San Diego, CA

North County Report: The Race for Supervisor in North County

Published

1 year ago

January 15, 2025

North County Report: The Race for Supervisor in North County

We may have just wrapped up an election season, but a few North County officials are already gearing up for races in 2026.

Two North County Republican mayors are running for the San Diego County Board of Supervisors. And one San Marcos councilmember plans to run for California State District 40.

Vista Mayor John Franklin and San Marcos Mayor Rebecca Jones are taking a shot at the District 5 seat, which includes the region’s most northern cities and areas. County Supervisor Jim Desmond is termed out.

Recently re-elected San Marcos Councilmember Ed Musgrove plans to make a bid for the seat held by state Sen. Brian Jones, who is termed out.

I took a closer look at what the three Republicans want to get done and, if elected to higher office, what could become of the seats they would be leaving behind.

Two Mayors Vying for a Supe Seat

San Diego’s District 5 is made up of the cities of Escondido, Oceanside, Vista, San Marcos, Camp Pendleton and other northern communities. The district leans Democrat with 143,500 registered Democrats and roughly 129,000 registered Republicans. It also has a large Hispanic population.

So far, the candidates are two Republicans. Mayor Franklin has served on the Vista City Council since 2014 and as mayor since 2022. His decision to run for supervisor and not for a second mayoral term means Vista will need to elect a new mayor.

During a recent a call, he told me addressing homelessness is one of his top priorities. One of those is to see an increase in the use of conservatorships.

A conservatorship is a legal arrangement where a judge appoints someone to manage the affairs of an adult who cannot do so themselves because of mental illness or health issues. The county is rolling out a new state law that expands conservatorships to people suffering from severe addiction to force them into treatment. County officials were supposed to enact the law a year ago, but the majority of county supervisors decided San Diego needed more time to prepare.

“The majority in the Board of Supervisors want to wrongly claim that conservatorship is an infringement on civil rights,” Franklin said. “But there are so many people on our streets whose judgment has been too diminished by their addiction or other mental illness to recognize that they are sick.”

He acknowledged the need for more mental health resources to effectively implement the conservatorship expansion. Voice of San Diego has previously reported that the county has a severe lack of residential and detox treatment beds to meet the expected demand from the expansion.

Franklin also wants to improve public safety and crack down on crime, which he says will also result in a decrease in homelessness.

“The only thing we need to do to eliminate encampments is eliminate the flow of illegal drugs to the local encampments,” Franklin said. “We have a culture now that accepts less interaction from law enforcement. We need more law enforcement resources, not less.”

The other candidate: San Marcos Mayor Jones has served on the San Marcos City Council since 2007 and as mayor since 2018.

She did not respond to my requests for comment, but she told The Coast News last April that she wants to apply the initiatives that were successful in San Marcos at the county level.

Her priority would be to advocate for affordable housing as a key aspect of preventing homelessness in San Diego County. More than 7 percent of San Marcos’ housing stock is deed-restricted, something Jones attributes to San Marcos’ historically low rates of homelessness, according to The Coast News.

She also wants to help increase mental health resources that are innovative and cost-effective, she told The Coast News.

Jones’ run for supervisor means San Marcos will elect a new mayor in 2026.

Ed Musgrove

Musgrove was first elected to the San Marcos District 4 City Council seat in 2020. He just won his re-election bid for a second term this past November.

He’s now hoping to win over voters for the District 40 state Senate seat in a couple years, a seat that’s currently held by state Sen. Brian Jones, who will term out in 2026.

If Musgrove wins, he’ll leave his current Council seat in the middle of his term. San Marcos will be tasked with filling the seat.

He said helping jurisdictions better address homelessness, cost of living, infrastructure and public safety are some of his top priorities.

Specifically, Musgrove added, communities are lacking the funding and resources to fulfill the mandates coming down from the state, including making way for more housing, as well as effectively dealing with issues like homelessness and high cost of living.

“We tend to chase dreams that are not realistic – for example, this concept of no gasoline powered cars by 2035, all electric, and yet we can’t keep the power on when it’s a sunny day,” Musgrove said. “We need to be a little more pragmatic with the tax dollars that go to Sacramento and start returning them back to the cities.”

District 40 includes San Marcos, Escondido, Rancho Bernardo, Rainbow, Fallbrook, Bonsall, Ramona, Poway and more.

Around Town: Palomar Health’s Recent Board Meeting Was Intense

Palomar Health in Escondido on May 23, 2023. / Photo by Ariana Drehsler

Palomar Health’s Board of Directors tabled plans to revise the public health care district’s bylaws on Monday after aides from multiple state legislators urged the board to reconsider.

The public healthcare district’s board was supposed to change Palomar’s bylaws to enshrine Mesa Rock Healthcare Management’s role in its operations. Mesa Rock is a private nonprofit management company that the board contracted with last year to oversee the day-to-day operations of the hospital district, which includes Palomar Medical Centers in Escondido and Poway, raising widespread concerns that the district’s leaders are trying to privatize a public institution.

