San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria announces hiring freeze for all non-essential city staff positions

Good Morning, I’m Debbie Cruz….it’s Thursday, December 5th.

San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria announced a hiring freeze on Wednesday.

More on that next. But first... let’s do the headlines.

In the days and weeks after Cyber Monday, online orders are shipping out.

We’ve got some tips to protect your packages this season, and what to do if your package is stolen.

Ask if you can have name brand items shipped in packaging that hides the label.

Experts recommend delivery drop off to a neighbor or family member who is home.

You can also let delivery drivers know ahead of time where to leave your package.

Finally, if you see your mail being stolen, don’t get physical. Call the police with details.

Carlsbad’s assistant city manager Geoff Patnoe is stepping up as the new city manager.

The City Council’s decision to appoint him was announced Wednesday.

Patnoe will succeed Scott Chadwick, who last month announced his move to the Port of San Diego to become their president and CEO.

Patnoe will start December 19th.

December Nights is returning to Balboa Park on Friday. Many are anticipating the official reopening of the Botanical Building.

It's been closed for almost three years for renovations.

The city expects more than 300 thousand people to join the festivities and suggests planning ahead.

MTS is offering free transportation between the City College Transit Center and Balboa Park during December Nights.

A special shuttle service will use the southbound bus priority lane on Park Boulevard, servicing all southbound stops between Zoo Drive and Broadway.

From KPBS, you’re listening to San Diego News Now. Stay with me for more of the local news you need.

San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria today says the city is enacting a hiring freeze for all non-essential city staff positions. Metro reporter Andrew Bowen says it comes in anticipation of a major budget deficit.

Gloria had hoped city voters would approve Measure E, a sales tax increase that would have turned the city's deficit into a surplus. But it failed by just 3,500 votes. Now, cuts to city services are on the horizon. In addition to a freeze on most hiring and nonessential overtime, Gloria says he wants to renegotiate leases of office buildings used by city workers and monetize city facilities like Golden Hall and the adjacent parking garage. “My goal in this endeavor is to avoid a series of deep cuts in successive budget years and instead rightsize our city services to the resources that we have without the expectation of increased revenue.” The city expects a shortfall of $258 million in the next fiscal year, which begins in July. The City Council's budget committee is due to discuss the cost saving measures next week. Andrew Bowen, KPBS news.

The San Diego Unified School District and its former superintendent are now facing lawsuits from two former employees. Reporter Katie Anastas has more on the allegations.

Monika Hazel and Tavna Bustani both held leadership positions in the district. Hazel alleges that Lamont Jackson routinely sexually harassed her…and offered career opportunities if she complied with his advances. Bustani says Jackson created excuses to meet with her privately and visited her home uninvited. Both women say they were demoted to teaching positions, which reduced their salaries. The school board fired Jackson in August after an independent investigation found their sexual harassment allegations were credible. But it found insufficient evidence that employees were terminated or promoted based on their response to his advances. The district says it has not yet been served with the lawsuits. Katie Anastas, KPBS News.

A new proposal could bring funds to help solve San Diego’s border sewage crisis. Science and technology reporter Thomas Fudge spoke with the people who support it.

State Senator Steve Padilla’s bill, SB 10, would allow revenues from a toll on vehicles, at the Otay Mesa East port of entry, to be spent not just on transportation but also on environmental clean up. That crossing is still under construction and will be designed mainly for commercial traffic. Padilla says you can’t enable a huge movement of people and goods across the international border, and not address environmental impacts. “The fact that you have one of the worst environmental disasters in North America occurring and we don’t have, in some respects, permanent funding.” 

Padilla says under his plan there would be a dedicated fund to fix the problems of untreated sewage and industrial waste that pollutes the river and the ocean. So far, political support for the plan is hard to reckon. SANDAG, which would manage the environmental fund, has no comment on SB 10. Thomas Fudge, KPBS News.

Studying U.S. presidential history offers some similarities to the country’s current politics. But next to nothing on where we might be headed next.

“I’m pretty worried, pretty alarmed. We haven’t really seen anything like this, I don’t think, in our lifetimes.”

We’ll have that story and more, just after the break.

Anyone looking to make sense of America’s political circumstances as Donald Trump heads into a second presidential term next month might turn to U.S. history. Both early and recent. Still, KPBS’ Amita Sharma reports that political scientists say even though the past holds some similarities, the country’s future is likely without parallel.

