SAN DIEGO — San Diego City Council District 4 was devastated in the January 22 storm. During that time, there wasn’t anyone representing the district on San Diego’s City Council.
The district includes Encanto, Mountain View, Skyline Hills, Lincoln Park and several other communities. Their former council representative, Monica Montgomery Steppe, was elected to the San Diego County Board of Supervisors last fall. Henry Foster III is trending toward an outright win in Super Tuesday’s special election for District 4 and could take office in just weeks.
Addressing homelessness, fixing streets, bringing services back, tackling forgotten parks and making maintenance such a priority this community never has the devastation they saw with the January 22 storms, ever again. Those are just a few of the things the people in District 4 say they want going forward. Parents say they want to make sure their community is the finest in America's Finest City because they and their children deserve it.
"Just make it make sense to me,” Stefania exclaimed passionately.
She and her cousin Brenda live in District 4 and say they’re taxpayers and want to see their tax dollars working for them just like everyone else.
"We need our streets repaired. We need better patrolling officers who understand our community. If they don't understand our community, we don't need them. We really want our whole District 4 to look like in La Jolla and Del Mar. We want to live like that too."
Now that Henry Foster III is going to be their city councilman, Brenda shared, "I'm ready for him to get his boots to the ground and if there's anything he may need, I know we have people here that are willing to work with him."
"He was the person that was elected,” Dwayne Harvey said. “So, he better be the one to do the job,"
Harvey, President of the Community Council at The Willie Henderson Recreation Center has been volunteering to help flood victims in district recover from the January storm.
"The drains used to be cleaned out on an annual basis. I know that because I worked for the city, and I used to clean them out. Years ago, they basically stopped cleaning them out, at least in our community."
Volunteers say because there are no hotels in district 4 they had to send those neighbors elsewhere for shelter.
"They still need help. They're going to be needing help for months on end. So we need the city, we need the county, we need all of our elected officials to take care of business and do what they were supposed to do."
CBS 8 was there moments after early returns on Super Tuesday put Foster in line to be District 4's next city councilman. He says his top priority is recovering from the storm.
"I'd like to think that based on what's happened, they see what disinvestment does to a community,” shared the night of the election.
"We have a lot of families that were devastated, and I think there's more that the City of San Diego can do. We've had several events recently that we couldn't have at the park because of the floods and that's unacceptable so we got some work to do I'm going to go to City Hall and make sure that work gets done."
The District 4 seat has been open since Monica Montgomery Steppe was elected to the county board of supervisors. Foster was Montgomery Steppe's long time chief of staff. CBS 8 reached out to Foster for comment on this story and we're still waiting to hear back. However, every community member CBS 8 talked to in District 4 for this story says they are excited about the new council member and are ready to work with him to build a better District 4 going forward.
WATCH RELATED: San Diego City Council District 4 has lacked a representative | Henry Foster III leads the race