By Kate Callen / May 28, 2025
How many schemes to plunder Balboa Park have died on the vine?
There was the 15-story “observation wheel” in the Plaza de Panama. The decommissioned Atlas Rocket near the Air and Space Museum. The boutique hotel on Inspiration Point. The Cabrillo Bridge bypass with the 800-car parking garage.
None of these ploys stood a chance. History has taught us that the surest way to galvanize San Diegans is to meddle with their “crown jewel” park. And if you really want to enrage them, decree that all visitors – families, tourists, class trips, volunteers – must pay for parking for the first time in the Park’s century-old history.
That once-unthinkable scenario is the latest in a string of frantic proposals from Mayor Todd Gloria.
Gloria is desperate. City coffers are draining. Voters rejected his sales tax because they didn’t trust him with their money. His new trash fees have hit the skids.
The Mayor could save money by shrinking the city payroll with layoffs, starting with his bloated management team. That’s what business leaders do. When money runs low, executives make painful cuts to keep the lights on.
But Gloria knows nothing about the world of business. He only knows the cult of personality. His aides are his acolytes, the entourage that keeps him bubble-wrapped in adulation. He’d sooner rehome his chihuahua than part with his staff.
Instead, the Mayor wants to wring money out of Park visitors. Then the Zoo would also have to charge for parking. How will people pay? At entrance toll booths? At kiosks with credit cards? Either way, motorists will have to queue up and wait… and wait.
This setup has obvious hurdles. To clear them, a leader would need a smart battle plan and the steel to execute it. But Gloria isn’t an astute strategist. He is a performer, an actor-mayor. He governs from the stage.
So let’s take our seats for the latest production of the Todd Gloria Political Theater. It’s a four-act play; we’ve seen it a few times.
Act I opens with the startling announcement of a bizarre proposal (like turning a warehouse into a 1,000-bed homeless shelter) that makes people wonder, “What is he smoking?”
Act II features a triumphant press conference. Maybe a ribbon is cut with a giant scissors. Or a white sheet is pulled away from a flashy artist’s rendering. A chorus of devotees (starring Councilmember Stephen Whitburn) surrounds the Mayor, who dazzles us with his smile.
In Act III, out-of-town consultants swoop in for lucrative contracts to hawk the idea. Which they easily get. One group receives $910,000 to “study” the plan. Their conclusion: It’s fantastic!! A second group charges $890,000 to conduct “community outreach” events where nobody writes down what the community says because, really, who cares?
In Act IV, the Independent Budget Analyst (IBA) releases a cost estimate that seems reasonable – say, $2 an hour for parking. The public is mollified. Then, just as the pay kiosks are installed, the IBA comes out with a revised estimate – say, $10 an hour. Oops!
In a recurring cameo role, Circulate San Diego hails the parking fees as the latest salvo in their war on cars. And they demand the installation of expensive new bike lanes on all Park roads. Which they easily get.
The Union-Tribune Editorial Board endorsed Gloria in every one of his election bids. It is now his severest critic. In a scathing editorial, “Ambulance Story Makes It Official: Mayor Gloria Has Jumped the Shark” (reprinted in the Rag), the editors were blunt:
“Gloria is on a different planet than his constituents — one in which up is down, left is right and right is wrong. … A ballot measure that uses state direct democracy laws to force responsible behavior on City Hall is the best hope — and maybe the only hope.”
Far-fetched? Of course. But we’re already stuck in a realm of unreality. Anything is possible.
Perhaps SOHO can succeed in making the grass in Balboa Park “historical.” People can drive from all over San Diego to see it, and say to their children and grandchildren, “When I grew up, we had some of this in our backyard.” Balboa Park is the only place that does not seem to have been touched by current policies. Our politicians cannot stand to let that happen.
Bravo
Kate Callen, I applaud your gift to lay Mayor Toad Gloria where he belongs.
Lay off some of his fat management team and sell some property. That should put a dent in the budget!
Good idea!
Of course Toad will try to extract tourists money wherever he can. They don’t know. They’re just trying to enjoy a vacation. There’s no morals when you’re plundering and pillaging. The big question I have is why? When your termed out? What’s the incentive for saving those staff positions?
Good point! He’s a bird that can’t fly anymore and he just keeps flapping his wings in a pathetic effort.
Well, all I can say is you got exactly what you voted for, a career politician who knows zero about economics. But he checks all of the boxes in the game of identity politics. Brown skinned and gay, therefore he must be great. Hope you are satisfied San Diego! I’m sure the Pride Parade will be fully funded and supported. Yay!
You do understand, not a single staff member/contributor of the Rag voted for him. Same with the overwhelming majority of commentors. So who exactly is this “you” that you are referring to?
