Paradise Lost. This is the story
of San Diego, a once great city.
I'm Bill Walton and I'm a San Diego native.
I'm a lifelong resident.
I'm an engaged citizen,
I'm a voter, and I'm a taxpayer.
San Diego, this once great city,
is in crisis.
We have simultaneous homeless crisis,
humanitarian crises, public health crises.
These are all the result.
Of a leadership crisis,
success in anything in a group,
dynamic A-Team setting,
a city, a community, whatever.
Success is always a result of
effective leadership. Conversely,
failure is a result of lack of leadership,
and when there's failure,
it's the fault and responsibility
of the leader.
Being part of a team,
a community, a group and a city,
that's a privilege a carries with it duty,
obligation and responsibility.
Some of the first lessons of responsibility
are clean up after yourself.
Or how about protecting the rights of
others regarding shared public space?
This story of our once great city
started for me 69 years ago.
I was born in San Diego.
I grew up in Balboa Park.
When I was 26 years old 43 years ago.
We found our family dream home in
Hillcrest on the North End of Balboa Park.
It was the people, it was the facilities,
it was the possibilities and
opportunities that were just endlessly
positive and so full of hope.
It was my dream.
That iconic neighborhood electric,
eclectic and very densely populated,
as densely populated,
a community and neighborhood as
there is in all of San Diego.
And there's always Balboa Park
and our immediate neighbors,
the Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts,
Roosevelt Middle School,
the Veterans Memorial building with its
disabled service Centers for our veterans,
the Center for the.
Mine and our world famous San Diego zoo.
Right in the middle of all of this.
Is the park.
On the east side of Park Blvd,
between Morley Field Drive and Zoo Place,
it's an expansive, flat,
level, free,
public,
open green space with spectacular
views and the all-encompassing
wonders of nature and life and
places where families could go,
where children could play roll in the
grass and in the dirt didn't have a name.
Like all the other sections of Balboa Park,
it wasn't named Bird Park.
It wasn't named Marston or Inspiration Point.
It wasn't named 6th and Laurel.
It wasn't named Lawn Bowling Park.
It wasn't named the Pepper
grow over the Redwood Grove.
It was always just the park.
And it was all better than perfect.
It was shamrocks.
It had everything anyone could ever ask for.
It was my dream.
But then the problem.
A few years back.
Our mayor, Todd Gloria,
decided that the park would be a terrific
place for a massive homeless encampment,
with its accompanying nightmares
of enormous amounts of trash,
safety issues, lack of sanitation,
health problems and security issues,
and all the other tragedies that
are now part of life in our
beloved but crumbling neighborhood.
This is absurd,
and that's an insane this is a shipwreck.
The rest is the sad story of our once
great but now failing neighborhood
and community, and our beloved park,
which for years was just called the park.
It now has a new name.
Todd gloriavale.
I'm a patriot.
I love our neighborhood and I love
our city and I'm fighting to save it.
I have been after our city officials
for years to provide us with a safe,
secure,
healthy and clean place for us to live,
work and play to clean up our park,
to pave the two streets that are
the only way through to the South
from our neighborhood park Blvd.
And Zoo drive to clear the sidewalks
and the bike paths of the homeless.
Encampments,
so that we can freely move
about our once great city.
A moment on the bike path.
There are bike paths throughout our city.
There are three critical ones
for the transportation of people
who are riding their bikes.
In no particular order.
There's the Ocean Beach bike path.
There's the Embarcadero bike and
pedestrian path right along the water
between Hawthorne St and the airport.
And then there's the Vermont St Bridge,
which connects Hillcrest with the
neighbors to the north and to the east.
On any given day,
it can be anyone of our bike paths which
are specifically designated for bikes.
There are no other parks in our
city with the massive homeless
encampment that we have in gloriavale.
There are no other parts of Balboa
Park with the massive homeless
encampments that we have in gloriavale.
I have spoken with our terrific San Diego PD.
They say they operate at the
direction and command of Todd Gloria.
The same with our City Council
talked to Todd Gloria.
The same with the ADA Compliance department.
I'm disabled.
They say too talk to Todd Gloria.
The same with the California Coastal
Commission talked to Todd Gloria.
I begged, I pleaded with Todd Gloria.
We want our neighborhood back.
We want our community,
our park, our bike path back.
It was less than useless.
It was a massive and stupefying
exercise in futility.
Todd Gloria governs by the
changing winds of social media.
Todd Gloria,
in our conversations,
prefaces every explanation with
this is not an excuse.
Then he goes on to make yet another excuse.
Todd Gloria likes to excuse his
failures by saying his San Diego
Police Department is understaffed.
What Todd does not point out
is that since he took office,
his oath to serve and protect
and to provide us with a safe,
secure,
healthy and clean environment to live,
work and play that there are
about 300 fewer officers on our
San Diego Police Department today
than when Todd Gloria took office.
And that many of those officers.
Have left because they can't
or won't work for Todd.
Gloria,
why can't we fill these official
and critical San Diego Police
Department positions?
People who want this honorable
profession and career,
they don't want to work for Todd Gloria.
Now Todd,
Gloria and his self-proclaimed Todd squad,
they love to run around our once
great city telling everyone
what a great job he's doing.
