Marni von Wilpert reflects on first year on San Diego City Council

Councilwoman Marni von Wilpert presents a certificate to Lei Zhou at RB's Hats Off to Volunteers ceremony.

Dec. 13, 2021 12:54 PM PT

To say San Diego City Councilwoman Marni von Wilpert’s first year representing District 5 has been nothing like she anticipated would be an understatement.

“I haven’t even been on the dais once since we’ve been on Zoom for the City Council (meetings),” von Wilpert said. “We’ve all been in the same boat, being on Zoom for school and work. It has been quite a unique experience not working with my colleagues in person.”

Friday is the first anniversary of her being sworn into office to represent Rancho Bernardo and other District 5 neighborhoods in the city’s north inland area.

“COVID aside, it has been an incredible opportunity to serve my hometown and reconnect with my peers from where I grew up,” she said.

Von Wilpert, 38, lives in Scripps Ranch, the same community where she was raised. With friends at Scripps Ranch and Rancho Bernardo high schools, and having her first job as a teen at a Carmel Mountain Ranch restaurant, von Wilpert said during community events throughout the district this past year she has seen many people she knew years earlier.

“Reconnecting with these folks has been amazing,” she said.

The council seat is her first elected office, though she came in with some familiarity of how the city operates due to being a deputy city attorney from 2018 until her election in 2020. Despite this knowledge, von Wilpert said she was surprised by the amount of information she has to read and comprehend quickly on a wide variety of issues.

“I learned to quickly rely on my staff,” von Wilpert said, adding she is enjoying the challenge.

When asked about accomplishments during her first year, von Wilpert said she is most proud of the ghost gun ordinance she authored that as of October banned non-serialized untraceable firearms within the city.

With her legal background, public safety is among her top priorities, she said.

“It was the first law I drafted as a City Council member where I was able to see a campaign promise come to fruition,” she said. “We are one of the first cities in the nation (with this law). It is fantastic.”

Another accomplishment she mentioned was her work as a co-chair of the city’s COVID-19 Response and Recovery Committee. Issues it has addressed varied from reviving the tourism economy to getting financial assistance to residents behind on their rent so their landlords are paid and the renters not evicted. She said it was important for landlords to get 100 percent of back rent paid instead of the initial plan for 80 percent through a mix of state and federal funding assistance.

Von Wilpert said more than $100 million in rental assistance — all of the city’s allocation — has been dispersed, with more than 33,000 applications for rent relief processed.

Despite these accomplishments, von Wilpert said she has other issues that are being continued into her second year. This list includes road repairs in Rancho Bernardo on streets such as Paseo del Verano and Azucar Way. Like her predecessor, Mark Kersey, von Wilpert chairs the council’s Active Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

“I wish I was able to push for repairs sooner and faster,” she said. “(Now) there is money from the state, but a lot is for backlogged infrastructure needs we have to get done.” These include aging water mains that continue to break throughout the city as happened recently in the downtown area.

“One of my learning curves has been on how important city infrastructure is and the backlog to fix it,” she said. “It is more expensive to use emergency funding than bid out (on these projects) ahead of time.”

Another of her goals for year two is to address nicotine addiction in teens based on information she is hearing from schools and parents in Poway Unified and San Diego Unified school districts. (Her District 5 communities have campuses in both school districts.)

Von Wilpert said she is also looking forward to having more in-person interactions with her constituents. Because of the pandemic many of the typical meetings and interactions have been moved to the virtual realm, but there have been some outdoor events in recent months where she has met with people outdoors.

San Diego City Councilwoman Marni von Wilpert, Paisley Huezo and her grandfather, San Diego Police Capt. Mike Holden.

“I really enjoyed how the citizens of Rancho Bernardo have adapted their Hats Off ceremony,” she said.

Other RB events were created to replace long-standing ones that could not happen, such as a small parade held in RB Community Park to celebrate Independence Day since the Spirit of the Fourth Parade was canceled for the second year.

“The Rancho Bernardo community has stepped up to help the city,” she said. “There has been a real severe shortage in Parks and Recreation, so it is not putting on its events. The Rancho Bernardo Community Council has stepped up and put on one of the best Halloween events in the city (this year).”

“I am proud of the district’s sense of neighborhood and being safe,” she said. “I am hoping we can move on from COVID, with (cases) getting better as more are vaccinated. It will be great to get back to normal in city business.”

As for other goals, von Wilpert said they include public safety issues, especially pertaining to fire protection. Von Wilpert said she pushed for all three of the city’s firefighting helicopters to be funded so the department has the resources it needs to quickly extinguish blazes so they do not turn into wildfires that burn neighborhoods as happened in District 5 during 2003 and 2007. This meant restoring $350,000 in funding in the fiscal year 2022 budget to maintain Helicopter 1. The investment pays off she said, mentioning at least 20 brush fires extinguished in the past year.

“That is a big win,” she added.

Von Wilpert said this past year has been a learning opportunity for her.

“One lesson I learned is that once elected and in the seat you hear so many more perspectives on issues than you originally thought,” she said.

She added that she strives to gather multiple perspectives and on some occasions what she has heard changed her mind.

“(Issues are) more complicated ... it has been an eye opener for me.”