OB Rag

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

Monday, September 14: City Council, 10:00 a.m./2:00 p.m.

Agenda:

Item 200: Award a Construction Contract with Skanska USA for the El Camino Real to Via De La Valle Project

Why it matters: Awarding $57.4 million for a 9-year relocation and upgrade of a deteriorating half-mile road makes sense. But given San Diego’s sorry record of capital project management, any city endeavor of this size needs close and constant scrutiny.

Item 201: A Resolution to Demand Local Control in the Deployment of Autonomous Vehicles

Why it matters: The city plans to develop a process for tracking and monitoring AV violations and impacts on public safety.

By Paul Krueger / Times of San Diego / Sept. 10, 2026

The Aug. 26 conclusion of the lawsuit challenging San Diego’s inflated trash fee has prompted the release of new details about the cost to taxpayers of a divisive and unnecessary legal dispute.

The lawsuit was sparked by a City Council vote that approved a “world-class” trash and recycling program with new bins, weekly recycling, bulk-item pick-up, “radio frequency identification” tags and other add-ons.

Those perks — plus salaries for additional city employees to deliver the services — bumped the estimated baseline fee from about $23 a month to more than $40 monthly.

Taxpayers revolted. Facing both a ballot measure and a lawsuit, the City Council in May approved a compromise that significantly reduced both the fee and the scope of service.

The settlement scuttled the proposed ballot measure and resolved the lawsuit. But the dispute was still a drain on city finances.

NY Times Editorial Board – RSN / Sept. 9–11, 2026

President Trump has a long record of threatening rather than protecting the integrity of American elections. At his worst, he sought to overturn the 2020 results. Now he is menacing the midterms, with an executive order that would throw voting by mail into chaos if it went into effect.

It is up to the Supreme Court to prevent that. Nearly one in three voters now vote by mail. Mr. Trump’s order has already sowed doubt about whether Americans can continue to trust the Postal Service to deliver their ballots and prompted bipartisan alarm from states and local election officials. The sooner the court puts Mr. Trump’s ill-advised directive to rest, the better.

Mr. Trump’s order is illegal. He does not have the authority to set the rules for election administration. The Constitution gives that role to the states, with Congress providing oversight. “The times, places and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulations,” Article I states.

As a bipartisan task force said in 2021 in response to a relatively minor executive order from President Joe Biden, “Presidents don’t have much of a role in how elections are run — and that’s a good thing.” Nevertheless, Mr. Trump ordered the Postal Service in March to decide which voters would receive mail-in ballots, a decision that states have always made for themselves.

Join veterans and others to protest the ongoing war in Iran …. time to bring the troops home.

By Marc Elias / Democracy Docket / September 8, 2026

We are less than two months until Election Day for the most important midterms of our lifetime. Ballots have already started to be sent out. The threats to free and fair elections are real and growing more serious by the day.

What once seemed like an abstract threat has now become concrete. The risk of a rigged election is no longer unthinkable. The need for action can no longer be delayed or denied.

I have often said that Donald Trump’s plan is to make it harder for you to vote and easier for him to cheat. Now we know what that will look like in 2026.

Donald Trump issued an executive order claiming powers over federal elections that he does not have. In response, the U.S. Postal Service is trying to ram through a rule that will make voting by mail more difficult while requiring states to turn over sensitive voter data.

The Postal Service has not been shy in making clear that it is taking these steps to allow federal law enforcement to conduct criminal investigations of alleged voter fraud.

That is not all the USPS has done to make voting more difficult. A series of smaller changes have resulted in slower mail service and delayed postmarks on envelopes. While these are not limited to returned ballots, the results have been devastating for those trying to vote by mail.

Claiming Democrats are “communists” is another fantasy crisis.

Bill Eddy / Substack / Aug 17, 2026

Remember the 2016 election campaign when Donald Trump repeatedly called Hillary Clinton “Crooked Hillary” and the entire Republican Convention chanted “Lock Her Up”? Yes, she improperly used a personal server for her emails sometimes for government business—just like many Republicans in government did without consequence. She was not prosecuted for this, but less than two weeks before the election, the Director of the FBI, James Comey, notified Congress that they were investigating an unrelated laptop that suddenly showed up with some of her emails. This gave the bogus claim extra credibility at the worst time. Trump won the election and the issue promptly vanished. Trump’s con was highly effective and may have won him the Presidency.

Now It’s Communism?

