For local jurisdictions, cannabis farming can generate significant new tax revenues, create jobs and help reverse course for the region’s declining agricultural sector. In the weeks and months ahead, county and local officials will be taking steps to implement medical and recreational marijuana regulations, including cannabis farming. The local farmers I’ve talked to think the time is ripe. In the last 16 months, the state…
While the incoming Trump administration is a national disgrace and disaster, unique opportunity exists in California’s 49th and 50th congressional districts represented by the notorious Darryl Issa and Duncan Hunter Jr. respectively. Secretary Robert Reich has re-posted the grass roots battle plan for resisting the Trump agenda, two of whose leading advocates are the infamous Issa and Hunter. Those wishing to form groups for the…
Are you sick and tired of gun violence and the barely contained flood of weapons on our streets? Time to drill down to the local election level to get the ball rolling against the pernicious gun lobby and people who make our streets unsafe due to the abundance of guns allowed in our society. This issue has caused us to endorse several candidates for local…
It was a classic and pretty much forgotten today radio-then-TV show, “Life of Riley,” starring William Bendix as wing riveter Chester A. Riley, who tag-lined in outrage “What a revoltin’ development this is,” when life, as it always seemed to on that venerable show, went wrong. It happened every week back then and it’s happening again around North County. Nobody in North County wants the…
With the November election just weeks away, I am encouraging San Diego voters to vote No on the Lilac Hills Ranch Measure B. Measure B is a countywide measure on which all San Diego County voters – including residents of incorporated cities – will vote. Measure B would allow a deep-pocketed developer to build Lilac Hills Ranch, a development of more than 1,700 homes and 90,000…
Local non-profit research and advocacy group Center on Policy Initiatives this week found that Escondido’s poverty rate was just about the highest in San Diego county. Only El Cajon’s 22.8 percent was barely higher than Escondido’s 21.6 percent overall rate. El Cajon had 28 percent poverty rate for children, Escondido? It was 28.5 percent. Otherwise across the land, Vista had an 18.6 percent rate, San…
How will our region look and feel in 2050? How many more of us will there be? How will we travel around? What will be the key environmental issues of the day? What will our greenhouse gas emissions be? Earlier this summer, the local chapters of the American Planning Association and the Association of Environmental Professionals hosted a membership appreciation event highlighting San Diego Association…