For a Good Time, Read

Re: News Ticker, October 1, “San Diego Sheriff’s Costly Overtime Overpay”

Of course that’s what we do! We swap shifts all the time. Better yet, instead of swapping days, you just swap shifts and pull a double. That’s how we make our money.

Brought to you by an ex-San Diego sheriff’s deputy and current California corrections officer. Thanks for the article. I had a good time reading it.

• Name withheld
• via voicemail

One,Two, Three, Five

Hey, you guys at the Reader are so good? Somebody forgot to count to four!

In the calendar section on page 38 and 39, “Your Week and Welcome to It,” I see Thursday, October 1st; Friday the 2nd, Saturday the 3rd; then Monday the 5th. What the heck happened to Sunday, the 4th?

I’ll take an extra-large t-shirt for me and my wife. I think you guys better hire a proofreader. Don’t forget to mention the Italian Fest on the 11th!

• Richard Montesano
• via voicemail

Photo by Andy Boyd

Trail, Interrupted

In your September 24 cover story, “Dangerous Bike Spots + Safer Routes,” you have a photo with the caption, “The San Diego River Trail now connects all the way from Ocean Beach to I-805 without interruption.” But it basically stops at Sefton Park. Looking at the map portion of the San Diego River Park Foundation website it says “current gap” — Fashion Valley Road to Sefton Park/Mission Valley YMCA.

Maybe what led somebody to think that is that, looking at the map, going along the river it shows I-8, and maybe somebody thought that was the trail. But if you look further into it, there’s a crossover — it looks like they’re going to cross it over to Friars Road and continue on.

• Greg Gieselman
• via voicemail

Deprived of the Right to Good Roads

Re: September 24 cover story, “Dangerous Bike Spots + Safer Routes,” and the letters regarding it.

A small number of bike lanes in a few areas can make for a better San Diego. Unfortunately, though, bike lanes help a very small number of bicyclists to the detriment of most San Diegans.

Many bike lanes are created by removing an automobile lane, slowing traffic and leading to congestion. Some bike lanes are created by narrowing automobile lanes. This slows traffic less but will lead to more accidents. Of course, this causes more congestion.

Worse yet are “sharrow” lanes. Sharrows are the markings you see in regular automobile lanes that show a bicycle and two “arrowheads.” Sharrows mean that a bicyclist can pull in front of cars in the car lane and legally slow that lane down to a crawl. The cars must stay behind the bicyclist in the automobile lane if they can’t get into another lane to slowly pass.

If San Diego’s mayor gets his way and there are many more bicyclists in the future, these lanes will always have one or two bicyclists in them, depriving most San Diegans of their right to good roads. Mayor Faulconer and certain city council members want many more of our streets to lose lanes for automobiles in order to help a few bicyclists.

The next time I vote it will be for someone who works for all of San Diego, not the few.

• Richard Robertson
• Navajo

Horsefeathers!

I am writing out of a deep concern for the county’s contribution of tax money to a “study” of the issue of building a new sports stadium to accommodate the Chargers football team. My concern would become a vehement protest should the matter escalate to a county taxpayer gift of many millions of tax dollars to the Spanos family, who already have a fortune in excess of a billion dollars, to help fund an unneeded football stadium so that the Spanos family can accumulate even more billions of dollars! Myself and many, many others, similarly situated, feel marginalized and steamrolled in this tax-money grab.

A new stadium is not necessary. The idea is just plain insulting when over $70 million was expended just a few years ago on the existing and quite adequate stadium in Mission Valley. The movers and shakers behind this misbegotten plan care not for the citizens who will be taxed to pay for their greedy gambit.

I have to laugh when I read some of the deceptive comments by those who would profit from a new sports stadium — pure horsefeathers!

Rest assured that if this fetid plan comes to a vote, I will be at the forefront of those opposed, and will work tirelessly to defeat such an evil undertaking.

I would not be opposed however, to use county tax-derived funds to fix infrastructure, roads, and projects that actually benefit the tax-paying citizens who have been shoved aside for too long.

• Thomas G Johnson
• Fallbrook/Bonsall

Proofreading Offer

I just read the article, “Let’s Take This Relationship to the Next Level” from the August 13 issue. Horrible story, but I am writing because, as I was reading it, I kept coming across mistakes in how it was written.

I had to wonder if anyone proofread this article. Is there anyone there that would be interested in what I found to be confusing, poorly written, or just errors?

I’d be happy to reread it and point out what I’m talking about if anyone there is interested ( even the author of the article, if she’s interested).

