vosdpodcastnetwork201707

We need a lot more teachers. Fewer folks want to be teachers, even as the demand increases. In San Diego County, about 32 percent of teachers are 50 years old or older. As more teachers retire, we have to replace them. On this week’s podcast,...

Lewis Keller lived in his van, even while working a full-time job. The Navy veteran said when he made the decision to live in his vehicle, he was making about $40,000 a year. But after taxes, child support and other bills, the only rent the recent divorcé could afford was moving in with a roommate. He opted for living solo in his van instead. Keller's situation isn't uncommon. This year's annual survey by the Regional Task Force on the Homeless found that almost 21 percent of homeless respondents reported being employed. Keller, who now lives in an apartment at Alpha Square, the Alpha Project's downtown complex that houses formerly homeless and very low-income people, joined hosts Scott Lewis and Andrew Keatts on the podcast this week to offer his take on the city's growing homeless problem. He said he puts the brunt of the blame on San Diego's limited housing stock. "The primary issue seems to me is there just isn't enough housing," he said. "I don't think we can fix this problem overnight. ... There's a need to bring on about 10,000 units per month to even make a dent in the homeless issue that we're facing." He said some people opt to live on the streets because they don't like the rules or hurdles that come with tapping into the shelter system or other government support programs. For folks like him, he said if affordable apartments were available, they'd no longer be homeless. "How can we address this issue and get better results?" he said. "Because the efficacy we're experiencing right now is failure." Also on this week's podcast, Lewis and Keatts discuss just how hard it's going to be to get a subsidized football stadium built in this town, and they praise the Homeless Awareness Day efforts, including VOSD's coverage of the spike in homeless in the East Village despite the ongoing gentrification and a look at the problems with housing vouchers. They're also excited about Politifest's upcoming awesomeness. Hero of the Week Hats off to the city of San Diego and Mayor Kevin Faulconer for quickly responding to criticism about long 9-1-1 emergency call wait times. The city rolled out a series of policy changes to help solve the issues and, a few months into the changes, average wait times have fallen and the percentage of calls answered within 10 seconds has gone up. Goat of the Week An audit of the state gang database, CalGang, outlined the many failings in the system, including not ensuring individuals' right to privacy, major flaws in how names are entered and purged from the system and an error that resulted in 42 people in the system recorded as being younger than age 1 at the time of entry.

On Monday, District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis is scheduled to testify in the biggest political corruption scandal happening right now. José Susumo Azano Matsura is a Mexican businessman accused by federal prosecutors of illegally funneling more than a half-million dollars to San Diego political campaigns. Prosecutors have said at least $200,000 from Azano went toward supporting Dumanis' failed 2012 mayoral bid. Dumanis isn't accused of any crimes herself, but her testimony could help answer a lot of the lingering questions. For such a high-profile case, remarkably little is known about what, exactly, Azano hoped to get in exchange for his generous financial contributions. On this week's podcast, hosts Scott Lewis and Andrew Keatts run through the many details they hope the DA's testimony might divulge. They pull up an old U-T TV interview between Rodger Hedgcock and Dumanis, where the DA said she knew nothing about Azano and that her campaign had done nothing wrong. They then describe the many ties between Azano and Dumanis that were uncovered after the interview ran. Lewis, Keatts and all the journalists who've been paying attention to the case have been asking Dumanis about what she knows about Azano. She's continued to deny knowing much of anything at all. But if things go as scheduled and she takes the stand Monday, it's very likely she'll have to answer all those same questions, but this time under oath. Labor's Big Wins Mickey Kasparian, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers and the Labor Council in San Diego, joins the podcast and lifts the curtain on what happens when the workers union and major grocers like Vons and Albertsons sit down together at the negotiation table. He said the most recent talks resulted in a good contract for workers, but he said the union got uncomfortably close to calling for a major work stoppage. "[Resolutions] always come at the brink of a dispute," he said. Kasparian also talks about the proposed city measure that would change the rule allowing a candidate to win outright in primary elections if he or she gets more than 50 percent of the vote – it's a change he's been vocal about supporting. Lewis asked whether he was surprised that the proposal made it to the November ballot despite lots of opposition. "I think the mayor's race probably really brought this to the forefront," he said. "Just think about it – the city of San Diego one of the largest cities in the country, and you don't really have a mayors race. ... And so many people who could have run that would've really had a good chance to become the mayor in November did not run because they knew Kevin Faulconer wouldn't be defeated in June, but he was very vulnerable in November." Also on this week's podcast, Lewis and Keatts play clips from John Oliver's segment about the sorry state of journalism and they discuss the new study from the San Diego Tourism Marketing District that found how lacking the convention center side of the Chargers' proposed convadium would likely be. Hero of the Week Kelly Davis, a VOSD contributer, and her family, who decided to share their deeply personal experience putting the state's new aid-in-dying law into effect. Goat of the Week The ACLU of Southern California gets goated for its recent report and press release about charter schools being in violation of California law by illegally restricting access to enrollment. While the findings do likely include some actual problems with charter school enrollment, it looks like many schools were likely unfairly included for doing things like requiring attendance at orientation meetings. Also, there are traditional public schools that have selective admission processes.

Superintendents don't stick around for long. A  by , a nonprofit advocating for public school improvement, found that two-thirds of superintendents at California's largest public school districts served three years or less....

