Q&A with San Diego City Council Candidate Vivian Moreno (2024)

Oct. 4, 2018

Voters in San Diego’s District 8 will choose a new City Council representative since incumbent David Alvarez is termed out. Alvarez’s aide Vivian Moreno and San Ysidro school board member Antonio Martinez are vying to represent the district, which includes Barrio Logan, Otay Mesa and San Ysidro. Each candidate met separately with The San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board. Here is the transcript for Vivian Moreno.

Union-Tribune: Thanks for coming in. Tell us why you decided to throw your hat in the ring this time?

MORENO: Well, about two years ago, I basically thought about whether I wanted to run and my number one priority is, you know, making sure that the residents of District 8 have good representation, that they have a person that’s ready to hit the ground running. Since I was 14 I’ve known that the way that you and I change is through government.

Union-Tribune: How did you end up with David way back when? Why… what made you choose to kinda enter… work with him?

MORENO: So interestingly enough my background… I was actually a buyer in the metal industry and a quick tidbit that I don’t talk enough about, I was an internal auditor. We were trying to get ISO certified and although I was moving up the ranks and everything was… you know, I was offered my boss’ job and things were going really well it wasn’t my passion. I wasn’t going to not change within, you know, the metal industry, so I decided to jump on council member David Alvarez’… then David Alvarez’ campaign. I met him through the San Diego County Young Democrats.

He came in with his one-month-old child and his wife and I said you know what? I want to get to know him more, first off, and I want to see if this is somebody that I want to really engage with, and so I became a volunteer. It was the… it was the longest, I think, job interview of my life. I volunteered for about nine months. I under promised and over delivered and all I wanted was a… an interview, right? Just see how I work.

A worth ethic for me has been ingrained. My mom worked for 41 years at Jack in the Box. My dad worked in the logistics industry. So mom worked 13 hour shifts, you know, did the whole bit. So I had… I have a strong work ethic, and David saw that and I really liked what David stood for and it literally was bringing the District 8 residents to City Hall and vice versa, bringing City Hall to District 8 residents and, you know, I think we really bridged that… that gap that existed.

Union-Tribune: What are you most proud of in the time you’ve spent in the office?

MORENO: The library… the San Ysidro Library after 100 years, you know? It was… the library was built in 1923. My grandpa was born in 1933, so it’s older than my grandpa. You know, because it’s something that was very contentious for many years and seeing that come to fruition and that’s just the beginning, you know?

We’re also doing a groundbreaking for Cesar Solis, the first park after 30 years in District 8 and, honestly, it’s just… it’s the basic… the basic things that the city does… right… is filling potholes, infrastructure in regards to parks, libraries, the basic things that every other community in the city of San Diego gets, but for some reason District 8, you know, has had to wait, you know 35 years. I’m thinking of Southwest Park right now. It was promised 35 years ago to residents. Why?

What makes them different than a… you know, than any other community? There’s nothing. There’s nothing that makes them different, so… and that particular park is surrounded by condos and apartments and a middle school and I say what… what’s the difference? And I don’t think there should be a difference, so that’s my job in bridging that gap.

The city is changing. They city looks like me, and representatives should look like me, including, you know, being a woman.

Vivian Moreno

Union-Tribune: What kind of Democrat do you define yourself as? In places like Seattle and San Francisco we’re seeing younger Democrats who have much more aggressive ideas about how cities should work to try to help people who are marginal economically or who have life struggles. Do you envision yourself as being that kind of an activist or more of a conventional Democrat?

MORENO: I think I would let the residents decide what kind of a Democrat I am. I’ve been a part of the Democratic Party since 2012 as a delegate. I’ve been the president of the San Diego County Young Democrats … . I mean I… Carl DeMaio in the Orange [County] Register mentioned in 2012 that the project… the program that we ran at… in the UCSD area was one of the four reasons why he lost, right? So I’m a Democrat that likes to go knocking on doors and make the… the grass roots is what I like. That’s what I like. I think the last three days of the primary… I know I’m so nervous. I’m so sorry.

Union-Tribune: Didn’t notice.

MORENO: The last three days of the primary we were dropping [literature] and I just… I couldn’t get a pulse of what the residents felt because I like this… I like being face to face. I like… you know, if it’s negative, I want to hear it, you know. It builds a callous, I think, in a staffer and in an elected official. So I… I’m like… I’m the Democrat that likes to work, you know? And I’m going to be honest. I like to work with everybody. I’m not just going to say you know what? You are this title and… our… or this person or this entity and I’m not going to work with you. I don’t think that that is something that makes for a better city, you know?

And I think that one of the things that every elected official should be looking towards is what is… and I guess I’m going to put an I in this, right? I want to work on the San Diego… my niece’s and nephew’s San Diego. What is San Diego going to look like in 20 years? That’s my responsibility. Oh, you know, once I get elected that’s going to be my responsibility. What… you know, what is San Diego going to look like? Not what it’s going to look like in the next two years or the next four years or hey, I just want to get elected for, you know, the next election.