Ask Sam Popkin, a UC San Diego political science professor emeritus who has written extensively on the American presidency, to plumb U.S. history for a comparable political time…and he pauses. “Possibly Andrew Jackson.” “He actually turned out doing some very strong stuff.” As this PBS video on Jackson explains. “Earlier presidents vetoed bills only when they were unconstitutional Jackson vetoed bills he didn't like. He blocked infrastructure projects, dismantled the national bank and replaced government employees with political friends.” Popkins says Jackson also removed Native Americans from their land in the south and it was brutal. “He had lots of incidents of what today would even be called if not ethnic cleansing, ethnic clearing,” Popkin is not suggesting President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to use the military to deport millions of undocumented people, possibly including between 150,000 to 300,000 in San Diego, is the same as Jackson’s ethnic clearing. There is another similarity though. Jackson sought retribution against political enemies. So did former President Richard Nixon. Trump has long said publicly he wanted his political adversaries to be prosecuted, jailed, even executed. He famously called for Hillary Clinton to be locked up in 2016. But the era that best informs Trump’s next four years as president is his first four in office, when he wiped out numerous environmental rules, signed into law large corporate tax cuts and revamped the federal judiciary. “He made some important changes in his first administration.” Thad Kousser is a UC San Diego political scientist. “He's taking bigger swings now.” Take his notion of a deep state - that a web of bureaucrats across the federal government are actually the enemy within. This time, Trump has nominated people who have expressed deep disdain for the agencies he wants them to run: RFK Jr., a vaccine skeptic who wants to pause disease research, to head Health and Human Services; Tulsi Gabbard, described as a Russian sympathizer, as director of National Intelligence and FOX news host Peter Hegseth, who has been accused of sexual assault and been described as “an anti-establishment crusader, to run the Pentagon; Kash Patel, a former defense lawyer who says he’ll come after journalists, to head the FBI. Again, Kousser. “He’s not going for Washington establishment figures but people who are picked almost because they oppose the national establishment, the Washington establishment. They want to change the institution or even tear them down rather than just re-steer the ship of state.” Neoconservative writer Bill Kristol says that’s a requirement for Trump’s ultimate goal…total control. “Trump wants to call over to the Justice Department and say, You need to look at investigating this person. I want to see the files on that person. He wants to call over to the EPA and say, Hey, lay off this guy I know who you’re investigating about possible environmental problems with his companies.” Kristol believes Trump will carry out Project 2025 - a conservative plan to reshape the federal government in a way that consolidates his power. The plan includes giving the president more say in federal and state prosecutions, implementing mass deportations and undoing certain civil rights protections, such as barring discrimination in the workplace. Kristol predicts justice will be less blind, liberties fewer. “Freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, political freedoms, freedoms can be curtailed, and it can happen gradually, and it doesn't all happen everywhere all at once. But I think after two or three years of Trump, we could really see an erosion of some of these things we take for granted.” And that erosion, he says, represents a step toward autocracy. The central question is will the harm be reversible? “I'm pretty worried. I'm pretty alarmed.” He says the country’s history has no precedent for where we are now. Amita Sharma, KPBS News

If you missed the San Diego Filipino film festival, you have one more chance to see some of the short films for free tonight (Thursday) at the Chula Vista Public Library. KPBS Cinema Junkie Beth Accomando speaks with two of the local filmmakers.

San Diego Filipino Cinema celebrates its 6th anniversary with a special CineLibre event at Chula Vista Public Library. The non-profit organization also sponsors the San Diego Filipino Film Festival each October. For CineLibre, it’s showcasing seven short films from the festival including Fidel from Southeast San Diego filmmaker Luke Lace. “I didn't really know how important my Filipino identity was to myself. And so having that support from San Diego Filipino Film Fest was one of those things that I didn't know I needed.” Fellow San Diego filmmaker Marissa Roxas will be screening her short, You + Me Will Always Be Back Then. “I realized how important it was for me to tell my story as a Filipina as a queer Filipina, specifically to this story that I told… I think a huge part why I make films and tell stories is because representation is very powerful to see yourself on the screen. What it comes down to for representation, it shows you what is possible for yourself. And when you can see yourself in a character and see people who look like you, it's like, OK, no, I can do this.” You can meet both filmmakers and see their films on Thursday/tonight at Chula Vista Public Library. Beth Accomando, KPBS News.

That’s it for the podcast today. As always you can find more San Diego news online at KPBS dot org. Tune in to Midday Edition at noon for our arts and culture show, including a weekend preview highlighting some holiday events. I’m Debbie Cruz. Thanks for listening and have a great Thursday.