The Weekly Ask is one short video each week that poses questions to you, our audience. This week’s question:
What is the most underreported issue in San Diego today?
We received great responses via social media and email, and our team has taken them all into consideration for future stories. To see the next question in our series, go here.
If you think of something you’d like to ask inewsource, email bradracino@inewsource-launch.newspackstaging.com or shylanott@inewsource-launch.newspackstaging.com. You can also tweet to either of us here: @shylanott or @bradracino.
Here’s what you had to say this week:
Several suggestions dealt with San Diego infrastructure woes – bridges, water mains and the like. One reader asked, “Why’s it taking so long to get the Georgia St. bridge done?” (Here’s a story from the San Diego Reader on that topic from last November.)
Another person said an underreported issue is “Old dilapidated water mains under our streets that need to be renewed.”
We wrote a few stories on water mains several years back – including this one about how asbestos cement was to blame for three of every five breaks from 2012 through the end of September 2015. And we should take a moment to point out that inewsource could do a lot more to tackle potholes, sinkholes and hellholes all over the county, but that requires full-time reporting power. So we’re currently fundraising to hire a reporter to handle infrastructure coverage – because it takes money to hire a top-notch investigator to unearth the issues our readers have pointed out. If you’d like to contribute, please go to inewsource.org/donate to support our efforts.
Moving on.
Two readers said unaffordable housing and homelessness are underreported. While those subjects could always use more attention, we’d point out that both The San Diego Union-Tribune and Voice of San Diego have done great work on those subjects over the past few years.
Another reader wanted news coverage on “Where are ALL tax revenues going to in San Diego County … Including all utilities, infrastructure, SANDAG, etc.” This is a whopper, but we put out a call to the San Diego County Treasurer-Tax Collector’s Office to get some answers. The office provided a high-level view of tax allocations for the last fiscal year. Here you go:
SanDiegoCounty.gov
A spokesman for the office added, “For more detailed information (and more stats than you could ever want), you can visit the County Auditor and Controller’s site.”
- Apportionment reports: https://www.sandiegocounty.gov/content/sdc/auditor/reports.html
- Additional information: https://www.sandiegocounty.gov/content/sdc/auditor/trb1718.html
Climate change popped up in one email. Specifically, the reader said he hasn’t seen “anything in the news about the longer term impacts and how and when we will need to deal with them and what they will cost.” He pointed out a lack of information about things “like constructing seawalls around low lying areas like Mission Beach, La Jolla Shores, Western National City, etc. or replacing wastewater and stormwater pipes as groundwater rises and displaces them, and what to do about coastal underground electrical distribution and communication lines that might become flooded.”
Here’s an informative piece from The San Diego Union-Tribune that covers this subject and references Del Mar, Imperial Beach, Solana Beach and Encinitas.
Also, here’s an interactive tool you can use to see the effects of sea level rise across all different areas of the country (though it defaults to San Diego).
Lastly, one reader wanted to see more coverage about the two measures having a tough time getting on the November ballot – The Full Voter Participation Act and Safeguard Our Countryside. Again, our colleagues at The San Diego Union-Tribune have done a good job of keeping up on these efforts. You can read some of the coverage here, here and here.
We’ll let you know when big things happen.