Would be in a better place by n.
It should have been in a better
place for the past few decades.
Now at six, we are getting
answers on water bill issues.
An exclusive interview with
the city's Public Utilities
director. I think Labor Day is going to see
a boom in the number of people traveling.
Yeah, today expected to be the busiest
travel day of the holiday weeke.
What you need to know before yot
out on those roads plus Adalia spawns
a tornado which then flips over a car.
This incredible video here where
the tropical storm is headed no.
Temperatures
will keep cooling down through this week.
We've got a fall like weekend ad
just in time for your Labor Day.
We'll talk about how much cooler
it's going to get into next wee.
It's 6:00 AM on Thursday,
August 31st, and you're up with CBS8.
Well, this morning, millions
of Americans getting ready
to travel for the Labor Day wee.
Today, expected to be
the busiest travel day.
Yes, on this Thursday.
Glad you're with us at 6:00 AM.
I'm Eric Connor,
and I'm not at you, Rob.
Or yeah, maybe people are gettig
up to get ready for a holiday.
It all comes on the same day
that some flight attendants are
expected to pick it outside of
San Diego International Airport,
so this could impact some of
you showing up at the airport.
Let's check in with CBS8's
Chris Grow this morning.
What's the reason behind
this demonstration, Chris?
Yeah, good morning, guys.
In the demonstration in an effoo
try to get United to offer them a fair
contract and also try to fix some issues
that the airline's been dealing with.
But I want to show you right hee
behind us right now a look at te
scene right now with departures United.
That's where the demonstration will be
going on. So in terms of, you k,
it'll be visible, it'll be ther.
That's something that will impact travelers
just in terms of getting the messaging out,
which of course is behind the demonstration.
But I don't think it will have o
big of an impact on folks gettig
in and out of the airport.
Now, of course,
we know that Labor Day this wee,
this is going to be a busy travel season,
right?
You are going to see a lot of
people here today,
tomorrow and through the weekend
with departures and then of coue
eventually with arrivals just next week.
In fact, when you take a look at the numbers,
they're pretty staggering compad
to just last year.
We are seeing the FAA expects to
have 52,000 flights in the air,
which would make it one of the busiest
travel weekend so far this year.
And then from Friday through Wednesday,
the TSA expects 14 million peope
will travel by plane,
which they say would be an 11%
hike from Labor Day of 2022.
Now some of the very popular
destinations that people are going to
be traveling to include Las Veg,
as well as Seattle, Anchorage,
AK, New York and even Orlando.
But with Orlando,
remember we did just have a
hurricane go through Florida.
So keep an eye on whether or not
you could be experiencing any ds
or potentially cancellations.
There's always going to be some
amount of cancellations
that happen as long
as we have bad weather
on the schedule.
Yeah. And so again,
you can see just right now
here at 6:00 in the morning,
things are pretty steady.
It's not the busiest that we've
ever seen things by any means.
But look, this is going to be ly
the scene here for the next two days,
today and tomorrow.
So if you're leaving on
any one of these days,
be sure to get out here early.
Eric and Netta,
good advice. All right.
Starting to get busy.
Thank you very much, Chris.
And for those of you
driving instead of flying,
check out the gas prices.
Yeah, This morning San Diego's average
price 537 for a gallon of regul.
We were paying a lot last year,
but less than this year,
5/23 at this time last year.
Let's turn now to this developing story.
This morning,
San Diego police searching for n
they say stabbed and killed another man
at a McDonald's in the Midway District.
It was in the middle of the day
just before noon yesterday on
Midway Drive when this happened.
Officers found a 35 year old
man on the ground.
When they got there,
he was taken to a hospital where he died.
Witnesses say the suspect arrivd
in a light colored minivan,
jumped out,
then attacked the victim before taking off.
Police say it's not clear what
led to that confrontation.
For the first time,
the city of San Diego's Public
Utilities director is sitting dn
exclusively with CBS8 to explain
why thousands of customers arent
getting their water bills on ti.
We've been working for you,
pushing for answers after hearig
from a lot of you who have had
your bills held up for months.
As CBS8's Shannon Handy reports,
the director admits the departmt
has been struggling to find a
solution to this billing proble,
but promised a fix is coming next month. Do
you share in the frustration
of your customers? Absolutely.
Our management team lives it every day,
you know, and it's our mission to fix it.
Juan Guerrero has been with San Diego
Public Utilities for over 7 yea.
He's only been director for a yr
and a half, but since he takes
responsibility for the problems
that have plagued the department
since before he was in charge,
it should be in a better place by now.
It should have been in a better
place for the past few decades,
but what we're doing is playing catch
up a significant amount of ketcp
in a really compressed timefram.
I sat down with Guerrero to
talk about this 2018 audit,
which looked at Public Utilities
track record and billing and
found a number of issues,
one of which was not notifying
customers whose bills were under review.
In those cases,
people's accounts were put on h,
which meant they weren't receiving bills
until the investigation was complete.
Then they don't knowingly get oe
massive bill for all the monthss
which equaled thousands of doll.