No, I care about San Diego, and I want to make sure that it’s a San Diego that suits everybody, that everybody could live in San Diego and at the rate we’re going, you know, people that look like me are not going to be able to live in San Diego, you know? I graduated from UCSD. I am a professional. I’m 36 years old. I don’t know if I’m still a young professional. The young Dems would say I’m not, but even somebody like me, it’s becoming very difficult and I don’t… I don’t want that San Diego in 20 years.

Union-Tribune: What does the San Diego in 20 years look like? We just had Gavin Newsom in. I guess it was last week. We had a big discussion about housing and how the McKenzie study says to reach that number of housing units that you’ve built here in San Diego it’s going to start to look like Tokyo because you’re going to have high rises everywhere. How… and I notice you’re supported by (unintelligible).

MORENO: Yeah.

Union-Tribune: And I saw your quote. I think it was in the Voice of San Diego. You said we need to build, period.

MORENO: Absolutely.

Union-Tribune: You’ve been advocating for that, too, but walk us through what the future of San Diego looks like with housing as you envision it.

MORENO: Well, for starters I mean we need it built. In our best year we’ve built… what… 6,400 units and in order to keep up with the amount of people that are, you know, being born and also moving into San Diego, we have to build anything from 17 to 24,000 units a year.

I think the future of housing is going to be along the trolley. It’s going to… think commercial in our district, in District 8 where we’d have the commercial and 22nd Project that came to fruition through my bosses’ term. We need more housing in that particular corridor, right? Just changing the HUBZone.… I think it was a McKenzie study that showed that if we just changed all the zones around the trolley… if we just bumped it up to the next highest zoning, you know, it would mean a world of a difference.

I don’t have the exact figure, but… oh, my notes are in my purse, but I think the HUBZoning has to be along the trolley. I think a lot of… a lot of people… the generation that’s coming after me… the millennials… I don’t they necessarily care to have cars. I think they want to commute to work. I think they… I said something in The Voice, you know, where we recognize that we’re not in traffic, we are traffic. So I think that… that’s the clicker… right… in that if we build more housing along the… what do they call… the transit-oriented districts, essentially, we’re going to be able to HUBZone at a… at a substantial rate and I think…

Union-Tribune: So is that possible? You said the best year was 6,400 units, and you envision four times that?

MORENO: Yeah, 17. Well I mean we need to do something or else we’re going to become, you know, San Francisco.

Union-Tribune: A year and a half ago the California Legislative Auditor’s Office put out a report that said the traditional complaints about why it’s so tough to build housing, environmentalism, the high cost of regulations, et cetera, were dwarfed by the fact that there was generally no community enthusiasm for the kind of things that housing advocates advocate and I think about that every time I read our letters to the editor.

Our letters to the editor, I think for every one we get that says build, build, build we get two that say what are you trying to do? You’re just trying to ruin this place. You’re trying to make us like Los Angeles or you’re ignoring the needs of people who are already here and so I’m struck by that. I… we’re all for housing. This has been our biggest issue for four or five years, but I don’t feel like we’re moving the community. I don’t feel like we’re getting people to a place where they’re ready to approve… you know, to overcome the NIMBYism. What do you think?

MORENO: Well, I think it’s the way that you approach it as well. If you’re not going to include the community in it then absolutely they’re not going to be a part of it. We had a project in the South Bay, the Marian School site where it used to be the old Catholic school off of Coronado and, you know, we created a relationship with the planning group.

I remember the first six months that I was at the planning group as a staffer… I mean I had daggers being thrown at me every single month and it was once they realized hey, this person is not going away and they’re actually fixing, you know, some of the issues we have… potholes and things like that… that we created a relationship and when the developer came in, the developer listened to them. The developer listened, and so now we have housing units in… at the Marian school site as we speak and, you know, I walk the precincts, and they’re all, you know, every single type of family.

A large portion of those families are Seals… Navy Seals that are coming in and, you know, they want… they need to live in San Diego, so they bought up a lot of the housing units. I think in District 8, I don’t think you get that sentiment, to be honest with you. Most of our projects have not been… the residents haven’t been against the housing projects that we’ve brought forward, that being an example of it. Now, for the rest of the city, you know, I think that’s… north of the 8, if you will… I think that that’s, you know, a concern that, you know, representatives in those areas need to look at, but I… I’m focused on District 8 and I know that what our community needs is… what our community needs is more housing.

Union-Tribune: In 2012, when Kevin Faulconer was running for mayor, we interviewed him and I asked him a question about promoting biotech in La Jolla, and he gave an answer that I’ve thought about ever since. He said we shouldn’t focus on biotech in La Jolla, we should focus on the entire city, including south of the 8. Do you feel the mayor has done a particularly good job of promoting economic development south of the 8?

MORENO: I think that the mayor has done a good job focused on Otay Mesa. Otay Mesa is our last prime industrial land. Him and council member David Alvarez created the Otay Mesa southbound truck route. There’s 3,200 trucks that goes south of the border, and they go on a city street called La Media. Before we used to have four hours of gridlock, and so you can imagine carbon emission, money spent, time spent and we were able to begin the first few steps of fixing that issue.

