OB Pier Working Group Meeting: ‘All To Do About Nothing’

By Geoff Page

What has been dubbed the Ocean Beach Pier Working Group had its “Fall Virtual Meeting,” on Wednesday November 17. The agenda for the meeting had this heading:

THE CITY OF SAN DIEGO
OFFICE OF COUNCIL PRESIDENT JENNIFER CAMPBELL
SECOND DISTRICT

The meeting was moderated by Campbell’s representative for the Ocean Beach area, Teddy Martinez. So, this is being run by the District 2 Council office, in case that wasn’t clear enough. Considering the results of this meeting, District 2 should get all the credit.

This was a Zoom meeting for a core group of meeting participants and other interested parties but was deliberately not made open to the public. At one time, there were 27 attendees.

Some of the core group come from local organizations such as Andrea Schlageter, chair of the OB Planning Board and Denny Knox from the OB Mainstreet Association. Mark Winke, former president of the OBTC and RalphTeyssier, son of the contractor who built the pier are also part of this informal core.

Other attendees included Khota Zaiser form the mayor’s office, Walt Bishop, Federal Government Affairs City of San Diego, Elif Cetin, Deputy Director, Engineering & Capital Projects, Elizabeth Scroth-Nichols, Senior Civil Engineer, City of San Diego, and two Ph.D scientists from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography.

Martinez opened the meeting by telling everyone how important the pier is to Campbell.  (However, it was not important enough to put in even a brief appearance like Campbell made at the previous meeting.)

After Martinez’s opening, he introduced the two Scripps scientists. The excitement about two Ph.D’s in oceanography attending, seen as a good omen, quickly faded.

Dr. Jules Jaffe, Ph.D, Scripps Institute of Oceanography at UC San Diego spoke first. Dr. Jaffe described his work looking at plankton in some detail. He described some scientific uses for a new pier, that, frankly, could have been easily pursued on the existing pier.

Dr. Jaffe spoke about an underwater microscope to look at plankton. He said this could be used to provide an early warning for algae blooms. He said this same thing is done on the Scripps Pier and doing this off the new pier would provide an observational point to compliment the Scripps Pier. He mentioned ocean sensors and teaching possibilities.

When he described what it took to do these things, which was very little in the way of equipment, it did not sound like any ideas on building a pier but rather what a pier could be used for. It sounded more like a request to please consider Scripps in the new pier but there was no offer of actual help from Scripps.

As if that was not deflating enough, the next speaker, Dr. Ronald Burton, Ph.D, Scripps Institute of Oceanography at UC San Diego, veered so far off track that one wondered if he knew why he was speaking. Dr. Burton began by explaining his work at Scripps. It was long explanation about plankton sampling and counting fish eggs to assess what fish are spawning locally. He said this could also be done on the new pier needing very little, perhaps a locker to store equipment and a simple winch on the railing to lower and raise plankton samplers.

Once again, this could have been done today off the existing pier, a new pier is not needed for this work. And, Dr. Burton also did not offer any assistance from Scripps. In fact, it appeared that both men were there to pitch their work as scientists more than anything else.

Martinez allowed a lot of time to the two scientists, much more than should have been allowed since the meeting was only scheduled for one hour.

Pier Condition and Funding

Martinez began this section of the agenda by launching into yet another paean for Campbell again saying how committed Campbell was and how much she cared about the OB Pier. This is a huge mistake that everyone is making, referring to this as the OB pier.  The pier is in OB but it belongs to the whole city and the county actually. By continuing to refer to this as the OB Pier it localizes the issue and not everyone in the city is fond of OB. It is the San Diego Pier.

Khota Zaiser spoke next. He began by talking about the state funding of $8.4 million that he said San Diego did not yet have. It was clear that he had no details about this money and he quickly moved on to talk vaguely about grants and how the city is looking at funding in that manner but no hard details were offered.

Walt Bishop spoke next and explained that an earmark was attempted titled “Sen. Alex Padilla Congressionally Directed Funding Request.” It was directed at the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development – Economic Development Initiative. It was a request for emergency repair funds amounting to $500,000.

The request stated the $500k would cover 68.5% of the emergency repair costs with the city able to contribute only $230,000 to the total needed. All of this funding was supposed to be enough to make repairs to the two piles that have caused the end of the pier to be closed.

Apparently, the earmark did not make it into the next year’s budget for the Transportation and Urban Housing committee. Bishop then said the national infrastructure bill may be another possibility. In short, no money for the repairs.

Engineering and Capitol Projects

Elif Cetin and Elizabeth Scroth-Nichols from City of San Diego were up next. More time was wasted explaining information about the pier damage that everyone already knew. Civil engineer Scroth-Nichols continued the city’s line that the pile damage was due to two recent storms. This is an attempt to rewrite history.

The storms did cause more damage but the damage was identified as far back as 2004. The city’s lack of any maintenance caused as much damage as the storms, more actually.

The city went on to say that the Coastal Commission was holding up the emergency repairs. This was curious. As related in the October 12 OB Rag story about the OBPB’s October meeting, the city came before the board as part of a process to obtain a coastal commission permit retroactively for repairs at the foot of Narragansett and west of the Sea Spray Apartments.

The repairs were done a year before the meeting. The emergency repair process allows circumvention of regular permit procedures because the repairs need to be done quickly and permits take a long time. It was not explained why the coastal commission was involved before the repairs are made. To some, this appeared to be an excuse because the city does not have, or will not devote, the money to fix the pier.

Cetin then wasted a bunch more time explaining contract delivery methods to everyone. Until the funding is secured, discussions of what kind of building contract method is used serve no purpose.

Community Input

The agenda only allowed for 15 minutes of community input. This was to start at 1:40 but did not begin until 1:49 leaving six minutes. Despite this, Martinez still devoted the last minutes to more high praise of his boss Campbell.  On this one-page agenda, Martinez was listed as “Teddy Martinez, Office of Council President Jennifer Campbell” three times. Just in case folks did not know Campbell was council president, it was listed four times in the agenda. Campbell is pushing her title as council president for all it is worth.

Only a few comments were made by the “community.” It appeared the audience, that included several people passionate about having a new pier, had a similar reaction to this dog and pony show and just stayed quiet.

The end result is there is no money and no concrete prospects for obtaining any. District 2 continues to treat this as an Ocean Beach project instead of a city-wide and county-wide project. The commitment from the city leaders is clearly lacking at this point since they won’t even cough up enough money for the emergency repairs.