. Andrea Lopez-Villafaña has spent some time with each of the candidates and her dispatch will be ready soon.

For now, check out the fundraising numbers. While Ammar Campa-Najjar and Zaneta Encarnacion have raised more money, the three other major candidates have enough to compete in final weeks before the primary. Jill Galvez and John McCann have actually more cash on hand minus debts as of last month.

Not in the graph: As of last month, candidate Spencer Cash had raised just over $1,000 and had $440 to spend.

San Diego County Sheriff

John Hemmerling may have gotten the support of the Republican Party, but the Republican Party is not the establishment any more. The establishment is center left and it has clearly lined up behind Undersheriff Kelly Martinez. Dave Myers, the former deputy sheriff, has raised a significant sum but has no money to spend beyond his own debts.

San Diego City Council Races

The most closely watched City Council race in the city of San Diego is the coastal district now represented by former City Council President Jen Campbell.

She is going into the primary with by far the most resources but she’s going to need them as Joel Day and Lori Saldaña walk the district. Day has more money than Saldaña but she is much better known.

The District 4 race is not a race.

Kent Lee has a commanding lead in the District 6 race.

And Vivian Moreno has a much more comfortable race in District 8 against Antonio Martinez than she did four years ago against him.

Backers Say Transit Measure Is on Track, Bound for November Ballot

Supporters of a citizens initiative to raise sales taxes for transit, roads and highways face a deadline this week to qualify for the November ballot.

On May 11, that group will need to submit at least 116,000 valid signatures of county residents to the registrar, who will then have 30 days to count and certify them.

Gretchen Newsom, political director of IBEW 569 and a spokesperson for Let’s Go! San Diego, the group pushing the initiative, said they’ll turn in plenty more signatures than that.

“Well over 100,000 San Diegans are saying ‘Let’s Go’ for safer infrastructure, less traffic and cleaner air – and with such strong, early support we are confident that we’ll qualify the initiative and win in November,” she said in a statement.

The committee behind the initiative has raised $1.6 million total, and has a little over $1 million in the bank. It’s received six-figure contributions from two different labor unions, three engineering and construction companies, and a political action committee sponsored by Airbnb.

Although the measure is championed by a private group, not the San Diego Association of Governments, the measure’s passage is nonetheless essential for SANDAG to complete the long-term transportation plan it adopted last year. Paying for that plan as it is envisioned now requires voters approving half cent sales tax increases in 2022, another in 2024 (in the area covered by the Metropolitan Transit System), and again in 2028, among other new revenue sources the agency expects in the coming years.

101 Ash St. Chisme

If you are at all intrigued by the 101 Ash St. story, Lisa Halverstadt has had some scoops recently we’d like to review.

She got a hold of the transcript of the deposition that the former real estate chief for the city of San Diego, Cybele Thompson, recently sat for.

There were three main takeaways: One was behind-the-scenes view Thompson gave about why Mayor Kevin Faulconer wanted the city to lease-to-own the high rise to house city workers rather than buy it (Hint: He wanted to avoid the appearance of giving city money to his supporter, developer Doug Manchester, even if it meant the city had to pay a lot more.) We kind of knew that but Thompson added some particularly hilarious color including Faulconer lecturing an employee about political savviness, as though he handled this one savvily.

The second takeaway was the Thompson remains proud of the deal, despite all the controversy. This is odd because of the …

… third takeaway: She describes in detail how ill prepared the city was to handle the renovation and how poorly Faulconer led the entire project. So, in short, it was a great deal but it was a total mess and the city was way over its head.

Then Halverstadt dropped another doozy. The next story concerned Jason Hughes, the commercial real estate broker who had volunteered to advise the former Mayor Bob Filner and then former Mayor Kevin Faulconer, on how to get the best deals on office space for city employees.

As a volunteer, he didn’t have to go through a bidding process to get the gig. But now that the deals he helped negotiate have gone so sour, the city accuses him of having an illegal conflict of interest. Because, it turns out, he wasn’t a volunteer after all. The company trying to sell the city two high rises downtown had a contract with him to both share their profits with him if the deal went through or their costs with him if it didn’t.