At the time,
57,000 customers were impacted.
In the report,
the city auditor recommended Puc
Utilities inform customers of
quote bill impacting activities.
Fast forward five years later,
CBS A found the problem is still
happening to an estimated 28,000 customers.
Why is
it taking so long to resolve these issues?
It was 10 recommendations.
Within each recommendation,
there were so many different
things to address, so we've been
working through those, Guerrero
says. Aside from the billing is,
the audit also addressed its
poor customer service practices,
which for the department took priority.
They overhauled their training program,
hired more employees and
automated certain procedures so
call wait times would go down.
They also hired a new management
team before recently shifting tr
focus to those billing issues.
And again, it goes back to the volume
of issues and prioritizing and working
through each one of the issues.
One of the challenges that we have is we
talk a lot about aging infrastructure.
Well, our aging infrastructure
includes our IT, Guerra
says. While alerting customers y
seem like a simple fix, it's no.
He says they've had to make 40
enhancements, including replacig
their call center software syst.
The challenge with some of the r
software systems is they were vy
customized to our specific operation,
and there were multiple software
systems that are standardized throughout
the city that had to work toget.
In addition to that, he says a lack of
staffing led to a backlog of held bills.
Not only that, but as one of the
largest Public Utilities in the state,
he says there are other programd
projects to run that can't be put on pause
as we're working through these improvements.
We're running a live operation,
so it really takes time to get
through everything. Guerrero
admits it's been a challenge,
but says customers whose bills are held
can expect notifications in September.
As for his message to those affected,
I apologize to them for the operations
that were working diligently to improve.
Are you confident the departmenn
resolve all these issues? Yes, absolutely.
Barrero says people who do get
those massive bills can go on a
payment plan with no added fees,
but you have to call in for tha.
He says their wait times have ge
down to an average of 30 minute.
They hope to get to 0.
They also still have 10 open positions.
There was a lot more discussed,
including why not just a bill fr
customers for something instead of nothing,
or why do customers impacted by
this still have a $0.00 balance?
I want to share the answers to a lot more
of these questions with you and more.
Today at 6:00 PM
right 608 now. And as we look
outside, Did you catch the moon
A little bit. It's right, Yes. Now it's here.
We're doing OK coastline and not
quite as confident of a little cloudy.
Still, we need to hear you cuz everyone
wants to know about this whole blue moon.
He did say in Kurtney Mesa you can catch
the moon. You're wearing the ble
suit for the blue moon.
Look at blue suit for the blue .
I mean, you can see it
outside in Kurtney Mesa.
Right now we have limited visiby
still closer to our coastline.
However, it looks like over the next couple
hours those clouds will start to lift.
We'll get a bit more sunshine, .
Sadly, this moon is setting
in about 30 minutes or so.
So if you're along the coast and
you are just dying to see it,
you're probably going to have to head east.
But take a look at what a widespread problem
we're looking at as far as visibility goes.
Miramar is at half a mile,
El Cajon at six miles,
Kearny Mesa at 5-5 miles from North Island,
so in Coronado and same in Imperial Beach.
So we're still running into that
widespread trouble related to visibility
as opposed to the patchy issuest
we had dealt with earlier in the week.
This marine layer is now becomig
more and more dense with each dy
and that's because that trough
of low pressure is sinking in.
So as low pressure moves in we'e
going to see a more enhanced mae
layer that's going to be daily between
now and the upcoming weekend and also
between today and the upcoming weekend
we'll see temperatures cool day-to-day.
So today is day one of cooling.
No longer do we have the
90s as average today,
87 degrees on average inland,
88 for the mountains,
108 out there for the deserts,
so pretty warm for your desert regions,
77 along the coast,
some passing clouds that we'll
be working through.
Here's what it looks like walkig
out the door though right now
we're still in the upper 60s,
low 70s out there.
Yesterday we talked about how
there really wasn't much of an
opportunity to allow for the sea
breeze to bring in some cooler .
We really haven't been able to n
up the windows and let in the cl
overnight temperatures because overnight
we've been staying at 70 degrees in Carlsbad,
68 in El Cajon,
so it really doesn't bring
much of A differentiation.
However,
what we're going to see is that by the
afternoon we will be cooler across the board.
We are now a degree cooler
in Carlsbad and Encinitas.
2 degrees cooler for La Mesa El Cajon,
but that'll become much more
pronounced by the afternoon strh
and day-to-day will be droppingl
the way down to the 70s by Sund.
Take a look at your board of
wait times out the door.
610 on the clock so far, slicking like
at the sandy siege report of en.
You're going to be waiting about 90 minutes.
An hour and a half.
Oh time.
A support of entry an hour 15.
That and Eric,
back to you,
Kevin. Thank you very much and
still ahead here, caught on
camera Adalia creating a tornado
that look at that flips over a .
A look at the devastation left
behind by this storm. Plus,
another concerning moment for Se
Minority Leader Mitch McConnells
he freezes for a second time ane
rare moon that lit up the night.