The District 8 City Council race to represent San Ysidro and other parts of southern San Diego is heating up. Antonio Martinez, a board member for San Ysidro School District, received a key labor endorsement from the San Diego & Imperial Counties Labor Council. His opponent, Gerardo Ramirez, the chief of staff for current District 8 Councilmember Vivian Moreno, has received the endorsement of the Municipal Employees Association, or MEA, the biggest city employee union.
Endorsements and Implications
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, stating that they work well with Gerardo at City Hall and have found him to be effective and responsive.
City Hall is facing its own set of challenges, with one or more of the four elevators that serve the building being out of order five times this calendar year. Nicole Darling, a city spokesperson, attributed this to the aging building and its aging systems, which require ongoing maintenance to address systems that are beyond their service life.
Future of Civic Center Plaza
Conversations about the future of Civic Center Plaza remain alive, but any redevelopment seems years away due to budget constraints. The aging downtown buildings have been plagued by plumbing, HVAC, and elevator breakdowns for the last decade, prompting city officials to consider moving city employees to a new location.
In other news, the San Diego Zoo has welcomed a new addition – a porcupette, the offspring of prehensile-tailed porcupines Gracie and Picante. This new porcupette is the happy couple’s second baby.
San Diego Unified’s affordable employee housing projects have also gained national attention, with The New York Times recently running a piece on the effort to build about 2,500 units of housing, described as “the largest project of its kind in the country.”
Original reporting: Voice of San Diego — read the source article.
