Author: Kate Callen

By Kate Callen / June 23, 2025

If you are furious because City Hall intends to get out of the fiscal mess it created by charging you unlawful trash fees, Mike Aguirre wants your help.

Aguirre is the lead attorney on a lawsuit seeking to block the trash fees on state constitutional grounds. He and co-counsel Maria Severson outlined the key legal issues to a packed forum on June 21 at the Mission Hills Library.

The 70 people who attended expected to be asked for donations. But Aguirre and Severson weren’t there for money. They wanted volunteers.

“To the extent you want to help us,” Aguirre said, “I want to use the Public Records Act to dig into the public records that are available to build a mountain of evidence to present to the judge. … We can’t take [the city] at their word. We need to find out all the particulars.”

By Kate Callen / June 16, 2025

Good afternoon.

As you know, community leaders in every district are fighting the City’s efforts to cram more housing into our neighborhoods – housing that is excessive in scale and expensive in price.

We’ve gotten to know one another at meetings like this, and we’ve talked about joining forces. Massive public outrage over monstrous Bonus ADUs has finally united us as
members of the new San Diego Community Coalition.

It is sad but true that local politicians only seem to care about three groups: the Chamber of Commerce, the building industry, and certain labor unions.

Going forward, the Community Coalition will expect your equal time and attention. This citywide alliance is three months old. It includes 26 communities, and it is growing.
Neighbors for a Better San Diego helped launch us. Save Our Heritage Organization has joined us.

Our geographic reach extends from Encanto in the south to University City in the north, from El Cerrito in the east to Ocean Beach in the west.

By Kate Callen / June 13, 2025

This week’s San Diego City Council 6-3 vote approving trash fees capped another hours-long session before another furious overflow crowd. It’s no wonder the Councilmembers seemed exhausted. They are caught between their irate constituents and an autocratic mayor who scorns their constituents.

The six “Yes” voters looked like patients in a dentist’s waiting room. They have no viable solution to the budget crisis and no prospects for future elected office. They must serve out the rest of their Council terms in a kind of political purgatory.

Here are random observations of a weary Council that must now prepare for another contentious hearing when they consider Bonus ADU reform on Monday, June 16:

Going Through The Motions: The trash fees were rammed through for one reason only: The City is so financially destitute that it will dig money out of any crevice. No Council member could make that case with real enthusiasm. So they put in a token effort. Stephen Whitburn thanked some people and quickly voted “Yes.” Vivian Moreno had nothing to say. Even Henry Foster III, who ultimately voted “No,” seemed disoriented.

Elo-Rivera Fulminates:  One of the “Yes” voters brought firepower, but not about the city’s plight. Instead, Sean Elo-Rivera unleashed a diatribe about the presence of the National Guard in Los Angeles. When an audience member yelled, “That’s not city business,” Elo-Rivera pitched a fit: “I don’t care if you don’t like what I have to say, put your thumbs down, shake your heads, do what you like.” Such a class act.

By Kate Callen / June 3, 2025

San Diegans who feel the strain of overdevelopment in older neighborhoods won’t recognize the halcyon city in Wesley Morgan’s May 31 Times of San Diego commentary, “Opinion: Privileged Homeowners Like Me Shouldn’t Resist New Housing.”

Morgan, treasurer of YIMBY Democrats of San Diego, describes how he and his wife bought a Mission Hills home 11 years ago where they “raised our daughters surrounded by great schools, walkable streets, and reliable city services.”

Over time, Morgan writes, “it became painfully clear how few others had that chance and how little our neighborhoods were doing to welcome others.”

The rest is a story of virtue and evil. Virtuous people like Morgan want to see a lot of new housing bring a lot of new residents into their flourishing communities. Evil people want to keep new residents out because they are mean and they hate strangers.

Morgan’s essay reads like a fairy tale because it is. Let’s look closely at some of his assertions and see how they square with reality.

Dear Rag Readers:

I just got off the phone with Editordude Frank Gormlie. He certainly didn’t sound like a man who just underwent successful bypass surgery. Frank’s voice was clear, and his mood was mellow. But knowing Frank, that mood is transitory: The morning after his surgery, he was irked because the hospital was late in bringing him breakfast. It was an early and sure sign that he’s well on the road to recovery.

By Kate Callen / May 29, 2025

San Diegans have just 10 days to submit written protests to the City Clerk about proposed trash fees for residential properties.

For the price of a postage stamp, property owners can register their disgust with one of the most offensive City Hall scams in recent memory. If voters had known the truth in 2022 – that new trash collection services would cost $53 a month – Proposition B would have been defeated.

Instead, it narrowly passed, thanks to a much lower estimate of $23 to $29 a month from the City’s Independent Budget Analyst (IBA). In a May 5 Union-Tribune article headlined “San Diego Trash Fee Collection Was Riddled With Errors,” the IBA said its faulty work was “an honest mistake based on some bad information and some miscalculations.”

Jordan More, the IBA analyst responsible for the miscalculation, had this to say: “Mea culpa – I am human.” He is also well compensated. According to Transparent California, the City paid More $248,117.68 in total pay and benefits in 2023.

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.