Hughes’ defense has been that he told the mayor he wanted to get paid. He never told the city how much or that he did but he says that’s their problem.

We knew all that.

The new stuff: Halverstadt got some more details on how far he went to hide his profit. The 101 Ash St. deal was a follow up to a very similar deal the city made for another high-rise downtown: Civic Center Plaza.

As he was trying to shepherd that through City Hall, Hughes specifically asked the landlord who wanted the city to sign off on a lease to own deal for Civic Center Plaza — Cisterra principal Jason Wood — not to include Hughes’ payment in a financial breakdown of the transaction they were preparing to share with the city in fall 2014. Cisterra was anticipating a $10 million profit on the exchange and Hughes, we know now, had a contract to collect 45 percent of that.

Here was Hughes and Woods’ exchange as the deal was coming together:

“How long until I can get the email bullet points?” Hughes replied. “And make sure to leave any fee reference off it.”

He later clarified that Wood should “show the $4.5 mill as ‘investment banking fee’ and don’t label me as a recipient.”

“Wasn’t going to mention the $10 million at all,” Wood replied.

“Even better,” Hughes replied.

Why this matters: If Hughes’ contention is that he hid nothing, well, this isn’t going to help him make it.

The other takeaway from that piece … is just kind of funny. Hughes embraced and trumpeted his volunteer work for the city. But even while he was collecting millions, he moaned about how much not being paid for his work with the city was taxing him.

In 2015, a year after telling Wood to leave his fee off the breakdown of costs of the city’s lease-to-own deal, in which he ended up making more than $5 million, he joked that he deserved a city pension and he hadn’t gotten back to city workers who had asked him for something because he had been busy instead with actual money-making endeavors.  

Other Notes

On the podcast last week: We officially declared a new San Diego Special. The city’s inability to make progress on the effort to redevelop the nearly 50-acres of land it owns in the Sports Arena area has now reached the crucial moment where it feels like it will never move forward and yet will always be discussed.

Ironically, it was Mayor Todd Gloria who came up with the term San Diego Special in a Voice of San Diego op-ed several years ago. This appears to be his first contribution to the collection of civic imbroglios to reach the status.

Cute Rivers: It’s kind of wild how much in local politics can change with one National City council member’s resignation. MacKenzie Elmer processed the implications of Mona Rios’ departure on both National City and regional water politics.

If you have any ideas or feedback for the Politics Report, email scott.lewis@voiceofsandiego.org or andrew.keatts@voiceofsandiego.org. We did just see that finance reports for some campaigns came in this week. We’ll check them out asap.

The post Politics Report: Dem Party Chair Abruptly Goes on Leave appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

The room inside the Montevalle Community Center in Chula Vista slowly fills with residents who want to hear from the six candidates competing to become the city’s next mayor. Some spend time mingling and others settle into their seats, but no one stands out more than Aurora Murillo. 

The 42-year Chula Vista resident quickly picks a seat close to the candidates, pulls out a pen and pad for notes and keeps an eye out for the volunteer collecting questions from the audience. A long-time property owner who runs them as rental properties, Murillo wants to know what the candidates think about an ordinance the City Council is set to take up regarding rent rules.  

She’s still learning about some of the newer people in the race, she tells me, but with the primary inching closer she feels more pressure to decide. As the candidates pitch their big ideas for Chula Vista, she quickly scribbles notes. She mutters comments under her breath as each candidate speaks – not always positive, but an indicator she’s closely following this race.  

Those running to replace now termed-out Mayor Mary Casillas Salas are once-congressional hopeful Ammar Campa-Najjar, Chula Vista Councilman John McCann, army veteran Spencer Cash, community college executive Zaneta Encarnacion, Chula Vista Councilwoman Jill Galvez and former Councilman Rudy Ramirez.  

The key issues in the race are those many residents have heard about for years: bringing a university to Chula Vista, changing its sleepy town stigma to a place that invites business and innovation and hiring more police officers and fire fighters. 

But it’s apparent after speaking with dozens of residents, that it’s not the topics they have grown tired of, it’s more of the long-standing promises from their city leaders about bringing them to life.  

At the forum hosted by the San Diego chapter of the Women League of Voters in April, Campa-Najjar taps into that frustration when he jokes that people’s eyes glazed over at the first mention of bringing a university to Chula Vista.  

“You’ve heard about it for 25 years,” he said.  

Candidates and residents say the city seems to be at an interesting turning point – though it’s been there before. But residents tell me they are yearning for change that improves their quality of life.  

The city continues to grow, and the same pressures that it’s faced for years are becoming even more compounded. Solutions sought by its previous leaders to address homelessness, improve public safety, and balance its budget are no longer something that seems sustainable to residents.  

Its leadership is changing not only with the open mayor’s seat, but also two City Council seats for districts 1 and 2 and a city attorney. Councilman Steve Padilla, who represents District 3, is running for the California State Senate. If he wins that race, the council could appoint someone or hold a special election.  

That’s potentially five of Chula Vista’s six elected positions in flux over the next few months, ushering in a new class of leaders to shape the city it becomes.   

Failure to Launch  

Chula Vista is the second largest city in the region, with a population of more than 270,000 – 60 percent of which are Latinos. It manages a budget of some $472.9 million. 

It’s also a city that many just drive past, residents tell me. It’s the kind of place where people purchase homes, but work and spend their money elsewhere – one candidate even joked that the city’s own residents would rather spend a date night out in Little Italy than their own city. It’s also a place where its own small businesses owners say they wouldn’t recommend fellow entrepreneurs set up shop.  

But it’s also a city rich in diversity, culture and community. It has a big voice in the region’s local government agencies such as the San Diego Association of Governments. And the people who call it home feel immense pride over it and want to see the city prosper for their children. 

“I don’t think I’ll ever leave,” Steve Garcia, owner of Thr3e Punk Ales brewery on Third Avenue, tells me over coffee one day. “I like it here too much. Where would I go? I’m from Chula Vista, I have a Chula Vista tattoo on my arm … on my back.”  

Garcia wants a mayor who has fresh ideas and is willing to bring investment to the city. Someone who is willing to work with council members to improve the city and bring some long-standing promises to life. 

“Why are we always that city that plans, but then has a failure to launch … kind of mentality,” he said. 

He remembers hearing murmurs about a university coming to his town when he graduated from Bonita Vista High School in 1997. He’s also all too familiar with another long-standing promise: the bayfront redevelopment. He opened a bar in 2018 off J Street because it was a good opportunity, but also with the foresight that it would be a prime location for a business if the bayfront became a reality. 

It’s taken time, but that project is making some progress. 

“I feel like we deserve somebody who’s ready to take the reins and take us to a level that I feel we deserve,” Garcia said. 

Garcia spent the last couple months interviewing the mayoral candidates on his podcast Emo Brown. And though he hasn’t totally decided who he is voting for, one person’s name comes up. 

“It’s going to take somebody with new connections, new ideas … somebody who is completely ready,” Garcia said. “The more we talk about it, it sounds like Ammar to me. He paints that picture, and we’ll see. Good luck to him.”  

Campa-Najjar spent four years trying to make a name for himself in East County. But now he’s making a run for Chula Vista. 

“We need a mayor with a big city vision,” Campa-Najjar told me over a recent lunch at his favorite Chula Vista restaurant. 

That’s an old tale often shared about the city of San Diego, and Mayor Todd Gloria shared that same big city wish back in November 2020.  

Campa-Najjar wants to get the city to more aggressively pursue state and federal dollars, attract more businesses to east Chula Vista and redevelop areas of west Chula Vista to attract more visitors and encourage local entrepreneurs to open businesses.  

Campa-Najjar snagged the endorsement from several labor groups, including the firefighter’s union. He talks about making sure that the city’s firefighters are paid fairly. He had a handful of fire fighters join us to talk about their community and what they want from their next city leader. 

“He cares about the people, and you can tell,” said Brett Martin, a first responder in Chula Vista. “We are not here today, just for more money in our pockets, which we do need, it’s about the city, it’s about the people.” 

Community Trust  

A few weeks after the candidate forum Murillo shares that she thinks the city is ready for a mayor who prioritizes the needs of its residents over their own.  

