Category: Economy

By Claire Trageser / Axios San Diego / Nov. 10, 2026

Organizers behind the push to recall Mayor Todd Gloria told Axios they’re fed up with trash fees, parking fees and other city issues.

Why it matters: Gloria now has to deal with a recall effort that will further question his leadership as he rounds the final two years of his term and thinks about what he might run for next.

Gloria won reelection in 2024 with 55% of the vote, but polling this year shows voters have increasingly soured on the city’s direction, and issues like parking, trash fees and closed bathrooms haven’t helped.
He didn’t respond to a request for comment for this story.

The intrigue: The tipping point in the recall decision was Gloria’s support of an outsider over incumbent District 4 City Councilmember Henry Foster in last week’s election, recall organizer Kathleen Harmon told Axios. [Ed.: That “outsider” was Martha Abraham who won the election; she was endorsed by the OB Rag.]

Foster challenged the mayor, saying he should resign over a trash fees billing mistake. “He saw fit to go get an outsider to stand up against our councilman who has done an outstanding job of bringing resources into our community,” Harmon said.

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Ballot measure’s apparent victory shows that voters are willing to reimagine public transportation in a post-pandemic world.

By Mariana Duran / Mother Jones / Nov. 4, 2026

In a huge win for public transit, voters in the San Francisco Bay Area appear to have approved a measure that will slightly increase the sales tax to fund transportation in the region over the next 14 years, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The measure will allow transit agencies, including BART, to preserve their service and avoid deep cuts to stations and transit lines amid the end of emergency pandemic funds.

Unlike other ballot initiatives in the state, the Regional Transit Measure didn’t face a well-funded campaign advocating against it. But it presented voters with a big ask: to rethink their relationship to public transit dramatically, and shift to a system where all residents—not just riders—pay to keep their region connected.

The measure reflects a growing reality for many metropolitan public transit systems post-Covid, which have had to reimagine their funding models as ridership patterns have shifted and people’s lives have become more digital. It is especially salient in the Bay Area, where BART, the primary transit system connecting the region, had warned it could cease to exist if it continued to struggle financially.

In response, transit advocates and scholars say we need to figure out how to fund a system where high quality transit is accessible to everyone, even when it might not be profitable.

By Claire Trageser / Axios San Diego 

The share of San Diegans who think the city is on the wrong track has spiked since last year, according to a new poll.

The big picture: The poll, paid for by the city’s white collar union and obtained by Axios, puts some hard data behind just how unhappy people are with the city.

Zoom in: The San Diego Municipal Employees Association poll found 69% of respondents said the city is on the wrong track, up from 49% last September.

Just 19% said the city was going in the right direction, the lowest number since the union started polling on that question in 2020.

The fine print: They polled 410 people in a statistically balanced sample group, Ryan Clumpner, a political consultant who conducted the poll through his company Public Dynamics, told Axios.

The margin of error was 4.3%, he said.

By Debbie L. Sklar / Special to the OB Rag

Before Jensen’s Finest Foods became a familiar grocery stop in Point Loma, the neighborhood market at Catalina Boulevard and Talbot Street was known as Food Basket.

A grocery store at 955 Catalina Blvd. has been part of the Peninsula’s commercial landscape since the 1950s, and its history reflects both the growth of suburban San Diego and the importance of neighborhood markets.

Editor Frank Gormlie recalled:

For years during the 50s and 60s, my family lived right across Catalina from the large Food Basket and the store dominated the little mall it sat in. It wasn’t our main shopping outlet because my mom had access to the Navy Exchange on 30th Street, but we used the cavernous Food Basket for everything else. I was usually sent on an errand on my own to buy something every week — and would use it as an excuse to go its bakery for a Bear Claw. In the 60s, it was the first store where I ever used a shopping cart and the first store where I tried riding a shopping cart down the aisle. (I got pretty good at it too!)

A 2016 account in the OB Rag reported that the grocery building was constructed in 1950. A 2010 city of San Diego planning report, however, dates the existing shopping center to 1953. The property’s leasing agent, Steve Avoyer, told the Peninsula Beacon in January 2016 that the location had been a grocery market since 1952. The dates are not necessarily contradictory: the building, shopping center, and beginning of grocery operations may reflect different milestones.