So yeah, I would say… I would say that we have definitely made progress. Now, as a city… you know, as the next council member, what I want to do is I want to make sure that the last prime industrial land in the city of San Diego actually, you know, gets built out and one of the ways we’ve already started that is that we created the Otay Mesa Enhanced Infrastructure Finance District, the first of its kind in the whole state of California where all the tax increments in Otay Mesa are going to stay in Otay Mesa. It’s one of those hard things. What comes first, the chicken or the egg, right? Does business come first or does infrastructure come first? Well in this circ*mstance, we’ve taken the bull by the horn and we’ve said we’re going to make this happen.

We’re going to make this happen because there’s a lot of infrastructure needed in Otay Mesa, and there’s a lot of focus in Otay Mesa as well. We’ve had, you know, the Cross Border Xpress, which has been hugely successful. We’re working on Otay Mesa II, which is in the county, but still, nonetheless, the 905 was, you know… I think the last… it was finally opened during our tenure and yeah, I think we’re… I think the mayor has done a good job, and I think we just need to continue… if I may add a plug.

I think that one of the things that the city of San Diego should be doing more aggressively is applying for state and federal grants. The TIGER grant [Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery]. The TIGER grant is a perfect example of something that we should be applying for… and we have… and then figuring out well why didn’t we get it, you know? And this whole idea of the TIGER grant is no longer, you know, viable for cities like ours. The Port just got $9 million, you know? The… also SB-1 money, right? We had $89 million in trade corridor funds just focused only in the city of San Diego or the region… right… let’s say of San Diego? We applied for $5 million. There was $89 million.

My vision is we should have applied for half of that. We should have applied to get all. You know, we should have applied for everything that we could have, and then if they come back and say, you know what, you guys… you know, we need to figure out why we didn’t get it or, you know, just we need to figure out how to get more. Massachusetts, I think, is a state that gets the most TIGER grant funds. Why? And I don’t know if it’s because we’re so far away from Washington, D.C. and Sacramento, but we have a lot of federal issues in the City of San Diego and if I’m just going to focus on D8, I’m going… District 8, I’m sorry… I’m going to focus on San Ysidro Port of Entry, I’m going to focus on Otay Mesa Port of Entry, the biggest commercial port in… in the State of California, second biggest in the whole border region.

Harbor Drive. Harbor… how… you know? I mean how many people go on Harbor Drive, a city street to get to their job? And those are things that I think that we should be not only relying on the general fund, but really piggy backing on our local congressional representatives and our state and senators and assembly members to help bring in more money, but we need to apply.

Union-Tribune: Yesterday at the Assembly they passed 60 to 0 a bill demanding that the federal government clean up the Tijuana River Valley. To me, the question is why didn’t the Legislature do this three years ago?

Why are we only getting a lawsuit now? This problem’s been a horrible problem for years and years and really is a blight on people’s lives, and yet the political class, to me, waited until this spring with the filing of the lawsuit by Serge Dedina and others. So what do you think about the response of the political class to this crisis?

MORENO: I mean I can’t speak to why they didn’t do this earlier. I am happy that that is moving forward. I live in San Ysidro, so I get to smell the stench and, you know, I think it was last year for 14 days I said what is going on because it wouldn’t stop and I think it’s something that nobody… nobody should have to live with that, right? And let alone the important echo system that we have in the Tijuana River Valley. I’m happy that it’s moving forward, and I think that there should be more collaboration. That’s what I’ll say.

Union-Tribune: The city and county, as far as I know, haven’t joined that lawsuit, though. They haven’t joined the Port and the small cities suing?

MORENO: I don’t… I wouldn’t be able to state whether they have or haven’t.

Union-Tribune: I think it’s just Chula Vista, IB and Port.

MORENO: Yeah and I know that there has been efforts, especially with the minutes and, you know, we’ve been inching our way. We’ve been getting funding for it, but I think right now it’s been elevated to… you know, to another level, right? To where everybody is looking at us and to be honest, it’s an international issue. It’s not… you know, we can’t… the city of San Diego can’t go over to the city of Tijuana and say hey, can you fix this?

You know, this is… in Tijuana it’s run by… it’s run by the state and actually I read… I think it was Sandra Dibble’s article recently about a private desal plant that’s looking to get the wastewater and transfer it over to the… to Valle de Guadalupe, something that Napa’s been doing… something that we’ve been doing… right… with the Colorado River for many years. So I see improvement in that, and so…

Union-Tribune: Would you support joining that lawsuit? Do you think the City Council should vote to kinda do that?

MORENO: I mean without seeing… you know, without having been briefed by the City Attorney, I’m not going to state whether I would join, you know, a lawsuit. Without seeing what’s in front of me, I don’t want to speculate, yeah.

Union-Tribune: On homelessness, what… what’s the impact in District 8 you think? What solutions do you have for it? And a lot of people, including us, have been critical of the city and the county’s response to hep A crisis. As a member of David’s kinda inner circle there, should some of the blame for the slow response fall to you, too? Should voters hold that against you or not?

MORENO: Well, I think that I’m just tired of the blame game. You know, we have 20 lives that perished due to the hep A situation that occurred and I just think everybody just, you know, needs to put on their hard hat and get to work, you know? I do understand that the county is sitting on $96 million dollars of human health services funds for this particular sector of our community.

