There are troubling signs that while the economy is rebounding, we may be facing a jobless recovery. Last week, the presidents of the Federal Reserve Banks of San Francisco and Atlanta each suggested that unemployment will persist well into 2010. A recent public opinion poll by Hofsta University found that three out of four suburbanites had either themselves or knew someone who had lost their job during the recession. The Golden State is seeing unemployment higher than it has been in 26 years and almost every forecaster believes it will go higher. While some of the locally-tracked leading economic indicators are positive, help wanted ads and jobless claims continue to point downward.

Four miles from my neighborhood is one of the many "community serving" retail centers that dot San Diego's landscape. Built in 1993 and with more than 500,000 square feet of space, it prospered during the boom of the first half of the decade.

For the last few years every time the temperature goes up and the wind starts to blow a good friend of mine starts to get worried. He starts smelling for smoke. Clouds in the sky get a close look just to be sure they are not signs of wildfire. He fills up his vehicles in case the call comes to evacuate.

Six months after its passage, the federal stimulus package in San Diego is definitely a tale of a lot of bad and ugly and not a lot of good.

This weekend over a million Californians will flock to the beach. The coast is a central part of our state's identify. Increasingly, however, the state's ocean resources are under threat and it is past time that we contemplated how best to generate the revenues required to preserve this vital environmental and economic resource.

San Diegans interested in stopping the fiscal losses from Qualcomm Stadium and retaining the Chargers in our county limits should pay attention to recent developments in the city of Santa Clara. The strategic agreement crafted between that city and the San Francisco 49ers suggests both a new benchmark for the negotiations with the Chargers as well as a possible way forward.

On Tuesday, California voters from the political left, center and right resounded rejected every statewide proposition except for the largely symbolic Proposition 1F. There are some lessons to be learned from this defeat that are instructive to both local and state governments.

In a less than six years San Diego will celebrate one of its most important anniversaries, the centennial of the California/Panama Exposition. The date needs to be not just celebrated but also be used to catalyze critical and permanent improvements to the region's crown jewel.

Last week California water managers assessed April's snowpack readings, an important measure of our statewide water supply. While the news wasn't as dire as some had feared, the readings confirmed what had long been expected -- our state is experiencing its third consecutive year of below normal precipitation.

Sometimes the most important developments occur in the most obscure of regulations. That is the case with contemplated changes to how California measures and mitigates the transportation and traffic impacts of new development projects.

If recent news from Washington is to be believed, early next year Congress will enact an economic stimulus package that will increase new spending on infrastructure by hundreds of billions of dollars. As readers of this column know, that has been an approach we generally support as infrastructure investments spur job creation and, if done right, can improve the region's long-term competitiveness.