Podiatrist in Mira Mesa, CA

State senators sent a letter to the California Insurance Commissioner urging immediate action.

SAN DIEGO — Walt Mooromsky is one of 240 condo owners in the Canyon Park Villas in Mira Mesa, who recently had their property insurance not renewed by Farmers Insurance due to wildfire risk.

The condos sit on a canyon ridge, but Mooromsky said the City of San Diego owns the canyon behind their homes.

“We've done some brush mitigation. We don't own very much, basically, at the fence line is the end of our property. We're not allowed to mitigate beyond that,” said Mooromsky.

Because the condos are connected, they require a master, $50 million property insurance policy to cover the entire complex.

The HOA had to go to the secondary insurance market and cobble together replacement insurance, resulting in a $2,500 special assessment on all 240 condo owners, just for this year.

“$2,500, it's not a drop in the bucket. So. There's a little bit of a shock,” said Mooromsky. “The best thing they could do for us was, well, if you can't pay it all at once, we'll set up a payment program for you with a 4% interest rate.”

The Mira Mesa condos are one of three local complexes recently cancelled by Farmers, including 320 condos in Tierrasanta and 338 units in in Rancho Bernardo.

CBS 8 has been working to find a solution. Now, state legislators are responding with a letter to the CA Insurance Commissioner.

Eighteen state senators signed on to the letter, dated February 6, 2023, requesting that the Commissioner immediately raise the maximum amount of coverage allowed under the state's safety-net insurance plan (called the FAIR Plan) “from the current level of $8.4 million to at least $20 million.”

For condo owners in San Diego, those long-term solutions can't come soon enough.

“This can feed homelessness. I mean, there are people who are just making it by owning a condominium. And, if you're going to hike the dues up that much, they can't handle that,” said Mooromsky, the condo owner in Mira Mesa.

Farmers Insurance did not respond to CBS 8’s request for comment.

Toni Atkins, California’s Senate President Pro Tem, emailed the following statement to CBS 8:

“Climate change is taking a toll on our state and now, with the risks to life and property more intense than ever, it’s also impacting California’s insurance market, including here in San Diego. With homeowners struggling to find and maintain home insurance – especially residents of condominiums and HOAs in high fire-risk areas throughout the state – my Senate colleagues and I are urging Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara to use his existing authority to increase coverage limits under the California FAIR Plan as an interim fix to help residents, while we also work on identifying longer-term solutions. A healthy insurance marketplace is essential to protecting our homes and not exacerbating our state’s housing crisis – we will continue to explore every option available.”

The office of the State Insurance Commissioner emailed CBS 8 the following statement:

"Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara appreciates the Legislature’s support of his continued efforts to modernize the FAIR Plan to meet new challenges. The Commissioner has a long history of taking actions to ensure California consumers have greater access to insurance. In November 2021, the Commissioner ordered the FAIR Plan to implement his mandated increases to its decades-old commercial property coverage limits offered to businesses, which increased the combined coverage limits for the FAIR Plan, under its Division I Commercial Property Program, from $4.5 million to $8.4 million and, under its Division II Businessowners Program, from $3.6 million to $7.2 million.

Insurance is about safety and, hearing from homeowners and businesses, we are creating lasting solutions to protect Californians from climate change. Expanded coverage options for HOAs and community associations including a stronger FAIR Plan is a top priority for my new term. Thank you @SenToniAtkins and @CASenateDems for your continued support. We have to hold insurance companies accountable to covering Californians. We want them to be part of the solution, not the problem, and work with us to protect homeowners and businesses.”

Insurance is about safety and, hearing from homeowners and businesses, we are creating lasting solutions to protect Californians from climate change. Expanded coverage options for HOAs and community associations including a stronger FAIR Plan is a top priority for my new term. 1/

— Ricardo Lara (@ICRicardoLara) February 9, 2023

Thank you @SenToniAtkins and @CASenateDems for your continued support. We have to hold insurance companies accountable to covering Californians. We want them to be part of the solution, not the problem, and work with us to protect homeowners and businesses. 2/2

— Ricardo Lara (@ICRicardoLara) February 9, 2023

WATCH RELATED: Farmers cancel insurance for 338 homes in Rancho Bernardo (Feb. 2023).

Fans and followers of Richard Blais now have another spot to visit with the opening of California English, where the celeb chef who’s called San Diego home for a decade now is putting his SoCal perspective on some of the UK’s best-known culinary hits.

The new Sorrento Mesa restaurant, which opens Thursday, February 2, is a project that’s been in his back pocket for many years, further encouraged by a honeymoon trip to London and the discovery that he’s more than half genetically British.

