On Feb. 4, San Diego County Supervisor Vice Chair Nora Vargas held a virtual The First Friday Breakfast townhall-styled discussion about 2021 accomplishments and 2022 priorities for District 1 and the San Diego Region. The town hall was hosted by Chula Vista Chamber of Commerce CEO Michael Monaco and Laura Munoz Humphreys, regional executive director for the Border View YMCA and the South Bay YMCA, along with the City of Chula Vista.
Vargas said after one year in office, the Board of Supervisors wrapped up a challenging and productive year. She said much of the work was mitigating the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, and “championed” new polices.
Vargas said she represents 650,000 people, and with the district boundary changes, she lost Coronado and Point Loma, but now also represents Spring Valley and La Presa and parts of San Diego.
“In total, we passed 41 equality centered policies, attended hundreds of community meetings and roundtables, and elevated significant issues that impacted our community,” she said. “In the past 12 months we deployed equity minded initiatives to help keep our communities safe. Today, I am proud to say due to those interventions, 80% of San Diego’s eligible population has been fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Even in the south region, which covers most of District 1, 90% are fully vaccinated.”
Vargas said with the Omicron spike, they extended to 33 sites to meet new testing needs to meet the needs of the community. She said with the state requiring masks for everyone until Feb. 15, that the County should follow suit and make its recommendations.
“I do want to emphasize that this mask mandate for indoor settings is expiring, certain industries such as healthcare settings and schools will continue to require will continue the use of face masks for indoor settings. For the last few days, we have seen a decline in COVID cases and hopefully that trend continues.”
Vargas said with home testing becoming more widely available, they are working with the state to develop a mechanism to capture at home testing results. She said she believes that at home testing is skewing the data and that they are trying to find out how to continue to monitor it.
“Whatever implements are imposed, I want to make sure that it is serving our communities, the well being of our frontline workers,” she said. “Employees in our community is a part of the bigger picture in our recovery.”
In economic prosperity, Vargas said the BOS has worked on funding local businesses during the pandemic, adopted a $7.23 billion budget, allocated more than $700,000 in small business grants, allocated over $60 million from the American Rescue Plan, and awarded more than $6 million in District 1. She said that there is still money available, so businesses should reach out to see the programs for which they are available. Vargas said last year, the BOS introduced an initiative for the creation of the first Office of Economic Prosperity Community Development and is excited to see what it will look like.
“We are the safety net for our communities, but I also want us to be innovators and support our communities as we try to think about how our communities are building wealth. Surviving and thriving,” she said. “We directed the county to explore more funding opportunities at the state and local level to identify economic emergency stimulus loans to support businesses that are unique to our binational workforce. I think we are in a very advantageous position as a border region.”
Vargas said passing the pilot program for Microenterprise Home Kitchen Operations allows people to infuse new funding for many people who have not had access to healthy foods.
Vargas said housing is one of the largest problems communities have faced due to the pandemic and wanted to talk about this because it was an item of contention.
“Many families were being displaced and we introduced the strongest initiative of moratorium in the history of the county for our residents in the midst of the pandemic,” she said. “It was not everyone’s favorite initiative, but I will tell you something. It was a way to ensure that we did not have additional folks that were left unsheltered in our communities. We also secured $211 million for assistance to ensure that those folks who owned the properties were able to get the assistance that they needed.”
Vargas said at looking forward in 2022, housing for all is extremely important to her, food security must be a priority, assessable transportation, health equity, and climate justice are prominent issues the county is working on.