OB Rag Staff Report

Before San Diego City Councilmembers voted unanimously November 9 to approve the $4.2 billion Midway Rising project, they were presented with two conflicting scenarios for the future of the Sports Arena district.

Speakers backing lead developer Brad Termini (who was in attendance) envisioned a Shangri-La with lots of affordable housing, plenty of green space, great jobs, minimal traffic, and new revenues filling up city coffers.

Project opponents, nearly all of them community leaders, catalogued very real risks, from environmental (flooding that could unleash buried toxins) to financial (the tangled terms of the deal could produce another 101 Ash Street fiasco).

When the council members prepared to vote after 7 hours of discussion, the real question they faced was:

Do you feel lucky? Do you believe that nothing untoward can happen, in nature or in finance, to make this another San Diego land use debacle?

These excerpts from statements in opposition are sobering. On the financial picture, Marc Frederick, a commercial real estate broker and former City real estate disposition manager, delivered a grim prognosis:

By Louis Tillman

To see the art show on Newport Avenue this month, you have to walk through a clothing store. SHIFT Gallery sits behind Connect San Diego at 4847 Newport, at the end of a passage you could easily miss. Inside, through Nov. 17, hangs “Takeover: Small-Scale Works” about 55 paintings, sculptures, photographs and prints by 40 artists. Nothing on the walls is larger than 16 inches in any direction.

Barbara Sexton, the retired Mesa College art professor who juried the show, picked those 55 pieces from 221 entries, so about three of every four were turned away. The artists who got in had to fit what they wanted to say into something about the size of a pizza box, and a lot of them pulled it off. The San Diego Museum of Art Artists Guild, which sponsors the show, has been putting local artists in front of the public since 1915. I don’t live in Ocean Beach. I live in Santa Monica, which is also a beach town, and over the years I’ve watched plenty of places I liked there get replaced by things built for people passing
through. Most of those changes came one approval at a time, and each one sounded reasonable when it came up.

By Paul Krueger

Those of us who opposed the City Council’s rush to approve the Midway Rising development agreement were disappointed that Council Member Raul Campillo didn’t do more to stop that runaway train.

Campillo has been a reliable and extremely well-spoken advocate for good governance and financial responsibility. His opposition to the inflated trash collection fee and paid parking in Balboa Park were more than just “no” votes.

He explained in common-sense terms that both proposals were bad public policy built on flawed economic data, and he predicted the taxpayer backlash that forced the Mayor and council majority to reverse course.

Campillo harbored very serious reservations about the Midway Rising deal, but it was obvious long before Monday’s meeting that he had no support from his colleagues to rework the proposal, or even just delay its approval to allow a more complete — and perhaps independent — review of the credible concerns voiced by opponents.

In the end, Campillo cited the new supply of  affordable housing, the thousands of jobs, stronger protections for taxpayers, and the revitalization of the Midway District as reasons for approving the deal.

But Campillo’s “yes” vote was tempered by his pointed, on-the-record critique of the development deal, and a promise to hold the developers to the contract terms.

By Alex J. Chavez / OnlyinSanDiego / November 9, 2026

Todd Gloria needs to understand something: San Diego is not obligated to love him, defend him or continue giving him the benefit of the doubt.

And no amount of communications strategy, carefully crafted talking points or political spin will change that.

When I previously asked what Todd Gloria had delivered for San Diego, the question concerned his record. But the deeper problem is becoming impossible to ignore. Gloria has surrounded himself with a political team that appears more interested in protecting its own authority than earning the trust necessary to govern.

Now, with a recall effort underway, the mayor and his advisers face a reckoning they should have seen coming.

This did not happen overnight. And they did not arrive here by accident.

They Have Confused Access to Power With the Ability to Lead
Gloria entered office with nearly every political advantage imaginable: experience, established relationships, an initially friendly City Council and communities that believed he would represent their interests.

What happened to that promise?

For too many residents, the disappointment goes beyond policy disagreements. It concerns an administration perceived as inaccessible, dismissive and increasingly disconnected from the people it was elected to serve.

Communities that once stood with Gloria deserve to know why their concerns seem less important now than they were when their support was politically useful.

Requests for meetings should not become exercises in frustration. Constituents should not have to fight for basic engagement. Community leaders should not be left wondering whether promises made during campaigns were simply transactional.

