Dwayne Crenshaw is running for City Council, and he wants you to know that he’s got a plan. Whoever wins the seat will only be finishing out former councilman Tony Young’s term, which ends in 2014. That means another election, and Crenshaw knows he’ll have to prove his mettle by then.
We’ve been profiling the District 4 candidates running for city council, first by looking at Myrtle Cole, and then by checking out Bruce Williams’ campaign. This is Crenshaw’s third run for the seat.
Crenshaw listed a host of plans to our Liam Dillon, including improving streets and increasing gun buy-back programs. “If I don’t do it,” Crenshaw said, “I want to be held accountable.” But Crenshaw’s troubled history with the Coalition of Neighborhood Councils, where he was once executive directory, is a persistent challenge for him.
One Paseo, Three School Districts
The One Paseo project, a massive proposed mixed-use development in Carmel Valley, wants to split a payment of $10 million between the Solana Beach and San Dieguito High School Districts. That’s because the envisioned One Paseo development sits within the boundaries of both of those districts.
But it also sits across the street from the Del Mar Union School District boundary, and that school district hasn’t been invited to share in the cash infusion.
“The project would presumably be more palatable to more residents if it wasn’t on the boundary of two local school jurisdictions, thereby depriving some nearby residents of a schools cash infusion that might make them more sympathetic to the development,” writes Andrew Keatts.
The Carmel Valley Planning Board still hasn’t rescheduled a date to decide whether they will recommend the project, after a heated discussion delayed the original January vote.
Filner’s Many Fronts
U-T San Diego released the results of a survey on Saturday. While surveying San Diego residents on “how people use and view U-T products and other local media,” the paper threw in some “political questions,” asking respondents about their opinions of Mayor Bob Filner.
Among the most agreed-upon statements were that Filner “stands up for what he believes,” is “pro-union,” is “a typical politician” and is “active in the community.”
We’ve covered some of the U-T’s controversial polls in the past.
• The U-T also reported on Filner’s latest proposal to release the tourism marketing funds he’s been holding back in lieu of a renegotiated deal with the Tourism Authority. If you need to catch up, you can watch our explainer of the City Hall drama. Filner’s new proposal seeks to reserve $5 million for Balboa Park’s centennial celebration and to cap salaries for any employee receiving tourism dollars, among other things.
“In the proposal, the mayor backed off his earlier demand that downtown hotels provide a so-called ‘living wage’ for workers and instead called for the district to encourage its hotels to pay that,” wrote the U-T. “The TMD board is scheduled to consider Filner’s proposal in closed session at 2 p.m. Monday and is expected to release a statement afterward.”
The Mayor’s Marijuana Plan
Mayor Filner also released some details of his initiative to improve access to medical marijuana in San Diego this weekend, reported the San Diego Reader. The proposal removes the need for conditional use permits, and removes some restrictions on where the dispensaries can be located.
“Another major change listed in the draft ordinance is the enactment a (sic) two-percent excise tax on all medical marijuana sales,” the Reader wrote. “In addition to the excise tax, dispensary operators would be responsible to pay $5,000 permit fee to the City of San Diego each and every year its doors are open.”
City Relents on Tree-Crushing Victim
The city won’t appeal a $7.6 million verdict against it in favor of Michael Burke, a Mission Hills man who was paralyzed when a tree fell on him.
The U-T reported Burke argued the city was responsible for his 2010 injury because the city trimmed its tree maintenance budget over the last decade. The city argued the incident was an act of God, despite the fact that, just hours prior to Burke’s injury, a city arborist had been nearby inspecting another tree that had fallen and crushed Burke’s car.
News Nibbles
• With the Sprinter light-rail service currently offline, the U-T looks at how the eight buses contracted to temporarily replace the service stack up in comparison.
• NBC 7 San Diego highlights a 2012 analysis that says the Coronado Bridge (among many others) is “structurally deficient.”
• A charity for battered women has ended its agreement with San Diego after City Attorney Jan Goldsmith recommended the organization be audited.
Once a Legendary Runner, Now Imprisoned
“On June 11, 1966, competing at Balboa Stadium … [Tim] Danielson became the second American high school athlete to run a mile under four minutes,” the New York Times reported this weekend. Its multi-part article peers back at the history made by Danielson and the “sorry predicament” he finds himself in more than 40 years later. “On the night of June 12, 2011, Danielson was accused of killing Qi, his third wife, who was 48. She was a native of China whom Danielson had met online, wrote the Times.
Do Know Your Hoods?
How well do you know your San Diego geography? Do you know your Cherokee Point from your Burlingame? This Code for America project “Click that ‘hood!” invites you to test your local neighborhood knowledge while the clock is ticking.
The map uses data pulled from SANDAG to identify the boundaries of each neighborhood, and some neighborhoods are definitely missing (Uptown, you’ve been dissed). I took the easy test, which asks you to identify only 20 of the possible 93 neighborhoods. I gave up after several minutes of searching for one specific neighborhood.
So for all my readers in the neighborhood of Birdland, rest assured I meant you no insult, but I just haven’t the foggiest idea where you live in our beloved city. Send me a postcard, it sounds nice there.
Seth Hall is a local writer and technologist. You can reach him at voice@s3th.com or follow him on Twitter: @loteck.