Daily Business Report: May 8, 2026
At Our Peril: Ignoring the Canary in the Coal Mine of Arts and Culture Defunding
By Linda Caballero Sotelo | Voice of San Diego
Over a recent phone conversation, a friend conveyed her sense of disillusionment with how cities are being managed. The expression “tone-deaf” came up, and that warnings are all around us. Across the United States, cities are making budget decisions that reveal far more than their fiscal priorities. They reveal their values, their imagination, and their sense of responsibility to future generations.
In San Diego, the mayor’s proposed budget would virtually eliminate nearly the entire $12 million arts and culture budget, effectively dismantling the cultural ecosystem of educational organizations filling the gaps for student art education-based programming, artist support to produce works that attracts visitors and creates a livable and forward city to enjoy, visit and invest in. An ecosystem that extends across borders and has taken decades to build.
San Diego Unified Created a System to ‘Empower’ Parents. It Unraveled
By Jakob McWhinney | Voice of San Diego
In late 2010, San Diego Unified leaders began officially rolling out a new way to get parents and families more involved in schools. It was called the cluster council system.
The term cluster referred to the collection of elementary and middle schools that fed into each of the 16 traditional high schools open at the time. This new system created a group for each cluster comprised of parents, teachers and administrators that met regularly to weigh in on the direction of schools and discuss their problems.
‘Wreck Alley’ off Mission Beach is a premier West Coast dive spot
by Karen Pearlman | Special for Times of San Diego
Just past the breaking waves, roughly two miles west of Belmont Park’s Giant Dipper roller coaster, the sandy ocean floor resembles an underwater desert.
For divers, the area off Mission Beach known as Wreck Alley holds the key to life-affirming and haunting findings.
Beneath the emerald haze of the Pacific Ocean, divers encounter massive looming silhouettes. The vast underwater desert is a graveyard of intentionally sunken ships that serves as a premier West Coast dive spot.
