Things are heating up in the District 8 City Council race to represent San Ysidro and other parts of southern San Diego.
On Tuesday, Antonio Martinez received a key labor endorsement from the San Diego & Imperial Counties Labor Council.
Martinez is a board member for San Ysidro School District.
His opponent Gerardo Ramirez is the chief of staff for current District 8 Councilmember Vivian Moreno. Ramirez has received the endorsement of the Municipal Employees Association, or MEA, the biggest city employee union.
That means two powerful unions will be pitted against each other, with money potentially pouring into each campaign.
Brigette Browning, president of the Labor Council, said that Martinez will fight for “good paying jobs, strong neighborhoods and opportunities for every family.”
Meanwhile, Micahel Zucchet, the general manager of MEA, also backed his man.
“We work well with Gerardo at City Hall and have found him to be effective and responsive, and we think he will be a great councilmember,” Zucchet said.
City Hall Is Kinda Busted
City Hall just can’t seem to catch a break.
Since the beginning of this year, one or more of the four various elevators that serve the building have been out five times so far this calendar year. One is out currently.
Nicole Darling, a city spokesperson, said it’s because of the aging building and its aging systems. City Hall was built in the 1960s and “requires ongoing maintenance to address systems that are beyond their service life,” she wrote in an email.
There’s long been talk of moving or replacing City Hall. But Darling said budget constraints have put those plans on hold.
Conversations about the future of Civic Center Plaza remain alive — but any redevelopment seems years away.
Other buildings that make up the plaza like the city operations building have been riddled with plumbing, HVAC, and elevator breakdowns for the last decade. The aging downtown buildings were a big reason why city officials tried to move city employees into 101 Ash — but as we know that didn’t work out so great.
Critter Corner: Porcupette Hot Out the Oven
Seems like the critters over at the San Diego Zoo can’t stop getting busy. A pair of prehensile-tailed porcupines named Gracie and Picante recently gave birth to an as-of-now unnamed porcupette (yes, that’s what they’re called). This new porcupette is the happy couple’s second bebe.
These porcupines are native to South America and spend most of their time in trees. Their prehensile tails can function almost like a fifth limb, curling tightly around tree branches for balance or even to hang upside down to grab some tasty fruit.
San Diego Unified Employee Housing Gets NYT Treatment
Next time you speak to your cousin who moved to the Big Apple, you may have something new to brag about. The New York Times recently ran a piece profiling San Diego Unified’s unprecedented slate of affordable employee housing projects. The Gray Lady described the effort to build about 2,500 units of housing as “the largest project of its kind in the country.”
As is frequently the case when national media comes parachuting in, we were about eight months early on this. And as the NYT reporting suggests, it’s hard to overemphasize how big of a deal San Diego Unified’s projects could be. The district genuinely is pioneering a new approach to affordable workforce housing. Officials hope it won’t just lessen the financial burden on teachers, but also lead to a housing paradigm shift.
See Jessica? San Diego’s not just about weather.
You can check out our comprehensive piece that dives deep not only on the housing projects themselves, but also what local education leaders hope will come next.
In Other News
The Morning Report was written by Jakob McWhinney and Mariana Martínez Barba. It was edited by Will Huntsberry.
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