Author: Source

By Steve Anderson / Beach & Bay Press – Times of San Diego / April 30, 2026

Recently, Mayor Todd Gloria proposed major cuts to San Diego’s arts and culture funding. As the city faces an $118 million deficit, the proposed arts cuts alone would save $11.8 million. Like much of Gloria’s decisions as mayor, this was met with backlash, especially among the local arts community.

On top of that, it seems like the cuts will affect other beloved aspects of our community — street fairs and parades are also under threat of losing major funding. Within Point Loma and OB that would be annual events, like the OB Street Fair and Chili Cook Off.

That doesn’t necessarily mean the OB Street Fair will cease to exist, but it might raise attendance fees and the organizations that support the events may experience layoffs.

by Linda Caballero Sotelo / Voice of San Diego / May 5, 2026

Over a recent phone conversation, a friend conveyed her sense of disillusionment with how cities are being managed. The expression “tone-deaf” came up, and that warnings are all around us. Across the United States, cities are making budget decisions that reveal far more than their fiscal priorities. They reveal their values, their imagination, and their sense of responsibility to future generations.

In San Diego, the mayor’s proposed budget would virtually eliminate nearly the entire $12 million arts and culture budget, effectively dismantling the cultural ecosystem of educational organizations filling the gaps for student art education-based programming, artist support to produce works that attracts visitors and creates a livable and forward city to enjoy, visit and invest in. An ecosystem that extends across borders and has taken decades to build.

This is not simply a budget cut. It is a cultural alarm, a canary in the coal mine warning us about the direction of our civic life.

This Thursday, May 7th, the City Council is holding a “Special Meeting” to vote on an ordinance implementing Senate Bill 79, the new state law that allows 5+ story apartments within one-half mile of trolley stops and certain major bus routes.

And a Call to Action has been announced for residents to help limit the impact of SB 79 by attending or by using the city’s online comment system.
It’s Agenda Item 600.

Here’s more on the situation from Neighbors For A Better San Diego (NFABSD):

To use the protections allowed under the law, San Diego must adopt an implementing ordinance before SB 79 takes effect on July 1.

 While Neighbors For A Better San Diego (NFABSD) opposed the bill in Sacramento, the Planning Department’s phased approach is the best available path under a bad law and deserves support. It limits immediate exposure in high-fire-hazard zones, low-resource areas, historic sites, and sea-level-rise areas, and it applies the state’s optional one-mile walking-distance cap to reduce the most unreasonable overreach.

The picture snapped in Hillcrest yesterday

by Debbie L. Sklar / Times of San Diego / May 4, 2026

Mission Bay didn’t start as a destination. It started as water that refused to sit still.

Just inland from the oceanfront homes and boardwalk of Mission Beach, the waters of the bay stretch across what was once a wide, shifting tidal wetland. Before it became a center of recreation, the bay was part of a dynamic coastal system of marshes, mudflats and seasonal channels— land that helped shape the surrounding beach communities as they developed.

Early waters and wetlands
For centuries, the San Diego River spread across a wide tidal basin here, carving through a shifting wetland of mudflats, marsh channels, and seasonal flood zones. Long before development, this was part of a larger coastal ecosystem used by the Kumeyaay, whose presence in the region predates Spanish settlement by thousands of years.

By the mid-20th century, that landscape was already being redesigned.

Here are this week’s Repeal the Paid Parking at Balboa Park and Trash Tax petition table events:

Carmel Mountain Ranch:
Saturday, May 9th from 9a – noon (this one location has an earlier start time)
Ralphs — Carmel Mountain Ranch
11875 Carmel Mountain Road
San Diego, CA 92128
 
Mission Hills:  
Saturday, May 9th from 10a – noon
Mission Hills Fabric Care Center
1604 West Lewis Street
San Diego, CA 92103

 Pacific Beach:
Saturday, May 9th from 10a – noon

Editordude: We are continuing our celebration of the 50th anniversary of the popular vote in OB that established the Ocean Beach Planning Board with a series of “Memories.” Doug Card’s memory is first and its from 2016. Doug was a member of the very first Planning Board and played a key role in the days up to and after that election on May 4, 1976.

By Doug Card

With the current bizarre national presidential election campaign, it’s good to reflect upon a true grassroots election in OB just 40 years ago – today – Wednesday the 4th.

To recall how, during a time of great national upheaval, a dedicated band of idealistic activists managed to create a permanent structure to maintain the integrity of the character of Ocean Beach in the face of heavy developmental pressure. And how the cooperation between OB’s traditional rival organizations and facets of San Diego City government ended a long-running conflict and worked together for the sake of the people and the future.

Having been an active participant in some of this progress I’m pleased to set down a few memories of that exciting significant era – both for personal reasons and for the sake of history. As an active social historian myself, I’d like to leave behind some material which would could be of use to any researcher in the future, for this event deserves historic recognition. Perhaps some local grad student is looking for a thesis topic….

JW August reports:

No ICE! No War! “Hands Off Our Vote” was one of the themes running through Friday’s ‘May Day Strong’ event at Chicano Park.  Billionaires were not welcome, nor were Democrats or Republicans. The park, long a gathering place for protests, was again a staging area for emotional speeches and pleas followed by a march to City College.

The speeches echoed the language and themes on the organizers and their website

It was all about pocketbook issues and the creation of the ‘Real Affordability Agenda’.  “A promise of a good life for everyone back in reach” said one speaker, “if workers will unite”. Supporting a goal of “making billionaires and corporations pay what they owe” says the website, repeated by the protest speakers as well as multiple signs and tee shirts with an anti-capitalist theme.

One of the dozen events happening in San Diego County today, May Day, is in Chicano Park.

Our on-the-spot photog JW August took these.

By Sean Bothwell / Guest contributor LA Times / April 30, 2026 

The marine ecosystem along Southern California’s coastline is in crisis. Sea surface temperatures are hitting record highs, rivaling the devastating marine heat wave known as “the Blob” that wreaked havoc on West Coast fisheries and ecosystems a decade ago.

Scientists from NOAA, Scripps Institution of Oceanography and University of California’s Agriculture and Natural Resources are warning that a developing El Niño could intensify conditions further. There are steps we can take that would relieve the pressure on these already stressed waters, and it’s past time for California lawmakers and regulators to act.

Last year, harmful algal blooms led to the illnesses and deaths of hundreds of sea lions, dolphins and seabirds off Southern California. Further north, Dungeness crab shells are dissolving in acidic waters. Fish populations and marine mammals are struggling to survive in growing oxygen-depleted zones that can stretch 50 miles from the coast. Warming ocean temperatures are accelerating all of it.

The critical factor contributing to this crisis within our control is nutrient pollution from wastewater discharges and agricultural runoff.

By Arturo Castañares / La Prensa San Diego / April 29, 2026 

In the race for San Diego City Council’s 8th District, one candidate stands out as uniquely UNQUALIFIED to run for higher office: Antonio Martinez.

Martinez has served on the San Ysidro School Districts Board of Trustees since December 2012, but has also run and lost twice for the same San Diego City Council seat he is running for again this year. He lost twice to Vivian Moreno, in 2018 and 2022, and is now running when Moreno is termed out of office.

District 8 includes the San Diego communities of San Ysidro, Otay Mesa, Ocean View Hills, Barrio Logan, Logan Heights, and Sherman Heights.

Maybe serving on a local school board for 14 years would seem like a good background to run for higher office, but the San Ysidro School District is currently under financial distress and has certified that it may not be able to meet its current year and next two years’ obligations to pay teachers and staff.