Month: April 2022

Mica Kramer is one of the only women operating a Computer Numerical Control or CNC machine in the building of surfboards. Women in the surfboard industry are growing and Mica is a pioneer. Follow her as she builds, paints and surfs her way to a new tomorrow. A film by Charles Landon and Tom Zizzi.

The San Diego City Council continued yesterday, Monday, April 11, to adjust its rules for accessory dwelling units (ADUs) and made it easier, supposedly, for developers and homeowners to build more of them for low-income residents.

Already the loosest rules in the state, San Diego’s ADU building process just got looser.

And developers play loose with the rules, as Paul Krueger demonstrated in today’s Rag.

By David Ost / Common Dreams / April 2, 2022

It is tough for leftists to be on the same side as the mainstream.

We can easily feel at those times that we’re missing something, that we’re letting down the struggle, that by ganging up even on an admittedly bad actor we’re helping strengthen the nemesis at home, allowing it to appear as the good guy.

Ever since 1917, that has been the case with regards to the western Left and Russia. Before 1917, the Left saw the tsarist autocracy as the pinnacle of authoritarian reaction, an attitude that eased the path for the socialist parties of Russia’s enemies to embrace World War I. But ever since the Russian Revolution, the Left has been wary of joining with any western bourgeois condemnations of the country,

The San Diego Union Tribune Editorial Board sent a 10-question survey to the five viable candidates in the San Diego City Council District 2 race. Here, staff of the OB Rag have separated out their responses based on the subject matter or issue — to be viewed “side-by-side.”

Q: How do you plan to address homelessness at the beginning of your four-year term? What will homelessness in San Diego look like at the end of your term?

Jen Campbell:

As a physician, I know homelessness is, for many, primarily a health problem, /p>

By Ernie McCray

Days away
from my
84th birthday
I still dream
a fantasy
where people
join hands
to bring hopeful changes
to a troubled land.

This wish has persisted
|because we’ve
come a long way
as a nation
in the spirit of this mission,
but too often it’s been
in a one step forward
two steps backwards fashion

By Paul Krueger

Spurred to action by vigilant neighbors, city inspectors have cited a local real estate developer for violating building codes in the construction of a controversial ADU (accessory dwelling unit) project in the Talmadge area.

Patrick Clark, who manages “REIG Asset Management,” converted a single-family lot with adjacent garage into multi-unit rental complex.

Clark — who is based in Bonsall — purchased the property for $635,000 in October, 2019.

One man died, 3 rescued from capsized panga found in Ocean Beach

Three men were rescued and one was found dead after a suspected smuggling boat overturned near the Ocean Beach pier early Sunday morning, April 10. …..Tribune

Lifeguards Needed

Want a job as a lifeguard? Now is the time to apply! Tryouts are scheduled for April 14, 15 and 16

Will San Diego Cancel the SeaWorld Lease?

SeaWorld Parks and Entertainment, currently welshing on paying $10 million in back rent to the city, last year came up with a free ticket worth $80 for Ninth District council man and council president Sean Elo-Rivera to attend a SeaWorld reception. Even so, “SeaWorld will not be let off the hook,” Jay Goldstone, the city’s acting Chief Operating Officer, told the Union-Tribune last week regarding the company’s chronic bad debtor status. …

Originally posted April 11, 2022
By Mat Wahlstrom

Documents uncovered (as a result of prevailing in a lawsuit filed in 2021 in a California Public Records Act request) indicate the City of San Diego secretly partnered with major property owners to implement their chosen code changes and upzone (read: increase land values) not only for nine blocks in the historic Hillcrest core, but almost the entirety of Hillcrest and Medical Complex — and to use public funds to subsidize their efforts.

The result is the city’s current Plan Hillcrest project, which mandates these two neighborhoods absorb 80% of all new development in the six neighborhoods of Uptown.

OB Planning Board to Return to In-Person Meetings in May

By Geoff Page

By far, the main topic of interest at the Ocean Beach Planning Board’s regular monthly meeting, Wednesday, April 6, was the mayor’s grab for development fees called Build Better San Diego. The board had a long, heartfelt, somewhat fatalistic discussion of how to respond to the mayor’s proposals.

The city’s website for Build Better San Diego, https://www.sandiego.gov/buildbettersd, describes it briefly as follows:

“Build Better SD is a citywide initiative to enable the faster delivery of public spaces and buildings equitably and sustainably across San Diego.”

Huh?

Luckily, the site adds some more explanation:

by Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer

Hello neighbor. As a third-generation San Diegan who grew up in this beautiful region, I am so excited to be your new representative on the County Board of Supervisors.

Every 10 years, our district boundaries are redrawn to group communities together in ways that make sense based on our changing population, so I’m excited to welcome Ocean Beach and Point Loma to San Diego County District 3, which covers most of our coast from Carlsbad to Coronado, as well as Mira Mesa, Rancho Peñasquitos, and University City.

Residents of Evergreen Street are living a controversy right now as their Point Loma street is destined for a so-called advisory bike lane (ABL).

It’s unclear whether the city is putting plans for the street redesign on Evergreen on hold, as they were forced to in Mira Mesa.

In the meantime, we’re learning more about how the city is maneuvering to install more bike lanes around town.

Apparently, the city has adopted a new take on how residential street traffic should flow. And advisory bike lanes are their answer. According to local media:

Intended to make streets more cyclist-friendly, ABLs offer a single lane for bi-directional traffic to share in the center of two bike lanes. If oncoming cars are approaching, vehicles are supposed to veer into the bike lanes and pass.

By Colleen O’Connor

Did you feel the jolts? Hear the rumblings? And rush to grab your get-away bag?

If not, you must have slept through the last 24-hours.

This afternoon’s scheduled final vote confirming Ketanji Brown Jackson, as the first black woman and public defender ever to be a U.S. Supreme Court Justice, is its own earthquake.

Deeply felt in California and the rest of the county, the aftershocks will reverberate for eons. The “strike-dip” fault lines cleaving both the Republican and the Democratic parties are already apparent. Just watch the rumblings of the 2022 and 2024 election cycles.

But, California is experiencing yet another earthquake; oddities in any April, in any year.