It’s always great when one of our reporters starts a sentence with, “I got a tip…”
Tips can sometimes lead you down rabbit holes, but most of the time they help our reporters dig in and reveal something someone doesn’t want us to find.
This week, Jim Hinch had a tip. He learned that more than a dozen farmers and local families who grow vegetables, fruits and flowers at a community garden near the Tijuana River received eviction letters from the agency that manages the garden.
The Resource Conservation District of Greater San Diego County was kicking out all of the 217 individuals who use the space. Gardeners and farmers freaked out. For some, this represented a threat to their livelihood and the food they put on the table.
So, what gives?
Hinch revealed that the evictions were brought on because of warning signs the county placed near the garden. The large red signs read, “Warning! Elevated levels of Hydrogen Sulfide gas have been detected due to Tijuana River pollution.” Theses signs were put up at the behest of San Diego County Supervisor Paloma Aguirre.
Leaders with the district worried the signs would expose them to legal liability and endanger their employees.
Aguirre disagreed that the signs were responsible for the closure. She told Hinch it wasn’t her intention to close the garden and that she’s working with the gardeners and county staff to come up with a solution.
So, What Now?
Aguirre held a Town Hall and told the gardeners that she’s working on finding someone to manage the property and she hopes the county can install air quality regulators that can warn gardeners when the air is not safe.
The supervisor has made it her mission to bring more attention to the pollution that has plagued San Diego’s South County communities. But now, those actions have resulted in some unintended consequences. Our Jim Hinch will keep following the story.
What do you think about all of this? Send me a note at andrea.sanchez@voiceofsandiego.org.
Politifest News Factory
Mayor Todd Gloria at Politifest on Saturday, Oct. 4, 2025. / Vito di Stefano for Voice of San Diego
As promised, we’ve uploaded recordings of our Politifest 2025 Solutions Showdown panels to our site. You can find the videos here.
We also had a lot of news from Politifest.
San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria participated in a debate about how to get the city we want. One of his ideas was to merge the Harbor Police Department with San Diego’s to address the city’s officer shortage.
“In this time of real challenges financially, we should be asking ourselves fundamental questions about the way we’ve chosen to organize ourselves and wonder if we can be more efficient,” Gloria said.
After we mentioned his idea in our Morning Report, Port of San Diego leaders let their staff know that they weren’t into it.
“Mayor Gloria’s suggestion to merge Harbor Police with San Diego Police has not been discussed between the Port and the City of San Diego and it will not be entertained,” Port CEO Scott Chadwick wrote in a memo to staff Monday evening.
One person was excited. Keene Simonds, leader of San Diego’s boundary refs aka the Local Agency Formation Commission, told our Bella Ross that a merger would be complicated but he liked that Gloria was asking the question.
“At the end of the day, the question is, do the two agencies’ police protection services have enough commonality in their mission to make it work?” Simonds said.
When we asked Gloria about his idea during the panel discussion, Gloria mentioned that the assignment for Politifest was to “throw ideas out.”
Bring on the big ideas. Catch up on our stories from Politifest here.
More Chisme to Start the Week
- The city official responsible for leading the city’s battle against climate change lost her job this week. Read more here.
- Speaking of people who got fired, Councilmember Henry Foster got fired up about the story we published earlier this month about how he was fired from the city in 2016. City records show that the staff recommended he not be rehired, but he did return in 2018 as former Councilmember Monica Montgomery Steppe’s chief of staff. He put out a statement this week about our story, although he refused to provide a comment for our story. Montgomery Steppe also put out a statement. Read more here.
- A judge denied Grecia Figueroa’s request for a restraining order against Nathan Fletcher’s wife, Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher.
- An appeals court decided that voters did approve a hotel-room tax in San Diego. The tax would fund an expansion for the San Diego Convention Center, homeless services and road repairs. Our Mariana Martínez Barba writes that although the court’s ruling unleashes a lot of money, the city isn’t going to move forward with the expansion plan.