Two ballot measures in the City of San Diego in next week’s election are getting a lot of attention right now: Measure C, the Chargers’ plan to raise the hotel tax to pay for their combined stadium and convention center; and Measure D, the Citizens’ Plan to reform the tourism industry and make hoteliers and the Chargers pay their own way.
Community members are right to be concerned about Measure C because it would open the door for
a massive football stadium and convention center just blocks from Barrio Logan and Logan Heights without any legal requirements to mitigate the impacts on the surrounding neighbors.
Some community members have raised similar concerns about Measure D and oppose it because they fear it also guarantees that a stadium and convention center will be built in downtown, close to neighborhoods. The opposition may misunderstand what Measure D would actually do.
The language in Measure D was negotiated over many months by a wide variety of community groups, with input from environmental groups, members of community planning groups, and local representatives like City Councilman David Alvarez.
Measure D is a compromise because many stakeholders that normally spend their time fighting each other at City Hall finally came together to do something good for the City as a whole, and for the neighborhoods, in particular.
Measure D would set the hotel tax between 14 and 15.5 percent depending on the size of the hotel and put all of the new revenues into the City’s General Fund, not into a downtown stadium as Measure C would do.
That means the new money would be available for police, fire, libraries, parks, street and sidewalk repair, and every other kind of municipal service. Best of all, none of the monies would be earmarked for special interests. The public would get every penny.
Measure D would also authorize the City to sell the Qualcomm Stadium site in Mission Valley, but only for fair market value and only if the buyer agrees to use the site for transit-dependent parks, open space, and university purposes like an expansion of SDSU or UCSD. Vehicle-dependent uses that would make gridlock on I-8 and I-15 worse would not be allowed.
To get broad stakeholder support for these community benefits, Measure D made a compromise on development in East Village. It allows the Chargers (or any other professional sports team) to seek approval to build a stadium on Tailgate Park and the MTS bus yard, but only if the team meets certain conditions.
First, Measure D prohibits all forms of taxpayer subsidies for a stadium. That means the team would have to pay 100 percent for the stadium, 100 percent for any land it needs, and 100 percent for the team’s share of any off-site improvements or mitigation measures. None of the team-related costs would be paid
by taxpayers.
Second, and just as importantly, Measure D requires the team and any other stadium or convention-center developer on that site to go through all the usual city planning and zoning procedures and follow all the development laws.
In this respect, however, Measure D went one step further to protect the communities surrounding East Village: it requires all negative impacts to be fully mitigated, but prohibits the politicians and the developers from claiming that the mitigation is too expensive to do.
That’s why community leaders like Councilman David Alvarez are supporting Measure D. He has said he’s supporting Measure D because, as a Council member, it gives him more power to protect his constituents against developers and business interests that only pretend to care about the communities where they build because they could no longer claim that they cannot afford to protect their neighbors from the harmful impacts of development.
As long as affected community members can articulate the harmful effects of a proposed stadium and/or convention center and identify measures to alleviate those effects, those measures will have to be taken. If they’re not taken, the development cannot be approved.
That is a huge improvement over the status quo. Never in the City’s history has any initiative sought to give the residents more power to protect themselves.
But without Measure D, wealthy special interests will be able to exploit the current rules to their advantage. Under the current rules, if anyone tries to build a massive football stadium or convention center in East Village, the surrounding communities will have no way to force the developer to take the steps necessary to prevent gentrification, traffic and parking problems, displacement of the homeless, air pollution, etc.
Measure D empowers residents to defend themselves against bad development. It puts people over profits. It puts the public interest over private interests.
In a political environment where underserved communities usually get run over by wealthy developers, Measure D helps empower our communities in a new and more meaningful way.
Let’s not confuse these measures.
We remain opposed to a stadium deal funded by our tax dollars through Measure C.
La Prensa San Diego, however, endorses Measure D and urges San Diegans to vote for it.
Join us in protecting our neighborhoods.
Vote YES on MEASURE D.