Author: Frank Gormlie

By Savannah Smith / The Point – LomaBeat / Nov 17, 2025

Point Loma Nazarene University’s Surf Team anticipates a strong season after taking first place in their opener at Black’s Beach last month.

The annual season opener, hosted by the University of California, San Diego’s Surf Team, took place from Oct. 25-26 and marked an exciting start to the year for the team. They competed against 31 collegiate teams and scored a total of 211 points, 63 points higher than any other team.

Sydney Ott, a third-year marketing major and returning team member, said it felt great to start the season with a win, especially after the team’s ninth national championship title win in June.

“Everyone was surfing super well, so it was awesome seeing us win as a team,” Ott said.

Leading up to the opener, the team held group practices at Mission Beach to prepare and get into the competition mindset.

“For me personally, I made sure to surf consistently leading up to the event and made sure that I had my board dialed in,” Ott said.

This preparation proved to be valuable once the contest began, as competitors were met with difficult conditions throughout the weekend.

by Kevin Sullivan / Times of San Diego / Nov. 3, 2025

San Diego City Council Resolution 280194 of June 1992 declared the city would not develop Montgomery-Gibbs airport for the full range of general aviation aircraft nor pursue a strategy leading to commercial or passenger services. The city’s Airports Advisory Committee is now proposing projects that may nullify this resolution.

The cleverly worded Airport Master Plan proposal to “remove the displaced threshold on runway 28R” will expand the airport so more, larger, heavier and noisier planes can operate from there. The proposal’s wording disguises the actual meaning which is to relocate the runway’s landing area 1,077 feet farther East.

This is what the council stopped in 1992 — building a longer runway. The neighborhoods of Navajo, Allied Gardens and Grantville are under the flight path.

Moving the landing area farther east may also mean passenger planes on approach are in closer proximity to the power lines that caused the tragic May 2025 crash in Murphy Canyon that killed six people.

By Paul Krueger / Times of San Diego / Nov. 17, 2025

Five years after Home Depot’s corporate office announced the construction of a new superstore in Mission Valley, the concrete behemoth is rising from the dust on Camino del Rio South just east of Texas Street.

You can see the project move toward completion as you zoom along Interstate 8. The steel-and-concrete girders closest to the freeway are the backbone of the store’s 155,000-square-foot parking structure. That’s actually bigger than the store and its garden center with 125,000 square feet of shopping space.

This colossus will become the dominant structure on the disappearing south rim of Mission Valley. But who exactly will it serve?

There is no housing of any kind along this stretch of Camino del Rio South or even close by. Home Depot executives reportedly believe the new superstore will be a magnet for customers who live up the hill in Normal Heights, North Park, Hillcrest, and adjoining neighborhoods.

By Frank Gormlie

I’m happy to share the news that two of the Rag’s current commentators and long-time San Diego journalist have received well-deserved awards of merit from local non-profit organizations.

J.W. August was honored by the San Diego Press Club with a “Best in Show” award for “Best Daily and Online Entry Excellence in Journalism.” August was recognized for his KPBS report on a detective in the Navy Criminal Investigations Division who is now serving time for abusing a federal prisoner in custody.

Paul Krueger was honored by the San Diego County Taxpayers Association with the Chairman’s Golden Watchdog Award for Grassroots Advocacy. Paul is a co-founder of both Neighbors for a Better San Diego and the San Diego Community Coalition.

Last week, staff from the city of San Diego’s Parks & Rec department released a framework for long-term parking in Balboa Park, one that proposed charging residents $300 per year to park in the city’s crown jewel. Visitors, whether from Del Mar or Delaware, would have had to pay $375 annually.

On Thursday, though, after pushback from the community, adjusted figures from staffers were announced, with a significantly reduced rate: $150 a month, a number in line with one first proposed by some Balboa Park stakeholders when the city council was considering the plan back in September.

Out-of-towners, however, would now be the ones shelling out $300 a year for unlimited visits to Balboa Park under the new plan. A three-month pass for city residents would drop to $60 from the originally proposed $80, while monthly passes would remain at $30, $40 for visitors. A quarterly pass for visitors would actually swell to $120, up from the first proposal of $100.

Join the OBHS, November 20, 2025, at 7 pm, “El Presidio”, featuring Richard Carrico, at Water’s Edge Community, 1984 Sunset Cliffs Blvd., O.B.

Think you know the early history of Spanish settlement in San Diego? Know where the first mission in San Diego was located? Were Kumeyaay prisoners executed at the San Diego Presidio? What the heck did those early Spanish colonists eat?

Join one of our favorite speakers and local historian and author Richard L. Carrico as he answers those questions and many more. Richard will walk us through the mid-1700s up to 1845 and literally uncover lost stories and histories.

The San Diego City Council will go into closed session next Monday, November 17 to discuss a possible appeal of the recent court ruling on the Midway District height limit.

In a memo from the office of council president Joe LeCava, dated Nov. 10, it announced that council would have a closed session on that date — a conference with legal counsel regarding current litigation, and the first case on the list is Save Our Access v. City of San Diego. The agenda item was described this way:

This item involves litigation related to Measure C, a November 2022 ballot measure to exclude the Midway-Pacific Highway Community Plan Area from the Costal [sic] Zone’s 30-foot height limit. Save Our Access seeks to invalidate Measure C due to an alleged failure to comply with the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). The City Attorney’s Office will update the Mayor and City Council on the status of litigation and seek direction.

A memorial is being planned by friends for Tracy Condon, killed in a hit-and-run incident this week in Ocean Beach.

She was reportedly sitting on the curb near the front of the OB Library or Post Office when she was struck by a truck and fatally injured. The driver initially ran away but upon his return 3 hours later, was arrested by police. Tracy was known for year as someone who handed out food to homeless folks in OB — only to then become one herself.

A memorial has been scheduled for Tracy, next week, on Wednesday, Nov. 12, down at the Wall at the end of Newport Avenue, at 4:55 p.m.

By City News Service – Times of San Diego / November 4, 2025

The Sierra Club has filed a lawsuit challenging the recent approval of the Harmony Grove Village South development based on its potential fire risks.

The environmental organization argues in the suit, filed last Friday, that the planned community in North County will be located in a high fire-risk area with only one evacuation route in the event of a wildfire.

The case is the latest challenge to the 111-acre project, approved Oct. 1 by the San Diego County Board of Supervisors over the objections of many residents who already live in the area.

The location is a little less than one mile west of the city of Escondido, south and east of San Marcos and north of the Del Dios Highlands Preserve.

Plans include 453 residential units, 5,000 square feet of commercial/civic space, four acres of private and public park

Here’s the definitive story — from the SD Union-Tribune:

A 24-year-old driver was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of fatally striking a woman sitting on a sidewalk in Ocean Beach and then running away, San Diego police said.

The collision occurred shortly before 4:45 p.m. on Santa Monica Avenue near Sunset Cliffs Boulevard. Police said the driver, who was parked facing the north curb of Santa Monica, for unknown reasons accelerated forward while attempting to leave and struck a 59-year-old woman sitting on the north sidewalk.

The man got out of the truck and ran off, abandoning his vehicle, police said. He was arrested on suspicion of felony hit and run by officers about three hours later when he returned to the scene where he had left his 2002 Toyota Tundra, police spokesperson Officer Colin Steinbroner said.

The woman was transported to a hospital, where she died. Her name has not been released.

That’s the U-T report as of about 5pm Wed. Nov. 5.

In the meantime, the community has identified the woman as Tracy Condon. There’s a Moment of Remembrance for her on Wed, Nov 12 at 4:55 pm at Veterans Plaza (sunset), Ocean Beach Veteran’s Plaza.

by Jeanne Kuang and Maya C. Miller / Cal-Matters /  November 5, 2025

California voters on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved Gov. Gavin Newsom’s measure that allowed the state to redraw its congressional map in favor of Democrats, pushing back against President Donald Trump’s effort to hold onto a Republican-controlled Congress by urging redistricting in Texas.

Tuesday capped off a whirlwind, hyper-partisan two-and-a-half-month campaign for one of the most expensive ballot measures in state history. Supporters poured more than $120 million into Newsom’s committee supporting the measure. Opponents raised just $44 million. Outside groups spent $27 million to try to sway the vote.

Here’s what you missed.

Newsom declares victory
In a triumphant speech, Newsom proclaimed that Prop. 50’s victory was not just a win for California, but a win for the entire country. He called on leaders in other Democratic-held states — Illinois, Virginia, Maryland and New York — to “meet the moment” and redraw their congressional districts, too.

“Instead of agonizing over the state of our nation, we organized in an unprecedented way,” Newsom said. “Tonight, I’m proud. But I’m very mindful and sober of the moment we are living in. Donald Trump does not believe in fair and free elections, period and full stop.”

Prop. 50’s passage marked a significant victory for the governor, who took a political risk on the measure, calculating that it would give the state’s Democratic voters who are frustrated with the Trump administration a way to “fight back.”

On Friday, Oct. 31, a dozen of us crowded around a long table at NewBreak Cafe on Abbott Street in OB to discuss and learn how to support OB’s historical district, which is on the City of San Diego’s chopping block. All our eyes were on the presenters, Bruce and Alana Coons from SOHO (Save Our Heritage Organization) who had traveled all the way from Point Loma to teach us the basics and guide us through the process.

Formerly entitled the Ocean Beach Cottage Emerging Historical District — which has been around since 1999 — it was on the chopping block as a city staff recommendation because a little over a year ago, the San Diego Planning Commission voted to spare OB from a horrendous development project of 24 ADUs on Point Loma Avenue precisely because of the existence of OB’s historic district. And at the end of the hearing on August 29, 2024, one of the commissioners turned to staff and urged them to change the city’s Municipal Code to get rid of the district as a basis for exempting OB from some of the worse housing policies of Todd Gloria’s administration, called “Complete Communities.”

And a year later, the staff did just that: they came up a “fix”