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What will David Alvarez bring to the San Diego City Council? We speak to Councilmember Alvarez about his goals for District 8, and we discuss how he thinks the council should go about cutting the city's $73 million budget deficit.
"The district is actually, I think, one of the most exciting in the City of San Diego. We've got everything from a border with Mexico from in the southern portion in San Ysidro and Otay, we've got agricultural land in the River Valley area, we've got bayfront both down in the south, and also in the Barrio Logan part of town, we've got historic neighborhood, in Barrio Logan and the northern portion of the district. Then we've got bran new communities in Bay Side and in Ocean View Hills. And so it's a very diverse district. So I'm really, really excited about the opportunities and challenges that that brings. But I think the three things that I want to focus on is on maintaining public safety in all of our neighborhoods. I think that's a priority for people. It's been shown in surveys, and in study it is, time and time again, that's what people want from their city government, so that's a priority for me. Economic activity and development opportunities for people to have jobs or people to open up businesses and to run businesses in San Diego that are successful. And economic revitalization in some of the historic neighborhoods, some of the older neighborhoods where we can brick in some innovation, redevelopment, some activity that's gonna bring November into some of these neighborhoods that really need a lot of infrastructure projects to make them go forward. But I think that ultimately as our council president pointed out in his first meeting as president, getting a grasp and a handle on our budget and solving a structural budget, our structural been deficit is a priority for me, and I think it is for the rest of the council, and that's where all of our energies really should be focused. That's where we're gonna be spending a lot of time, as the president said, almost as many meetings as possible, talking about that, and I think that it is where the priority should be. That's where we're gonna find out whether we can continue to provide the services that people want in the city or not.