Author: Kate Callen

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.