• Jim
• via email

Before the Anglo-Saxons Arrived

This concerns News of the Weird in the September 24 issue. Check Shepherd has something screwed up in the item titled “Funny Old World.” He says, “The Welsh language is such a severe mutation of the original English spoken in the Middle Ages ...”

That’s wrong. The Welsh language is a Celtic language. It’s descended from the original British spoken before the Romans arrived in what is now England. Before the Romans arrived in Britain, it was spoken back then, long before the Anglos, Jews, and Saxons arrived in England. Their language, which became English, is a Germanic language. Welsh is a Celtic language.

Welsh and Cornish were both descended from the original British language. Welsh is not descended from Medieval English. Welsh is descended from ancient British that was spoken there before the Romans arrived. Cornish is extinct now, but Breton, which is spoken in the Brittany peninsula in France, is also a Celtic language that is fairly closely related to Welsh.

• Name withheld
• via voicemail

Delta Tunnel Boondoggle

Re: “Water Wars: View from the Delta,” City Lights, August 6

Congratulations to San Diego! You have become statewide leaders in water conservation. From the heart of California’s delta, we salute you.

Figures just released for July show that San Diegans are using 29 percent less water than in 2013, far beyond the mandated 16-percent reduction goal for the region. Keep up the good work!

Congratulations also on your recent court victory over the Metropolitan Water District. On July 15, a San Francisco County Superior Court found that MET overcharged San Diego for years to use the Colorado Aqueduct to bring water from the Colorado River. You are now owed $188,295,602 plus interest.

But as you right historic wrongs, and redouble your conservation efforts, don’t let California’s drought scare you into supporting wasteful water projects that won’t bring you more water.

Governor Brown’s proposed twin water tunnels under the San Francisco Bay-Delta are exactly the boondoggle to avoid. With the 2.0 version of the plan just released for public comment, there are a few things San Diegans should know.

If built, these massively destructive tunnels will mostly deliver water to large corporate farm operations, and the oil industry in the southern San Joaquin Valley, not to San Diego residents.

The San Francisco Bay Delta will see fish species pushed to extinction if the tunnels are built, hurting salmon fishing and tourist communities from Monterey to San Francisco to southern Washington state.

The project will create few jobs. Building the new version of the tunnels will create only 5.5 job years for every $1 million of public investment, less than half the job creation per dollar of most construction spending.

Worst of all, the tunnels will not solve California’s water issues. California’s water system is broken by history and politics. Today, it isn’t even based in hydrologic reality. For example, five times more water than the delta watershed actually produces on average has been promised to water exporters. Water policy geeks call this “paper water” because in dry years more people’s supplies only exist on paper from the state and federal water projects, while they still have to pay their share of the projects’ mortgage.

Water politics are based on political muscle that makes large corporate agricultural investors rich while the less fortunate go thirsty. For example, in recent months, 25 families in Fairmead, California (in the Central Valley) have watched their wells run dry while the almond orchards across the road are perfectly green. Beware the boondoggle!

Once called the Bay-Delta Conservation Plan, the new plan is called California Water Fix. Now, the “conservation” aspect has been largely forgotten. When financing, cost overruns, interest, and operation of the tunnels are factored in, Jerry Brown’s gunnels will still cost Californians $60 billion.

Who will get this water, and who will pay? San Diego will not be getting new water from the tunnels. Most of the water will go to the Kern County Water Agency and the Westlands Water District located in the dry southwestern side of the San Joaquin Valley. These districts serve large, corporate agribusiness. In a desert landscape, they grow thirsty crops like almonds, largely for export. Oil companies in Kern County use billions of gallons of water for fracking operations that also pollute water in the process. But these special interests want every California water user to subsidize this project. Thus, the boondoggle.

Why should San Diegans help foot the bill for tunnels that mainly support unsustainable agriculture? State funds would be better invested in sustainability and long-delayed infrastructure projects like replacing leaky old water mains, water recycling and restoring Southern California’s groundwater supplies. Such investments would drought-proof water supplies while providing local, steady jobs. Through innovative conservation projects, San Diegans have actually reduced your dependence on Delta water and that reduction continues.

Now it is time for San Diego ratepayers to demand an end to Jerry Brown’s delta tunnel boondoggle and to insist on projects that will promote water conservation in other parts of the state to equal San Diego’s success.

Public comments on the BDCP/WaterFix will be taken until October 30, 2015. Comments can be mailed to P.O. Box 1919, Sacramento, CA 95812, or sent via email to [email protected].

• Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla
• Executive Director,
• Restore the Delta