Elevators, Endorsements and Porcupettes 22%
By Voice of San Diego42%
7/29/2026, 2:15:00 AM
Topics: Elections, Labor Unions, Infrastructure, Zoos, Affordable Housing, Environmental Issues, Social Issues
Keywords: City Council Race, District 8, Antonio Martinez, Gerardo Ramirez, Labor Endorsement, Municipal Employees Association, City Hall Elevators, Aging Building, San Diego Zoo, Porcupettes, San Diego Unified, Employee Housing, New York Times, Downzoning, Pests, Decommissioned Warship, Homeless Population, Heat Waves, Encampments
BS Summary: This article contains 23 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Post Hoc (False Cause), and Hasty Generalization, with Appeal to Authority as the most egregious example at 15% saturation with 124 hits. Analysis detected 746 faulty-reasoning hits from 829 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 30.7% and a BS Rank of 22% (20,077 of 25,563 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 78.50% of the article peer group.
Things are heating up in the District 8 City Council race to represent San Ysidro and other parts of southern San Diego.
On Tuesday, Antonio Martinez received a key labor endorsement from the San Diego & Imperial Counties Labor Council.
Martinez is a board member for San Ysidro School District.
His opponent Gerardo Ramirez is the chief of staff for current District 8 Councilmember Vivian Moreno.
Ramirez has received the endorsement of the Municipal Employees Association, or MEA, the biggest city employee union.
That means two powerful unions will be pitted against each other, with money potentially pouring into each campaign.
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.
“We work well with Gerardo at City Hall and have found him to be effective and responsive, and we think he will be a great councilmember,” Zucchet said.
City Hall Is Kinda Busted
City Hall just can’t seem to catch a break.
Since the beginning of this year, one or more of the four various elevators that serve the building have been out five times so far this calendar year.
One is out currently.
Nicole Darling, a city spokesperson, said it’s because of the aging building and its aging systems.
City Hall was built in the 1960s and “requires ongoing maintenance to address systems that are beyond their service life,” she wrote in an email.
There’s long been talk of moving or replacing City Hall.
But Darling said budget constraints have put those plans on hold.
Conversations about the future of Civic Center Plaza remain alive — but any redevelopment seems years away.
Other buildings that make up the plaza like the city operations building have been riddled with plumbing, HVAC, and elevator breakdowns for the last decade .
The aging downtown buildings were a big reason why city officials tried to move city employees into 101 Ash — but as we know that didn’t work out so great.
Critter Corner: Porcupette Hot Out the Oven
Seems like the critters over at the San Diego Zoo can’t stop getting busy.
A pair of prehensile-tailed porcupines named Gracie and Picante recently gave birth to an as-of-now unnamed porcupette (yes, that’s what they’re called).
This new porcupette is the happy couple’s second bebe .
These porcupines are native to South America and spend most of their time in trees.
Their prehensile tails can function almost like a fifth limb, curling tightly around tree branches for balance or even to hang upside down to grab some tasty fruit.
San Diego Unified Employee Housing Gets NYT Treatment
Next time you speak to your cousin who moved to the Big Apple, you may have something new to brag about.
The New York Times recently ran a piece profiling San Diego Unified’s unprecedented slate of affordable employee housing projects .
The Gray Lady described the effort to build about 2,500 units of housing as “the largest project of its kind in the country.”
As is frequently the case when national media comes parachuting in, we were about eight months early on this .
And as the NYT reporting suggests, it’s hard to overemphasize how big of a deal San Diego Unified’s projects could be.
The district genuinely is pioneering a new approach to affordable workforce housing.
Officials hope it won’t just lessen the financial burden on teachers, but also lead to a housing paradigm shift.
See Jessica?
San Diego’s not just about weather.
You can check out our comprehensive piece that dives deep not only on the housing projects themselves, but also what local education leaders hope will come next.
Back in the day, San Diego “ downzoned” huge swaths of its urban core , banning apartments in some of the city’s most walkable neighborhoods.
Our Public Matters partners at KPBS broke down how the practice reduced the city’s ability to grow and became a tool to segregate neighborhoods.
(KPBS)
There could be a spike in pests at your favorite restaurant.
An analysis by Times of San Diego found twice as many eateries across the county were closed by health inspectors last year compared to just four years ago.
The culprit?
Likely cockroaches and rats.
(Times of San Diego)
A San Diego warship is being decommissioned more than a decade early after a series of mechanical problems and structural defects.
(Union-Tribune)
San Diego’s homeless population faces challenges with heat waves .
They lack access to running water, showers, and air conditioning to cool down.
(KPBS)
The city of San Diego and Caltrans agreed to continue their removal of encampments on state freeways .
Earlier this year, we wrote about how one camp was cleared nearly 70 times , and people kept coming back.
(10 News)
The Morning Report was written by Jakob McWhinney and Mariana Mart í nez Barba.
It was edited by Will Huntsberry.
Analysis
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