Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Convention center donor's styrofoam agenda
Will Dart’s cash pierce city’s wall?
City of San Diego website
The day before San Diego city councilmembers Chris Ward and Barbara Bry rolled out a sure-to-be-controversial proposal to ban so-called expanded polystyrene food and beverage containers in the city, an American plastics heavyweight weighed in with its money.
Chris Ward
Barbara Bry
Dart Container Corp of Mason, Michigan anted up $10,000 on May 30 for the cash-strapped group of hotel interests and labor unions trying to mount a successful signature drive for a ballot measure to raise the tax on room-stays, with the proceeds earmarked for convention center expansion and putative homeless relief.
The pro-tax group has spent heavily on public relations and political consulting firms with ties to Republican Mayor Kevin Faulconer, but just $136,585 was paid to signature-gathering company Arno Petition Consultants of Gold River, California, which was still owed $37,653 at the end of the April reporting period, per disclosure filings.
The final estimated cost of fielding a corps of high-priced signature seekers has ranged from roughly $900,000 to more than $1.2 million, based on the recent spending records of similar efforts in the city, putting the convention center tax seekers in serious catch-up mode.
In addition to its spending binge on consultants, fundraising for the convention center tax effort has thus far appeared to suffer from less than avid financial backing by Mission Valley and Mission Bay hotel concerns, along with uncertainty created by the as-yet-unresolved status of a rival plan to develop a hotel on the bayside expansion site.
All of which has ballot measure promoters scurrying for cash from a mixed bag of political special interests located outside the city, including $25,000 provided last month by Baton Raton-based GEO Group,an operator of private prison and a day facility for felons said to be looking for possible expansion here.
Dart Container, a longtime opponent of polystyrene bans, has over the years funded an array of San Diego city candidates, including Faulconer's 2014 election campaign with $15,000.
In January, the company was at the fore of a successful lobbying drive to tank passage of a California Senate bill that would have banned polystyrene food service containers in restaurants.
In San Diego, Dart uses the services of Falcon Strategies, an influence peddling outfit run by Clarissa Falcon, per a February 6 disclosure filing with the city clerk's office, which says the company seeks to include "recycling polystyrene containers in the city's Zero Waste plan."
Dart paid Falcon $15,000 during the first three months of this year, an April 24 disclosure shows. Between January 1, 2015, and March 31, 2017, says a report by WasteDive, Dart paid Falcon a total of $125,000.
Last June, San Diego's city council voted unanimously to allow polystyrene containers to be deposited into the city's residential curbside recycling program, at an added yearly cost to the city of $90,000, the Union-Tribune reported at the time.
But polystyrene opponents, including Ward and Surfrider Foundation chairman Michael Torti, now contend the Dart-favored recycling program hasn't adequately reduced polystyrene debris on beaches and in the ocean, per the paper's account.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Convention center donor's styrofoam agenda
Will Dart’s cash pierce city’s wall?
Convention center donor's styrofoam agenda
Will Dart’s cash pierce city’s wall?
City of San Diego website
The day before San Diego city councilmembers Chris Ward and Barbara Bry rolled out a sure-to-be-controversial proposal to ban so-called expanded polystyrene food and beverage containers in the city, an American plastics heavyweight weighed in with its money.
Chris Ward
Barbara Bry
Dart Container Corp of Mason, Michigan anted up $10,000 on May 30 for the cash-strapped group of hotel interests and labor unions trying to mount a successful signature drive for a ballot measure to raise the tax on room-stays, with the proceeds earmarked for convention center expansion and putative homeless relief.
The pro-tax group has spent heavily on public relations and political consulting firms with ties to Republican Mayor Kevin Faulconer, but just $136,585 was paid to signature-gathering company Arno Petition Consultants of Gold River, California, which was still owed $37,653 at the end of the April reporting period, per disclosure filings.
The final estimated cost of fielding a corps of high-priced signature seekers has ranged from roughly $900,000 to more than $1.2 million, based on the recent spending records of similar efforts in the city, putting the convention center tax seekers in serious catch-up mode.
In addition to its spending binge on consultants, fundraising for the convention center tax effort has thus far appeared to suffer from less than avid financial backing by Mission Valley and Mission Bay hotel concerns, along with uncertainty created by the as-yet-unresolved status of a rival plan to develop a hotel on the bayside expansion site.
All of which has ballot measure promoters scurrying for cash from a mixed bag of political special interests located outside the city, including $25,000 provided last month by Baton Raton-based GEO Group,an operator of private prison and a day facility for felons said to be looking for possible expansion here.
Dart Container, a longtime opponent of polystyrene bans, has over the years funded an array of San Diego city candidates, including Faulconer's 2014 election campaign with $15,000.
In January, the company was at the fore of a successful lobbying drive to tank passage of a California Senate bill that would have banned polystyrene food service containers in restaurants.
In San Diego, Dart uses the services of Falcon Strategies, an influence peddling outfit run by Clarissa Falcon, per a February 6 disclosure filing with the city clerk's office, which says the company seeks to include "recycling polystyrene containers in the city's Zero Waste plan."
Dart paid Falcon $15,000 during the first three months of this year, an April 24 disclosure shows. Between January 1, 2015, and March 31, 2017, says a report by WasteDive, Dart paid Falcon a total of $125,000.
Last June, San Diego's city council voted unanimously to allow polystyrene containers to be deposited into the city's residential curbside recycling program, at an added yearly cost to the city of $90,000, the Union-Tribune reported at the time.
But polystyrene opponents, including Ward and Surfrider Foundation chairman Michael Torti, now contend the Dart-favored recycling program hasn't adequately reduced polystyrene debris on beaches and in the ocean, per the paper's account.
Comments