“Someone that focuses on what is the best thing for the community, whether it gives (the candidate) notoriety or not, instead of seeking self-glorification,” she said.  

Murillo was deeply disturbed by how the city’s leaders handled the trash strike that forced residents to drive their own trash to the landfill or watch as their garbage piled up. City officials tied their own hands several years ago when they approved a franchise agreement with Republic Services that gave away the city’s leverage. It basically said the company wouldn’t be at fault in the face of an “uncontrollable circumstance,” which included a strike or work stoppage.  

Cash said the trash strike is why he’s running. In an interview, he said financial mismanagement is at the root of every problem facing the city.  

He is the only independent in the race. If elected, he said he would strengthen the city’s contract process so that situations like what happened with Republic Services don’t happen again.  

“I’ve lived my working career as a good steward of the taxpayer’s dollars serving our federal government for over 20 years,” Cash said.  

Murillo thinks the next mayor should be someone who isn’t afraid to be criticized by residents, but who listens to residents on big policy decisions.  

Encarnacion is supported by dozens of elected officials including Casillas Salas, County Supervisor Nora Vargas, and the Democratic party. 

She said the city needs to confront the tension between helping the city grow – bringing business and more housing – and making sure the city doesn’t lose what makes it special. That means engaging the community early on and in a way that is intentional, not just antiquated public forums or public comments at council meetings, to allow residents to be a part of the process.  

“We have to keep our community involved because what happens is that when the community is involved what happens is sustainable because it’s something they have helped create, something that they own,” she said. 

She said that approach will be important as the city continues to mature because that same growth is what has forced people to face the impacts of that growth.  

“As more people move into our city, and less jobs in our city, more and more people are seeing the urgency of needing to do things a little different,” she said.  

Murillo said she still needs to do more to learn about Zaneta, but after the forum, she’s leaning toward supporting Ramirez.  

Ramirez served on the City Council from 2006 to 2014. During an interview he said he feels strongly about making himself available to residents during public office hours if elected.  

He feels that for far too long the council has operated under a staff-led agenda that he intends to change. He wants the council to drive the agenda on the issues of homelessness, and business, and for it to take its place as a leader on regional boards. 

He said that direction will be important in helping the city as it continues to grow.  

“It’s poised to take another big step and we don’t have a lot of time to squander,” he said.  

A Person Who Knows Chula Vista like the Back of Their Hand  

Jorge Marroquin has lived in Chula Vista for 26 years. He sits on the city’s Safety Commission.  

He’s focused on the city’s homeless population and improving the quality of life in the city.  

It’s important to him that whoever replaces Casillas Salas is someone who has been present in the community for many years. That’s a feeling that other community members share.  

On a recent Monday, Galvez spent the morning speaking with voters. Galvez has served on the City Council since 2018. She said she is determined to do right by Chula Vista and not sell out to special interests. She points to a recent vote regarding a change of zoning for a plot of land from industrial to residential, but it’s near a landfill, which seemed to have a more appropriate use for industrial, she said. Galvez was the lone no vote.  

“This is my passion, taking care of people,” she said. After being frustrated by decisions by other councilmembers, she decided, “I’m gonna drive the bus or get off the bus.”  

Later that day, she said, she knocked on 127 voters’ doors. She had conversations about the city’s role in the region, improving transportation and increasing housing supply.  

At a law enforcement appreciation event earlier this month, a volunteer at one of the booths pulls Councilman John McCann aside and tells him he has his vote because he thinks there needs to be some common sense in leadership.  

McCann said people are concerned about potholes being filled and that their basic needs are taken care of: roads, police and fire.  

As we walk, he speaks to a firefighter who tells him that he’s sorry the union didn’t back him and that he’s his preferred candidate.  

McCann is the only Republican in the race. He currently represents Chula Vista’s District 1. He’s served on the City Council since 2014. And he secured the endorsement of the Chula Vista police union.  

Just 22 percent of Chula Vista’s voters are registered Republicans, according to the county’s latest registration figures. But as the only Republican in a crowded field, McCann will have an inside track with that chunk of residents. The field of Democrats will square off over the 46 percent of the city’s registered voters who are party members. But the second largest group of voters in Chula Vista declined to choose a party, at 26 percent.  

