The City’s slick new initiative, ‘Equity FORWARD, San Diego’ is a signal that we should believe our leaders’ commitment to communities that have been left behind. We ask, “Just how have you earned our trust?”
The communities served by the College-Rolando library have made concerted pleas for equity for our community and for our library for nigh on to seven years, without result.
In 2016, the City abandoned its plan to purchase the property next to our library should it ever come up for sale. That decision placed our library on a slippery downhill path.
Why was a City land purchase important for the future of the library? Because the City shorted our library at its beginning. It didn’t purchase sufficient land, and it built more than ½ of the library’s required parking and its driveway on land borrowed from that next door property. Now the adjacent property is being redeveloped with high density housing.
The floodwaters continue to rise as the library remains poised on its slippery slope, lacking guaranteed access. Soon the library will land underwater, without its driveway and parking. The “T’s” are being crossed and the “i’s” dotted at this very moment as the City completes its review of the details of a dense residential/hotel development. This development will cripple our library forever.
When asked to choose between protecting our library, and approving the investor’s often requested increases in density, the City, in-explicitly and repeatedly, chose the investor’s requests.
The City supported an investor’s plan to increase the density of allowed development, not once, not twice, but four times, starting with assurances to do so even before the 2017 private purchase. Then in 2019, the City granted an upzone for a hotel, followed in 2021 by city support to initiate a zone upgrade to enable high-density residential. Then in 2022 the residential restriction on development, that it had placed on the property just two years before, was cast aside by the City, giving the investor a green light to build high-density residential.
The investor’s return multiplies, and the library is further compromised with each City decision. It’s hard to explain why the City made this series of choices.
All signs are that, when the library lands at the bottom, it will be partially submerged as it was in 2017.
In 2017, when the owner chained off his property, library usage dropped by 50%. It was just too hard for parents with young kids, the elderly, the disabled to access the library. Our library was isolated.
We can’t explain why the City allows our library to slip underwater when it supports libraries in wealthier communities. It recently completed construction of a branch library in Mission Hills. Land for parking was scarce there, too. What did the City do? It created 80 spaces, in three levels of underground parking, at great cost. And when Scripps Ranch faced problems with competing use of its 80 spaces, the City today is spending over $4 million to double the amount of parking there.
Yet, the City naïvely asks us to trust them. Trust them when they promise to ‘some-day’ get around to paying attention to our lack of parks and our failing pipes and roadways……….as they plan to double, even triple the number of residences here. Experience tells us we will remain at the end of the line when it comes to city investments.
Can we trust the City’s new initiative, ‘Equity FORWARD, San Diego’?
We’ve been a non-white majority since the 2000 Census. The 2020 Census reports that our minority population is over 60%. Whites are 38%. The next largest group is Hispanic with 32%. The remaining Asian/PI, Black and other smaller racial groups total 30%. Our 2021 median household income is reported as $54,000. That is $30,000 below the median of the city as a whole. The library serves a community of 54,000, many struggling for equity.
The new City initiative is about amplifying minority voices in city decision-making. Our experience suggests that it is actions, not initiatives, that we need. We have been loud and persistent in urging our leaders to take off their “housing at all costs” glasses and look at the roadblocks to equity that result from their decisions affecting our library.
Our leaders know that housing development in San Diego these days is a very good gamble, and this investor’s bet would have landed elsewhere. How can they, in good conscience, intentionally send our library underwater? Why should we trust? This is our last chance to act to protect our library.
Email [email protected] and [email protected]. The deal’s not signed……yet.
– This opinion piece was written by Jan Hintzman, president of the Friends of the College-Rolando Library.
(Courtesy photo)
