Month: January 2018

There are tough challenges and many rewards to serving as a volunteer on the Ocean Beach Planning Board. Reviewing projects and making recommendations to the City carries an important responsibility – but it also represents the crucial role that community members play in the arena of land-use and urban planning issues and insights.

Every year the OB Planning Board holds an election for seats on its 14-member Board of volunteers. This year, the election will be held on Wednesday, March 7th, and voting will take place inside the OB Recreation Center, from 4 to 6pm. Any tenant, resident, property owner or business owner in Ocean Beach can run as a candidate and/or take part in the election itself, as long as

By Murtaza Baxamusa / SanDiegoUrbDeZine Jan. 23, 2018

There isn’t enough affordable housing being built in the city of San Diego. Lenders and banks aren’t lending as much, apartment owners aren’t caring, and builders aren’t building as much since it’s not as remunerative to build for income-constrained households.

This worsens the disconnect between the economics of the housing stock and the demographics of the families it’s meant to serve, as shown by a recent Harvard University study on apartments. In San Diego, less than 10 percent of the rental housing stock is affordable*. With new federal tax policies, things could get worse.

Deadline Is March 1st

By Don Sevrens

Want to make a difference in the Peninsula community?

The candidate filing period has opened for five of the 15 seats on the Peninsula Community Planning Board. The deadline for filing is Thursday March 1. The election itself will be Thursday March 15 from 4 to 8 p.m. in the Point Loma Branch Library.

The planning board is an elected advisory body that has first say on important projects as well as influencing the City on important planning concepts.

By Bianca Bruno / Courthouse News / January 29, 2018

Standing in front of the picturesque San Diego harbor Monday at Spanish Landing in Point Loma, city council members called on the federal government to remove the eighth largest U.S. city from its list of potential offshore drilling sites, saying it will negatively impact military operations and tourism.

Councilwomen Lorie Zapf and Barbara Bry were joined by Councilman David Alvarez in calling for San Diego’s coastal waters to be protected from offshore oil drilling after the region made the Jan. 4 list of potential sites scoped out by the U.S. Department of the Interior.

Being portrayed negatively in the international spotlight is never good, as the city of El Cajon recently found out. The east county city found international attention after it banned feeding the homeless in parks, and after about a dozen homeless advocates were arrested, cited and released for trying to feed homeless people in a local El Cajon park.

The city lifted the temporary order on Tuesday, January 23rd. They had enacted the ban – they claimed – as a safety measure after the San Diego County Board of Supervisors declared the region’s growing hepatitis A outbreak a public health emergency. The same day, last Tuesday, the County ended the health emergency over Hep A.

The other bombshell that San Diego Reader writer Delinda Lombardo dropped in her Jan. 25th article – besides Nati’s Mexican Restaurant being replaced by Pop Pies Co. – was the change in ownership of the building Nati’s is currently in. The incoming Pop Pie partners still need to finalize their lease with the new owner. Plus other businesses in the building have not been told what to expect.

Lombardo reported that it appears that the structure is being taken over by controversial developer Michael Donovan of SDPB Holdings, LLC. . Donovan is controversial because of his conflicts with the city as well as with neighbors a year ago next to a Mission Hills project he was building, as well as conflicts with neighbors against a Golden Hill / South Park development of his a few years back.

By Jim Miller

It’s the first week of classes in the San Diego Community College District where I teach, and, as has become almost an annual ritual, the new year comes with a number of suspect education reforms from Sacramento.

Jerry Brown released his budget proposal recently, and unfortunately, there are two big, bad ideas that the Governor would like to be part of his higher education legacy: a new fully online college and performance-based funding. What unites these initiatives is that they are both driven more by corporate education reform ideology than sound pedagogy or evidence that they will be effective in reaching their stated aim.

I’ll start with the online college.

Three Council members and Environmental Groups to Demand Trump Administration to Stand Down on San Diego Offshore Oil Drilling While Candidate for District 2 to Protest Republican’s Involvement

Councilmembers David Alvarez, Barbara Bry and Lorie Zapf join together with environmental leaders will rally in a protest today, Monday, January 29th and make the case for San Diego to be removed from the Administration’s list of potential oil drilling sites released by the Department of the Interior on January 4.

The protest and news conference will be at Spanish Landing Park – East, at 3900 N. Harbor Drive, across from the airport at Noon.

By Geoff Page

Two of the projects that came before the Peninsula Community Planning Board, or PCPB, at its regular monthly meeting January 18 at the Pt. Loma Library engendered opposite reactions. One was very popular, although it had a major flaw, and the other was very unpopular.

Replacing the Dolphin Motel on Rosecrans

The popular project was an attractive new hotel that would replace the Dolphin Motel on Rosecrans, a collection of four old buildings on the corner of Rosecrans and Garrison that will be demolished. The address are 1453-1463 Rosecrans Street and 2912 and 2930 Garrison Street. Everyone on the board believed this would be a big improvement over what is there now.

The 49,150 square foot hotel will be three stories tall with 92 rooms, about double the number of rooms in the old motel.

The Ocean Beach Town Council is having its annual election to its Board of Directors, and this year there are 7 open seats. And there are a staggering number of 13 candidates for those seats. Four of the candidates are incumbents. The top 7 vote-getters become Board members – there is no run-off.

The election takes place online from Monday, January 29th to Friday, February 9th, only by the several hundred members of the OB Town Council. (Voting members are paid up for the $20 annual fee.)

The Ocean Beach Town Council is an all-volunteer, non-profit organization dedicated to the care and improvement of our beautiful coastal community. Membership costs $20 per year, and all money raised goes right back to helping our community. If you’re interested in being a member, go here.

At the monthly meeting of the OBTC Wednesday, Jan. 24th, the 13 candidates appeared and all of them gave very brief speeches.

INSIDE is a list of the candidates with a very, very brief description, in the order of their presentations the other night:

It was like a love fest during the Summer of Love at the Ocean Beach Town Council meeting Wednesday night, January 24th. It was all good vibes as the Board bid a cherry and teary farewell to Gretchen Newsom, president for the last 4 years, and to other members who are stepping down from the Council. It was merry times as well during all the various governmental reports.

It was very celebratory as the Board presented the awards to the OB Holiday Parade winners – including members of the Mermaid float who came dressed in costume. And it was all very friendly as more than a dozen candidates for the open chairs on the Town Council gave their brief spiels (see separate article).

In direct contrast to last week’s ominous OB Town Hall meeting on the dreary subjects of arson and vandalism, this gathering of OB folk and kids was more akin to a circus, where ringmaster Marcus Turner, OBTC vice-president, directed the various performances and shows in a delightful couple hours of entertainment.

In the January 25th edition of the San Diego Reader, Delinda Lombardo, breaks the sad news that the days are numbered for one of the most iconic restaurants in Ocean Beach – Nati’s Mexican Restaurant.

In a piece of excellent investigative work, Lombardo reports the –

“Pop Pie Co. will occupy the restaurant space, pending the signing of a lease.”

Nati’s, the famous eatery – located at Bacon and Niagara – has been a mainstay in the Peninsula since the early 1960s – and even though some express disdain for the old-school Mexican food served – for many others, it’s their favorite place for Mexican. It was voted “best restaurant” for many years.

It was originally thought the recent sale of Nati’s would only result in remodeling and the restaurant would be re-opened. But now it appears any innovations will be going further.