Balboa Park Property Tax Measure: Who Is Andy Kopp?

By Kate Callen

Andy Kopp wants to make a name for himself, and he has chosen Balboa Park as the place to do it.

Kopp, a former Navy intelligence analyst, is spearheading the “Balboa Park Restoration & Community Improvement Act,” an initiative aimed for the 2028 ballot. If voters approve $1 billion in general obligation bonds, that debt would be paid by an additional tax assessment of between $3.50 to $23 per $100,000 of assessed parcel value.

The proceeds would clear the Park’s deferred maintenance backlog, expand the Museum of Art (cost: $250 million), restore the Old Globe and the Starlight Bowl, renovate the Morley Field Sports Complex, and build a pedestrian bridge from Golden Hill to Inspiration Point.

With his proposal, Kopp has become a player in Balboa Park advocacy circles, where people don’t know much about him but are impressed by his chutzpah. He took the stage at a September 19 Friends of San Diego Architecture Park forum like a prizefighter entering the ring.

His remarks began, “I’m kicking the door in and demanding some movement on this issue.” He said the current Park Master Plan update “is bullshit, and you know it.” He dismissed the idea of private support for the Park as “a non-starter … There’s a larger philanthropic class in Fort Worth than there is in San Diego.”

This ballot measure is a heavy lift. Balboa Park is beloved, but San Diegans detest tax raises. We must ask: Who exactly is Andy Kopp? What are his credentials to lead this effort?

A half-hour of online searching about Kopp turned up … not much.

Kopp is former Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives and Communications for the San Diego Housing Federation. He also is former San Diego Director of the Truman National Security Project.

Since 2024, he has founded Platform for Democracy,  and Platforms US . The two non-profits are the infrastructure of his ballot measure campaign.

The websites are bare bones: generic statements about “the public good” and “the general welfare of the people,” Kopp’s picture and bio, and a “Donate” button.

But they have no organizational details: no boards of directors, leadership teams, or specific projects (like the Balboa Park initiative), no “About Us” or “Get Involved” tabs, no press releases or social media.

Kopp is collaborating on the Park measure with Western State Carpenters, a labor union that helped fund a poll of 500 registered likely city voters. The survey found that 50 percent of respondents favored the initiative, 40 percent opposed it, and 10 percent were undecided.

Why Western State Carpenters? Perhaps because, as the Times of San Diego reported, “the [Art Museum] rebuild and Inspiration Bridge would be required to use mass timber, a sustainable alternative to using steel for large buildings.”

If Kopp were leading any other ballot measure, we would not scrutinize his record. But a man who has had no ties to Balboa Park has stepped forward as the savior of San Diego’s treasured regional asset. Why?

In an interview on September 23, Kopp was disarmingly candid. He said that after working for two City Council candidates who didn’t get through the primaries, he looked for other ways to succeed in the civic arena.

“I thought, ‘Where can I make my mark and how?’ That’s when I decided to start my own advocacy organizations,” Kopp recalled.

Once his nonprofit websites were up, Kopp needed a cause, something with a big impact. When he saw how paid parking in Balboa Park galvanized the public, he realized “the Park is universally popular.” His only involvement with Balboa Park had been that of an occasional visitor. But he didn’t think that was pertinent.

“I wanted to work in politics and policy,” he said, “and this was one opportunity that was staring me in the face.”

Such is the worth of San Diego’s crown jewel. City Hall doesn’t want to pay for it. And the public has not yet given the kind of philanthropic support that has reinvigorated urban parks in New York, St, Louis, and New Orleans.

Starved of funding, the Park has become a kind of salvage property waiting for someone to come along and lay claim to it. Put in that light, the real question about Kopp’s quixotic campaign for a Park property tax measure is: Why not?

“Do I have the skills and the contacts to move this along? I think the answer is ‘Yes’,” he said. “If not me, then who?”

the OB Rag