I do understand that the city of San Diego has spent… spent just last year $12 million of general fund money… $27 in total of funding, whether it be SDBG funding. So I think that, you know, we just all need to fix it, period and I think a way to fix it… and I’ve been thinking about this a lot, especially in the northern part of our district.

You know, I’ve been walking for quite some time. I mean I started walking precincts last August, and I’ve been followed, you know. I mean I don’t want to call it harassment, but I’ve been followed and it’s been uncomfortable and I’m a 36-year-old woman. You know, I can only imagine for a 13-year-old girl walking home, you know, from school what that must feel like.

Union-Tribune: Followed by…

MORENO: By an individual. By an individual I’ve been followed, and it was scary. So I think that the number one solution that we need to do in the city of San Diego is… and to eradicate homelessness is permanent housing. Permanent housing needs to be our number one priority and I’ve given it some thought and I’ve thought okay, well maybe we could work with MTS to find some land and maybe we could, you know, put the puzzles together.

We have the San Diego library sitting right there vacant. It’s there. We don’t need to pay anybody a million dollars. We don’t need to pay anybody $12 million. We have it there. We need to turn that into a one-stop shop. That’s what we need to do and we need to work with the County of San Diego. We need to make sure that when our PD officers go in to break up an encampment that there are people ready to help people that need and that want help, right? So yeah, I think… I think we just need to stop, you know, blaming each other and just…

Union-Tribune: Well, on the library… What do you think the reluctance is on that library using it for that?

MORENO: We need to do an RF… request for proposal. That’s what we need to do.

Union-Tribune: But they’ve been talking about that for years and never gotten any really good excuse why that hasn’t been used.

MORENO: Well…

Union-Tribune: And it’s always put forward as the perfect place.

MORENO: Yeah. Well, you know, I think that the council president needs to docket it. We need a request staff to… to put out an RFP and see if it’s feasible, right? I’m not saying that that’s the end all. We do have other pieces of land that we could potentially use, but in my time campaigning I’ve thought well it’s right there. Why not look at that, you know? Why not see that as an option?

Union-Tribune: What do you think about homeless services in District 8? A lot of people focus on downtown because there’s a big portion of the homeless population here, but there are homeless people throughout the city in many districts.

MORENO: Oh, yeah. No and … and they’re… they’re all over the… I mean they’re in canyons now, right? They’re in creeks and in the southern part of the district we see them in our overpasses and ramps to get on and off of the freeway, which is Caltrans, but you can’t live on a ramp, right? You can’t, but when you tell somebody you can’t live on a ramp… right… you have to be able to say but you can live here and you can go there.

Union-Tribune: Short-term vacation rentals, your council boss famously wavered on what to do about it. What was your view on how that debate evolved and do you think the council ended up at the right place?

MORENO: I can say that I don’t know how it’s enforced… enforceable. I don’t see how the city of San Diego is going to enforce vacation rentals without working with the platforms, so we’re probably going to have very angry people in about a year.

Union-Tribune: Other cities seem confident that they can enforce San Diego-style rules. San Francisco and Santa Monica, for example. So why is it a… why is their perception different than your perception about enforceability?

MORENO: Well because we need more personnel in [Development Services Department], plain and simple. I mean we need more personnel in DSD to help push… remember the housing units we were talking about… the 17,000 units? We’re going to need a lot of DSD personnel to help, you know, push that and I think that it’s a matter of priority, right?

If your priority is, you know, focused on building more housing, well then how do we get to that number? I’m not saying that 17,000 is going to be the number and I know I’m diverting, but just to finish this point. So how do we get to whatever number it is, whether it’s 10,000? I mean we need to have the staff… right… to back up that policy initiative, essentially and I guess that’s my answer to that… is I don’t think we have the staff to enforce the ruling that just passed.

Union-Tribune: Would you have voted against that proposal?

MORENO: I didn’t have… once again, we go back to things that council members have available to them, first one being the city attorney. You know, I wasn’t privy to the closed session discussions. I will say for the record that I use Airbnb. My family and us, we… you know, when we go to Baja we use Airbnb.

It’s a great way to… you know, to stay all together and I would be a hypocrite to not support short-term vacation rentals, to be honest with you. I would be a complete hypocrite to not support them. So I believe there are 11,000 units that are in question… 11,000 vacation units that are in question and I think that we need to make sure that they’re able to perform in the city of San Diego.

Union-Tribune: Do you worry about legal repercussions? Scott Sherman famously said sue us…

MORENO: I think… you know, I don’t… I mean I think that’s par for the course when you’re in the city of San Diego, right? I mean anybody’s entitled to… to sue possibly. To answer you, yeah. To answer you honestly, possibly that is something that I think as a City Council member you should look at and weigh in your decision whether you’re going to get sued or not.

Union-Tribune: The editorial board took a long time to make a firm stand on this position because we were interested in the property rights angle and the fact that for years and years so many of these homes have been used for vacation rentals and now all of a sudden it’s a problem because of technology making it easier to access them, but we ended up deciding to support fairly restrictive rules because of the belief that the problem of investors buying homes and taking them off the market was real.

So what do you say to that argument… that this is part of the housing crisis and the last thing you want to do is incentivize people to come in and buy homes and take them off the market?

