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Chelsea Allen, the manager of community engagement at the San Diego Symphony, said she thinks San Diego's art and culture crowd is ready for new, exciting things. "It seems from what we're learning that it's very brave," she said. "And it's willing to accept some new sounds or looks, so we're happy to be doing that here." The symphony is shaking things up with its new Our American Music festival, a month-long concert series that includes shows by hip-hop legend Talib Kweli and folk singer/songwriter Rosanne Cash alongside chamber and classical music performances. The festival also includes temporary public art installations – sound booths and a community quilt – that invite audiences to interact and create some art and music of their own. For the first episode of Season 2 of Culturecast, Voice of San Diego's podcast covering arts and culture in region, I stepped inside a sound booth and talk to Allen and Brandon Steppe, the founder and director of the David’s Harp Foundation, a nonprofit that works with at-risk and homeless youth by providing free music education. The kids in Steppe's program collaborated with the symphony and helped produce the music for the booths. All of the music and sounds you hear in this episode, by the way, are by David’s Harp students. The track I let play for a few seconds at the very end is called "Parade of History" by Nathaniel Randle.

California's stormwater system is a toxic mess. Voice of San Diego reporter Ry Rivard joined the podcast this week to discuss his three-part investigative series on stormwater pollution and the flawed system that polices it. Rivard talked about the history behind stormwater regulations and the thousands or more industrial businesses across the state that don't comply with the rules. Businesses that do follow the law open themselves up to lawsuits from environmental lawyers who've taken it upon themselves to police the system since the state doesn't have the resources. The current system is largely viewed as unfair, and there's a debate about what to do about it. "There's a bunch of different things we could decide to do," Rivard said. "We could decide to give the government all the resources it needs to actually enforce the law so that private environmental groups don't have to, or we could figure out a different way to clean up water, or we could loosen the regulations, or we could make the decision that any business that pollutes should be immediately shut down." Environmental lawyer Wayne Rosenbaum also called in and said something needs to be done to fix the system. "I think regulators would agree that it leaves a bad taste in everybody's mouth," Rosenbaum said. "I think this is an issue the state water board and the regional water boards have to address." Podcast hosts Scott Lewis and Andrew Keatts also offer their analysis of this op-ed by County Supervisor Ron Roberts, who addressed VOSD's reports on the San Diego Association of Governments' seriously botched income projections. Roberts addresses many of the questions brought up by our stories, including whether SANDAG knew the revenue forecast for Measure A, last year's proposal for another sales tax hike to pay for a bevy of transportation projects, was likely way off, too. Lewis and Keatts also parse the latest attempts to keep the Chargers in San Diego, which includes San Diego State University stepping in and offering to help raise $100 million for a new stadium. Hero of the Week There's been a sea change at SeaWorld San Diego. The company quit breeding orcas and will hold its last ever orca entertainment show this weekend. The show will be replaced by an "Orca Encounter" exhibit that's promised to be more educational. Goat of the Week Rep. Duncan Hunter used campaign funds to fly his pet rabbit around. That's bad.

How far does a school district’s responsibility extend when it comes to turning around a struggling school – and what’s a parent to do when the district doesn’t fix the problems? That’s the question Scott Lewis and Laura Kohn take on this week, in the latest episode of our education podcast, Good Schools for All, which we’re airing in our weekly VOSD Podcast feed. They look at the question through the lens of Lincoln High School in southeastern San Diego. Subscribe to Good Schools for All on iTunes or get the RSS feed here.

On this week's podcast, hosts Scott Lewis and Andrew Keatts discuss VOSD's decision to name downtown homeless people the 2016 Voice of the Year. In the second half, Lewis and Keatts speak with Mark Cafferty, CEO of the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation.

are leaving their Barrio Logan art studio. Their rent went up, and while that wasn't the only thing driving their decision, it hastened it. Artists are often part of the first wave of a neighborhood's gentrification. Attracted to the big, open...

