Dear Bonnie,
You’re killing me!
No sooner do I finish letting the editor at Vanity Fair have a piece of my mind (no magazine calls us “a sputtering neon error of beauty academies and pawn shops” and gets away with it) then I open the daily newspaper and read about your people raiding the homes of local school board members.
As the San Diego County district attorney you have a lot on your plate. And, with your campaign for mayor of San Diego about to hit second gear (how’s that going by the way?), you probably have a lot on your mind. But c’mon, Bon-Bon, did you have to unleash the hounds in South Bay again?
I was just starting to feel like we got past Forbes.com’s contention three years ago that we were one of the most boring cities in the country. (Did you happen to make it to our centennial celebration at the Olympic Training Center? Even that dunderhead hack at The Star-News told me the party was “f-ing awesome.”)
Anyway, I was still enjoying the centennial afterglow when that know-nothing Vanity Fair writer spouted off about Chula Vista being a border town with lots of beauty academies and rampaging narco terrorists.
You know how the media can be — mountains out of molehills and speaking from ignorance.
Even though the handful of hair salons and quinceañera dress shops on Third Avenue might seem like a lot of beauty academies and pawn shops, they’re not! They just have a lot in common.
So not only do I have to contend with that negative portrayal of my city, now I have to deal with the perception that the South Bay is a hotbed of political corruption — again!
Remember not too long ago, when your Public Integrity Unit indicted our councilman Steve Castaneda? While he was ultimately found not guilty, overall I think it left people in the rest of the county looking at us sideways. (Though I guess in your favor you did nail that one former Steve Padilla aide for, what was it, oh yeah, contempt of court.)
And it certainly doesn’t help our image when our police chief is perceived as being involved with two business ventures that seemed a little hinky. Or that drunk driving cop who cheats at cards. But now your raids? Bon-Bon, you’re killing me.
With double digit unemployment, an understaffed City Hall (except for our new communications manager), a power plant that won’t go away and a competing university project from the local high school district, I have enough to worry about.
All I’m asking is, next time you go looking for public corruption, can’t you look elsewhere? How’s Escondido doing these days?
Sincerely,
Cheryl