MORENO: What’s part of the housing crisis is that we’re not building. That’s the housing crisis that we’re having right now in the city of San Diego.

Union-Tribune: We don’t… I would say part of the housing crisis is the fact that we’re having homes taken off the market. It’s… the big problem is building, but you’re saying it’s not part of the problem that we have thousands of investors buying homes and then immediately taking them off the market for long-term rentals?

MORENO: Well, we’re talking about 11,000 units, right? I mean that’s, at the end of the day, what we’re talking about and I… I’m saying that we have to… I recently became a homeowner. In April the apartment that I had been living in… the condo that I had been living in for the past four years became available.

I took it and as a property owner… I mean it is… you know, what can I do with my property? And for the city to come in and say you can only do X, Y and Z, you know, is a little daunting, to be honest with you, because, you know, I… it was my hard work that got me to this point. I think I’d have to look more into that. You know, I’d have to look at… more into the statistics of, you know, what is 11,000 out of the whole housing unit of the city of San Diego, but to answer your question, I think the number one thing that the reason we have a housing crisis is because we’re not building.

Union-Tribune: Well, we also demolished all the SROs where a lot of homeless folks, now homeless people were living, so that’s a huge part of the problem, right?

MORENO: Yeah and our housing population keeps on growing every single year, right? We do the count… I don’t remember what time of year we do it, but you wake up at 4:30 in the morning and you go out and you wake people up that are homeless and it just… it keeps on… you know, the numbers keep on ticking up.

Union-Tribune: The housing problem in San Francisco has grown so intense that the new mayor, London Breed, is talking about trying to get a state law passed that would allow the city to intervene directly in the lives of individuals, the more deranged homeless, the ones who are meth addicts, the ones who are severely mentally ill and I just wonder is that the route that San Diego’s on?

Are we going to have a homeless crisis that’s so extreme with only a small fraction and then using up so much of the city’s resources that we need to look at things that go where no city’s gone before to try to deal with the handful of people that cause the most problems?

MORENO: Well, 40 years ago these people would have been put in a mental health institution, right? I wasn’t alive for that, but that authority was let go by the state and given to the county and the county… you know, I said we weren’t going to point fingers, but you know, they’re… we need everybody to be key players before, you know, God forbid we get to that point.

Union-Tribune: The Convention Center initiative included money for homelessness. How would you have voted on that when it was before the council?

MORENO: I go back to the council has… you know, has closed session and I’ve seen it. You know, I’ve seen it working with the council member. They’re privy to a lot of things that, I think, us, as staffers, you know, or running for City Council… we don’t have that, so it’s hard to make an assessment on that. Is it our responsibility to upkeep the Convention Center? Yes. Would I be for an expansion, whether it be contiguous or in another part? I’d be open to that. I’d be open to that, but having it connected with other issues that are so important I think is wrong.

Union-Tribune: Why?

MORENO: Well, for one, I think that those issues should be standalone. They shouldn’t be all wrapped up together, right? An expansion of the Convention Center is a real… you know, the upkeep of a convention center is real. Homelessness is a real thing and housing is a real thing and I don’t think that… you know, I don’t think that they should be looped together.

Union-Tribune: Doesn’t that make sense, though, to have an ongoing stable revenue stream for a city that doesn’t have a lot of ongoing (overtalking)?

MORENO: Yeah and there are other avenues to get a stable revenue stream without linking it up to something so controversial as the Convention Center.

Union-Tribune: Such as?

MORENO: Such as… I mean the way that it was presented to the Council two weeks ago now, you know, 24-hour notice. I think in the past year that I’ve been walking, one resident… and I’ve walked thousands of doors. One resident in District 8 has brought up the Convention Center, and that person worked for the Convention Center. I don’t think it’s the number one thing that’s on the residents’ minds, to be honest with you.

Union-Tribune: Are the scooters an issue down there?

MORENO: No. Nobody’s mentioned the scooters.

Union-Tribune: No?

MORENO: Actually, the bikes are awesome. Any time I see a bike right outside of my condo complex, I’m like oh, my gosh, I can go to the supermarket and a lot of the teenagers… a lot of, you know, 20-somethings are using scooters to get to and from.

Union-Tribune: What do you think of the city’s handling of this whole situation? It kind of… you know, given the dockless bike situation, the contract there, their hands have been tied a little bit, but they seem to open the door pretty wide to both dockless bikes and scooters at a time when many cities are banning or regulating them pretty seriously.

MORENO: Yeah. I think we started out wrong with DecoBike and I think we’ve continuously gotten it wrong. I think there has to be some type of regulation. You know it is a city right-of-way, it is the city’s responsibility, so we definitely need to go back to the drawing board on that one.

Union-Tribune: Yeah, BuzzFeed news just today had a story talking to a bunch of doctors and health care practitioners that said every day someone comes in with missing teeth, broken bones from falling off these scooters. I mean are we one act… I know Lorie Zapf’s tried to get some… a better regulation, from her perspective, for the boardwalk. The council didn’t support that.

MORENO: Yeah.

Union-Tribune: What kind of regulation do you envision as in the discussion, if not (overtalking)?

