Newly minted Supervisor Paloma Aguirre joined the county’s Board of Supervisors on Tuesday with a swearing-in ceremony on the lawn of the county’s downtown office building punctuated with “Sí se puede” chants and singalongs to mariachi music.
In her remarks, Aguirre, who a month ago was the mayor of Imperial Beach, vowed to work toward a county government “where the emphasis is on working people, not the wealthy and well-connected.”
“I didn’t come here to the county to sit back. I came here to fight back,” she said.
With an audience full of San Diego County’s top elected officials as well as rank-and-file county employees and activists, Aguirre began her term as a supervisor presenting much as she did on the campaign trail — as an environmentalist and close ally of labor.
To repeated applause, Aguirre said in her remarks she wanted to expand the county’s affordable housing fund, back organized labor and help the county weather the Trump administration. But more than any other issue, she looked poised to make her tenure about the Tijuana River Valley sewage crisis that has throttled her district.
“If this sewage crisis was happening in Malibu or Mar-a-Lago, it would have been fixed a long time ago,” Aguirre said, adding she was holding a meeting on the crisis with county department heads later this week. “Our sewage crisis demands urgency and results. I’m not interested in more delays, plans and excuses.”