Month: December 2024

By Gloria Tran / Op-Ed San Diego Union-Tribune / December 4, 2024

Loss of life: Mason Orozco-Romero, 4 years old; Malikai Orozco-Romero, 8 years old; Officer Austin Machitar, 30 years old; and Edgar Giovanny Oviedo, 16 years old. Critical injuries: Officer Zachary Martinez, 27 years old.

These four lives were tragically cut short, and one changed forever, after police pursuits led to violent crashes in San Diego in the last few months. Each life lost is horrific irrespective of the circumstances. While the actions of those being chased contribute to these tragedies, it’s our duty to evaluate these incidents holistically to protect the safety of both civilians and officers. Could these lives have been saved? No one will ever know. However, the Commission on Police Practices —  which I chair — hopes to make San Diego streets safer for residents and officers.

It’s indisputable that police pursuits have inherent dangers. Are law enforcement chases necessary? At times, yes, when there is an imminent threat to public safety. The concern is whether or not the risk is worth the offense. For example, if a murder suspect is spotted and police attempt to apprehend the suspect but the individual speeds off, common sense leads to the conclusion that a pursuit is essential.

Peters: Turquoise Tower proposal is a ‘mistake’ so bad it may become ‘poster child’ for development foes

From Neighbors for a Better California

Congressman Scott Peters, who represents Pacific Beach and is the founder of the San Diego YIMBY Democrats, says the proposed 23-story high-rise on Turquoise Street in North Pacific Beach is a “mistake” that should be sent back to the drawing board.

In a post on December 5 on X, the 50th district representative added:

“Other home builders I’ve spoken to worry that it will taint the reputation of all development and be a poster child for those who resist all new housing.”

Peters weighed in on what, arguably, has become the most important political issue in Pacific Beach since 1972, when concerned residents organized to pass Proposition D, a local citizens initiative that limits the height of buildings in San Diego’s coastal zone to 30 feet.

The body of an unidentified man was recovered from the ocean early Monday morning, December 9, by first responders.

They had responded to a 911 call at 5:00 a.m. Monday reporting a body face-down on the beach near the end of Bermuda Ave. getting carried out to sea by waves.

By Crystal Niebla / inewsource / December 5, 2024

A resident-led planning group has successfully stalled a housing project in its neighborhood after raising alarms over a once little-known zoning law applicable only to their southeast San Diego communities.

The San Diego City Council last month [Nov. 12] voted to grant the Chollas Valley Community Planning Group’s appeal of a project that would build more than two dozen, single-story homes across more than 5 acres on Klauber Avenue in Encanto.

At the center of the debate: a controversial footnote quietly added to the municipal code in 2019 that allows a developer to build single-family homes at a higher density in the area.

Without the footnote, the Klauber Avenue site would only permit a maximum of 13 single-family homes.

City officials, while continuing to say they’re unsure how and why the footnote was inserted, are now working to remove it.

For now, the Klauber project is halted.

Peninsula News reports that demolition of the existing structure at Rosecrans and Talbot could begin any day. That would definitely signal that the city is proceeding with allowing the 4-story, 56-unit mixed-use apartment complex to be built.The news, an online publication of the Point Loma Association, stated “demolition could began any day,” and quoted Eric Law, of the Peninsula Community Planning Board, as saying, ” … the developer is just waiting for final approvals to begin clearing the property and start construction. This could come at any time now.”

If this building is allowed to proceed, it would violate a host of laws and relations and embed a significant departure from “normal” procedures and cordial relationships between city government and the residents and neighbors of Point Loma. It would violate the 30-foot height limit and any trust between the neighborhood in question and Mayor Gloria and city councilmember Campbell. Just for starters.

This project and the way the city dealt with the neighborhood and its volunteer community planning group are outrageous. Some in the Peninsula have concluded the only recourse is a legal one. This means the community has to protect itself from the city with legal means. That is also outrageous.

Two San Diego-based coastal environmental organizations are about to sue SeaWorld for violating its permits which have resulted in polluting Mission Bay with heavy metals from its fireworks and with toxins from its wastewater.

The Coastal Environmental Rights Foundation (CERF) and San Diego Coastkeeper (Coastkeeper) have initiated a citizen suit enforcement action against SeaWorld and claim that SeaWorld’s unlawful discharges violate two of its Clean Water Act permits. (See below)

The groups charge SeaWorld’s 150 fireworks shows a year

“discharges plastic caps, wires, trash, and other chemical laden debris into Mission Bay in violation of multiple requirements of the regional Fireworks Permit, and fails to follow its own post-event cleanup protocols. Adding to the list of violations, SeaWorld allows embers, malfunctioning fireworks, wires and ignitors to fall into the bay while still burning.”

Early Thursday morning, December 5, a fire broke out in a two-story apartment on the 5000 block of Narragansett in OB and 2 people had to be hospitalized with at least one of them suffering burn-related injuries.

Responding firefighters helped numerous residents evacuate the fire that erupted just before 12:30 a.m, 10News reported, but two people were reportedly trapped inside and had to be rescued and rushed to the hospital.

A man out jogging in the Ocean Beach area was struck and killed by a driver in a speeding sedan early Thursday, December 5, and San Diego police have recovered an abandoned vehicle suspected of being involved.

A witness told police the sedan and two other cars were traveling at a high rate of speed when the pedestrian was struck around 5 a.m. on Nimitz Boulevard and West Point Loma Boulevard, police Officer David O’Brien said. The victim died before he could be taken to a hospital.

None of the drivers stopped after the man was struck, he said.

by Ernie McCray

I always thought
I was hip to what’s going on
but I sure
got this past election wrong.

I mean I spent a day
just a week before election day
sitting in a chair,
on a patio
at the Crystal Pier
breathing in
the Pacific Ocean’s
breezy air,
a strawberry margarita
and a bag of sour cream and onion potato chips in my reach,
as my eyes followed the activities
playing out on the beach,
frisbees flying
waves being ridden,
lovers strolling hand-in-hand
in the sand.

By Carlos Acuña / Calexico Chronicle / November 27 –November 29, 2024

Psst. Want to know something? I hate political writing, despite all the schadenfreude and subliminal and not so subliminal virtue-signaling that weighs down each ponderous sentence much like the angst-inducing coal in Tennessee Ernie Ford’s “16 Tons.”

But the coming holidays lead my mind to funny places, to ask less than funny questions.

We’re supposed to live in a Constitutional republic, a democracy. For the better part of my adult life it sure hasn’t felt like it. In a democracy, the People rule. Period.

Where does the Constitution give the 1 percent of the population the entitlement to the distribution of resources over the remaining 99 percent? Where in this sacrosanct document does one read that unless one complies and submits to the arbitrariness of silly, insecure managers and supervisors, one must find one’s way to the exit door and starve, go homeless, penniless, deprived of the minimal decent healthcare and even clean water?

By Carolyn Chase

Sure would be nice to follow the money on the “homelessness” spending. With hundreds of millions of dollars going out the door, and let’s just say 10,000 unhoused – how much of that is direct help and how much is building rent-controlled units and how much is – as one activist put – the homeless industrial complex? I’m sure some has gone for good, but really…there doesn’t seem to be any serious analysis of what is a problem in Every City in the USA.

And you see it in Italy and France and the UK. Not so much in Scandinavia since not only do they generally believe that housing is a right, but they find ways to provide it. Austria also has an effective public housing program. Copenhagen in particular finds ways to provide affordable housing that isn’t bland and prone to low qualities of life, i.e. they are designed with green spaces and worthwhile architecture. It’s not rocket science – it’s design consciousness.

What we have around here in too many cases is cheap design and construction (not designed to last though the costs are definitely hard to manage) to support the bottom lines of the project.

Frank Gormlie Book-Signing
and Talk on The May 1970 Rebellion
Saturday, Dec. 14, 1–3 pm

Frank Gormlie will be available for book-signing
and will give a short presentation on his book,
what led him to write it and
what it means for us today in the Trump Era.