MORENO: Well, I mean we also need to have responsible citizens, right? We need to be utilizing these devices responsibly and, you know, there’s a risk associated when you get on a scooter with two people. That’s probably not the greatest idea, but I don’t know. I’m going to be honest with you. I’m not going to pretend to know something that I don’t know, so I look forward to staff, you know, hopefully bringing that forward and looking at that once I become a council member.

Union-Tribune: The Climate Action Plan is a topic we’ve asked council candidates about. We’ve written editorially that it’s great that San Diego wants to be a leader, but it needs to be honest and realistic. Do you really believe the Climate Action Plan is right when it says 18 percent of San Diegans in large parts of the city will use bikes to get to work in 15 years?

MORENO: I think if we put the right infrastructure, yeah. I mean if you look at Holland… I remember the first time I went to Eindhoven, Holland. I mean they have freeways for their bikes, you know, and you don’t touch a person’s bike because that’s their mode of transportation.

Now, I know the culture’s different and that it’s always been… right… since the invention of the bike, but I think, you know, we go back to the chicken or the egg, right? If we build it they’ll come and I… yeah, I think that if we put the right infrastructure, absolutely. People do… people want to get out of their cars and we talked about the generation coming after me. I think that that’s definitely something that we need to look at.

Union-Tribune: But the experience of recent years, as our letter writers and as my personal witnessing notices, those bike trails are… bike lanes are so rarely used and I… well, there’s the one on the frontage road in Mission Valley that I’ve literally seen like 25 bike riders in five years. So the idea that if we build it that they will come, where’s the beef?

MORENO: Bayshore Bikeway. When you talk about protective lanes, you see people out there all the time and if you’re a jogger out there, you better get out of the way. You know, we need to bring a mode of transportation. We can’t just put a line and say oh, a car is going to, you know, respect that.

You know, we also need to educate our drivers in that there’s a barrier, you’re going to hit your car, you don’t want to damage your car and so you know… and that’s what I’m talking about when I’m talking about Holland and their freeways. I call them freeways, but for their bikes… is we need to make it safe for these modes of transportation.

Union-Tribune: There’s no city in America where more than 6 percent of people bike to work. In 15 years our population workforce will be older. The average worker will be 40 years old, so that means half are older than 40 and half are younger than 40. Once again, how realistic is it to think that 18 percent, nearly one in five people, will actually ride their bike to work, especially with the weather getting hotter and hotter?

MORENO: Well, that’s… yeah, that’s a huge factor… the weather… but I go back to stating that I think that if we build the right infrastructure people will get off… will get out of their cars and into their bikes.

Union-Tribune: Councilman Gloria, when he recommended the Climate Action Plan, he gave a series of speeches not one of which acknowledged the fact that the shift to cleaner energy is costly and hurts poor people.

In 2006, when California passed AB 32, the whole part of the last few weeks before it got passed was devoted to the idea that clean energy cost poor people more money, so they put parts in the bill that allegedly devoted some of the cap and trade fees to try to help the poor communities. To me, that’s part of this debate that never gets talked about. Environmentalism has a price, and if the price is borne disproportionately by poor people, shouldn’t that be a factor in decision making?

MORENO: Absolutely and I mean… and I think that, you know, putting those electric plug-ins in Logan Heights is probably not a good way to get people to buy electric cars, right? I think that going back to the infrastructure needs, maybe focused on, you know, actually fulfilling the commercial… not commercial… Imperial Avenue Revitalization Plan that we have making sure that there are real bike lanes.

I think those are ways that we can get, you know… how you said poor people or people of lower income to get off of their… I mean our community… we’re the ones, you know, riding the trolley, right? I mean the Blue Line is the only one that actually breaks even. So I think we’re doing more to get us, you know, to complete the Climate Action Plan and to be honest… or to fulfill the numbers. You know, for somebody like me, I… I’m about a mile away from the nearest trolley and, you know, we talk about bike sharing, right?

I mean we talk about being able to get… jump on your bike and go to the trolley and move around, making sure that the trolley and the bus continues to operate, as an example, on Sundays after 7 right? We just got a phone call from a resident that wanted to make sure that a certain route stayed going after 7 p.m. on Sundays. I mean those are the things that I think can get us to actually fulfill our Climate Action Plan.

Union-Tribune: Another question involving Climate Action Plan and energy is Community Choice. Where are you on that discussion?

MORENO: I’m definitely open. I think that it’s a… I think it’s something to look at.

Union-Tribune: To implement as well or…

MORENO: Well, to look at. We need to look at it, right? Is this something that’s going to be feasible? Is this something that’s going to be good? I’ve been researching… it’s been awhile since I’ve actually opened up… I think it was probably like seven months ago that I really read into it, and it looked good. It looked good to me, but you know, I’m not going to say right now I’m going to support it 100 percent or I’m not going to support it because I don’t have anything in front of me to support or not support.

Union-Tribune: How does your district respond to legalized marijuana? Do you have a lot of shops down there? Do you have a lot of illegal shops?

MORENO: We… well, we have four legal shops, and we had the first one open up in Otay Mesa four or five years ago. Haven’t heard too much… Seems to be operating and it’s the law. It’s the state law. We’re just following the state law.

Union-Tribune: And in terms of illegal shops, do you see a lot of that down there?