McCann said he’s proud of what he’s accomplished as a council member.  

“It takes understanding the complexities of making things happen and I believe I have the qualifications to be able to do that,” he said.  

The post Chula Vista Wants a Leader Who Can Deliver Decades-old Promises and Vision for Growth appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

The race to lead San Diego’s second largest city is packed with hopeful candidates. 

Those running to replace now termed-out Mayor Mary Casillas Salas are set to take the reins at an interesting point for the city. There are two open city council seats — those vacated by councilmembers John McCann and Jill Galvez — and a new city attorney. And there could be another open seat on the council in the near future. 

That’s potentially five of Chula Vista’s six elected positions in flux over the next few months, ushering in a new class of leaders to shape the city it becomes.   

Voice of San Diego’s Andrea Lopez-Villafaña spoke to residents about what they want from their next mayor. 

“I feel like we deserve somebody who’s ready to take the reins and take us to a level that I feel we deserve,” one resident said. 

Those in the race include once congressional candidate Ammar Campa-Najjar, army veteran Spencer Cash, community college executive Zaneta Encarnacion, Galvez, McCann and former councilman Rudy Ramirez. 

Read more about what Chula Vista residents want from their next leader here.

SDHC, City in Talks To Sustain — Or Bolster — Housing Aid

The city’s Housing Commission is now expecting to maintain — or even bolster — three rapid rehousing programs just days after staffers told agency board members about a city plan to end those contracts.

Mayor Todd Gloria’s policy chief Jessica Lawrence and interim Housing Commission CEO Jeff Davis said during a Tuesday City Council budget hearing that they expect to find a funding solution that will allow the Housing Commission to continue serving homeless families who need temporary housing subsidies via the three contracts that now make up about a quarter of the city’s so-called rapid rehousing aid.

“What I’m hearing from the mayor’s office is there is no desire to diminish the rapid rehousing programs but to keep them at their current levels or greater,” Davis said.

The update during a City Council budget hearing followed a Voice of San Diego story documenting pushback from housing commissioners who erupted last week when they learned the commission was preparing to wind down the three programs after a directive from the Gloria administration at a time when the city’s homelessness crisis appears to be booming. Gloria’s office had argued there was a misunderstanding between the city and the Housing Commission.

“We are committed to working with the Housing Commission to identify long-term resources to support the program,” Lawrence said Tuesday after City Council President Sean Elo-Rivera called on city officials to clarify the future of the rapid rehousing programs.

Davis said he expected to have more details to share with the City Council by the time it votes on the city and Housing Commission budgets in June.

In Other News

• The City Attorney’s Office is suing a company it claims overcharged the city for portable showers when it transformed the Convention Center into a homeless shelter. (City News Service)
• Nathan Fletcher, chair of the county Board of Supervisors, this week shared a standard memorandum of understanding with city leaders across the region pledging that the county will provide services to any city that opens a new shelter, safe camp or other services meant to move homeless residents off the street. A $10 million grant program to help bankroll those new shelters is set for a county vote later this month. (Union-Tribune)
• A new audit found San Diego is wasting millions of dollars by not preventing injuries to city workers with more rigorous safety protocols and deeper analysis of how injuries happen. (Union-Tribune)
• A new report found that the average home price in San Diego County hit $1 million last month. (Fox 5 San Diego)

This Morning Report was written by Andrea Lopez-Villafaña, Lisa Halverstadt and Megan Wood.

The post Morning Report: We Asked, They Answered. Here’s What Chula Vistans Want From the Next Mayor appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

This post originally appeared in the May 19 Morning Report. Subscribe here for free.

After a marathon meeting Tuesday night, the Chula Vista City Council decided to table a pair of ordinances intended to put tighter rules around evictions and come back with more information and possible revisions.

As the Union-Tribune noted, the first of the two proposals would have temporarily prevented landlords from kicking tenants out of their homes for the purpose of making significant repairs. A similar ban on what’s known as “no-fault” evictions in San Diego will take effect Sunday.

Chula Vista’s proposal required four votes but only three members of the City Council were present. Andrea Cardenas was a no-show, and John McCann recused himself because he owns multiple properties. An alternative proposal would have placed limits on the reasons that a landlord could terminate a renter’s tenancy. 

Tenants and activists said the rules were needed to protect them against harassment and loopholes in state law, citing a couple examples. Property owners called the proposals extreme and burdensome, arguing the problem is not widespread.

Both proposals are expected to come back up for discussion in July.

The post Chula Vista Delays New Landlord-Tenant Rules appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

Gabriel Guzman is ready for change.  

The 60-year-old Eastlake resident is increasingly concerned about the cost of living and homelessness in Chula Vista and throughout California.  

Early Tuesday morning, he stopped at a voting center at Chula Vista City Hall to vote for Republican candidates. He picked John McCann for Chula Vista mayor.  

McCann is the lone Republican in the race. He’s up against fellow Councilwoman Jill Galvez, Ammar Campa-Najjar, a once congressional hopeful, community college executive Zaneta Encarnacion, former councilman Rudy Ramirez and army veteran Spencer Cash.  

About 46 percent of the city’s registered voters are Democrats and 22 percent are Republicans, according to the county’s latest registration figures. Some 26 percent of Chula Vista voters are independents. 

Guzman wants a leader who will address the city’s growing homeless population. He pointed to a woman lying on the grass in front of city hall, who two officers and resource workers spent nearly an hour trying to get to accept services.  

“Something’s gotta change,” he said.  

Residents have been talking about wanting leaders for the city who bring decades-old promises to life.  

And for Nelly Cervantes that’s Campa-Najjar.  

The Chula Vista resident said there’s been a lot of attacks against Campa-Najjar that claim he’s young and inexperienced, but she views his youthfulness as something positive.  

“He has energy to do a lot and his heart is in it,” she said. 

She saw a similar quality in another candidate: David Alvarez for Assembly District 80. She said she’s familiar with Alvarez’s work and accomplishments. Cervantes said she feels Alvarez is a genuine person who has his intentions in the right place.  

“He fights for his people,” she said.  

Sharon Floyd, 86, showed up to vote to support Galvez for Mayor. Floyd has lived in Chula Vista for decades and previously worked as a teacher at a local school.  

“I think she’s probably the best of all of them and has the best intentions for Chula Vista and the residents,” Floyd said.  

Floyd, a registered Republican, opted to vote for Galvez in the mayor’s race, but went with Republican candidates in the others, adding that she feels California is not the state it used to be. 

Some voters on Tuesday had their sights set on state and federal races only.  

Stanley Breaux said he paid little attention to the local races.  

Breaux has lived in Chula Vista for 10 years. He was more concerned about what state leaders are doing to address environmental issues in the region. He voted for candidates who expressed interest in addressing environmental issues.  

He wasn’t sure if he voted for Assembly District 80, but he said it’s important to have responsible leaders who focus on the needs of residents.  

The post Voices of the Voters: Chula Vista Mayor’s Race Top of Mind   appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

Republican Councilman John McCann held a lead in the race to become the city’s next Mayor — with 31 percent of the vote — as of Wednesday morning.

It’s too soon to know who will advance with him to the runoff. Ammar Campa-Najjar had a slim lead over Jill Galvez as of Tuesday night. Both are Democrats. 

McCann has served on the City Council since 2014. He secured the police union endorsement and ran a campaign focused on addressing the basic needs of residents: roads, police and fire. He told Voice last month that he was proud of his accomplishments on the council and believed that would translate to voter support. 

“We are just very thankful to the voters of Chula Vista,” McCann said late at night. “I’ve dedicated over four years of being engaged and providing services for our citizens and we’ve been able to accomplish great things.” 

That resonated with voters. Andrea Lopez-Villafaña spoke to South Bay voters at the polls who mentioned that they were eager for change in city hall. 

Other races of note in Chula Vista include the council and city attorney races. Democrat Carolina Chavez had a lead over Republican Marco Contreras for the City Council District 1 seat. That seat is currently held by McCann. Steve Stenberg and Jose Preciado were neck-and-neck for District 2, which Galvez currently represents. 

Deputy City Attorney Simon Silva had a significant lead over his opponents for the city attorney race. He will square off with criminal defense lawyer Dan Smith in November. 

