County and City of San Diego California

Senior Volunteers Harvest Goodness and Turn Surplus into Service | News | San Diego County News Center For over three decades, a remarkable volunteer force of older adults has harvested millions of pounds of food — and discovered that the act of giving back is itself nourishing. March 2026 On a cool winter morning in North San Diego County, a pickup truck rolls slowly past a field of unharvested crops. Two farmers and a retired minister stare at the ripening fruit going to waste while, just miles away, thousands of their neighbors go hungry. It is a scene repeated endlessly across California's most productive agricultural regions. But for these three men — Laurel Gray, Dene Hatch, and George Norton — the sight provoked not resignation but resolve. That act of conscience, witnessed in the early 1990s, gave rise to one of the most quietly consequential volunteer organizations in San Diego County: the Senior Gleaners of San Diego County , a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that,...

San Diego's Fiscal Crisis: Why Reform Fails & Taxes Rise | Claude ▌ Sidebar Analysis Companion to main report, p. 1 San Diego's $110 million structural deficit is a personnel and pension problem addressed by a vacant homes tax. The arithmetic does not work — and the political reasons why are not hidden. $258M FY 2026 budget deficit — the starting point $110M Projected structural deficit, FY 2027–28 $9–24M IBA projected annual vacant homes tax revenue The vacant homes tax, under its most optimistic scenario, covers roughly 9–22 percent of the city's projected structural deficit. The remaining 78–91 percent must be found elsewhere — or isn't found at all, and services continue to erode. To understand why the city is reaching for a constitutionally fragile, enforcement-challenged tax on a few thousand beach houses instead of addressing its spending structure directly, follow the money — specifically, the campaign money. ...

How to Get Out of the Pit ▌ March 2026 A structural conflict of interest — union money flowing to officials who negotiate union contracts — is the engine of San Diego's fiscal dysfunction. Closing it is possible. But the path out is littered with legal traps that must be designed around from the start. The death spiral  The Mechanism of Capture San Diego's fiscal crisis is not primarily a revenue problem or a spending problem. It is a governance corruption problem — structural, legal, and self-reinforcing. Understanding the loop is prerequisite to breaking it. ▌ The Self-Reinforcing Capture Loop ① ▶ Public employee unions fund council campaigns — AFSCME, firefighters, police associations are consistently among the largest donors in San Diego city elections. ② ▶ Union-backed council members are elected . They hold the authority to ratify ...