OB Rag

‘I Should Know — I’ve Been Trying to Find Out for Over a Year’

Originally published in the San Diego Union-Tribune on June 26, 2026

By Danna Givot

If San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria and the City Council care — or even just wonder — why they’ve lost the public’s trust, they need look no further than their so-called “Technical Working Group” for Neighborhood Homes for All of Us.

What is the Technical Working Group? A secret group of “experts” hand-picked to develop site plans and four building designs (with up to 10 units each) for “single-family” zoned lots in San Diego’s neighborhoods.

[Please go to the original for any links here.]

Three years ago, the planning commissioners rejected San Diego’s Senate Bill 10 (SB 10) proposal, which would have allowed single-family homes to be replaced by 10-unit apartment buildings. To their credit, the commissioners recommended that community stakeholders have seats at the working group table when crafting the next iteration of infill housing in our single-family neighborhoods. I asked the Planning Department to give Neighbors For A Better San Diego a seat at that table but received no response. This was after two members of the Technical Working Group told me they were in the group, although the city’s deputy planning director told me days later that it had “not been formed.”

Shawn Styles / CBS8 / Sept.22, 2026

The Ocean Beach Pier has been closed for nearly three years, leaving many residents frustrated and saddened by the loss of one of the community’s most recognizable landmarks.
For local graphic designer Brad Fernbaugh, the closure is personal.

“The pier holds a special place in my heart,” Fernbaugh said. “My wife’s grandmother is the one that put on the contest, and it’s been closed for three years. I look at it every day and it bums me out.”

Fernbaugh is behind the “’66 Poster Project,” a fundraising campaign built around Ocean Beach’s connection to the 1966 World Surfing Championships. The competition, held near the Ocean Beach Pier, is remembered as a pivotal event in surf culture.

A tribute to 1966 surf history
Fernbaugh recreated the style of the original poster used to promote the 1966 contest.

“The original that looks like this was done for the 1966 contest, so I replicated something similar,” he said.

By Paul Krueger

The Voice of San Diego recently shared its paywall-protected wisdom that District 4 challenger Martha Abraham “…seems to have built something of a coalition between conservatives, anti-development folks and southeastern San Diego residents that believe the area has never gotten its fair and equitable share of resources.”

I vehemently disagree with VOSD’s assertion that any of Abraham’s credible supporters (myself and all my colleagues included) are “anti-development,” and shared my reasoning in an email to Voice editor Scott Lewis and assistant editor Will Huntsberry.

Will’s response, which I’ll share at the end of this column, was disappointing in its brevity and reasoning. But, hey, it’s totally his (and Lewis’s) prerogative to reject audience input and double-down on their chosen narrative. In fact, these civil editorial disagreements are what we should most cherish and defend in a (still hopefully) free and open society that respects the First Amendment (despite — and perhaps because of — Donald Trump’s latest attacks on the media).

Here’s the portion of my email that responded to VOSD’s comment about “anti-development folks” and their support for Abraham:

“Calling any of Abraham’s supporters ‘anti-development’ is intellectually lazy and just plain wrong. In my six years of studying and speaking out on this issue as an activist freed from my obligations as a neutral journalist and observer, I have not encountered even one credible activist who can accurately be described as ‘anti-development’.

By LK Bruce

It’s time to talk about veggie sandwiches – which, for the record, are not just for vegetarians. Even my meat-and-potatoes husband loves a good veggie sandwich. The trick is finding a good one – or, better yet, a great one.

I’m not talking about the variety that consists of cucumbers in a cloud of alfalfa sprouts. Those really aren’t worth talking about. And I’m leaving mock-meat sandwiches off the list, too. I realize that those with cardiologists may need to break the meat habit in stages, and mock meat can be a bridge. Or a crutch. While the Sally Ride sandwich at Ike’s (“vegan turkey”) is pretty darn good, I vastly prefer vegetables made great simply by being who they are.

Veggie sandwiches worth talking about:

• The Veggie Cobb at Con Pane  2750 Dewey Rd #105, San Diego, CA 92106
• The Eggplant Parm at Hungry Lu’s 4920 Voltaire St., San Diego CA 92107
• The Roasted Veggie at The Jetty 4934 Voltaire St., San Diego, CA 92107
• The Sweet Chili Crunch Tofu at Urbane Cafe 3954 W. Point Loma Blvd., Suite B, San Diego, CA  92110

Here are the details

The Veggie Cobb at Con Pane

First of all, there’s the bread. It’s from a bakery, so it’s good. I recommend the multigrain for this. But what really makes this sandwich special are the mung bean sprouts

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

Monday, September 28: Council Closed Session, 10:00 a.m.

Agenda:

Why it matters: Two of three litigation items involve damages associated with lack of city maintenance: a sidewalk trip-and-fall and a leaking water meter. Isn’t it less costly to fix problems than to pay for harm they cause? And these cases date back to 2022, 2023, and 2024. They should have been handled more expeditiously.

By Caitlin Rother / Substack / Sep 22, 2026

Until I found a flyer on my doorstep about a community meeting last night, I was not aware that the city of San Diego was updating the 1998 community plan for my neighborhood of Kensington-Talmadge and several others that are nearby but have completely unrelated interests and socio-economic demographics. Because I covered City Hall for many years when I was still a working investigative reporter for The San Diego Union-Tribune, I took my notebook to the meeting.

After we listened to two city planners present the highlights of the community plan update, Neil Winner, chairman of the Kensington-Talmadge Community Planning Group (KTCPG), summed up his group’s very measured response like this: the plan update “is not compatible” with the historic nature or the infrastructure and fire safety needs of our community. He said the KTCPG submitted an alternative plan to the city, but was told that it did not comply, without any discussion or the ability to challenge or resolve that conclusion.

Here’s my view: First, don’t hold back. What the city is proposing is a nightmarish crush of increased density, to fill our cute, historic neighborhood of well-maintained single-family homes in South Kensington with garrish apartment complexes looming six to eight stories, and three to five times the number of people living in that space as they are today. The plan allowing these new complexes, which would all be squished into the few square blocks surrounding my house, is envisioned to triple the community’s overall population and yet developers will not be required to provide any additional parking spaces because they will be built just blocks from a couple of bus routes, some of which are now slated for reduction or elimination.

Just take a minute to process that ridiculous lapse of common sense and logic.

The first one is on Monday, September 28 at the Conference Center at Liberty Station, 2600 Laning Road, 92106. It’s hosted by the Point Loma Association and the League of Women Voters of San Diego.

And here’s the second one on Thursday, October 1, at the Point Loma Library. This one is hosted by the Peninsula Community Planning Board.

By JW August / Times of San Diego / Sept.18, 2026

Attorneys are racing against the clock to speed the processing of certain green card applications, months after President Donald Trump’s shutdown of a long-running visa program.

The Diversity Visa (DV) program, also known as the Green Card Lottery, was halted in December when federal officials ordered a comprehensive “hold and review” of the program’s screening and vetting procedures.

The processing of lottery applicants reopened this week following an intense legal fight – one that is set to extend to San Diego. Doubts remain, however, as to whether there’s enough time – or willingness from the government – to handle thousands of remaining applications before Sept. 30.

Because of federal law, State Department embassies have to stop processing this year’s applicants by the end of September, the conclusion of the federal fiscal year.  Many cases are on hold because of slower processing times and the ordered shutdown of the DV program.

The program makes immigrant visas available to natives of countries with low immigration rates.

By Steve Rodriquez

Someone whispers, the circus is in town. A dark
caravan is seen parading down the road. We might expect
to see trained lions, and the trapeze artist;
death-defiers treading a tightrope balanced high above.

Instead, we are treated to a disappearing act. Sheer scale of magic
catches everyone by surprise. Scary clowns, wearing olive drab
outfits – complete with black masks, helmets, ICE cool military swag—
pour out of their armored vehicles. Under a big top canopy

of blue coastal skies, they form three-ring spectacles
in front of restaurants, Home Depot lots, and apartment complexes.
Resembling Death Star troopers arriving far too late
for this year’s Comic Con, they begin disappearing humans

By Angelo Haynes

On Thursday evening, Sept.24, challenger Martha Abraham and incumbent Henry Foster III met at a community forum at the St. Timothy Lutheran Church in Paradise Hills to engage in a moderated discussion on the issues affecting voters in District 4. The forum was organized and coordinated by the Paradise Hills Foundation (PHF), a non-profit organization dedicated to the beautification of the Paradise Hills neighborhood and to improving residents’ quality of life.

Projects for PHF include: neighborhood cleanup and hauling efforts, arts funding (e.g. public murals), improvements to the main street of Paradise Hills (Reo Dr.), garbage cans, signage improvements, and home exterior assistance to elderly or indigent neighbors.

Nichelle A. Wentz, the president of the PHF, was on hand and stated that while many other community concerns affecting District 4, such as policing, Foot note 7 and small business development seemed to garner greater attention, issues affecting the Paradise Hills neighborhood were neglected. The Paradise Hills branch library for instance hasn’t had a capital improvement from the city in over 40 years. For Wentz, this forum was an opportunity to bring attention to her neighborhood and give residents a chance to ask candidates questions before the election.

All public questions participants had at the venue were to be written down and submitted to forum organizers in advance; these questions would then be read to the candidates at the end of the session. PHF organizers stated that this method of questioning was intended to screen for repetitive questions and to organize community concerns into topics to ascertain any patterns or themes for voters in the community.

by Cody Dulaney / inewsource /  September 23, 2026

Jay Goldberg swears he’s a capitalist.

It’s a Thursday afternoon and the 42-year-old Hillcrest homeowner is seated at his kitchen counter, scrolling through lines of code he wrote to analyze multiple datasets on his laptop. He’s a Google engineer by trade, but his workday is over, and now he’s hunting through the local real estate market.

His target? Properties that he calls “apartment hotels” — or entire complexes that have been converted from long-term housing to short-term rentals.

He’s a capitalist, he says, but he’s a capitalist with guardrails, driven by one guiding principle: What’s good for one person shouldn’t come at everyone else’s expense. And he’s become convinced that’s exactly what’s happening in San Diego.

Earlier this year, inewsource revealed a glaring loophole in a San Diego law that allows property owners to obtain a short-term rental license even after carrying out an illegal eviction. It works like this: Investors buy up multi-family properties, clear out the long-term tenants with buyouts or no-fault evictions, and post the units on short-term platforms, such as Airbnb.

Goldberg has spent years working to identify these properties.

He gathers data from short-term rental platforms. He combs through active licenses and property records. And when he thinks he’s identified an apartment hotel, or really any short-term rental violation, he turns over what he finds to San Diego officials.

Then he waits.