Interim Mayor Gloria’s February Update

Friends,

Thank you to all who joined me last month when I presented the annual State of the City Address. When I walked on stage and looked out to the audience assembled in the historic Balboa Theatre, I was again humbled by the support shown by San Diegans. As I shared in my remarks, San Diego will always be America’s Finest City. But we shouldn’t be content with just being fine. We must dare to be great. A great San Diego future means developing a comprehensive infrastructure funding strategy and a bond for voters’ approval in 2016; it means better utilizing available resources to truly address the challenges of homelessness; it means implementation of a progressive Climate Action Plan; and it means investment into Balboa Park for the 2015 Centennial Celebration of the 1915 Panama-California Exposition. The 2014 State of the City Address is available for reading and viewing at sandiego.gov.

San Diego’s future is dependent on your continued participation as we work together for a great city. I’ve heard from many of you that a highlight of the State of the City evening was the video asking, “When you think about San Diego’s future, what do you see?” This is meant as a conversation starter, and I would love to hear and see how more San Diegans answer that question. Snap a picture of your vision or describe it and post it on Instagram or Twitter with #SDFuture.

On the topic of infrastructure, please know we aren’t waiting until 2016 to address this challenge. Late last month, the San Diego City Council unanimously approved $120 million of bond funding for neighborhood infrastructure projects. San Diegans deserve neighborhoods with smooth roads, sound facilities, and water and sewer pipes that don’t break. This bond will help us achieve that goal. More than $43 million from the bond will fund street resurfacing. The project list includes replacing Fire Station 5 in Hillcrest, and $4.3 million for accessibility improvements city-wide.

Also last month, Councilmember Mark Kersey, chair of the City’s Infrastructure Committee, and I kicked off the first ever citywide sidewalk assessment. This assessment, funded in the Fiscal Year 2014 budget for up to $1 million, is expected to take approximately one year to complete and will provide an unprecedented evaluation of the conditions of sidewalks throughout San Diego. The City of San Diego has approximately 5,000 miles of public sidewalks and the bulk of the assessment work is being completed by 24 student engineering interns. Remember, if you tweet, you can follow the City’s infrastructure conversation on Twitter — #RebuildSD.

As I said in my State of the City Address, I know more great ideas and big dreams are out there; let’s work together to make them happen. You can email me your ideas at [email protected].

As always, thank you for the opportunity to serve.

—Todd Gloria, Interim Mayor

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Editor’s note: Dale Larabee requested this letter be printed, saying it shows how passionate rescue dog owners like himself are about their pets.

In the Jan. 31 – Feb. 13 issue of the Uptown News Dale Larabee wrote a column about dogs [See “Dogs I have loved and kicked” Vol. 6 Issue 3]. First of all I didn’t appreciate the title “Dogs I have loved and kicked.” That’s just not something anyone should say or joke about. Later in the column he states that “A growing problem is rescue dogs…” and he suggests that rescue dogs have behavioral issues and are hard to train. I have had dogs my entire life. Some have been rescues, some have been rescues who were abused, some were simply dogs that needed a home (from neighbors who had a dog who had puppies or dogs that just needed a new home). I have not noticed that any rescue dog was harder to train than any other dog. The point Mr. Larabee was trying to make was not entirely clear. It seems like he is saying that people who adopt rescue dogs do not want to train them. I don’t think the column was very well written and it probably has caused some confusion for readers of the column. My main issue is that a reader of the column may be dissuaded from adopting a rescue dog due to Mr. Larabee’s careless comments. I think we can all agree that these poor dogs deserve every chance they can get and Mr. Larabee is lowering these rescue dogs chances of a happy life. If he does not care about the lives of rescue dogs perhaps he should refrain from writing about dogs completely.

Thank you for your time.

-Zuri Ganz via email

Editor’s note: In the article referenced below, [SANDAG allocates additional funds to bike plan” Vol. 6 Issue 3] Uptown News incorrectly reported that the proposed bike lanes would run along Third and Fourth avenues, rather than Fourth and Fifth avenues.

[See “SANDAG allocates additional funds to bike plan” Vol. 6 Issue 3]

It’s crazy, and a way of shoving bicycles off of the route that cars want. Third Avenue? It ends at Olive St., and won’t connect the Uptown area to Downtown. In order to go the four blocks up to Spruce St. and continue on Third Ave., you need to go over to First or Fifth avenues. San Diego politics at its finest. By the County Bike Coalition (which has SANDAG represented on its board) joining MoveSD (developers), they essentially have a gag order placed on them. Fifth is a much wider and safer street than Third. The only reason I can think of for placing a bike route on an indirect street is to shove bicyclists to the side, like second-class citizens. What’s next? To get the state vehicle code rewritten to exclude bicycles from the roadways? I see all this happy-clapping coming from developers/engineers seeing a bigger budget from the state. This shows that bicycles are still considered a hobby/sport in this town and not transportation. This route goes nowhere along the way. Not to Balboa Park, businesses, schools, community buildings, or much of anything else unless you live along the route.

When it is shown that the use of the backstreet bike routes are under utilized, they will go away. Well played, my friends. Like taking candy from a baby. This is much like the uproar from horse owners not wanting to give way to cars, although the roads were originally paved for bicycles.

—Hans Wangbichler via sduptownnews.com