In August, 2024, at a press conference while gearing up for the Presidential Election against Kamala Harris, Trump explained his strategy: “All we have to do is define our opponent as being a communist or a socialist or somebody who is going to destroy our country.” He then branded her “comrade Kamala” as his favorite label throughout the campaign. Reports indicate that he used this term somewhere between 30 and 80 times in his speeches in the fall of 2024. And he won the election.

by Ernie McCray

It’s so refreshing,

especially nowadays,

to hear ideas being expressed

in loving ways,

and I listened, recently,

to a few speakers,

at a forum sponsored by

H.O.M.E.

the abbreviation for

Humanitarian Outreach for

Migrant Emotional Health,

who spoke with affection concerning how the organization

goes about its mission to ensure

that the voices of asylum seekers,

ICE detainees,

and immigrants in removal proceedings

By Muir Avenue Ale

Amtrak has ruined my vacation, and I’m pissed.

For years, Amtrak has sold the California Rail Pass for $159. For the right kind of traveler and the right trip, it’s almost too good to be true. During a 21-day period, you can use the pass for seven days of nearly unlimited travel (four trips per day).

The pass includes these four train lines:

• Pacific Surfliner: San Diego to San Luis Obispo
• Gold Runner (my favorite): Bakersfield to Bay Area
• Capital Corridor: Bay Area
• Coast Starlight: Los Angeles to Dunsmuir

These trains are connected by a bunch of bus routes, which the pass covers. Two of these buses even take you into Nevada (Reno, Las Vegas) for no extra charge.

By Point Loma Observer

Last week, Voice of San Diego updated readers on Awaken Church and its “out there” pastor, Jurgen Matthesius, including a link to a recently posted supercut of clips from Matthesius’ sermons. The clips include his claims that he shrank a child’s inoperable tumor through prayer and that God called on him to pray for the tanks to stop during the Tiananmen Square massacre, prompting him to spontaneously speak in what the article characterizes as “Asian-tinged tongues.”

“Out there” is putting it mildly.

But Matthesius and Awaken Church are not simply a religious curiosity. As many Rag readers know, their influence extends into San Diego’s political arena.

In 2024, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported that Richard Bailey, now a candidate for San Diego City Council District 2, assisted members of the Awaken Church’s political arm, RMNNT, in their efforts to get elected to local office.

‘It Shouldn’t take a law suit to force the Commission to follow state law to protect tenants.’

by Cody Dulaney / inewsource / September 8, 2026

The illegal rent increase saga that has for years dogged San Diego’s largest housing agency is nearing an end.

The San Diego Housing Commission, which hands out more than $300 million every year in Section 8 vouchers to help low-income tenants pay rent, agreed to settle the latest of two lawsuits related to approving rent increases that exceed the cap set by state law. Under the agreement obtained by inewsource, the agency is set to pay nearly $6,000 in litigation costs and provide records that would show whether rent increases previously approved by the agency were lawful.

Housing attorneys and advocates across the state are hailing the outcome as a boon to Section 8 participants, who rely on vouchers to pay rent, and taxpayers, who fund the program. The Housing Commission declined to comment, citing ongoing hearings.

The settlement marks the latest development in a years-long controversy that drew in the California Attorney General and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, while taxpayers and Section 8 voucher holders bore the costs of rent increases that went unchecked.

By Debbie L. Sklar / Special to the OB Rag

In 1855, a group of San Diegans began prospecting for coal on Point Loma.

The project was an ambitious one. The San Diego Coal Co. hoped to develop the deposit into a local source of fuel and a profitable business for its investors. A local coal supply also could have helped San Diego compete as a coaling station for steamships and potentially benefit from future railroad development.

The men behind the venture were associated with San Diego’s small Mormon community. Among them was Ephraim Green, a former member of the Mormon Battalion who later said he had noticed coal on Point Loma before leaving San Diego in 1847.

The story has acquired a mythology of its own. One version says the Mormon prospectors were acting on a “revelation” that coal could be found there. But the historical record tells a more complicated story.

Reports of possible coal deposits on Point Loma dated to at least 1849. In 1855, Green returned to California and told members of the Mormon colony at San Bernardino about the coal he remembered seeing on Point Loma. He eventually led interested men to the site.

The prospecting soon became a formal business.

The San Diego Coal Co. was formed in November 1855 by Green, H.C. Ladd, George Warren Sirrine and Seth Benjamin Tanner.