MORENO: No, not me. Not as I’m walking, and I’m walking. Haven’t seen it.

Union-Tribune: What’s the biggest public safety issue that people you talk to are talking to you about?

MORENO: Not having enough police officers.

Union-Tribune: Anything more specific than the number of…

MORENO: They want to see the police officers more often. They want to see them pass by. You know, if they call because their, you know, ex-husband is… is coming after them and threatening them they want to see a police officer there, right? So yeah, if we can get… we need to get serious in the city of San Diego… right… about our retention issues that we have. I think there’s 2,000… we’re budgeted for 2,200, and we have 1,800 and our attrition level is like… what… 15, 14 a month. We…

Union-Tribune: Although, we had the chief in. He said that that number is a little lower in recent months probably because of the pay raise that they…

MORENO: That’s great. That’s great to hear and I think that, you know, we need to pay our officers more. We need to recruit our officers from within our communities. You know, our officers need to look like us and so yup, we… the number one… that I’ve heard walking precinct is we need to see more officers.

Union-Tribune: The city of San Diego suffered a gigantic loss in the California Supreme Court with the overturning of Measure B or Proposition B, and now we see some of the same people who were criticized by the court for not sweating the details of collective bargaining who are no longer in office, like DeMaio and [Jerry] Sanders, talking about a whole new pension reform crusade in 2020.

Would you support that? How did you feel about Measure B and the idea that only police officers deserve defined benefit pensions in terms of what you need to offer to people to get them to come work for the city?

MORENO: I want to be clear, I voted no. I voted absolutely no. The reason we got into a pension issue was not because of city stuff. On the contrary, I think we’re finding it a lot more difficult to recruit and retain qualified employees and we just talked about DSD needing to beef up.

Why would you want to work in the city of San Diego if you’re a planner, let’s say… you know, 1.3 million people in the city of San Diego come to be a planner for… I’m just going to throw this number out… $57,000 dollars with a 401(k), when you can go to Chula Vista? There’s… or Carlsbad, but I’m going to focus on Chula Vista where there’s 260,000 people and you get a pension. Why… I mean you know, I know we’re government, but if you look at it in a business perspective where would you tell, you know, your friend to go?

Union-Tribune: But in January the League of California Cities put out a study that said the level of pension benefits that cities are required to pay is unsustainable. Right now they’re like 14 percent of the budget and they’re on their way to being 20 to 25 percent more of the budget in some cities, including Los Angeles. So I understand the argument that you have to offer the same kind of benefits…

MORENO: Absolutely.

Union-Tribune: …for competition purposes, but why not blow the whole thing up? Why do we have a system where public employees can get triple or quadruple the Social Security payment? Why? It seems to me like it’s a function of union power and mismanagement as opposed to an organically derived need to offer these benefits.

MORENO: If you focus on directors and the pay of the directors then, you know, yes, but we’re talking about, you know, your rank and file. We’re talking about your $46,000 a year people and to be honest with you we… in order for us to function as a city, I think we need good, quality work and I think the scapegoat has been the city… the city workers and I don’t think… and I go back to that’s not how we got into this issue and another thing is who, you know… we… how are we going to fund the pension in 40 years? There’s still going to be people alive, so that’s something that the city needs to look at as well.

Union-Tribune: Where are you on the former Qualcomm Stadium site?

MORENO: Oh, on the two… I don’t… I personally don’t like the ballot, you know, but… you know, I don’t like the ballot-boxing thing. I just… it just irks me. I don’t know.

Union-Tribune: Does that mean you’re going to vote…What would you envision for that… what would you envision for that stadium… for that location? What would you…

MORENO: Well…

Union-Tribune: What do you think the city should do about that location?

MORENO: You bring up a good point. Let’s do an RFP. Let’s do a request for proposal for one of the biggest plot of lands that the city of San Diego has, right? So let’s start there for one, but I think… you know, I think the sky’s the limit, right? Nobody’s talked about making… maybe making it open space. That’s an option as well right? So I don’t know what the future’s going to hold for those two initiatives, you know. If one of them succeeds… well we obviously need to work within those confines, but we don’t know what can be put there.

Union-Tribune: But you don’t like either proposal?

MORENO: I don’t know how I’m going to vote. I have yet… I haven’t decided how I’m going to vote yet.

Union-Tribune: It sounds like you’re leaning to no on both, though.

MORENO: I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t… to be honest, I don’t know how I’m going to vote. I know that SDSU does a whole lot for the… I mean I’m a UCSD alum, but SDSU does a whole lot. My mentee from the program that I was a part of for many years… she’s a Compact For Success student, and I know that SDSU does a humongous amount of work in the city… in the region in general. So you know, that’s something to consider.

Union-Tribune: How… on that side you talked about maybe making it an open space to varying degrees. Both proposals do that, but they also had some housing. As someone who’s such a staunch advocate for housing you said it should be open space, but do you think that is also a plot of land that there could be a good number of housing built on?

MORENO: Potentially, but we… I know in the city of San Diego we also have to look at the average daily trips and what that triggers in regards to infrastructure, right? The ATPs… we need to look at that as well. So… I mean I… nothing is ruled out, I guess I should say. Nothing is ruled out in that… in that particular plot of land. It could be housing. It could be open space. I mean I think the sky’s the limit, right?

