Month: October 2021

By Geoff Page

While the agendas for planning board meetings don’t always look enticing, there are usually a few interesting nuggets here and there, some unexpected, in every meeting. This was the case for the Midway-Pacific Highway Planning Group’s regular monthly meeting, October 20.

District 2

For example, the government report for Council District 2 – oh, pardon please – for the Council President’s office, was provided by Makana Rowan.

The only item Rowan spoke about was the long-awaited vendor ordinance, which is coming to city council December 14. When asked to see the exact language of the ordinance, Rowan said it was essentially the same as the draft that has been previously published. He said the city attorney is reviewing it and the final version is not ready yet. This item is not as much of a concern for Midway as it is for Ocean Beach and other beach areas.

In parceling through the different developers’ plans for the Sports Arena redevelopment, a cause for concern is raised when reviewing the writings of one of the developers, a team member of the Midway Village+.

Just a few months ago in the opinion pages of the San Diego Union-Tribune, Nathan Moeder, a principal of London Moeder Advisors and team member of Midway Villages+, wrote:

“The public is not better served by providing affordable housing at the sports arena site.”

Moeder also said that for the city to focus on affordable housing for the city property at the Arena site “is a fatal flaw and will do more damage than good.”

A recent court battle unearthed that the city exempts certain kinds of work from triggering a greenhouse gas emissions analysis under its Climate Action Plan.

By MacKenzie Elmer / Voice of San Diego / October 25, 2021

A recent court battle over burying power lines in San Diego neighborhoods unearthed a potentially large shortcoming in the city’s signature climate policy: The city isn’t tracking, and therefore attempting to reduce, tons of planet-warming gases created by infrastructure projects.

By Judi Curry

It’s been a long time since I have gone to an ice hockey game.

Years ago, when my husband was alive we would attend the games, but I can honestly say that in the past twelve years I have not attended a game. Until yesterday, when my friend Steve asked me if I wanted to go with him for the season’s opener. Of course I said ‘yes’ since I have always liked sports – used to take ice skating lessons at the Pan Pacific Auditorium in Los Angeles, with the hope, short lived, of joining the Ice caspades.

When Steve asked me to go to the game, I didn’t realize that he had second row seats behind the goal; that every time a puck would hit the wall or glass in front of us it sounded like a gun being shot off. And it sounded like a zillion of them were going off at one time. It was fun watching the woman in front of me jump and spill her drink almost throughout the entire first quarter when those pucks hit the wall. It is interesting to note that she did not come back after the first period intermission – or if she did she sat somewhere else!

By Nearby Concerned Resident

A community safety issue has been identified by our concerned neighbors’ group. A proposal for Coast and Mission Bay Parking Lot Gate Closures that will affect Sunset Cliffs outlines overnight gate closures and signed overnight parking restrictions to improve public safety and reduce illegal activity.

(See Proposed Parking lot closures)

A number of neighbors on residential streets that these parking lots border are concerned these lot closures and restrictions will push overnight parking onto residential streets and don’t see any provisions in this proposal to address this safety issue.

by Ernie McCray

The other day,
in my backyard
on my patio,
I got to read a poem,
and say a few things
on a video,
regarding the direction
I’d like to see the world go.
Young folks,
my favorite folks,
were in the back of my mind
as I spoke,

By Kathy Blavatt

Scary yards are popping up everywhere, and I don’t mean just the ones that stopped watering!

My front yard recently turned to Fall colors. It has no need for props this Halloween. It is plenty scary with its piles of leaf mulch, unwieldy cactus, and prolific Spanish Moss.

My plants love to drink my homemade Witches Brew from compost teas … and I don’t mean the drinking kind! Though teas such as Earl Grey, Darjeeling, Mint, and other herbal teas can actually provide a pleasant scent around the yard. But some types of compost teas will have an unpleasant order for a short time.

Some compost teas sprayed on plants attract good bugs, while others make an excellent concoction that can repel bugs.

By Mat Wahlstrom

This Wednesday, 10/27, at 2:00 PM, the San Diego City Council Rules Committee will hold its first ever hearing on implementing the Hillcrest historic district. Should it clear this first hurdle, it could go either to the full council for a vote or be on the ballot in the June 7, 2022 election.

The implementation of a historic district for Hillcrest is important for all San Diegans.

Although originally proposed in 1981 and recommended in the 1988 Uptown Plan, a Hillcrest historic district has never been docketed by the council for consideration.

Flash forward to June 2015, and the draft Uptown update of the 1988 Plan clearly defined

From Surfrider:

OIL SPILL UPDATE
REPORT TARBALLS WASHING UP AT SAN DIEGO BEACHES

We are getting reports of tarballs washing up across San Diego County. To record those sightings and ensure clean up, Surfrider has created a simple oil/tarball mapping tool that uses your phone to photograph and map your findings in realtime.

We believe this will ultimately be a great tool to record and report oil that seems to be showing up everywhere and could help with clean up and understanding the full impact.

Here are other media reports on the Palm Tree controversy raging in Point Loma this week.

The first is from ABC 10News:

Some Ocean Beach residents gathered to protest the removal of palm trees in their neighborhood Thursday morning. The City of San Diego and Federal Aviation Administration have cited a row of palm trees as a potential threat to airplanes traveling to and from San Diego International Airport.

By Norma Damashek / NumbersRunner / Oct. 21, 2021

Part I: The endless summer is fading fast

Breeze through this nostalgic snapshot of the place we call home, seen through the lens of the New York Times travel page:

Like its urban rival Los Angeles, San Diego is not so much a city as a loose collection of overlapping (and sometimes colliding) communities bound by arterial, life-giving freeways: it’s a military town in Coronado; a surf town in funky, eclectic Ocean Beach; and a border town in the historic Mexican-American neighborhood of Barrio Logan.