Catherine Blakespear hasn’t been mayor of Encinitas since 2023, but to many of the city’s most politically-active residents her ghost still haunts the city.
The biggest reason some people can’t let Blakespear go: They believe she opened the door for too much new housing in 2019, when she helped upzone certain parts of the city. Residents have other complaints too, reports our Tigist Layne, but housing looms largest.
Blakespear, who is now a state senator, says the reason she still gets so much hate is that she got stuff done. She describes her time as “active.”
Protestors once marched on Blakespear’s house calling for her recall, because of a plan she had championed for a coastal bike path and trail. Residents were worried about potential fencing and how the project might affect traffic. Today, the coastal trail is beloved, despite the intense pushback at the time and Blakespear said she is glad she stuck with it.
The city’s current mayor Bruce Ehlers accused her of focussing on “beautification” projects instead of the city’s real infrastructure needs.
Mayor Rejects Call to Suspend Parking Fees
San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria delivers his State of the City address on the 12th floor of the City Administration Building in downtown San Diego on Jan. 15, 2025. / Photo by Vito di Stefano for Voice of San Diego
Mayor Todd Gloria isn’t interested in suspending parking fees at Balboa Park.
After Councilmembers Kent Lee and Sean Elo-Rivera called for the city to suspend parking fees for San Diego residents, the mayor wrote in a memo Wednesday that rolling back fees would have “immediate and serious fiscal consequences.”
The paid parking program, “was not developed or imposed unilaterally by my administration. It was shaped, amended and approved by the City Council,” he wrote.
The parking revenue is key to addressing the city’s budget deficit. But as our City Hall reporter Mariana Martinez Barba explained, projected revenues from the parking program don’t look great because of delays and reduced fees.
Gloria wrote that despite an “adjustment period” the program is working. The city has received and approved 1,285 applications, according to the Mayor’s Office.
And more on the push to rollback other fees: At a press conference Wednesday, Councilmember Raul Campillo announced a proposal dubbed the “5/5/5” plan to roll back downtown special event parking fees.
Under his proposal, the city would reduce rates from $10 to $5, shorten the enforcement window from six hours to five, and limit the special event parking zone to five blocks around Petco Park.
“We can support special events without punishing the people who live, work, and do businesses downtown,” he said in an email statement.
About that Chollas Creek Project
The city of San Diego took issue with a line in the last Environment Report, that it doesn’t have the $111 million it will take to fix the stormwater infrastructure in Shelltown to prevent flooding.
Technically, the city’s taken out enough debt to fully fund the project price, providing that doesn’t change. Designing it will take until 2028, according to the city’s Capital Improvements Program documents. Construction is supposed to be finished by 2031.
“The project has fully identified funding and it’s being fully designed right now,” wrote Jordan Moore with the city’s Independent Budget Analysts Office.
The city’s taking out about $41 million in debt to make the project happen. That’s financing San Diego is required to put up in order to get another $59 million in loans from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act.
The Beta Street project in Shelltown is one among 26 stormwater projects in the Chollas Creek watershed, which stretches from North Park to Shelltown.
The Learning Curve: San Diego Unified’s Big Housing Project
It looks like big changes won’t be in store for the multiple housing projects that developers are pitching to San Diego Unified, reports our Jakob McWhinney.
Backstory: School officials have offered up multiple plots of land for affordable housing developers to build housing for teachers and families. Board members were set to approve the projects, until a surprise vote to delay the final decision.
Now, developers will spend two days pitching board members on their projects. Board members are expected to vote on the winners during the two-day pitch process. One board member wanted developers to be able to make relatively last-minute changes to their pitches, but it turns out that’s now not going to happen.
In Other News
- inewsource reports that starting next month, San Diego’s housing agency will no longer add people to a waitlist for housing vouchers.
- Two families are suing the Sheriff’s Office and a private medical provider in two separate lawsuits for allegedly failing to provide care for two inmates. (Union-Tribune)
- Five years since a South Bay mom went missing, her family is still searching for answers. (Fox 5)
The Morning Report was written by Will Huntsberry, Mariana Martinez Barba and MacKenzie Elmer. It was edited by Andrea Sanchez-Villafaña.