GLORIA OFFERS BOLD VISION — AND A WARNING

San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria used his first State of the City speech — a virtual address from the San

Ysidro city library — to lay out both a bold vision on big issues like racial equity, housing, transportation and homelessness, and a warning about the city’s condition being “fragile” because of the pandemic and the huge budget gaps it has caused. In an interview with an editorial writer, he said this is being upfront about the city’s needs and the straits it is in:

“I need to have the confidence of the people of San

Diego to do the difficult things we have to do in the days ahead . ... People are counting on us to do more than we’ve ever done because we’re hurting.”

In the interview, the new mayor also said that his comments on the need to significantly update the city’s Climate Action Plan reflected in part the criticism he had faced from The San Diego Union-Tribune

Editorial Board and others for issuing a news release that asserted the city had reduced greenhouse-gas emissions by 25 percent over the past 10 years. That claim is based on estimated baseline emission figures for 2010 that the city acknowledged in 2017 were both incorrect and exaggerated progress in addressing climate change. Gloria did not disavow the news release, but he did say that the climate plan “was always understood to be a living document that needs to be updated.”

Combine such willingness to heed criticism with

Gloria’s realistic language about homelessness — that there are “no shortcuts” to end it — and the new mayor seems to be willing to acknowledge the true state of the city — and do something about it.