Zero about economics is when you make unsustainable car infrastructure free, lmao. Go take the trolley or bus you entitled car karen
No mayor of San Diego should be anything but lily white and a straight man, darn it. And when is the straight white man parade? How is it that the most underrepresented, discriminated against demographic doesn’t get a parade? Me and Bill’s taxes are going to nothing but gay. All gay all the time. San DiGaygo.
If memory serves The Rag has usually been not so friendly with Gloria and his typically lame politician policies. Its easy to assume since he does check those identity boxes you describe, that progressives would rubber stamp him and everything he does. I know a lot of gays dont support him, and though he is the child of immigrants I dont think the latino community is enthusiastic about our resident bike lane builder. Yet he won the mayor race virtually unppposed. How has he become so strongly empowered? Dont blame the progressives at the Rag, chock it up to the same dirty politics that always permeate every level of government. The Toddster is the same kind of slimeball we always get, and dont pretend your guy that checks different boxes is going to be any better.
elo-rivera is out with an email campaign trying to save parks, libraries, and recreation centers from the budget ax with a standard e-letter. I was able to change it to ask for a halt to the stealth fee increases to services and tourists, stop funding underused bike lanes, cut back the bloated staff, restore infrastructure fees to predatory ADU builders, and quit wasting time/ money with look at me photo ops.
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-mayor-gloria-protect-our-parks-libraries-and-rec-centers/
Great article, Kate.
Let’s also not forget the 101 Ash Street debacle. As Jeff McDonald noted in a Union-Tribune article a few months back, $15 million in Capital Improvement Project (CIP) funds—along with a hefty bond—were diverted to help finance the outright purchase of this albatross. Part of that $15 million had originally been slated for the timely cleanup of Chollas Creek. At the time, Council President Sean Elo-Rivera spearheaded this purchase. Now, on top of everything else, the city faces massive lawsuits—adding even more strain to an already dire budget gap.
As Bill Walton [RIP] astutely remarked – we have a leadership crisis.
Gloria is not projecting the net income from this bone-headed scheme.
There are thousands of high tech meters to buy and maintain. New meter enforcement staff with costly benefits to hire and pay. Creation of some system to exempt Park and Museum and Theatre volunteers. Those with ADA plates need not pay any fees. No projection on the numerical reduction in Park visitors due to a $2.50 an hour fee. The mayor and council of course are asking none of these questions.
I project the net income from paid parking will be less than the inflated salaries of a few of the Mayor’s PR CCX staff hacks, photographers and videographers who follow him daily.
No no no no to this new debacle.
Exactly! It will cost more to collect parking fees than will be collected as parking fees. While parking fees will make it more costly for lower income families from throughout the San Diego region (Balboa Park IS a Regional Park, after all) to enjoy their “public” park. David Lundin summarizes the cost-benefit issues well.
wait, author, do you actually think that car infrastructure is sustainable in the long run to be free? It doesn’t matter if it’s been a year or century, just because something has always been one way doesn’t mean it should stay that way.
Good, take the trolley! I wish they charged you car parkers (myself included) double.
Good points on this new boondoggle. The people that voted for him got the whole package of lies from the buffoon. Those of us that didn’t knew what we were in for. San Diego is a shitehole and sinking further into it .A microcosm of what has happened to the whole state.
“…A microcosm of what has happened to the whole” … country.
We have taken a 6 month hiatus from San Diego and are living in New York. This city is not without its problems, but we take buses and subways or walk everywhere. The litter is minimal. We have been in Manhattan (where we’re now living) Brooklyn and the Bronx. We have seen homeless but none in Central Park and no encampments anywhere. And certainly none in doorways or businesses. People curb their dogs and pick up from them. There is a sense of respect and caring here. Roads and sidewalks are maintained and clean. And we certainly don’t miss having our cars.
Travesty!! The park is for all pay scales . Families. Shame on you!!!!
Back when there was a proposal to rip 8-feet off the Northeast quarter of the Balboa Bridge to create a 90-degree turn and then construct a 2-lane (sometimes considered a 4-lane) road that would cause Archery Canyon to be bulldozed for an elevated roadway that would lead to a multi-story parking lot on the South side of the Spreckels Organ Pavilion, Save Our Heritage Organisation raised the factual evidence that parking in “City Park” (aka Balboa Park) was declared to be free parking. What has changed with that legal wording? What has Toad Gloria pushed through the City Council that we have not seen about that language? Parking in Balboa Park is declared as free and I suspect the good folks of San Diego would object to a change in the wording.
I don’t go to Balboa Park all that much, but on Google Maps it looks like there’s a big, level Plaza in the middle of it that could easily be turned into parking. Very close to the museums. Also some tennis courts in the northeast corner. Those would be killer parking spaces. I don’t know what an “Organ Pavilion” is, but that looks pretty flat too and could easily be turned into parking and connected to the parking lots to the southwest of it? Just spitballing. I care deeply about access to green spaces.
news flash
San Diego OKs sweeping parking price hikes, from paid Sunday parking to $10-an-hour meters during Padres games