FYI our editors will break down the Chula Vista races at our live podcast event on Thursday, June 9, at Novo Brazil Brewing. Get your tickets here.

The post Chula Vista Mayor: McCann Leads, With Campa-Najjar and Galvez in Battle for Second appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

An appellate court is forcing the city of Chula Vista to keep a cannabis company in the running for a license to operate in the city. One problem, though, is the city has no licenses left to hand out.

The case has brought attention to the allegedly petty and arbitrary way the city and its main consultant on the permitting process has handled applicants and it is the latest folly in the mess the city’s cannabis permitting system has become since the City Council authorized dispensaries to open within city limits. Delays and lawsuits have plagued the process and only a few entities have managed to make their way through it. 

A California appellate court in July sided with the company Caligrown, which had applied for one of the licenses to operate a storefront dispensary. The court found that Chula Vista’s rejection of the Caligrown’s storefront license was “arbitrary and capricious” and an abuse of the city’s regulations. 

In their ruling, the appellate judges ordered that Chula Vista keep Caligrown in the running for a permit. But the city has already promised or given away all its licenses and some of those businesses are already operational. 

Chula Vista’s ordinance allows for eight storefront retail cannabis business licenses and one delivery service per each of the four City Council districts. To get one, applicants must go through two rounds of vetting and demonstrate upfront that they have $250,000 in liquid assets, a business plan, an operating plan and relevant qualifications. 

During the first phase, the city’s finance director and police chief review the application to make sure everything checks out and the applicant does not also have a criminal record. Assuming everything’s good, the applicant then goes through a scoring process by a consultant., as the second phase. 

Or at least that’s how it’s supposed to work. 

Caligrown’s Case

Caligrown sought a permit to open a storefronts in City Council Districts 1, 3 and 4 in 2019 and 2020. But the police chief faulted the company for not submitting fingerprints and because one of the principals of the company was once convicted of petty theft. That principal, however, only owns 2 percent of the company and the conviction, from 1964, had been  expunged. 

To review the application, the city also relied on an outside consultant, Matthew Eaton of HdL, who gave Caligrown a relatively low score because the information in the application was formatted in a way he didn’t like, according to Eaton’s sworn testimony from earlier hearings. It was, in other words, a problem of organization, not of substance. 

“They didn’t follow their own rules,” said David Demian, Caligrown’s attorney. “The legal system is holding the city accountable to follow its duly enacted ordinance, and its duly adopted, publicly adopted, and published regulations. It’s just not certain what can or will happen next.” 

How Things Worked

The legal setback has put HdL under scrutiny. The firm is paying Chula Vista’s legal fees in the lawsuit and has faced tough scrutiny in other California municipalities for its cannabis licensing consultancy services, as well as locally. HdL no longer works with Chula Vista.

A critical 2019 report on HdL in MJBizDaily quoted Kelly Bacon, a former deputy city manager at Chula Vista, who acknowledged that the consultant’s relationship with other municipalities wasn’t quite so rosy and, said she hoped HdL would bring “a fresh set of eyes to the process and that it’s fair and impartial.” When asked earlier this year, Chula Vista declined to provide a reason for why it is no longer contracted with HdL, nor when the relationship was severed. But Anne Steinberger, a representative for the city, added that the city’s contract with the consultancy was limited to the initial phase of the application process and that it has been processing the rest of the applications internally. 

In early 2020, when HdL was still processing the city’s applications, Caligrown complained after receiving its rejections, claiming, among other things, that the scoring process was supposed to happen in Phase 2 and they weren’t aware they were being evaluated. Then-City Manager Gary Halbert ordered that the consultant re-review the application but the consultant ended up pushing up the score in only one of four relevant categories, and didn’t re-score the rest of the categories. Again, the application was denied, so Caligrown sued after its application was again denied.  

But while the lawsuit was ongoing, the city continued to award licenses, despite being asked not to in Caligrown’s complaint.

Compounding the problem, an attorney representing the city, Scott Taylor, was asked during the appeal court hearing on July 13 if the city had already given away its licenses in the same districts where Caligrown had applied. At the time, Taylor said he didn’t have the “most up-to-date information” but that, as far as he knew, no licenses had been issued. 

