BY MARIO A. CORTEZ
Introduced by San Diego Port Commissioner Dan Malcolm as being “the coolest Mayor in the country,” Serge Dedina gave his state of the city address to a capacity audience at the Boys and Girls Club Hall of Imperial Beach on Monday night. The mayor also presented awards to valuable members of the community and other local organizations which make a positive impact in the most southwesterly city in the continental United States.
Mayor Dedina took some time to speak with La Prensa San Diego about some of the most important improvements he has helped bring to Imperial Beach prior to taking the podium.
“The state of the city in Imperial Beach is absolutely awesome because we’ve been doing everything possible within our community to improve our quality of life. I’m really happy to announce a lot of improvements like improving alleys, sidewalks and street lights, in places that have been historically neglected. It’s my first year as mayor and we all had lots of work meeting a lot of promises,” Dedina said.
Imperial Beach has engaged in ambitious projects over the last couple of years. while the beachfront in Imperial Beach has gotten a makeover recently, the neighborhoods out in the east and along the bay have been underserved for decades. The Mayor spoke in regards to this subject.
“Now our challenges are now on the bayfront which has been historically neglected. Some of our biggest neighborhoods are there as well as a lot of families. Our goal is to improve that area. We are ripping out all the ugly fences there and we’re putting in a project called Bikeway Village to put a nice place for the community and visitors to hang out. We paved alleys and streets that were neglected for over 50 years and we also put streetlights there. They needed basic infrastructure in the eastern neighborhoods,” Mayor Dedina answered.
“I am really happy that we have made the most investments in areas where the most Latinos live. That is important to the city and people have been grateful for the investments in these historically neglected neighborhoods in Imperial Beach”, Dedina continued.
As for nature preservation, Dedina spoke of some efforts that the city has taken.
“We are working on sea level rise adaptation and were looking for ways to manage all the coastal flooding that’s projected to happen and finding how to preserve the wetlands. Most recently in the north part of the bay we approved a mid-range housing development that actually helped create more wetland habitat and provides Bayshore Bikeway access. “
Dedina highlighted that Imperial Beach has engaged in collaborations with neighboring cities and the Navy to better coordinate traffic and boost accessibility and promote alternative means of transportation.
“We are working with Councilman David Alvarez the City of Coronado and the Navy to really improve traffic flow on Palm Avenue. we are going to make [Palm Avenue] look a lot nicer and make it be pedestrian and bike friendly. We’re working w/ Caltrans to sync the lights on Palm avenue from SD and to Coronado. Also, with a new Navy base coming to the south end of Coronado it will be very important to get the Navy to help out.”
In regards to promoting cycling as a transportation option Mayor Dedina said “we are working with Greg Cox and SANDAG to really extend bikeways from the Bayshore Bikeway to the Tijuana Valley, San Ysidro and more importantly to the new border crossing on Virginia Avenue.”
From the podium, Serge Dedina spoke of other topics such as his efforts to clean up trash and other refuse in the community, efforts to bring affordable supermarkets to the city and the great steps taken to have as transparent government as possible.
Budget development and fiscal responsibilities were two major things that the mayor can boast about, having no audit irregularities in the 2015 fiscal year and a great amount of community involvement in developing the budget for the city.
With the objective of having another address full of good news in 2017, Imperial Beach and it’s mayor will keep on working to keep this beach city on a path of success and improvement.