Among other things, the contract takes away the Palomar board’s authority to fire Palomar CEO Diane Hansen and does not require Mesa Rock’s board to hold public meetings or be subject to the California Public Records Act.

At Monday’s meeting, legislative aides read a joint letter from state Senators Brian Jones and Dr. Akilah Weber Pierson and Assemblymembers Tasha Boerner and Darshana Patel, expressing “deep concern” about what this would mean for the hospital’s long-term operations and “public trust.”

A representative from the Local Agency Formation Commission of San Diego County, or LAFCO, also spoke at the meeting, criticizing Palomar officials for not being transparent with the public about what exactly Mesa Rock is.

Board member Laurie Edwards-Tate has been opposed to the new management agreement since its approval last February.

“It’s critical that elected board members take seriously our authority and responsibility to hold management accountable for their decisions, especially when those decisions have led to an unprecedented $165 million operating loss in 2024,” Edwards-Tate told Voice. “Outsourcing management insulates those responsible for this failure from accountability.”

It’s unclear when the board will revisit the proposed changes to Palomar’s bylaws.

In Other News

ICYMI: After months of tension, Interfaith Community Services, North County’s largest homeless services provider, has reconciled with Escondido leaders and aims to expand services. (Voice of San Diego)
Solana Beach Mayor Lesa Heebner was unanimously appointed as the new chair of the SANDAG board of directors last week. (Coast News)
Vista has a new sheriff’s captain. Lt. John Malan of the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office has been selected as the new sheriff’s captain for the Vista Station. (Coast News)

Source link

Related Topics:Featured North County Politics

Click to comment

San Diego, CA

San Diego Zoo Safari Park’s Elephant Valley: Get closer to elephants

Published

6 hours ago

March 2, 2026

Press Room

San Diego Zoo Safari Park’s Elephant Valley: Get closer to elephants

Todd Martens
| Los Angeles Times

San Diego — Before we see elephants at Elephant Valley in the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, we come face to face with destruction, only the wreckage is beautiful. A long, winding path takes guests around and under felled trees. Aged gray tree hunks form arches, for instance, over bridges that tower over clay-colored paths with hoof prints.

The design is meant to reorient us, to take us on a trail walked not by humans but traversed and carved by elephants, a creature still misunderstood, vilified and hunted for its cataclysmic-like ability to reshape land, and sometimes communities.

“It starts,” says Kristi Burtis, vice president of wildlife care for the Safari Park, “by telling the story that elephants are ecosystem engineers.”

Elephant Valley will open March 5 as the newest experience at the Escondido park, its aim to bring guests closer than ever to the zoo’s eight elephants, which range in age from 7 to 36, while more heavily focusing on conservation. The centerpiece of the 13-acre-plus parkland is a curved bridge overlooking a savanna, allowing elephants to walk under guests. But there are also nooks such as a cave that, while not previewed at a recent media event, will allow visitors to view elephants on their level.

In a shift from, say, the Safari Park’s popular tram tour, there are no fences and visible enclosures. Captive elephants remain a sometimes controversial topic, and the zoo’s herd is a mix of rescues and births, but the goal was to create a space where humans are at once removed and don’t impede on the relative free-roaming ability of the animals by keeping guests largely elevated. As an example of just how close people can get to the herd, there was a moment of levity at the event when one of the elephants began flinging what was believed to be a mixture of dirt and feces up onto the bridge.

“Our guests are going to be able to see the hairs on an elephant,” Burtis says. “They can see their eyes. They can see the eyelashes. They can see how muscular their trunks are. It’s really going to be a different experience.”

Elephant Valley, complete with a multistory lodge with open-air restaurants and bars, boasts a natural design that isn’t influenced by the elephant’s African home so much as it is in conversation with it. The goal isn’t to displace us, but to import communal artistry — Kenyan wood and beadwork can be found in the pathways, resting spaces and more — as a show of admiration rather than imitation.

“We’re not going to pretend that we’re taking people to Africa,” says Fri Forjindam, now a creative executive with Universal’s theme parks but previously a lead designer on Elephant Valley via her role as a chief development officer at Mycotoo, a Pasadena-based experiential design firm.

“That is a slippery slope of theming that can go wrong really fast,” she adds. “How do we recognize where we are right now, which is near San Diego? How do we populate this plane with plants that are indigenous to the region? The story of coexistence is important. We’re not extracting from Africa, we’re learning. We’re not extracting from elephants, we’re sharing information.”

But designing a space that is elephant-first yet also built for humans presented multiple challenges, especially when the collaborating teams were aiming to construct multiple narratives around the animals. Since meetings about Elephant Valley began around 2019, the staff worked to touch on themes related to migration and conservation. And there was also a desire to personalize the elephants.

