OB Rag

By Kate Callen

When a news story contains inaccurate information, the reporter is obliged to correct it. When a news commentary offers views based on mistaken judgment, the writer should admit it.

That’s why I want to retract my argument, expressed in a November 4 OB Rag post, that we should let Mayor Todd Gloria languish through the rest of his lame duck term instead of recalling him.

I still think a Gloria recall effort would be a very heavy and expensive lift. The 2028 mayoral election is less than two years away, and contenders are already circling.

But after working with Paul Krueger on a November 9 Rag story on an audit of the City Transportation Department, and after connecting the dots about the Mayor’s decisions around that audit, I now see clearly that Gloria has to go.

Paul and I began collaborating on a straightforward account of City Auditor Andy Hanau’s blistering report that the Streetlight Repair program was bilking the taxpayers. City electricians were submitting fraudulent timecards, collecting for unearned overtime, and loitering for hours in parked trucks.

As we drilled down into the specifics of the report, we found the fingerprints of San Diego’s newly-appointed Chief Operating Officer Bethany Bezak all over it.

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

Group Accuses City of Caving to Public Pressure as Local Politicians Line Up in Opposition

by Dorian Hargrove / Beach & Bay Press (Times of San Diego) / Nov. 2, 2026, 5:05 p.m.

A pro-housing advocacy group says San Diego officials are violating state housing laws by requiring special approval of a proposed 23-story mixed-use tower on Turquoise Street in Pacific Beach.

Developer Kalonymus first pitched “Project Vela” at 970 Turquoise St. in 2024. The developer proposed a 23-story tower offering 65 market-rate housing units, 10 low-income housing units, and 139 hotel units. The novel proposal would allow the developer to maximize the housing they could build by including the 139 hotel units, which would be filled through traditional long-term leases, not nightly or weekly hotel stays.

Pacific Beach residents quickly organized in opposition to the project, mostly because it exceeded the city’s 30-foot height limit on new coastal buildings.

The city has also laid out its concerns with the project.

In a December 2025 letter, San Diego planners alleged Kalonymus was trying to pawn off housing units as hotel rooms to avoid abiding by the height restrictions.

But in an Aug. 10 letter to Mayor Todd Gloria, the YIMBY Democrats of San Diego say the city is ignoring state housing laws aimed at expediting affordable housing construction.

by Dorian Hargrove / Times of San Diego / Nov. 9, 2026

A little over a month after the City of San Diego fired its top lifeguard for mishandling a sexual harassment complaint, the second-highest-ranking lifeguard is now suing the city and department for barring her from applying for the top lifeguard post, allegedly hiring a less qualified man instead.

In a newly filed lawsuit, Maureen Hodges, the city’s first and only female captain, says the city refused to let her apply for the open chief position after former Chief James Gartland was terminated in early October.

Hodges has served as a San Diego lifeguard for 20 years and currently serves as the department’s Marine Safety Captain of Strategic Operations.

Following Gartland’s termination, Hodges’ lawsuit alleges she went to acting chief Dan Eddy to inquire about applying for the open chief position.

His true source of power has still not been exposed and may re-surface

By Bill Eddy / Bill Eddy’s Substack / Nov. 9, 2026

Voters Have Spoken – for Now

Last Tuesday, on November 3, 2026, the national electorate spoke and soundly rebuked the corrupt, dangerous, and uncaring reality of the Trump administration and his Republican enablers in Congress. While he had a very narrow win in the Presidential Election of 2024, Democrats had a record win in the midterms with an across-the board sweep that hasn’t been seen in 50 years. This is good.

But has Trump finally reached the end of his hidden power over America? Has the Trump bubble burst?

The Trump Bubble

In May 2016, I put out a little book titled Trump Bubbles: The Dramatic Rise and Fall of High-Conflict Politicians. In it I explained: “I define a trump bubble as occurring when emotions trump thinking in politics. When fear trumps facts. When leader love trumps logic. It could be a politician, a policy or a war. In 2016, the trump bubble is Donald J. Trump himself.”

Trump bubbles are essentially kept afloat by hot air—the false and absurd statements of the politician, their negative advocates, partisan media, and especially social media, who repeatedly promote the fantasy of this politician’s strength and competence. I gave several examples in history when such trump bubbles occurred and how they eventually burst when reality set in and the hot air evaporated. I, of course, suggested that this dynamic fit Donald J. Trump and that his bubble would burst, I just didn’t know when.

Access Hollywood Tape Scandal

In October 2016, a month before the Presidential Election, I thought that his Trump Bubble had burst.

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.

by Ernie McCray

I’m enjoying every moment
of the immense joy I’m feeling
from having witnessed good win over evil
at the polls,
as it’s a good start for the healing
our souls will be needing
for how we’ve been battered
for a much too long time
like soldiers
on a battlefield,
some of us losing their lives
due to too many of our political leaders
not giving a damn
about our suffering.

Where and How, Exactly, Is Todd Gloria “Languishing”?

By Geneviéve Jones-Wright

I read Kate Callen’s op-ed about the recall of Todd Gloria published on the Rag November 4th, in which she argued that San Diegans should simply “let him languish,” and I have one question: Where and how, exactly, is Mayor Gloria languishing?

He has not been removed from power. He has not been stripped of his title. He has not lost his $244,727 annual base salary. He has not been shunned from public life or deprived of the authority of his office. He remains the Mayor of San Diego, the chief executive of the eighth largest city in the country, responsible for overseeing City operations and proposing the City’s budget.

That is not languishing. That is retaining the power, authority, platform, and institutional stature of the Mayor’s office— advantages that plainly matter to any elected official contemplating future public office.

Mayor Gloria also currently serves as President of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, a national leadership position to which he was recently elected by his peers. Far from being politically exiled or cast aside, he was selected to lead their national organization and represent their collective interests on issues affecting America’s cities. That position has given him an even larger national platform, which he is now using to travel the country talking about affordability and the rising cost of everyday life.

There is something deeply disconnected about that; and the hypocrisy is hard to ignore.

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: