Month: May 2023

It’s a sad but predictable truth, that the local planning boards of Point Loma — Ocean Beach, Peninsula and Midway — are faltering before our very eyes. And it’s all due to the city of San Diego’s neglect.

Take the following as prima facie evidence of this maddening trend.

Ocean Beach Planning Board

The OB Board has been struggling this past year in maintaining enough members to serve. At their May 3 monthly meeting, “there were only eight of ten board members attending for a board this is supposed to have 16 members,” as Rag reporter Geoff Page observed. Getting OBceans to turn out for their annual elections has also been a challenge over the last several years, not discounting the pandemic.

And despite a potentially controversial or contentious issue of planned roundabouts on Bacon Street on the agenda, Page reported, “There was only one person in the audience during the board meeting besides this writer and the District 2 representative.”

By Gary Warth / San Diego Union-Tribune / May 23, 2023

A divided county Board of Supervisors on Tuesday agreed to authorize up to $32 million in loans toward the city of San Diego’s potential purchase of four residential properties that could be used to house more than 300 homeless people.

The city’s Housing Commission is considering buying the properties with money from the state’s Project Homekey program, and the purchases are contingent on receiving the grants.

By Ernie McCray

Hey,
LAY THOSE PISTOLS DOWN, Ja!
Enough of
all that jive foolishness,
flashing guns on videos
as though you’re a gangster wannabe
or some kind of an OG.
If it’s attention you want
you’ve already got that,
it seems to me,
because on a basketball court
your fans eat up
your razzle and dazzle
and wizardry and artistry
with unadulterated glee.

Wesley Hill, a 25-year resident of Ocean Beach, is upset. While riding the Ocean Beach bike path on his bicycle, after dodging trash and debris from homeless encampments along the pathway, he ran into a skateboard, crashed head first, cracking some teeth and costing him dental bills.

Hill told Brian White of CBS8:

“The bike path has been a mess for months, if not years. Encampments, other people using it to do drugs, it’s become a public toilet. Frequently, you see shopping carts all over the place.”

By Justin Brooks / SD U-T OpEd / May 19, 2023

In 1995, I read a newspaper article about a young woman in her early 20s named Marilyn Mulero. Marilyn was awaiting execution in Illinois after being convicted of a double homicide.

The article said she was sentenced to death on a plea bargain, but I didn’t think that could be accurate. How could anyone be sentenced to death on a plea bargain? A plea bargain is supposed to be a bargain — meaning you give up your right to a trial in exchange for a lesser sentence. Death is the most severe punishment the government can dole out.

At the time I read about Marilyn, I was a law professor teaching and living in Michigan.

I felt a deep need to find out more about her case, so I set up a meeting with her and drove hundreds of miles to the prison where she was housed in rural Illinois.

The San Diego City Council on Monday, May 22, “reluctantly” consented to new California Coastal Commission regulations that will require restaurant owners in the city’s coastal zone to replace any lost parking spaces taken up by outdoor dining areas they operate on the street, as reported by Lori Weisberg at the U-T.

What is affected is a narrow strip of coastal zone known as the “beach impact area,” defined as a stretch of coastline that begins at the northern end of Torrey Pines State Reserve and runs about 15 miles south to Sunset Cliffs Natural Park. And the boundary extends inland approximately a quarter of a mile or more for much of the zone.

Everyone’s invited to the “OB Pier Update & Discussion” at the Ocean Beach Town Council meeting, Wednesday, May 24th at 7 PM. The meeting will be held at the Point Loma/Hervey Branch Library, at 3701 Voltaire Street –(and there’s plenty of parking).

The public May Town Council meeting will be “a session wholly dedicated to discussions surrounding the future of our beloved OB Pier,” as an announcement for the meeting stated.

The agenda will cover:

• an update from the City of San Diego about the current status of the pier,

The father of a Point Loma teen severely injured in a hit-and-run incident led a “community-wide detective squad” to find and locate an Ocean Beach person suspected of causing the incident.

Tim Ash is the father of Alex who was wrapping up a ride on his E-bike on Catalina Blvd on a recent Friday night when he was hit by an SUV that then took off. Alex fractured his pelvis in 3 places and he had internal bleeding in his bladder which was life-threatening. After his son was injured and hospitalized Tim and other family members and friends went to work, in search of the SUV, believed to be a black Jeep Grand Cherokee.

By Colleen O’Connor

All your enemies
Have opened their mouths wide against you;
They hiss and gnash their teeth.
They say, “We have swallowed her up!
Surely this is the day for which we waited; (From the Bible: Lamentations 2:16)

But, they have not swallowed her up.  Not Senator Diane Feinstein, not Nancy Pelosi, her neighbor of 30 years, and not Pelosi’s eldest caregiving daughter, Nancy Corinne Prowda.

For months, the GOP, many self-important, ineffectual politicians and op/ed columnists have railed against Senator Feinstein, demanding her resignation and heaping scorn on those who protected, sheltered, and cared for a woman who is elderly, recently recovering from shingles and its maladies.

By Geoff Page

There were two main items of interest at the Peninsula Community Planning Board’s regular monthly meeting, Thursday, May 18: traffic and cell towers.

The PCPB has resumed in-person meetings at the Point Loma/Hervey Library the third Thursday of each month. Zoom meetings have been discontinued.

Voltaire Street traffic

The traffic issue on Voltaire drew a number of people to the meeting.

Did anyone else notice it?

Amidst all the hoopla and genuine joy over the recent announcement that San Diego will have a major league soccer team, is the little-emphasized fact that Brad Termini — the Midway Rising developer and Mayor Gloria’s top campaign contributor — is one of the owners of the new franchise. A minority one, yes, but one nevertheless.

Yesterday’s U-T gave us an insight into the whole origin story and with a nod towards Termini’s role.

SD Art Advisory, a new art gallery, will soon debut in Mission Hills — a project from fine artist and gallerist Alexander Salazar and local interior designer Darcy Kempton.

Their 4,200-sqft space will feature two levels of works by both local and world-renowned artists, plus a salon where collectors can purchase NFT art in partnership with dealer Chris Trueman.

The curators hope the gallery shines a spotlight on the San Diego art scene while also benefiting the arts communities across SoCal and Baja California.

SD Art Advisory opens at 12 p.m. this Saturday May 20 at 3977 Falcon St