Turns out the city had been giving out licenses in those areas. Diane Howell, a Chula Vista spokeswoman, confirmed last week in an email that the city has in fact issued the maximum number of storefront licenses in Districts 1, 3 and 4, though some of them still require state approval.

And not only were they giving out licenses in those areas, the city was giving licenses to applicants who hadn’t even applied for those areas. Both March and Ash and California Holistics, for instance, received a license in District 1 despite neither entity submitting an application for that district. That is permissible in the city’s rules so long as the city can claim that it has exhausted all its other applicants in the original district. 

Laura Wilkinson, who owns Caligrown, contends that the city never exhausted its list. “I want the licenses, and the appellate court instructions were clear,” said Wilkinson. “Had they followed their own ordinance I would be operating in District 1 and probably 3 and 4 as well.” 

The Winners

March and Ash’s general counsel and co-owner, Bret Peace, said he was happy to receive an email earlier this year granting his company a license in that district, and that he does not know how or why they received it, since they had initially applied in another district. California Holistics did not respond to a request for comment. 

March and Ash is one of several local companies that have managed to succeed regularly when municipalities here and across the state offer licenses to operate.  

The companies that succeed all share common traits but one of them in particular: They have built up political connections and a team of consultants. March and Ash, in fact, has worked with Grassroots Resources, a political consulting firm that employs Chula Vista City Councilwoman Andrea Cardenas. 

When asked at a live Voice of San Diego podcast in June about her ongoing financial relationship with outside interests while serving on the City Council, she replied that she’s careful to keep the two separate and recuse herself when necessary.

“I don’t have any clients, really – I do a lot of the admin stuff, and you know, since I got elected, that’s been an even bigger market. It’s always been very difficult for people to force me to work on something that I’m not passionate about,” she said. “And so, even now when we’re talking about the cannabis industry, I’m very careful not to blend those lines, because if it doesn’t look good, it’s not good.”

Anne Steinberger, the city’s marketing and communications manager, also told Voice of San Diego that the cannabis licenses are handled by city staff and that council members do not direct or make decisions on applications. 

Going forward, part of the appellate court’s decision requires the city to not only rescind its rejection of Caligrown but to also re-score the application. This was originally done by HdL, but HdL is no longer working for Chula Vista. 

It’s not clear at this point how the city intends to comply with the appellate court’s decision because it can’t easily take a license away from one operator and give it to Caligrown without instigating another lawsuit. The city attorney’s office said it was still evaluating the ruling. Chula Vista’s City Council held a closed session discussion on the topic on July 26, but the details are not public. 

One possible remedy: elected officials recommend the city increase the number of licenses on the books. Chula Vista’s ordinance allows the city to increase the number of authorized cannabis storefronts, but “only after receiving and considering a report from the City Manager regarding any observed or projected adverse impacts on the community from such businesses.” 

Another remedy could include rescinding licenses. ​​According to the city, licensees are required to sign an operating agreement that includes, among other terms, licensees’ obligation to “indemnify and release” Chula Vista in the event of a legal challenge to its license approval process.

Whatever the case, the complaints raised by Caligrown are not the only ones that the city will have to contend with. There are still two pending lawsuits against the city alleging similar discrepancies in its licensing process. 

Ken Sobel, a lawyer and owner of Cannabis Village, claimed Chula Vista failed to follow its own rules in determining who gets a business license and that HdL didn’t follow the city’s rules in scoring applicants.

Urbn Leaf, one of the major dispensaries throughout the state, also filed suit, claiming the city’s licensing process is “baffling … arbitrary, capricious, and contrary to the law.” Its application was denied for allegedly violating the city’s zoning rules in 2012, when owner Will Senn operated a medical marijuana dispensary in San Diego.

Senn eventually settled with San Diego, which admitted no wrongdoing, but it still wasn’t good enough for Chula Vista, which for years has battled illegal dispensaries, to award Urbn Leaf a license. 

The post Already a Mess, Chula Vista’s ‘Capricious’ Cannabis Permit Process Scrambled Even More by Court Ruling appeared first on Voice of San Diego.