2025 State of the City Address: San Diego City Council Meeting (January 22, 2025)
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2025 State of the City Address
The San Diego City Council convened on January 22, 2025, for the annual State of the City Address delivered by Mayor Todd Gloria. Council President Joe LaCava presided over the meeting, with all nine councilmembers present.
The program featured a StoryCorps oral history presentation, followed by formal council proceedings.
StoryCorps Oral History Presentation
- The event began with a series of recordings from StoryCorps, produced in partnership with the City of San Diego. Residents shared personal stories about growing up in San Diego, community resilience (including the 2003 Cedar Fire), the impacts of gentrification, and the experiences of immigrant and border communities.
- A StoryCorps representative stated the recordings would be archived at the Library of Congress and on the city's website to preserve the diverse voices of the community.
Consent Calendar
- No consent calendar items were considered during this part of the meeting.
Public Comments & Testimony
- Council President LaCava noted that public comment on the State of the City item was taken during the 2:00 p.m. session of the council meeting, prior to the evening's formal ceremonies.
Mayor Gloria's State of the City Address
- Budget and Fiscal Outlook: Mayor Gloria devoted much of his address to the city's $258 million budget deficit, which represents about 12% of its $2.1 billion operating budget, a consequence of the defeat of Measure E. He declared the city must permanently "right-size" its budget without gimmicks. Immediate actions include a non-essential hiring freeze, a comprehensive review of office leases, and a directive for all departments to build budgets from a zero base.
- Public Safety: The Mayor reported crime reductions: homicides down 30%, sexual assaults down 12%, robberies down 10%, and car thefts down 20%. The city's emergency services responded to a record 188,000 calls last year.
- Infrastructure: The city has resurfaced a quarter of its road network in the last four years, and the city's credit rating was raised from AA to A+ in June.
- Housing: The Mayor championed housing reforms, stating the city permitted 10,000 homes in 2023 and 8,500 in 2024, far exceeding the historical average of 4,300. Average permit review time is eight days against a 30-day mandate. He announced a new program to incentivize "starter homes" (row homes, townhomes, condos) for first-time buyers. The city has invested $90 million creating nearly 2,000 affordable apartments across the city, and the Home Key program has secured over 600 homes.
- Homelessness: The Mayor stated city programs have served over 25,000 people and placed 4,700 into housing. The Mayor strongly criticized the County of San Diego for failing to provide adequate behavioral health services, stating the city cannot solve the regional crisis alone. He demanded the State of California either clear encampments on Caltrans property or fully reimburse the city to do so, declaring "enough is enough."
Key Outcomes
- No formal votes were taken during this address. It served as the annual formal communication from the Mayor to the City Council on the state of the city and set the agenda for the upcoming year.
- Mayor Gloria committed to solving the structural budget deficit in the current fiscal year without one-time measures.
- The administration pledged to continue aggressive housing production and to pressure the county and state for greater responsibility in addressing homelessness and mental health.
Meeting Transcript
Luxury in Southern California. The neighbors had orange trees that had oranges that were dropping on the ground. The other thing was just the pace of life. San Diego at the time was a large city, but it felt like a small town. People would go to the grocery store and hold a conversation with the clerk at the checkout. I just wonder how many of the things that made you fall in love with San Diego still hold true today. One of the things that made me fall in love with it that hasn't changed is the quality of the light, you know, that concept of the golden hour. So the light at dawn and the light at dusk in Southern California. That's spectacular. But your formative years were in San Diego. So your experience has been very different from mine. You go to college in a different part of the country, and then you've been abroad. Can you share what you missed about San Diego and what you didn't miss? When I was younger, I didn't like San Diego. And then in high school, having more freedom and mobility changed that a bit. But I always knew that I wanted to go to college out of state. Going to Iowa, I think gave me a really interesting perspective on California. And then these last few months traveling around Europe really has given me a fresh perspective on the United States, the way it works, the way that people live and the way that I conduct my life here. That's the beauty of travel. Yeah. You're seeing everything with a beginner's mindset for a little bit. But that wears off unless you cultivate it. I think it's also the understanding that multiple truths can exist at the same time. Your home city can have beautiful things about it that draw you home and you have memories there that people can't take away, but it's also far from perfect. I've been trying to get myself to approach San Diego in the same way that I approached all of the places that I visited. I went for a walk in our old neighborhood, and I just took the time to enjoy all of the flowers and all of the houses that I'd walked past hundreds of times that had faded into the background a little bit. And yeah, it was lovely. And I'm happy to be in San Diego, especially with the people I love. He pointed it at us and shot at us. Some of my other friends just kind of docked. Like I remember my heartbeat and breathing really hard, my friends screaming and crying. And then all of a sudden, cop cars were already there. Luckily, my one friend who did get hit by the ricochang bullet survived. You know, we're all alive to tell the story today. I grew up in Childe Vista, one of the communities where people from your community would flee too. Right. Even though it was separated by maybe three miles. My childhood was a lot different from yours. Running around in the canyons and playing out all day and being goofy kids, not dodging bullets. The day after that happened, my mom wanted to move. But my dad was like, no, this is home. This is where we're going to stay. No one's gonna run us out of our own community. And that stuck with me because I think for people who grew up in certain communities is that you just want to get out. But I challenged that and I think, well, no, what if we stay? Uh-huh. And what if we work towards making the community better? When it happened, I saw a couple of neighbors close their doors. They shut their blinds and they just stayed inside. Nobody came outside to make sure we were okay.
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