Anna Stump and Daphne Hill are leaving their Barrio Logan art studio. Their rent went up, and while that wasn't the only thing driving their decision, it hastened it. Artists are often part of the first wave of a neighborhood's gentrification. Attracted to the big, open warehouses and affordable rents found in overlooked and forgotten urban neighborhoods, they move in, making the neighborhood cooler and in turn, attracting developers. Often, artists and other residents eventually find themselves priced out. So how can artists help keep the same old cycle from playing out? "I don't know how to solve the problem," Hill said. "Do you have an answer?" I don't, but I talked to a few people who offered up some suggestions. For episode five of Culturecast, VOSD’s podcast covering the intersection of arts and gentrification in Barrio Logan, I headed down to Bread & Salt, an arts space inside an old bread factory on the border of Barrio Logan and Logan Heights. I sat inside the warehouse for an entire day and talked to artists, architects and developers about what people are, or should be doing to address gentrification. John Mireles is a commercial and fine art photographer who doesn't think gentrification is actually such a bad thing. He lives in Logan Heights, shows his art in galleries and coffee shops in the neighborhood and he’s also a landlord who owns and rents out property in the area. Photo courtesy of J Raymond Mireles At one of his recent art shows in Barrio Logan, Mireles told me he wanted to make a T-shirt that said "gentrifier" because he's proud of the work he's done to be part of and improve his neighborhood. Last year, Mireles took photos of some of his neighbors and community members, blew them up and hung them on his wooden fence. He said as long as people who move into the area are respectful of the community, newcomers can be a good thing. Plus, he said, change is inevitable, so he wonders why people would want to try to stop it when a neighborhood’s property values are at their lowest. "So often when people talk about gentrification, they're talking about a process of change as if it's this evil, horrible thing," he said. "If change is bad, when do we want this process of change to stop? Is it OK to stop when it becomes a very low-income neighborhood? Can neighborhoods only change from higher income to lower income and never reverse course? Can we only change from white to black to Hispanic to some other segregated ethnic group, or is it possible to have multicultural neighborhoods?" Mireles thinks Barrio Logan is headed toward becoming a more multicultural, mixed-income neighborhood, and that's a good thing. Musician Bill Caballero isn't as comfortable letting gentrification run its course. He agreed that change can't be stopped, but said artists and residents should work toward softening its blow. Photo by Kinsee Morlan "The only way that we can stay and not be pushed out is for the artists to buy their own goddamn building," he said. "You get a co-op of artists to buy a four-story building ... and they share the building and they say, 'This is what's it's going to be and we're intractable.'" Quick note to listeners: This is the last episode of what I’m calling Season 1 of Culturecast. I’m going to veer away from Barrio Logan for a while, but that doesn’t mean I won’t circle back. I’ve heard from several listeners, and the one thing I keep hearing is that y’all wish I produced more episodes more often. So I’m going to try to do that. I’ll do it by opening up the podcast to any story related to arts and culture in San Diego. The stories will probably be shorter and not serialized. I hope you’ll dig the new format. If you have any ideas for future episodes, shoot me an email.

When politicians vote to raise their own salaries, it's awkward. News of salary increases for public officials is almost always met with outrage. That was the case this week when the Union-Tribune broke the story about four of the five County Board of Supervisors quietly voting to raise their salaries by $19,000. County Supervisors Greg Cox, Dianne Jacob, Ron Roberts and Bill Horn voted for increase. Dave Roberts was the only one to vote against it. On this weeks' podcast, hosts Scott Lewis and Andrew Keatts give the Supes' pay boost an extended "Goat of the Week" entry, knocking them extra hard since they voted for it in a way that didn't allow for public input. Rep. Scott Peters calls in to the show to say we need a conversation that goes deeper than just knee-jerk, across-the-board opposition to all pay raises for public officials. "We just never have a conversation about what the right answer is and all the coverage of salary for public officials just seems to be negative," he said. "We need the engagement of the community and the press to help the local electeds find the right answer." Without defending the County Board of Supervisors' raise, which Peters said seemed a bit aggressive, he said it's important to keep politicians' pay competitive and come up with an automated way to increase salaries based on economic benchmarks and inflation without making officials vote on the raises themselves. Chelsea Collier, founder of Digi.City, also stopped by the podcast studio to talk about how cities can use technology to revolutionize the way they serve citizens. Collier recently penned an op-ed for VOSD urging leaders to ready the city for a 5G wireless broadband network. A Crippled Creek In the 1990s, regulation passed that said toxic metal levels in Chollas Creek were too high. A pricey plan was put into place to remove copper and zinc from the the waterway that starts in La Mesa and Lemon Grove and runs through neighborhoods in southeastern San Diego. The deadline to get it done loomed, but as VOSD's Ry Rivard reported this week, water officials came up with a new plan to instead roll back the cleanup requirements after restudying the water and calling the metal levels not as harmful as previously thought. The vote on the rule change was temporarily derailed, though, by an environmental attorney who argued that water officials should first require businesses to do more testing of water that runs off their property into the creek. Lewis and Keatts dug in to the story and discussed readers' quick and angry reaction to it. They also talked about the letter four City Council members sent to the Chargers that rehashed an old pitch to give or lease the Qualcomm Stadium land to the team, and they discussed the big budget cuts coming to San Diego Unified. Hero of the Week UC San Diego has plans to open an outpost downtown at the corner of Park Boulevard and Market Street. City officials and urbanists have long wanted to see a university move in downtown to help spur the neighborhood's growth as a technology and innovation hub.

