WHY YOUR SAY MATTERS

Your Say, The San Diego Union-tribune’s popular — and dare I say award-winning? — Saturday forum for reader essays, invites our highly engaged community to write each week about a specific topic, ranging from the serious and significant to the wild and whimsical.

Writers have addressed issues as droll as the future of baseball, favorite books or the most overrated and underrated movies of all time, and as sobering as how to end school shootings or the ramifications of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

The 2024 presidential election outlook received the most essay entries of any Your Say theme last year, and surely we will solicit essays on that topic over the next few months.

But issues that hit closest to home tend to generate the most — and most varied — responses, and those are the ones where we are more likely to influence the debate. The old adage popularized by former U.S. House Speaker Tip O’neill goes, “All politics is local.” When it comes to reader gripes and grievances, local concerns do appear to outweigh all others.

This was never more evident than with our last Your Say topic: the future of Balboa Park.

San Diego officials are surveying to determine how the city’s limited financial resources should be used to fix existing problems and identify future needs for the 1,200-acre park, which features The San Diego Zoo, 21 different cultural institutions and museums, 17 specialized gardens and countless obscure treasures. (Did you know there’s an archery range, a lawn bowling club and a disc golf course?)

So we asked readers to offer their suggestions for where city dollars should be applied.

Since launching Your Say in 2019, we have had some questions that didn’t generate the amount of responses we expected. At least once we didn’t even get enough to fill the space dedicated for the feature. That was not the case with the Balboa Park query.

With some questions that really resonated with the public, we received so many responses we felt the need to carry the theme over to another week. But this month we published a third week of responses as essays keep coming in.

We’ve received phone calls from people asking how they can contribute and essays from people who don’t even live in San Diego.

We heard from many locals who have much more to say than can be contained in a typical 150-word letter to the editor. We’ve drawn interest and input from experts and everyday San Diegans, including leaders of park-related organizations, like the Balboa Park Committee of 100 and Forever Balboa Park, and volunteers for the many park-focused community groups, like the Marston House Museum.

Essay writers addressed some of the more obvious topics that arise from time to time in our letters section, such as the park’s limited amount of parking, the impacts of homeless people, the pluses and minuses of allowing pop-up vendors, the availability of affordable food options, the pros and cons of putting in a Ferris Wheel or gondola ride, and the dreadful state of some of the public restrooms.

But we’ve also heard from folks whose priorities don’t always get the kind of attention other topics receive, such as the environmentalists who want invasive plant species removed from open canyons, the residents who would be willing to use mass

All of this also demonstrates the benefit of the longer form of community engagement we call Your Say.

transit to get there if better options were created and the community activists who worry the city is chipping away at the original 1,400acre park for non-park uses.

Some writers suggested raising additional funds, maybe even through personal donations, floating a city bond or ad sales, to cover improvements. Others said they’d be willing to help do the work they suggested themselves. If the question were, “Who cares about Balboa Park?,” these essays prove plenty of people do.

All of this also demonstrates the benefit of the longer form of community engagement we call Your Say. While a succinct letter to the editor can make powerful points, Your Say allows readers to write up to 500 words, allowing for more nuance, depth and personal touches.

While there’s no way to know if the powers that be are paying attention, a range of political leaders have told us they use letters to the editor and the Your Say essays as a barometer of local concerns.

Even if they’re not listening, we are. So we will keep asking you to email us at yoursay@sduniontribune.com to share an essay or suggest your own topics for future subjects. Your Say, as its name implies, is yours to create and steer. We look forward to hearing from you.

Kleske is the reader outreach editor and a member of The San Diego Union-tribune Editorial Board. Email him your 150-word letter at letters@sduniontribune.com