“Where can we also highlight each of the elephants by name, so they aren’t just this huge herd of random gray creatures?” Forjindam says. “You see that in the lodge.”

That lodge, the Mkutano House — a phrase that means “gathering” in Swahili — should provide opportunities for guests to linger, although zoo representatives say reservations are recommended for those who wish to dine in the space (there will also be a walk-up, to-go window). Menus have yet to be released, but the ground floor of the structure, boasting hut-like roofing designed to blend into the environment, features close views of the elephant grazing pool as well as an indoor space with a centerpiece tree beneath constellation-like lighting to mimic sunrises and sunsets.

Throughout there are animal wood carvings and beadwork, the latter often hung from sculptures made of tree branches. The ceiling, outfitted with colorful, cloth tapestries designed to move with the wind, aims to create less friction between indoor and outdoor environments.

There are, of course, research and educational goals of the space as well. The Safari Park works, for instance, with the Northern Rangelands Trust and Loisaba Conservancy in Kenya, with an emphasis on studying human-elephant conflict and finding no-kill resolutions. Nonprofits and conservation groups estimate that there are today around 415,000 elephants in Africa, and the African savanna elephant is listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Studies of the zoo’s young elephants is shared with the Reteti Elephant Sanctuary in the hopes of delivering care to elephant youth to prevent orphanage. Additionally, the Safari Park has done extensive examination into the endotheliotropic herpes virus. “The data that we collect from elephants here, you can’t simply get from elephants in the wild,” Burtis says.

One of the two entrances to Elephant Valley is outfitted with bee boxes; bees are known to be a natural elephant deterrent and can help in preventing the animals from disrupting crops or communities. To encourage more natural behavior, the plane is outfitted with timed feeders in an attempt to encourage movement throughout the acreage and establish a level of real-life unpredictability in hunting for resources. Water areas have been redesigned with ramps and steps to make it easier for the elephants to navigate.

With Elephant Valley, Forjindam says the goal was to allow visitors to “observe safely in luxury — whatever that is — but not from a position of power, more as a cohabitor of the Earth, with as much natural elements as possible. It’s not to impose dominance. Ultimately, it needed to feel natural. It couldn’t feel like a man-made structure, which is an antiquated approach to any sort of safari experience where animals are the product, a prize. In this experience, this is the elephant’s home.”

And the resulting feel of Elephant Valley is that we, the paying customers, are simply their house guests.

Source link

San Diego, CA

Man fatally struck by hit-and-run vehicle in San Diego

Published

18 hours ago

March 2, 2026

Press Room

Man fatally struck by hit-and-run vehicle in San Diego

A man in the Mission Bay Park community of San Diego was fatally struck Sunday morning by a hit-and run vehicle, authorities said.

The victim was also struck by a second vehicle and that motorist stayed at the scene to cooperate with officers, the San Diego Police Department reported.

The initial crash occurred at about 2:20 a.m. Sunday in the area of West Mission Bay and Sea World drives.

The pedestrian was in the southbound lanes of the 2000 block of West Mission Bay Drive when he was struck by a silver vehicle also in the southbound lanes. That vehicle fled the scene, continuing southbound, police said.

A 28-year-old man driving his vehicle southbound ran over the downed pedestrian.

“That driver remained at the scene and is not DUI,” according to a police statement. “The pedestrian was pronounced deceased at the scene.”

Anyone with information regarding the initial crash was urged to call Crime Stoppers at 888-580-8477.

Source link

San Diego, CA

Here are the 9 San Diego County communities that set or tied heat records

Published

1 day ago

March 1, 2026

Press Room

Here are the 9 San Diego County communities that set or tied heat records

San Diego County is known for having wet, cold weather in February. But it had numerous hot spells this year. And when the month ended on Saturday a high pressure system produced heat that broke or tied temperature records in nine communities from the desert to the sea, the National Weather Service said.

The most notable temperature occurred in Borrego Springs, which reached 99, five degrees higher than the previous record for Feb. 28, set in 1986. The 99 reading is also the highest temperature ever recorded in Borrego in February.

Escondido reached 95, tying a record set in 1901.

El Cajon reached 92, three degrees higher than the record set in 2009.

Ramona topped out at 88, five degrees higher than the record set in 2009.

Alpine hit 88, four degrees higher the record set in 1986.

Campo reached 87, four degrees higher than the record set in 1999.

Vista hit 86, four degrees higher than the record set in 2020.

Chula Vista reached 84, one degree higher than the record set in 2020.

Lake Cuyamaca rose to 76, four degrees higher than the record set in 1986.

Forecasters say the weather is not likely to broadly produce new highs on Sunday. Cooler air is moving to the coast, and on Monday, San Diego’s high will only reach 67, a degree above normal.

Source link