January 2025 Articles

City awaits Council’s next motion

By Rachel Williams

July 14.2024 (El Cajon) -- With online sales taking a bite out of retail traffic, shopping malls across the U.S. are struggling and some have closed down. Seeking to avoid that scenario, the City of El Cajon commissioned a market analysis envisioning redevelopment options for Parkway Plaza,  East County’s largest regional shopping mall.

Council members unanimously favored a motion to move beyond proposed aspirational measures and begin the next step toward transforming Parkway Plaza into a mix of residential, retail, offices, entertainment and community space.

These “Eatertainment” facilities would combine compelling, traditional dining options and immersive sport-centered bars with unique, dynamic lifestyle retail shops, all oriented around a linear park.

East County News Service

By Melinda Myers

Photo:  rain barrels can help manage the water on your property and provide water to use in your gardens.  Photo courtesy melindamyers.com

January 14, 2025 (San Diego’s East County) -- Each gardening season seems to offer new growing challenges. Our gardens are exposed to more drastic and variable weather with changing weather patterns. Floods, droughts, wind, temperature extremes, and unseasonable weather episodes can have immediate and long-term impacts on our plants.

By Fernanda Lopez Halvorson, County of San Diego Communications Office

Photo courtesy of the CDC

December 21, 2024 (San Diego) - County public health officials are warning San Diegans not to eat or drink raw milk products or give them to their pets because of the heightened risk for H5N1, or bird flu. 

By Wanjirũ Warama

Reviewed by Pennell Paugh

January 1, 2025 (La Mesa) -- Wanjiru Warama a resident of La Mesa, provides true stories of how her family and community lived in abject poverty on British colonial farms in Kenya in her novel, The Colonial Farm. Her historic memoir sheds light on the struggles of Kenyan farmworkers and rural populations under the British colonial rule. She then covers how Kenya’s rulership developed after the British retreated from governing.

East County News Service

January 16, 2025 (El Cajon)-- In honor of Valentine's Day, the Saps at Sea Laurel & Hardy club presents: Laurel & Hardy – Romantic Leads??  Films include "Should Married Men Go Home?", "Our Wife", and "Yes, Yes Nannette." 

The event takes place on Saturday, February 1, from 4:30 to 8 p.m. at First Lutheran Church of El Cajon, 867 S Lincoln Ave, El Cajon, CA 92020. 

East County News Service

Image: Creative Commons via Bing

January 23, 2025 (San Diego) - A woman, along with an incarcerated person, have been arrested on suspicion of mailing drug-laced letters to a San Diego County jail, says Sergeant Aaron Brooks with the San Diego County Sheriff’s Detention Investigations Unit.