In reviewing the brand new budget for the City of San Diego for the next fiscal year, I could not help but notice there are no funds for a new lifeguard station for Ocean Beach, although there is $120,000 for a “long-awaited” lifeguard station in Pacific Beach.
Really? How long has OB been waiting for a new lifeguard station?
I seem to recall that PB has a “new” lifeguard station; so does Mission Beach and La Jolla. Obviously, PB is larger than OB and needs more lifeguards.
The OB lifeguard station was built in the 1980s and is very decrepit and even dangerous to the lifeguards who have to use it. The attached public restrooms are atrocious and need replacement as well.
Yet, who is lobbying for this public facility from OB? There is no OB Town Council; the Planning Board has its hands full fighting ADUs; the Mainstreet Association is holding the annual OB Street Fair and mainly looks out — as it should — for the business members of the association. OBGO has long ago faded.
Ocean Beach has no consistent group that fights for the needed infrastructure that the community has been trying to obtain for years, no for decades
The OBPB puts it on the CIP ask list every year. Maybe after the library and pier projects are done the city will see fit to protect our first responders ?
As always, OB gets ignored or forgotten. I mean, even the residents here have lost their will to fight as is obvious by the dwindling attendance at our community meetings.
I’ve noticed over the years that the agenda items that seem to bring people to the meeting are drama, an apartment complex (or big development) being built into their neighborhood, palm trees, street vendors, corporations moving in, 5g towers being installed (but not always), and parking. But the voices for lifeguard towers, libraries, and big infrastructure, is just not there. Even the pier involvement seemed lackluster to me.
Not sure where the fight went. Maybe it’s because so many of our residential units are now STVRs and the ones that remain are so expensive that people have to work all the time to afford them. For whatever reasons there is very little public will or energy anymore to fight for things we need and it usually falls on a handful of residents who are willing to put in the time and energy to try to implement change. Sadly a handful of residents can’t do it all and frankly I know some of them who are burnt out and feeling very deflated lately.
TD – you’re so very right on much of this. If OB has to wait until after the new pier is funded, it will take so long that the seas will have already risen and we’ll have to build the new lifeguard station on Ebers Street.
Part of the fight collapsed because OB no longer has a town council to stand up for what it needs. The OBPB can’t do it all.
I don’t remember much action from the OBTC regarding STVRs. Maybe prior to Corey being prez but I can’t remember what level of involvement the OBTC had in this issue. Seems like the OBTC spends a lot of its time planning fundraising events for the end of year food and toy drive and parade.
OBTC was definitely involved in that effort. We had leaders of both OBTC and OBPB downtown at marathon council meetings fighting on that front.
And we had the support of our councilmember. It all seems like a distant dream now.
https://obrag.org/2018/07/city-council-bi-partisan-majority-saves-coastal-communities-votes-down-mayors-proposal-on-short-term-rentals-votes-for-councilwoman-brys/
Oh ya. I remember that. It was a long time ago though.
The sparsely populated neighborhood of OB doesn’t really have the tax base to support much infrastructure.
Maybe if the area was more dense and had fewer prop-13 subsidized millionaire landlords the city could afford some upgrades.