The chef’s favorite football club is also based in London, where Blais spent over a month researching his menu, which he says is more grounded in simple, proper cooking than around the high-concept, modernist techniques he’s most known for.

Created in partnership with Longfellow Real Estate Partners and located at Longfellow’s Biovista development at the corner of Mira Mesa Boulevard and Scranton Road, California English will function as an amenity for the life sciences complex, with catering and grab-and-go options for its on-site biotech workers. Still, Blais told Eater over a phone call that he’s fully intending for the 6,000-square-foot space to bring in a dining audience from beyond its campus confines.

The all-day offerings include a mash-up of SoCal staple avocado toast with the British breakfast of beans on toast, as well as a Cornish pasty filled with oxtail and bone marrow, savory scones served with clotted cream and kumquat marmalade, and a salad version of the traditional ploughman’s lunch. Other UK specialties include Blais’ take on the ultimate fish and chips and chicken tikka masala, widely considered Britain’s national dish.

A real-deal roast dinner, typically consumed in British households on Sundays, will be available all weekend here as a pre-ordered family meal featuring prime rib with Yorkshire pudding and all the fixings.

Blais, the co-host of ‘Next Level Chef’ on FOX, will oversee California English while still supervising his Carlsbad steakhouse Ember & Rye. Telling Eater that he’s still interested in creating more restaurants in San Diego, he’s currently planning an ocean-view rooftop restaurant with Longfellow that’ll be opening nearby at the company’s Bioterra campus.

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9276 Scranton Road , San Diego, CA 92121

The largest Taiwanese dumpling maker, Bafang Dumpling, has confirmed to Eater that it will be opening its first San Diego restaurant at the Village at Mira Mesa before the end of the year. Its corner storefront will be part of the retail center’s new expansion area (where Crumbl Cookies is already located) near the intersection of Mira Mesa Boulevard and Reagan Road.

After conquering Asia, where it has nearly 1,300 locations in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China and sells 1.2 billion dumplings each year, Bafang is setting its sights on growing its U.S. market with ambitions to make it bigger than its Hong Kong presence.

Bafang founder Jiayu Lin was a struggling mechanic while his wife was a math teacher who had students coming to their home for tutoring where they made potstickers for the kids, a popular afternoon snack, before buckling down to study. The first Bafang Dumpling restaurant opened in 1998, expanded to Hong Kong in 2008, and launched in China in 2014. Last year, the company went public on the Taiwanese stock market.

Ringing in at 3,000-square-feet, the San Diego restaurant “will be bigger than our City of Industry restaurant with more seating since we’ll have more space,” Stephanie Peng, CEO of Bafang Yunji North America, told Eater over a phone call. The chain made its stateside debut in March 2022 with a restaurant in the San Gabriel Valley and opened a second SoCal store last month in Chino Hills. “Our team is really excited. It’s such a great area and great community. We’re happy that Mira Mesa will be home to our first store in San Diego,” said Peng.

The menu will be the same as the Los Angeles area outposts, featuring specialties like its signature boiled dumplings filled with pork and cabbage, corn and chicken, or kimchi and pork, as well as the Bafang pork chop, a popular Taiwanese breaded pork cutlet. Other favorites include griddle-fried potstickers, Taiwanese beef noodle soup, and old-fashioned noodles, which are bouncy QQ noodles dressed with soy sauce and shallot oil. Drinks range from boba tea to mango soy milk.

There are also combo meals, which include iced lemon black tea or a cup of hot and sour soup, corn chowder soup, or mini wonton soup. “The combinations are easy for the customers to sample what our specialties are,” said Peng.

“We want to be able to offer authentic Taiwanese comfort food, like potstickers, dumplings, and noodles. Our aim is to deliver high-quality food that’s easy and convenient at affordable pricing,” said Peng. “We hope to go in offering a different style of food than burgers, pizzas, and tacos.”

While its North American headquarters and central kitchen will remain based in Irvine, Bafang has set a goal of opening 10 more U.S. stores by the end of 2023. “We’re vigorously expanding, focusing on Southern California because of its diversity,” added Peng.

While 85 percent of their stores in Asia are franchised, the first batch of U.S. Bafang restaurants is all corporate-owned. There will be opportunities for franchisees to expand across the country as Bafang establishes firm footing on this side of the Pacific.

