Hello to all you lovely and talented people, and hello to June!

Tomorrow's City Council meeting is a full one. For details on any item, click the agenda, then click on the item. Over on the right side of the page, you'll see a staff report and links to other bits of supporting material.

City Council -- Tuesday, June 2

Tomorrow's agenda includes 17 consent items that are considered noncontroversial and won't be discussed unless a Council member or someone from the public pulls it out for discussion. We've also got four proclamations.

Now, let's talk about the eight items on the discussion agenda, shall we?

• COVID-19 Emergency Rental Assistance Program: The City of San Diego received $248 million from the federal CARES Act to help offset the costs of the COVID-19 pandemic. Councilmember Chris Ward wants to use $61.9 million of that for an Emergency Rental Assistance Program to help families and individuals experiencing hardship as a result of the pandemic pay back rent after the City's eviction ban expires. It's currently set to expire on June 30. The program would be administered by the San Diego Housing Commission.

This conversation comes within the context of the City budget for the fiscal year that begins on July 1 -- Mayor Kevin Faulconer has earmarked the entire $248 million from the CARES Act in his revised budget proposal, and all nine Council members have submitted memos detailing their budget priorities. The Council's Independent Budget Analyst is in the process of compiling those priorities and will release a report with recommendations on Wednesday, June 3.

• Affordable Housing Preservation Study: Responding to policy direction from City Council President Georgette Gómez, the San Diego Housing Commission has produced a study, "Preserving Affordable Housing in the City of San Diego," that takes inventory of affordable housing -- both market-rate affordable and deed-restricted affordable -- and recommends strategies for how to preserve it. Housing Commission staff will present the study to the Council for adoption. This is a pretty big deal -- it's never happened in San Diego.

• Resolution Denouncing Xenophobia and Anti-Asian Racism: Also from Council President Gómez comes a proposed resolution denouncing racism and stigmatization of the Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) community as a result of COVID-19. The proposed resolution makes 10 specific commitments to denounce xenophobia, protect AAPI community members from discrimination, uplift this community, and recognize its contributions. 

• Atlas Specific Plan Amendment: There's a group of mostly noncontiguous sites on both sides of Interstate 8 in Mission Valley designated as the Atlas Specific Plan, which gets its name from Atlas Hotels, the company founded in the 1950s by developer Charles H. Brown, who created Hotel Circle. On Tuesday, the City Council is being asked to remove two contiguous parcels from the Atlas Specific Plan, because the Mission Valley community decided that they should be zoned for a mix of residential-commercial uses rather than for offices and hotels and rezoned them as such (Mission Valley Community Plan). The two parcels (the smaller purple area in the center of the image over to the right) total 7.8 acres and are bounded to the south by Hotel Circle North, to the west by the Crowne Plaza San Diego Mission Valley Hotel, to the north by the Riverwalk Golf Course and the San Diego River, and to the east by the Sundt office building. 

• Memorandum of Understanding with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 127: A memorandum of understanding with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 127 is ready for the Council to sign. Local 127 represents the City's blue-collar workers. The negotiated agreement for the fiscal that begins on July 1 calls for increases in a flexible benefits program and other non-financial adjustments, but no salary increases. 

• Appointment of Audit Committee Public Member: The City Council's Audit Committee is made up of two appointed members of the City Council (one to serve as committee, currently Councilmember Scott Sherman) and three public members who possess the “independence, experience and technical expertise necessary to carry out the duties of the Audit Committee.” One of the public-member slots is available, for a term that runs through Jan. 5, 2024. Two candidates -- Anandha Subramanian and Toufic Tabshouri -- have been deemed qualified. They will give brief presentations to the City Council, which will then choose one of them.

• South Mission Beach Storm Drain and Green Infrastructure: The City's Public Works Department is asking the Council to approve a permit to construct a comprehensive drainage system upgrade for water quality and flood control management, known as the South Mission Beach Storm Drain and Green Infrastructure project. The project is located on Mission Boulevard between San Fernando Place to the north and San Diego Place to the south, as well as numerous perpendicular streets running eastward to San Diego Bay. The current drainage system isn't working, and the area is flooding during storms. This project will fix it.

• Municipal Waterways Maintenance Plan: The Transportation and Storm Water Department is asking the Council to approve permits and an ordinance to implement the Municipal Waterways Maintenance Plan, a citywide approach to maintaining and repairing public drainage facilities throughout San Diego.

Sorry, due to COVID-19, only City staff and credentialed members of the press may attend the meeting in person. However, anyone can participate and make comments by dialing 619-541-6310 and entering the access code 877861 followed by # when the item you're interested in comes up (full call-in instructions). Watch the meeting on cable TV channel 24 or AT&T channel 99, or stream it online.

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