Three new San Diego City Council members will be inaugurated next week. The new Council's first big decision will be a tense one: Who will be the next City Council president? In this week's podcast, hosts Andrew Keatts and Scott Lewis talk about the behind-the-scenes vote wrangling between Councilman David Alvarez and Councilwoman Myrtle Cole to become the next leader and the interesting split it's caused among two of the city's most powerful progressive institutions. The San Diego Building and Construction Trades Council is backing Alvarez, while the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council just announced its support for Cole. Lewis and Keatts dig deep into why the groups are divided and why it matters. Taking a Stab at Solving San Diego's Biggest Problem The affordable housing crisis is one of the San Diego region's gnarliest problems, but that's not stopping one new coalition. Mary Lydon, the former executive director of the local Urban Land Institute chapter, is part of a new project called Housing You Matters, a group of urban planners, environmentalists and community leaders who have ambitious plans to first understand the housing problem, and then roll out recommendations for policy changes or other possible answers to the growing problem. Lydon joined the podcast to discuss the group's goals and its strategy. "There's no doubt that we're growing," she said. "Our populations are growing. We all have children. Where are they going to live? The great opportunities now are in the big cities ... so we have to figure out how to accommodate that. But here in the state of California, we have some constraints." Lydon said the city's Climate Action Plan is one local policy that's caused more restraints when it comes to building affordable housing. She also said her group is currently focusing on the "low-hanging fruit" of affordable housing by looking at how to spur more development next to public transportation. Transit-oriented development is something regional leaders have agreed San Diego needs more of, so she said her group is studying the barriers that might be keeping it from actually happening. Hero of the Week San Diego City Attorney Jan Goldsmith announced a new pilot program meant to better serve people who are frequently arrested for low-level crimes, cycling in and out of local jails and using up city resources with little results in terms of recidivism. The San Diego Misdemeanants At-Risk Track program will work toward diverting those non-violent chronic misdemeanor offenders into treatment and housing programs instead. Goat of the Week The city of San Diego's Development Services Department gets a big thumbs-down this week for breaking its own rules and allowing ineligible projects to benefit from a program that fast-tracks sustainable developments. Keatts found that five well-connected local architects benefited the most from the rule-breaking.

A special episode of Good Schools For All.

Todd Gloria has served eight years as city councilman, but in a few short days he'll leave for the state Assembly, where he's replacing Toni Atkins in representing District 78. Gloria joins hosts Scott Lewis and Andrew Keatts this week to talk about his time with the city, which included stints as City Council president and interim mayor. He shared his thoughts on City Hall battles over issues like minimum wage, the city's aggressive new climate plan, the failed Barrio Logan community plan update, affordable housing and more. Gloria said the reason his City Council presidency was cut short was the packed progressive agenda that he pushed during his tenure, which didn't always go over well with his Republican cohorts. "Some would say that was part of my undoing," Gloria said. "That I was too aggressive in trying to push an agenda ... but life is short, the job is actually quite hard and there are some downsides to these gigs, so if you're going to do one, make the most of it." Gloria said despite the pushback, he'll be taking much of the same progressive agenda and aggressive approach to Sacramento. He said one big thing he learned as a councilman was the huge impact of money on politics in California, where anyone with a big enough bank account can take issues directly to the voters. "What I certainly miscalculated is what unlimited money in politics can do," he said. In one of the more revealing moments, Gloria talked about what it was like to work with former Mayor Bob Filner, who resigned amid accusations of sexual harassment. Lewis asked if he felt like Filner was bullying him. Gloria said yes and described a few of his interactions with the former mayor. San Diego's Homeless Population Is Far From Hidden Lewis and Keatts summarize Lisa Halverstadt's recent coverage of San Diego's booming homeless population. In one story, Halverstadt talked to five downtown hotel managers who described tense daily confrontations between hotel staff and guests and homeless people. She also found a few tourists who said they wouldn't want to return to downtown San Diego because of their encounters with the homeless population. The hoteliers told Halverstadt they want the city to work harder at housing the homeless; they're even open to the idea of a hotel tax increase that funds homelessness solutions. Halverstadt also took on the most persistent theories about why San Diego's homeless population is exploding and explained why experts can only speculate about the reasons. Also on this week's podcast, Lewis pulls the ultimate bad-dad move and accidentally forces his sick kid to go to preschool, and he brings up his theory about the future of journalism being threatened by sources going direct to the public. Hero of the Week The Urban Collaborative Project wins the acknowledgement this week for their work toward fixing up an empty lot in Lincoln Park. Goat of the Week The boneheads who defaced signs at the New Americans Museum with anti-immigrant messages get the goat this week. The Liberty Station museum stages art exhibitions, talks and more centered on the contributions of immigrants.