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9690 Reagan Road Suite 104, San Diego, CA 92126

Climate advocates say the plan approved by City Council in January fails to include a meaningful attempt to shift commuters out of their car

By MacKenzie Elmer, the Voice of San Diego

February 21, 2023

Enough with the cars. That’s the message of climate advocates to city officials, regarding a community plan for one of the city’s fastest-growing suburban job centers.

Some of the region’s highest-profile climate advocates say San Diego shouldn’t allow Mira Mesa to continue growing without addressing the huge number of greenhouse-gas producing car commutes it draws.

The Coastal Environmental Rights Foundation, or CERF, notified the city earlier this month of its intent to sue over an update to the Mira Mesa community plan. These plans dictate how neighborhoods are permitted to grow. Most crucially, the plans are supposed to be in line with Mayor Todd Gloria’s renewed commitments to slashing planet-warming gasses known as the Climate Action Plan, approved in the fall of 2021.

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Climate advocates at CERF say the Mira Mesa plan, approved by City Council in January, doesn’t get the job done. The plan update fails to include a meaningful attempt to shift commuters out of their cars and into public transit like buses or trolley lines, CERF’s lawsuit alleges.

As one of the city’s northernmost neighborhoods, Mira Mesa draws a huge amount of daily car commuters to its technology job hubs, headquarters and business parks. A presentation on Mira Mesa’s plan from the city Planning Department shows over 90 percent of commuters travel to Mira Mesa by personal automobile. The proposed plan, the department showed, aims to slash that to 71 percent by adding more walkways, bikeways and some public transit.

But CERF says that’s not enough to meet Gloria’s own standards – laid out in his Climate Action Plan.

Gloria’s Climate Action Plan commits the city to shifting 50 percent of car commutes to either walking, cycling or public transit. Mira Mesa’s plan should aim to reach at least the Climate Action Plan’s goals as well, CERF alleges.

“If this commuting pattern continues in Mira Mesa and other job-heavy suburban areas in San Diego County … the (Climate Action Plan) 2035 target of 50 percent non-auto (commute) will be unattainable even if all auto trips are eliminated in downtown San Diego and other core planning areas,” the lawsuit reads.

Gloria’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment last week.

CERF’s lawsuit pointed back to over a dozen other community plan updates the city approved in years past that also failed to meet transit-based climate targets under a softer-handed Climate Action Plan passed in 2015. Then, the city’s goal was to cut half its greenhouse gas emissions by 2035. Fossil fuel-burning transportation was by far the biggest source of emissions in San Diego then, at about 55 percent.

Mira Mesa’s is the first to be approved under Gloria’s renewed Climate Action Plan passed in August, which commits the city to reach net zero emissions by 2035. (Net zero means the city would strike a balance between cutting as many emissions as the city generates and rely on technologies to make up the rest when it can’t.) Transportation still accounts for the majority of greenhouse gas emissions in San Diego.

When asked why CERF didn’t sue the city on any of the previous community plans, attorney Livia Borak Beaudin said the organization chose to wait to see what Gloria’s administration would come up with for their renewed climate commitments.

“If a new plan was coming forward, we were concerned the city would say, ‘don’t worry, we’ll fix this with a new plan,’” Borak Beaudin said. “That’s why it was such a let down when we finally saw this new Climate Action Plan has all these great goals, but there’s no roadmap to get there.”

CERF is involved in another lawsuit against the city – filed jointly with the Climate Action Campaign – over the lack of an adequate roadmap which commits the city to cutting greenhouse gasses on an actual timeline with dedicated money.

The City Attorney’s Office had no comment in response to the lawsuit Thursday.

Another way Mira Mesa’s proposed plan attempts to limit car commuting is adding more housing to the neighborhood than jobs – the idea being if more people lived near these growing job centers, car commutes would at least be shorter or even swapped for greener options like transit. The proposed plan sets a target of 24,000 new homes in Mira Mesa and 5,000 new jobs. Mira Mesa’s older plan called for almost the opposite – 7,200 new homes and 27,000 new jobs.

Still, the total number of homes created would be half the number of jobs, said Norman Marshall, a transportation planning consultant at Smart Mobility hired by CERF to study the Mira Mesa plan in a letter to Borak Beaudin.

“If these workplaces are constructed in the same outdated auto-oriented patterns of the past, this will dig the city into a deeper hole relative to achieving its (transit) goals,” Marshall wrote.

Correction: A previous version of this story misstated when the Climate Action Plan was last updated. It was approved in 2022.

Voice of San Diego is a nonprofit news organization supported by our members. We reveal why things are the way they are and expose facts that people in power might not want out there and explain complex local public policy issues so you can be engaged and make good decisions. Sign up for our newsletters at voiceofsandiego.org/newsletters/.

