EscInd: Weekly Action Plan for February 13, 2023
Welcome to Escondido Indivisible’s weekly action plan for February 13, 2023! Pick an action or two and commit yourself to doing them. As President Obama said in his farewell speech: Believe in your ability to bring change. Show up, dive in, stay at it.
Events
- Wednesday, February 15, 2023, 5:00 PM: Escondido City Council Meeting at City Hall Council Chambers, 201 North Broadway, Escondido, CA 92025. Agenda includes a Library Board of Trustees Annual Presentation, Item #12 on City Homelessness Response and Item #13 on an agreement with Interfaith to operate “a low-barrier, emergency shelter in Escondido for families experiencing homelessness”. Live broadcast of the meeting will be at escondido.org here. Public comments may be made via Public Comment Form.
Homelessness
- Read-up on What the Point-in-Time Count Revealed About North County Homelessness.
- Comment on Escondido City Council Meeting Agenda Item #12 on City Homelessness Response and/or Item #13 on an agreement with Interfaith to operate “a low-barrier, emergency shelter in Escondido for families experiencing homelessness”. This shelter in Ash Street is expected to provide 36 beds and is in addition to Interfaith’s emergency shelter Haven House with 49 beds so Escondido will have ~85 shelter beds total. To note, Escondido has 182 unsheltered people and 429 total people experiencing homelessness counted last year in 2022 Point-in-Time. Escondido spent $2.05 millions last year to address homelessness (maybe ~1-2% of city budget): $60,000 for city staff activities such as applying for grant funding and management of, $643,000 for Public Works Department activities such as debris cleanup and damage repair, and $1.4 millions (68%) on Escondido Police Community Oriented Policing and Problem Solving (COPPS) activities such as homelessness enforcement. From the EPD report (emphasis ours): “26 individuals were helped through [connections to addiction and mental illness treatments while] 12 of those 26 individuals remain in treatment or are incarcerated and no longer posing a threat to themselves or our community”. Escondido received $10.24 millions in funding to actually provide community-based homelessness services of which $1.2 millions are allocated to emergency shelters.
- Contact the Escondido City Council and ask them to do more to address the immediate needs of our community, such as, creating a Safe Parking Program similar to Encinitas and Vista and a Homeless Outreach and Mobile Engagement similar to La Mesa. North County had “only 150 shelter beds entirely” last year vs. “about 2,000 individuals experiencing homelessness just in North County”.
Federal Budget
- Read-up on Republicans say they won't cut Social Security. So why does it keep coming up? (see The New G.O.P. Takes the Country Hostage with the Debt Ceiling) and ‘No light at the other end’: Impending loss of pandemic CalFresh boosts [due to federal “emergency allotments” cutoff] could trigger hunger spike.
- Read-up on National indivisible’s Legislative Process 101: The Debt Ceiling.
- Contact Representative Issa, Representative Peters, Senator Feinstein and Senator Padilla and express support for a clean debt ceiling increase. See Support a Clean Debt Ceiling Increase, Tell Your Democratic Representative to Fight MAGA Extremism and Tell Your Republican House Representative You Oppose their Extreme Agenda.
Voting Rights
- Read-up on California proposal would reinstate prisoners' voting rights and States Push for New Voting Laws With an Eye Toward 2024.
- Contact Assemblymember Maienschein and State Senator Jones and ask them to support ACA-4 to “reinstate voting rights to people in prison on felony convictions”.
- Contact Representative Issa, Representative Peters, Senator Feinstein and Senator Padilla and urge them to pass legislation to restore and strengthen the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Escondido Indivisible is a grassroots group dedicated to affecting changes in our local community. Our website is at EscondidoIndivisible.com. Send us links and comments at EscondidoIndivisible50@gmail.com. And feel free to forward our newsletter to interested parties! If you were forwarded this letter, you can subscribe here, and check the archive here.
Don't miss what's next. Subscribe to Escondido Indivisible: