Month: April 2025

By Steve O San Diego

Secret menu item alert!!! Shhh….

Last week, I stopped by Northside Tavern for my favorite item on the menu: the Cali Bowl.

I didn’t realize things were about to change. If you haven’t had it yet, it’s basically a burrito in a bowl with shredded cabbage, rice, black beans, avocado, pico de gallo, cotija cheese, and your choice of protein (chicken, carne asada, shrimp, carnitas, or birria), all topped with salsa or chipotle sauce if you go with the shrimp.

The last time I had it, it was still a secret menu item, so secret that even some of the bartenders didn’t know about it. I ordered it with shrimp, and honestly, it was next-level good. Now it has been added to their menu.

But this visit took an unexpected and delicious turn. Just as I arrived, I ran into Tom North, one of the owners, on his way out. I mentioned I was about to order the Cali Bowl again, and he let me in on another secret menu item he’s been working on which is a twist inspired by the Hawaiian Loco Moco.

By Paul Krueger

After repeatedly dismissing — and even ridiculing — public concerns about San Diego’s “Bonus ADU” program, Mayor Todd Gloria is trying to take credit for our grassroots effort to limit the damage inflicted by multi-unit backyard monstrosities.

Worse, the Mayor and his planning department now dare to congratulate themselves for “…ensuring projects are consistent with the scale and character of San Diego’s neighborhoods.”

And it’s damn near Orwellian for the mayor’s publicists to claim the City “…monitors its housing programs to ensure they are achieving the desired results, and often makes adjustments based on feedback from the community…”

Those of us who have fought in the trenches on this issue know the reality: The mayor, the planning department, the city council, and the planning commission are directly responsible for the blight caused by excessive ADU construction.

They have consistently rebuffed any criticism of this infrastructure-busting program. They have empowered predatory developers and corporate investors to defy neighborhood concerns, with proposals that will jam up to 126 dwelling units on a single-family lot, with no parking, minuscule setbacks, and give-away waivers for infrastructure fees.

By Lisa Mortensen

Here is a copy of the 8-page notice that will be delivered to all property taxpayers who receive city trash service in San Diego.

Please read the highlighted portions of information that will provide the basic instruction and where to deliver the protest vote.  You can mail it or hand-deliver to:

Office of the City Clerk
202 C Street – MS 2T
San Diego, CA 92101

~The protest slip is on page 7 of the material you will receive.  It appears in tear off form but you may want to use scissors to remove it.

~It requires your name, property address (that will be on the envelope of the 8-page notice) and your signature.

~All protest ballots must be received by the City Clerk by 2pm (PDT) on June 9th, 2025.

In her State of the County speech last week, San Diego County Supervisor and acting chair Terra Lawson-Remer took on the Trump administration and all his cut-backs to local programs that benefit a lot of vulnerable residents.

She declared:

“Right now, the federal government is slashing programs we rely on for health care, housing, clean air and water, public safety and disease prevention. Every decision Washington makes impacts our ability to serve you.”

Yet her solution was to propose a new tax ballot measure that could raise $1 Billion a year. The San Diego U-T reported:

Lawson-Remer said she will propose a local tax ballot measure to offset federal cuts and boost services.

“We can raise the money ourselves, right here at home,” she added, “not by waiting, or begging for D.C. to do its job, but by taking the wheel of our own destiny and steering our own San Diego County ship through this storm.”

This funding, she said, would help the county adhere to an ambitious plan, introduced last month, to double behavioral health and substance use disorder treatment slots from 16,000 to 32,000 by 2030. …

Lawson-Remer had floated the idea of a ballot measure in February but pulled the discussion from the board’s agenda.

A supervisor-led tax increase would require the support of two-thirds of county voters, but there are ways to structure a ballot measure so as to require only a majority vote, she said.

In her address, Lawson-Remer said such a measure could generate $1 billion a year.

What? What was she thinking? Was she here when city voters rejected Mayor Gloria’s tax measure last year? (And Gloria has been punishing San Diegans ever since with high trash fees, increased fees for parks and facilities, higher parking rates and now cut-backs to police, libraries and rec centers and the arts.)

This is NOT the answer, Terra! It’s absolutely DOA – dead on arrival.

There’s a 12 unit, three story ADU being built in on Canon Street in Point Loma and it’s coming in under the radar as they are accessing from the back side (Avenida de Portugal) and putting materials in the chain link area next to the bank.

The units have no setbacks and no on-site parking. It’s a familiar story across San Diego these days: high density taking over the backyard of a single-family residence.

A San Diego jury on Friday convicted a local Hells Angel of attempted murder for stabbing a Black man on Newport Avenue two years ago.

Troy Scholder was also found guilty of assault with a deadly weapon causing great bodily injury, and a separate charge of felony assault against another victim. The stabbing and assaults occurred on June 6, 2023.

The jury also agreed with prosecutor Miriam Hemming’s argument that Scholder committed a hate crime in those attacks.

Scholder now faces another hearing to determine if he committed those crimes for the benefit of.a gang.

Reporter Robert Vardon at the OB-Point Loma Monthly (which is a publication of the Union-Tribune) picked up our story about Corey Bruins, the former head of the OB Town Council forced to resign in early 2024, and now facing 9 felonies.

Based on his reporting, here are more details of the Bruins’ affair.

Bruins is 34. At his arraignment on March 28 where he pleaded not guilty, he was ordered by the court not to possess any “personal identifying information” about current board members Jenny Brengelman, Shelly Parks and Stephanie Kane of the Ocean Beach Community Foundation, which succeeded the Town Council after the board decided last year to drop the Town Council name after nearly six decades because of the scandal.

There are 7 candidates for the OB Community Foundation Board of Directors. OB community members who want to vote should become a member of the OB Community Foundation (no-cost memberships are available); more info at https://obcommunityfoundation.org/membership. Voting will be open through April 27.

Here are the candidates and their statements (in the order sent to the Rag).

From Port of San Diego / April 23, 2025

The Port of San Diego has reopened the west side of the Shelter Island Boat Launch Ramp after completing repairs to the west side floating dock.

The repair project began in January and included pumping about 200 cubic yards of sand out from underneath the damaged floating dock and placing it onto the adjacent beach, installing neoprene sleeves and stainless-steel wedge anchors along the seawall to prevent future sand migration, removing the damaged floating dock, and installing the new floating dock.

Come inside for details………

By Alex Lai / CBS8 / April 19, 2025

The American dream of owning a home is being reimagined. Developers are buying single-family homes and adding high-density units in backyards, or as Realtor Jim LaMattery calls them, “alligator projects.”

“The reason I call these alligator projects is because they’re over-built, bloated, monstrosities in the middle of our neighborhoods,” LaMattery said.

He leads LIMBY, or Look In My Backyard tours, to show residents the projects in neighborhoods. One “alligator project” is in the backyard of a single-family home on Almayo Avenue in Clairemont.

“These are 17 units that are all one bedroom, one bath, and they’re 441 square feet and they’re going to rent at $2,600 a month,” LaMattery said.