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (February 23, 2023) – USA Volleyball is proud to announce the 18 athletes selected for the 2023 Boys U19 NORCECA Continental Championship Roster.

Twelve players from this group will be chosen to compete at the 2023 NORCECA Boys U19 Continental Championship on March 11-19 in Guatemala City, Guatemala. The team will train on March 5-10 at the Anaheim National Team Training Center.

The 2023 NORCECA Boys U19 Continental Championship is a qualifier for the 2025 FIVB U19 Boys World Championship.

U.S. Men’s National Team Assistant Coach Matt Fuerbringer will serve as head coach for the Boys U19 Team. Kevin Moore and Daniele Desiderio will assist Fuerbringer. U.S. Men’s Performance Analyst Nate Ngo will serve that role for the Boys U19 Team.

Six players on the 2023 Boys U19 roster return from the 2022 team that won the Boys U19 Pan American Cup (the first U.S. team to win the event) and qualified for the 2023 FIVB U19 Boys World Championship: outside hitters Sterling Foley, Sean Kelly and Victor Loiola, setter Tread Rosenthal, opposite Finn Kearney and libero Kellen Larson.

Kelly was named MVP of the Pan American Cup and Best Spiker. Rosenthal earned Best Setter. Kearney was named Best Server and Larson took Best Digger and Best Receiver.

Three other players were alternates on the 2022 Boys U19 Team: outside hitter Cole Hartke, middle Josh Aruya and setter Trent Taliaferro.

Other players on the 2023 roster are outside hitters Kahale Clini and Sebastiano Sani, middle blockers Trevell Jordan, Isaiah Preuitt, Parker Tomkinson and Gaige Gabriel, setter Peter Zurawski, opposite Marek Turner and libero Roan Alviar.

The 2023 Boys U19 Continental Championship was a late addition to the NORCECA calendar and USA Volleyball thanks the players who agreed to be a part of this team along with their families.

The Boys U19 Team roster for the 2023 FIVB World Championship (Aug. 4-13 in Argentina) will be determined later this year.

2023 U.S. Boys U19 NORCECA Continental Championship Roster

Player (Pos., Height, Birth Year, Hometown, School, USAV Region) Roan Alviar (L, 5-11, 2006, Hayward, Calif., Bishop O’Dowd HS, Northern California) Josh Aruya (MB, 6-7, 2005, Mission Viejo, Calif., Mission Viejo HS, Southern California) Kahale Clini (OH, 6-3, 2005, Honolulu, Hawaii, Punahou School, Aloha) Sterling Foley (OH, 6-6, 2005, Newport Beach, Calif., Corona del Mar HS, Southern California) Gaige Gabriel (MB, 6-8, 2005, Birdsboro, Pa., Exeter Township HS, Keystone) Cole Hartke (OH, 6-10, 2006, Barrington, Ill., Barrington HS, Great Lakes) Trevell Jordan (MB, 6-8, 2006, Mesa, Ariz., Desert Ridge HS, Arizona) Finn Kearney (Opp, 6-5, 2006, Phoenix, Ariz., Sandra Day O’Connor HS, Arizona) Sean Kelly (OH, 6-6, 2005, Manhattan Beach, Calif., Loyola HS, Southern California) Kellen Larson (L, 5-10, 2005, Irvine, Calif., Woodbridge HS, Southern California) Victor Loiola (OH, 6-4, 2005, Manhattan Beach, Calif., Mira Costa HS, Southern California) Isaiah Preuitt (MB, 6-8, 2005, Portland, Ore., Central Catholic HS, Columbia Empire) Tread Rosenthal (S, 6-7, 2006, Manhattan Beach, Calif., Mira Costa HS, Southern California) Sebastiano Sani (OH, 6-8, 2005, Bethesda, Md., Walter Johnson HS, Chesapeake) Trent Taliaferro (S, 6-4, 2005, San Clemente, Calif., JSerra Catholic HS, Southern California) Parker Tomkinson (MB, 6-10, 2006, Carlsbad, Calif., Carlsbad HS, Southern California) Marek Turner (Opp, 6-5, 2006, Long Beach, Calif., Woodrow Wilson HS, Southern California) Peter Zurawski (S, 6-6, 2005, Oak Park, Ill., Oak Park River Forest HS, Great Lakes)

Head Coach: Matt Fuerbringer Assistant Coaches: Kevin Moore and Daniele Desiderio Performance Analyst: Nate Ngo Athletic Trainer: Cheryl Bueno Team Leader: Cody Liner