SanDiegoVille / May 29, 2026
The “temporary” Mission Beach lifeguard tower is a multimillion-dollar monument to decades of civic neglect and a preview of what happens when a city government confuses managing a crisis with causing one.
Stand on the Mission Beach boardwalk this summer and take a look at what may be one of the most expensive temporary structures in San Diego history. Rising above one of California’s busiest beaches is an industrial steel framework wrapped in chain-link fencing, crisscrossed with exposed bracing and exterior staircases, topped by what appears to be a lifeguard observation cab bolted to the roof. The Giant Dipper roller coaster towers behind it. Visitors from around the world stop, stare, take photos, and wonder if construction is still underway.
It isn’t. This is the finished product. This is the City of San Diego’s replacement for the busiest lifeguard station in its municipal system.
Depending on which public report a taxpayer reads, the project cost somewhere between $2 million and $4 million. And that may not even be the most remarkable part. The real story is how the city got here.
Because this story is not really about a lifeguard tower. It is about how San Diego manages public infrastructure. The tower standing on the boardwalk today is simply the visible result of years of decisions that were deferred, maintenance that was postponed, warnings that went unaddressed, and replacement planning that never materialized until an emergency left officials with few alternatives.
For the balance of this important article, please go here.
This mayor and council reps have been far more interested in bike lanes, roundabouts, sidewalks jutting out into the traffic lanes, supposedly so peds, and drivers can see each other, thereby decreasing parking spaces, when people are not supposed to park closer than 20′ from ped crossing areas. they now have 2 projects doing the same thing. And painting asphalt, than they are maintaining the infrastructure. Many many streets are like 3rd. world country roads, but the cutesy stuff they want is evident everywhere you look, including the Normal St. ultra pricey extravaganza. From Jan. 2024- March 2026 there were 5 accidents causing cyclists serious injury or fatalities, the fault of the cyclist, and 5 caused by the driver. But, there were 33 serious/fatalities where the peds were the cause of the accident, and 20 caused by drivers. Per PD Records stats. Seems to me bike lanes could be put on wide streets, leave the parking as is, and it would better for shoppers/businesses and it would be much easier/better for peds to see oncoming vehicles, rather than having to get out in the traffic lane to see around vehicles parked 11 ft. from the curb for oncoming traffic. And roundabout make the intersection wider, so it’s farther for the peds to dodge traffic in crossing the street. Why on earth did the politicians spend so much money on a temporary fix on that life guard station? That kind of spending is wasteful and mostly stupid. Contractors/vendors are taking the City of SD for a high priced, unnecessary, and wasteful ride. I blame the City Purchasing Dept., for putting projects out to bid, when the Purchasing Agent monitoring the project doesn’t know enough about it, to say a hard no and reel in the applicant/contractor. Obviously it’s cheaper to maintain existing structures than to pay that kind of money for a temporary structure.
Before “The Strong Mayor Election,” the City Charter mandated a professionally trained city manager who forecast long-term maintenance and replacement of all infrastructure over 10, 10, 25, and decades into the future. The City Manager and City Auditor planned those long-term pots of money to be there when streets, lighting systems, water delivery lines, sewage lines and all those things would be cared for with the pots of money set aside and planned for long-term growth of funds. Then citizens were conned into rejecting the professional city manager and elected a politician as mayor. The first thing the strong mayors did was dip into or drain those pots of money for short-term “feel good projects” like 101 Ash Street, or bicycle lanes, or even worse…to rent motels for homeless and poor members of our Society. But now the money is gone, drained by political incompetence and a gross misunderstanding of why we had those pots of money. We need to have a new Charter election to reject the strong mayor system and bring back professionally trained city managers.
Click the SandiegoVille link and open a new tab. Well worth the read.
I totally agree with Ronald May. The sooner it’s changed by the voters, the better for SD. It’s going to take a brilliant City Mgr. to come up with a viable plan, for the foreseeable future. I wonder what a new Mayor and/or City Mgr. will uncover in the secret docs in the mayor’s office, since he seems to have had many closed door meetings.