EAST COUNTY ROUNDUP: LOCAL AND STATEWIDE NEWS

September 6, 2017 (San Diego's East County) -- East County Roundup highlights top stories of interest to East County and San Diego’s inland regions, published in other media. This week’s top “Roundup” headlines include:

LOCAL

• No San Diego companies selected for border wall contracts (NBC 7)
• Hurricane Harvey shows need for flood insurance (10 News)
• Turmoil engulfs Somali charter school in City Heights (Voice of San Diego)
• Alpine looking into its park needs (San Diego Union-Tribune)
• La Mesa woman collecting socks for hurricane victims (SDUT)
• Call it the Anti-Drought: Water Officials Hope to Drive Up Water Usage (Voice of SD)
• Desal Plant Is Producing Less Water Than Promised (Voice of San Diego)
• El Cajon councilman's beauty pageant ran for three years without nonprofit status (SDUT)
• Chased out of Arkansas as a child, Shirley Weber won’t back down in California Capitol (Cal Matters)
• Far-right activists and protesters clash at San Diego’s Chicano Park (LA Times)
• Santee working toward climate action plan (SDUT)

STATE

• Sending in the troops: California National Guard sent to the fire lines (Sacramento Bee)
• New California law to expand protection for immigrants (KNSD-7)
• What Were the Russians Burning In San Francisco? (NPR)
• After decades of pushing bachelor’s degrees, U.S. needs more tradespeople (PBS Newshour)

For excerpts and links to full stories, click “read more” and scroll down.

LOCAL

No San Diego companies selected for border wall contracts (NBC 7)

The Trump administration has awarded contracts to four companies to build four prototypes for his border wall in San Diego. No local San Diego companies were selected… Trump is now demanding that Congress fund the wall and has threatened to shut the government if it doesn't do so.

Hurricane Harvey shows need for flood insurance (10 News)

Coast, valleys, canyons [locally] all susceptible to floods.

Turmoil engulfs Somali charter school in City Heights (Voice of San Diego)

A raft of complaints prompted a San Diego Unified investigation into the school, which found problems ranging from issues with special education to improper hiring practices. The school adamantly denies the findings. School leadership and the board have been disrupted by departures, and some parents have pulled their kids out.

Alpine looking into its park needs (San Diego Union-Tribune)

Alpine residents have been clamoring for a park for more than a dozen years. Now the community’s planning group says it has an idea of how to use thousands of dollars in San Diego County-held park funds. The Alpine Community Planning Group is recommending to the county a plan to refurbish several athletic areas at the town’s lone middle school. But not everyone is on the same playing field.

La Mesa woman collecting socks for hurricane victims (San Diego Union-Tribune)

La Mesa woman is working quickly to get socks into the hands — and onto the feet — of people who were in the path of Hurricane Harvey.

Call it the Anti-Drought: Water Officials Hope to Drive Up Water Usage (Voice of San Diego)

As recently as the first months of this year, Californians were asked to conserve water. Well, they did. And they still are. Now, that’s a problem.

Desal Plant Is Producing Less Water Than Promised (Voice of San Diego)

Over the last year, the privately-owned plant failed to deliver nearly a fifth of the water the San Diego County Water Authority ordered from it. During the same period, there were 46 days when it delivered no water at all, according to business and regulatory filings by the plant’s owner, Poseidon Water.

El Cajon councilman's beauty pageant ran for three years without nonprofit status (San Diego Union-Tribune)

The California Attorney General’s Office has sent a letter to El Cajon City Councilman Bessmon “Ben” Kalasho asking for documentation and a filing fee for a nonprofit group he recently formed.

Chased out of Arkansas as a child, Shirley Weber won’t back down in California Capitol (Cal Matters)

When Shirley Weber and her siblings fled this place as children in 1951 on a midnight train bound for California, their destination seemed so distant and unfamiliar to the relatives who stayed behind that they called the state a foreign land. As Weber stood at the edge of her family’s 100-acre farm on a recent visit, her first in decades, memories of her birthplace came flooding back. She and her cousins swapped stories about shelling peas on her aunt’s screened-in porch, how dark it got at night before the city installed street lights, and what forced her family to flee—her sharecropper father’s refusal to back down during a dispute with a white farmer, and the lynch mob that threatened to take his life.

Far-right activists and protesters clash at San Diego’s Chicano Park (Los Angeles Times)

A brief but explosive shouting match erupted at Chicano Park Sunday afternoon between hundreds of park supporters and a small, right-wing group that had recently criticized the park’s iconic murals.

Santee working toward climate action plan (San Diego Union-Tribune)

Santee is continuing on its path to a climate action plan, joining other California cities working to comply with state-ordered regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the coming years.

STATE

Sending in the troops: California National Guard sent to the fire lines (Sacramento Bee)

The California National Guard is calling up nearly 350 members to help fight blazes burning around the state, the agency announced … As of Monday, Cal Fire listed almost 30 active wildfires around the state.

New California law to expand protection for immigrants (KNSD-7)

California police will soon be barred from arresting crime victims or witnesses just because of actual or suspected immigration violations under a new law the governor signed Friday… It will also prohibit police from turning a crime victim or witness over to federal immigration authorities without a warrant.

What Were the Russians Burning In San Francisco? (NPR)

Black smoke billowed out of the Russian consulate in San Francisco as it prepared to close. 

After decades of pushing bachelor’s degrees, U.S. needs more tradespeople (PBS Newshour)

California is spending $6 million on a campaign to revive the reputation of vocational education, and $200 million to improve the delivery of it…. The United States has 30 million jobs that pay an average of $55,000 per year and don’t require a bachelor’s degree, according to the Georgetown center. People with career and technical educations are actually slightly more likely to be employed than their counterparts with academic credentials, the U.S. Department of Education reports, and significantly more likely to be working in their fields of study.