And residents should never feel that disagreeing with their mayor means forfeiting the opportunity to be heard.

From Voice of San Diego / November 10, 2026

More than eight years ago, the city of San Diego, then led by former Mayor Kevin Faulconer, stopped signing new long-term leases with the businesses that rented land around the Sports Arena. At the same time, it began updating the zoning plan for the neighborhood.

As we wrote then, it looked like the city was finally, truly planning a massive redevelopment for the nearly 50 acres of land it owns in Midway.

Then, we watched one failure after another, as the city pursued what Faulconer and then his successor, Mayor Todd Gloria, envisioned. The courts threw out two ballot measures. Nevertheless, the city persisted and selected a development partner, negotiating an agreement over four years. With another lawsuit looming, the city’s leaders took the extraordinary effort of getting state lawmakers and the governor to give them special protection from lawsuits.

Finally, Monday night, the San Diego City Council approved the $4.2 billion redevelopment project known as Midway Rising.

The revamp on the Pechanga Arena site will include a new 16,000-seat arena. It will be where Dixieline Lumber sits now. Developers believe it will be close enough to the Old Town Transit Center to walk and that the investment they’re making will spur investments all along that walk. And that will make it somewhere you would want to walk.

By Staff

The San Diego Community Coalition publishes this email bulletin to keep our members and the San Diego public informed about important Council hearings and other city public meetings.

Monday, November 9: City Council, 1:00 p.m.

Agenda:

• Item 600: Intention to Form Enhanced Infrastructure Financing District for Redevelopment of the Sports Arena
• Item 601: Midway Rising
• Item 602: Approval of Disposition and Development Agreement between the City and Midway Rising

Why it matters a lot:  As Donna Frye warned us in her compelling November 6 Rag post about Midway Rising, “there are more questions than answers” about a massive real estate deal that has the potential to be a bigger disaster than 101 Ash Street. The public needs to ramp up the pressure on the Council. This is far from a done deal.

Tuesday, November 10: City Council, 10:00 a.m.

Agenda:

Item 56: Amendments to Municipal Code Related to Prohibiting Smoking and Vaping in Outdoor Dining Areas

By Paul Krueger and Kate Callen

Just one week after Bethany Bezak was named San Diego’s Chief Operating Officer, a devastating report by City Auditor Andy Hanau offered evidence that she is an exceptionally bad hire.

On October 26, Hanau and his staff delivered an audit of the city’s Streetlight Repair Program that contained troubling revelations about waste, fraud, and mismanagement.

Findings included unwarranted overtime paid to city electricians (overtime costs increased from $230,000 to $1.4 million) and blatant timecard cheating by employees, including two electricians who allegedly spent 198 hours – the equivalent of 25 days – sitting idly in their parked city trucks.

The audit “identified City vehicles with a total of 333 hours of extended stops where no worksites could be verified.” The review also found that “fifty-five percent of callback-related work orders involving multiple electricians did not identify all employees who claimed overtime for responding.”

Who was the Director of the Transportation Department overseeing the Streets Division and supervising streetlight repair in the crucial years leading up this audit?

Bethany Bezak.

Monday, November 9, is a fateful day for San Diego as it’s the day that the City Council finally takes on Midway Rising, the massive redevelopment of the old Sports Arena area. It will be taken up at their 1:00 p.m. meeting.

Even though the huge project has been touted as ” the largest affordable housing project to be built on public land in state history,” it has experienced four years of controversy. This compendium of controversy includes evidence of corruption between the main developer and the mayor — a mayor who calls it his “legacy project”, two law suits, two public votes laying the groundwork that barely squeaked by, proponents that fail to admit conflicts of interest, a special bill just for Midway Rising, but most of all a public that has not been convinced that the project is worthy of the city in its current form.

Many residents of the region have been opposed to it, many construction trade unions have been for it.

Some, like the editorial board of the Union-Tribune, like Donna Frye and other opponents, fear the council has already made up its mind on the issue, and are now only praying for the best. Other opponents fear the fabled 2,000 units of affordable housing may never be built, like Neighbors for a Better San Diego, like the leadership of local planning groups.

La Prensa ran a recent poll of coastal residents and found this: