Author: Kate Callen

By Kate Callen

Shortly before 12 noon on May 4, I nearly killed a bicyclist.

After I made a full stop at the 30th & Upas four-way stop sign, I stepped on the accelerator to start moving through the intersection. Within seconds, a speeding cyclist ran the stop sign meant for him and flew past the front of my car.

If I hadn’t slammed on the brakes, I would have crashed into him, and it’s doubtful he would have survived. News stories would have accurately reported that I hit him. Biking activists would have vilified me as a murderer.

This awful scenario happens all too frequently in neighborhoods across San Diego because too many cyclists think stop signs and stoplights are a nuisance.

They will literally bet their lives that they can frighten motorists into giving them the right-of-way that the law doesn’t grant them. If they lose the bet, motorists who obeyed the law can still face criminal prosecution and civil lawsuits.

Bicycling activists often talk about “bike safety.” For them, the term seems to mean that drivers should always be deferential to the needs of cyclists.

By Kate Callen

When I moved to San Diego to live with my new husband, Neal Matthews, he drove me around town to show me many places he loved and a few he loathed.

In the first category, we visited The Black, where we bought a water pipe. “Ocean Beach,” he said, “is the real San Diego.”

The second category took us to another coastal stop: Coronado Shores, a cluster of ten 15-story towers that would be a strong contender for “most monstrous development on the Western Seaboard.”

Neal was a San Diego Reader reporter who had covered the saga of the Shores construction in the 1970s. “These eyesores,” he said, “are partly why California established a Coastal Commission.”

Thanks to the Commission, developers can no longer turn San Diego into Miami Beach by erecting massive towers that block off the ocean. But there are smaller ways that arrogance can commandeer public spaces for private benefit.

I saw an example on April 16, when I drove to Coronado to walk on the beach. I regularly park in a public access lot that Coronado Shores was required by law to provide. It fills up on weekends, but spaces are available on weekdays.

By Kate Callen

On April 14, 2025, activists from 14 San Diego communities gathered at a South Park pizzeria to explore how they might band together in their common fight against citywide saturation density.

A year later, the San Diego Community Coalition has doubled in size to represent 28 communities – from Encanto in the south to University City in the north and from the College Area in the east to Ocean Beach in the west.

Its mission has expanded as well. When Frank Gormlie, Paul Krueger, and I invited community leaders to gather last spring, the impetus was City Hall’s push for predatory development. We were all struggling with multi-story Bonus ADUs and mid-rise towers in neighborhoods where parking was scarce and fire risk was high.

That is still a problem, and it will continue so long as builder-supported YIMBY politicians run the city. But the political pendulum has begun swinging back because communities have demanded more responsive local government. Going forward, we must intensify that effort.

At the start, the Community Coalition was inspired by Neighbors For A Better San Diego (NFABSD), the most effective local grassroots organization in recent history.

By Kate Callen / April 7, 2026

The 1933 movie Duck Soup added a wicked line to the comedy lexicon when a sly Chico Marx asked a flummoxed Margaret Dumont, “Who ya gonna believe, me or your own eyes?”

That quip, used by comics ever since, has become a running joke in North Park since the 30th Street Bike Lanes were installed in 2021 as part of a $30-million pipeline project.

For five years now, North Park residents have ridiculed the empty bike lanes. When my friends and I have coffee at a 30th Street sidewalk cafe, and an occasional cyclist whizzes by, we nudge one another and say, “Hey, look, there’s a bike in the bike lane!”

We live in a city where elected officials sell out neighborhoods to serve the interests of developer-backed “climate action” lobbyists. So we expect politicians and their cronies to treat us with insolence.

But sometimes their con jobs cross the line from absurdity into all-out farce.

By Kate Callen and Paul Krueger

After decades of neglect and a controversial parking fee that has endangered its attractions, Balboa Park could be rescued as early as next fiscal year through the determined efforts of its rightful owners, the people of San Diego.

More than 80 community advocates for Balboa Park gathered at a March 28 public forum to map out steps for saving San Diego’s embattled crown jewel. The first step: a change of the current park governance, which must happen immediately.

A new governance model would be an engine for addressing two Park priorities: raising the necessary funds to keep Balboa Park healthy and intact, and balancing the fragmented needs of numerous park constituencies.

“It is important to recognize that every blade of grass in this park has a constituency,” said former City Architect Michael Stepner, “and when you want to mow the lawn, you need to talk to everybody.”

Stepner and landscape architect Vicki Estrada led the discussion at “The Future of Balboa Park: A Community Conversation,” co-hosted by the San Diego Community Coalition and Neighbors for a Better San Diego at the Mission Valley Library.

By Kate Callen

The people of San Diego are the real stakeholders of Balboa Park, and they are ready to take back their “crown jewel” from a city government that has neglected and exploited it.

A grassroots drive to create a public-private Park conservancy will launch Saturday, March 28, at a San Diego Community Coalition town hall at 9:30 a.m. at the Mission Valley Library, 2123 Fenton Parkway. The forum is co-hosted by Neighbors for a Better San Diego.

By Kate Callen and Paul Krueger / OpEd San Diego Union-Tribune / March 15, 2026

In 1926, the city of San Diego embraced a farsighted plan by landscape architect John Nolen to preserve Balboa Park as what he called “one of the most strikingly beautiful parks in the world.”

Exactly 100 years later, the mayor and six City Council Members looked at Balboa Park and saw a source of ready cash to help fill a budget deficit.

The decision to monetize San Diego’s “crown jewel” by charging visitors to park there was arguably the City’s biggest political blunder in recent history. The mayor and the council didn’t anticipate how fiercely San Diegans would fight to protect their jewel.

That miscalculation could secure Balboa Park’s future if it galvanizes citizens to demand a new public-private governance structure. And a commissioned 2020 report that was never publicly circulated offers encouragement for doing just that.

The dire effects of paid parking – fewer visitors, declining revenues, staff layoffs – have worsened a problem with deep roots.

For decades, City Hall has put the Park on a starvation diet. San Diegans kept hearing about master plan updates that would make the Park more vibrant. But then we kept seeing the Park decline as those plans were relegated to file cabinets. The result has been filthy restrooms, rundown buildings, and wilting greenery.

Planning Group Elections This Week in San Diego

San Diego’s Community Planning Groups (CPGs) hold annual elections every March. Here are dates, times, and locations for in-person voting at some of this week’s elections. Be sure to bring your driver’s license or another form of ID showing your home address.

Tuesday, March 3

Normal Heights will accept ballots from 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. at the Normal Heights Community Center at 4649 Hawley Boulevard.

https://normalheightscpg.org/notice-of-election/

Ocean Beach requires voters to download and print a registration form and ballot (available on website below). In-person voting takes place between 5:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. at the Ocean Beach Recreation Center at 4726 Santa Monica Avenue.

By Kate Callen

Are you happy with the way San Diego is governed? Do you think our elected officials listen attentively to you and care about your neighborhood?

If your answer is “F*** No!,” you should participate in a 60-year-old system of local democracy where your vote has real impact: Cast your ballots in next month’s Community Planning Group (CPG) elections.

Every March, San Diego’s 41 active CPGs hold elections for open board seats. Unlike elections at higher levels of government, these don’t involve negative campaigning and Big Money mailers. Candidates present their backgrounds and positions, and almost all ballots are cast in person.

It’s a miracle San Diego still has CPGs. The all-volunteer advisory boards, established in 1976 to give citizens a voice in urban planning, came under attack in 2018 for being anti-progress, anti-inclusivity, undemocratic, unscrupulous, and just too darn old.

By Kate Callen

In rejecting proposals for deeper fiscal analysis of city-driven fee ballot measures, three San Diego City Councilmembers decided February 18 that preserving a broken status quo is more important than restoring public faith in city governance.

Councilmember Raul Campillo’s efforts to keep voters better informed through cost-of-service studies were brusquely dismissed by his colleagues on the Rules Committee. Joe La Cava and Vivian Moreno took umbrage that Campillo would even suggest such a thing. Kent Lee worried that greater transparency about a ballot initiative would create “a multitude of hurdles” for raising existing fees or creating new ones.

A fourth committee member, Sean Elo-Rivera, participated remotely and did not speak.

Campillo’s proposals were driven by public outrage over the notorious 2022 “bait and switch” trash fee Measure B. Voters approved the initiative after the Independent Budget Analyst (IBA) estimated that monthly fees would run $23 to $29. When the measure passed, the city announced that — oops! — the actual monthly fees would approach $50.

By Kate Callen

The tangled saga of Mayor Todd Gloria’s decision to monetize parking in Balboa Park has taken a new and interesting twist.

San Diego County Crimestoppers is offering up to $1,000 reward for tips leading to the arrest of suspects “responsible for multiple cases of felony vandalism to [52] parking pay stations located throughout the Balboa Park area.”

According to the February 10 announcement, “The suspect(s) vandalized the parking pay stations by spray-painting them, shattering the digital glass screens, and placing a sticky substance on the keypads deeming them inoperable. The total cost of the damages is estimated to be approximately $77,500.”

The notice included pictures of kiosks that were smashed and covered with paint. It didn’t include pictures of a more common sight around the park: kiosks plastered with Todd Gloria name tags and petitions for Gloria’s recall.

The OB Rag does not condone vandalism. Destroying public property as a form of protest is counterproductive.

By Kate Callen / February 4, 2026

A constant reminder of our city’s slow collapse sits in the side yard of my house. It is a beat-up black trash bin, and it isn’t going anywhere.

Weeks ago, without notice, crews swept through my neighborhood to haul away the old black bins. Residents like me who didn’t have them at the curb missed the boat.

Trash collectors told me the bin would be picked up the following week. That didn’t happen. And it didn’t happen the week after that.

When you drive around your community, you might see these stray bins lurking about. Some people leave them at the curb like a defiant middle finger. I belong to the group that hides them. I don’t want my neighbors thinking, “Does she really believe the city will pick that up?”

The funny thing is that my bin had been sidelined for more than a year. Remember how the original bins cracked over time? And people would press duct tape over the cracks?