Union-Tribune: Can I ask you a philosophical question? So your opponent eked into the runoff by three votes.

MORENO: Yes.

Union-Tribune: Would your campaign have been different with a different opponent?

MORENO: No. I’m a… I have the eye of the tiger. I don’t look left, I don’t look right. I’m a workhorse, right? At the Del Mar Fair you have a horse look to the left and guess what happens? I’m not looking left. I’m not looking right. I’m looking forward.

Union-Tribune: If you were Christian [Ramirez], would you have sought a recount?

MORENO: Knowing my personality, yes.

Union-Tribune: Yeah?

MORENO: Yeah.

Union-Tribune: Okay.

MORENO: Knowing my personality, I would have.

Union-Tribune: Can you talk about the unique situation you are with given proximity to the border in your district? Does it create certain challenges or benefits that the other districts don’t take advantage of?

MORENO: Oh, my gosh, yes. Yes. I think we’re very unique in that… in that District 8 is, as I mentioned, the only one that has two ports of entry. We have the Cross Border Xpress. We’re working on the second port… a third port of entry I guess I should say. I think it creates opportunities. There’s a lot of opportunities.

I mean you have a whole… you have a whole other market that you could attract and so does it create challenges? Well we talked about the 3,200 semi-trucks that are going southbound into Otay Mesa… I mean into Otay Mesa Commercial Port of Entry, so yeah. I think we… there’s going to have to be a lot of collaboration with state and federal representatives, which I’ve already experienced. I… for about a year and a half I was the bi-national liaisons for the council members, so I got to know a lot of the actors in those fields and… yeah, there’s… but there’s a lot of opportunity as well. Did you have something a little more specific?

Union-Tribune: No, I’m just curious whether we have the best relationship or have the relationship we used to have with Tijuana. There was always a lot of talk about the bi-national nature of our two cities, and you just don’t hear a lot about that.

MORENO: Well, and… you know what? I actually… that’s one thing that I… well that’s another thing that I commend the mayor for. I think he’s done a really good job at keeping those ties really close and I think we have an excellent working relationship. There’s… I could think of, you know, three organizations just off the top of my head that really keep people up to date, up to speed on what’s happening on both ends, right?

Actually four… SANDAG. You know you go to a border’s committee and you find out what the infrastructure proposals are in Tijuana and what the infrastructure proposals are in the United States. So I think we’ve done a really good job. I think we’ve done a good job. I think that the one place where we haven’t done a good job is maybe marketing internationally… marketing this region. I think we have a… I mean there’s nothing like San Diego/Tijuana.

Absolutely nothing like it when you talk about, you know, the economy here, when you talk about culturally, you know, gastronomy. I mean there… there’s a lot to sell in this region, and I think that we probably should be… I think the EDC has done it a bit, but we really need to reinforce that. So attracting more, for instance… as an example, attracting more businesses to San Diego before they’re ready to leave, let’s say to China, and explaining to them the dynamic and how it works and how a semi-truck could have a Fast Pass. So to get moving faster, production in particular.

So I think, you know… I remember doing a tour of Bose, right? And here’s another thing, too… is we need to educate the rest of the nation on how much we work collaboratively together, right? How an assembled piece in Mexico … and Sandra Dibble has highlighted this on numerous articles, but you know, a TV assembled in Tijuana, 40 percent of the product is from the United State of America as opposed to a TV assembled in China. I think only 3 percent of the product inside is American made, right?

So showing how much we really do work together, showing how joined our economies are, right? I mean everybody’s gone to Fashion Valley on a Saturday and seen, you know, a lot of Mexican people with their suitcases. What are they doing? They’re buying. They’re purchasing. The purchasing power in San Diego, I think, is a lot more robust because of the close… the proximity that we have to Tijuana.

Union-Tribune: Thank you for coming in. In your close just tell us… tell voters why they should vote for you and specifically how you’re different than Antonio Martinez.

MORENO: Okay. Well, my name is Vivian Moreno. I’m running for City Council in District 8. One of my top priorities is to make sure that more women, particularly more Latinas get into office. Infrastructure is huge in our district. We need somebody that has experience and knows how to navigate through the city of San Diego and state and federal… we talked about grants… that could help fix potholes and fix sidewalks and housing.

We have a huge housing crisis in San Diego, and we need… once again we go back to the experience and I didn’t mention this as much, but Otay Mesa, the last prime industrial land. We need somebody who understands Otay Mesa and understands the bi-national region, but at the end of the day, you know, you just have to Google our names to figure out where we come from, who we are. I’m a person of… you know, I’m a public servant. I have high integrity, a hard worker, and that’s what I’m ready to do.

I’m ready to work really hard for the city. I’m ready to work really hard also and primarily for the residents of District 8 and I think that they need to go with… or I’d welcome them to go with somebody that has the experience and is going to be ready to hit the ground running. Thank you for having me and I appreciate it.

Union-Tribune: Thanks for coming in. Thank you for joining us.

The San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board sent the candidate a questionnaire on the issues during the primary election. Read her answers here.