This is nonsensically absurd.
Are we to believe his hot
air or our own eyes?
Things are worse now than ever
before and our lives are being
dictated by an out of control
and unruly homeless population.
Every time I go out on my bike,
I'm threatened, chased,
attacked and assaulted by homeless people.
Our mail and deliveries are
stolen from our front door.
We are not able to move freely through
our neighborhood or Balboa Park.
This is not what we bought into in
our special compact with Todd Gloria.
I have asked Todd Gloria what
I can do to help.
I got no response.
I have asked Todd Gloria what he
was going to do to rectify this
horrific human tragedy and travesty.
I got no response.
I have asked Todd Gloria if he recommends
to me as a 69 year old disabled bike rider.
Should I carry tear gas? Pepper spray,
maybe a Taser for my own protection?
I got no response.
I have asked Todd Gloria for a tax rebate,
a tax credit and a reduction on my
future taxes because of his failures
to deliver the security and safety
that healthy and clean environments
that we have every right to expect.
I got no response.
Todd Gloria.
He has no problem whatsoever cleaning up
and then selling or leasing or renting
our public lands for his own benefit.
But try asking Todd Gloria to
provide us the people who live here.
And need our park St sidewalks and bike
paths for our everyday life and just
want to go to the park to ride our bikes,
to the beach, to walk in our neighborhoods,
to feel safe and secure in our
own homes and lives.
He's got no time, heart or stomach for that.
Because to time, Gloria, we don't count.
We don't matter and he doesn't care.
And what do we get?
We get glory of ill now.
The solution? We need new leadership.
Todd Gloria should step aside.
Todd Gloria campaigned for his job on the
promise that he would fix the homeless,
humanitarian and public health
crisis in our once great city.
Todd Gloria has made it worse.
He is not up to the job.
He does not know how to do the job.
He does not want to do the job.
Todd Gloria has been wrong on
these crises his entire career,
these crises.
We need a leader,
a leader who will insist on constant
engagement with the homeless population,
insist on consistent rehabilitation,
and be responsible for the
constant enforcement of the rules
of a functioning society.
We want the homeless population
off the streets, out of the parks,
off the sidewalks and bike paths.
Give them a life of dignity.
Give them the chance to build
their lives and their dreams.
These crises are not just going
to go away by themselves.
These are matters of equal protection,
equal enforcement,
common sense and human decency.
And all of these matters require
leadership and enforcement.
We have the resources,
we have the facilities,
we have huge numbers of people
who want to help to be shamrocks.
We have the historical precedent, precedent.
Years ago S Mission Beach,
Golden Hill disasters like we have today.
But with leadership and enforced regulations,
those neighborhoods have been reclaimed.
They've been restored and maintained
with regular and consistent enforcement.
It can be done, and it has to be done again.
Now. I started this quietly.
I thought that Todd Gloria would
see the light.
And that he would do the right thing.
I was mistaken and proven wrong.
Somehow, someway,
other people found out about my
behind the scenes efforts to save
our once great city.
My efforts have now intensified
and are now in the
public domain.
We are building coalitions of concerned
citizens and all the stakeholders who
share a love for our once great city.
And while my efforts are now public,
others have continued the quiet back
channel discussions and diplomacy
to solve these crises that are
failures of the human spirit.
I have been told by these intermediates
intermediaries that Todd Gloria
has stated that he is not going
to do anything about gloriavale,
about our bike paths,
about our sidewalks or about any of this.
This is absurd. This is insane.
This is a shipwreck.
I'm a patriot and I love my once great city.
Sadly, and with a broken heart,
I can no longer claim that San Diego
is the greatest place on Earth.
I can no longer urge family,
friends, tourists and businesses
to come and spend your lives here.
I can no longer recommend that people
should move to our runs great neighborhood
and join our once great community.
I can no longer say that this is my dream.
And I'm broken hearted.
Our friend and leader.
Fallen and passed now, Father Joe.
2 1/2 years ago.
And his scooter leaving his office,
his center downtown. The sidewalks.
The streets overrun,
dominated by homeless encampments
of incalculable size and measure.
Father Joe himself could not get
through on his scooter like me.
Father Joe disabled.
Father Joe tried to go around.
He couldn't.
He had to go over and off the curb.
While doing that, disabled Father Joe,
he tumbled and he fell and
he ended up in the gutter,
and he stayed in that gutter
filled with trash, with urine,
with feces, with human waste
of indescribable proportions.
And he laid there for 30 minutes
in the gutter by himself before
somebody came by to help him.
This is absurd. This is insane.
I want our parks back.
I want our streets paved and made usable.
I want our sidewalks and bike
paths to be used as intended.
And I want our lives back.
It's fitting and appropriate
that we're gathering here today
on the campus of USD at the
Institute for Peace and Justice.
I am well aware that without
justice there can be no peace.
And when historians look back at the
failed and brief tenure of Todd Gloria,
as our once great city crumbles,
dissolves, devolves these historians.
They'll rightly conclude.
That Todd Gloria, he had a chance.
He had a chance to make things right.
He had a chance to do something.
He had the platform.
He had the power.
He knew everything, yet he Todd
Gloria he chose Todd Gloria chose.
To do nothing.