This week, Sara Libby and I start preparing for the weighty decisions we’ll all be asked to make in this fall’s election. These are weighty not only because they’re important decisions, but because there are a lot of them. When you get the state’s Official Voter Information Guide in the mail this fall, you’ll see it’s a voluminous document, the size of some cities’ telephone books. The guide takes voters through the pros and cons of at least 17 different statewide ballot measures. We go through the guide, how you can use it and offer some first impressions about the layout, writing and fun facts scattered throughout. We suggest starting a book club soon if you want to get through the whole thing by Election Day. The guide doesn’t even include the numerous city and county ballot measures that you’ll also be asked to decide in November. We also list our favorite things of the week. My favorite thing is a rhetorical tic that Tim Kaine, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, has: He repeats himself for emphasis, something I’ve found that I do too. Sara’s favorite thing this week is the new HBO series “The Night Of.”

Mexican businessman José Susumo Azano Matsura is in court, defending himself against allegations by federal prosecutors who say he illegally funneled more than a half-million dollars to San Diego political campaigns. But as former VOSD reporter Liam Dillon reminds us, Azano's story leading up to the trial is plenty fascinating. Dillon, who's now covering California state politics for the Los Angeles Times, joins hosts Scott Lewis and Andrew Keatts this week to break down Azano's backstory, which he covered in-depth for VOSD. The road that led Azano from being a wealthy Mexican businessman who lived in a mansion in Coronado to an accused money launderer takes a lot of strange twists and turns. As Dillon tells it, Azano, who amassed his money through the international surveillance market, inserted himself into a land dispute in Ensenada between a rancher and San Diego-based Sempra Energy. Azano was beginning to lose his battle with Sempra, and Dillon says he likely turned to local politics looking for help. "It was my conclusion based on the reporting that I had done that his interest in getting involved in San Diego politics was an effort to try to turn the tide back against Sempra, sort of a last-ditch effort to get some political pressure in his favor," Dillon said. Also on this week's podcast, Lewis talks about how he got his exclusive story about the Padres' beef with the Chargers' downtown stadium plan and Keatts quibbles with Petco Park's No. 1 baseball stadium rating from USA Today. Hero of the Week Slain San Diego Police Officer Jonathan De Guzman and his partner, Wade Irwin, who was injured in last week's shooting, are the heroes this week. The interview segment of the show starts at the 22-minute mark.

The Chargers scored big this week when the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce voted Thursday to endorse their plan for a new East Village stadium. So far, organized labor groups are the only other major institutions that have thrown their support behind the team's initiative, which would hike the city's hotel tax to help pay for a new convadium, or stadium and convention center mashup. Meanwhile, the anti-convadium camp has organized itself as No Downtown Stadium – Jobs and Streets First, a diverse coalition of folks who want to make the case that the city should prioritize other needs before subsidizing a stadium. District 6 Councilman Chris Cate is one of the leaders of the coalition, and he joined the podcast this week to talk about why he's opposed to the plan. "The Chargers and [special adviser to the team] Fred Maas like to go around and talk about how this will not impact neighborhoods or impact the city at all," Cate said. "That it protects the general fund and all those things, but it's absolutely not true and I have a huge issue with folks voting on a $2 billion proposal – a tax increase for a huge infrastructure project – without any of the details whatsoever regarding the cost for construction, financing, detailed plans." Cate said the plan would have major impacts on the city – most people just don't know about them yet. And he said the city has too many other priorities to justify subsidizing a stadium for the Chargers. He also questioned the proposed facility's actual function as a convention center, saying it's just not clear whether it would meet the city's needs, nor is it clear who will run the space. Cate also talked about his opposition to ballot measure that proposes making big changes to the way officials are elected in the city of San Diego. Also on the podcast, co-hosts Scott Lewis and Andrew Keatts talk about Lewis' trip through the worst part of the world, the tension between Gov. Jerry Brown and cities across California when it comes to how big development decisions are made and they give a quick preview of the conversations and people that are part of VOSD's Politifest happening Sept. 24 at San Diego State University. Hero of the Week Well-known San Diego philanthropist Conrad Prebys, who died of cancer last week, gets the acknowledgement this week for supporting several important projects around town and setting an example of the amount of good that can be done by folks who've done well financially. Goat of the Week The San Diego County Office of Education gets the goat for its very bizarre meeting that turned into a gift giveaway and brought up questions about the proper use of public funds.

Thanks to a funding surge, more California schools are launching career academies, or programs that combine academic and technical skills. On this week’s podcast, Rob Atterby of ConnectEd joined co-hosts Scott Lewis and Laura Kohn to talk about...

For Dave Maass, covering Comic-Con International as a freelancer for the Rolling Stone is an endurance sport. From the Wednesday through Sunday that the event takes over the San Diego Convention Center, the former CityBeat reporter books every hour of every day with events like round-tables with famous folks, parties, panels and gaming and virtual reality demonstrations. Tasked with coming up with a list of the best of the best of Comic-Con for Rolling Stone, Maass told show hosts Andrew Keatts that one of his favorite things so far has been the Mr. Robot virtual reality experience. Virtual reality, Maass said, is everywhere in and around Comic-Con this year. “One of the things that’s interesting this year I think is that Comic-Con has run out of space to a large extent,” he said. “But this year there is so much virtual reality. It seems like every single property has some sort of virtual reality component, and so almost in a way it’s seeing Comic-Con expand into this virtual space.” With Scott Lewis out of town, Keatts is joined on the podcast this week by Sara Libby. They talk about the republican national convention that didn’t come to San Diego and all the related weirdness that eventually ended with San Diego adopting its “Finest City” motto, the continuation of Lincoln High’s leadership conundrum, the latest in the Lilac Hills Ranch development saga and an explainer on the Balboa Park revamp plan and which institutions are on board with it.

There's a link between school discipline policies and students who enter the justice system. Folks call it the school-to-prison pipeline. , or Mid-City CAN, is a City Heights-based organization that advocates for , a new approach...