Author: Source

The proposal comes as the city’s cannabis tax revenue continues to slump.

By David Garrick / San Diego U-T / November 4, 2025

A new proposal would give San Diego more tools to crack down on illegal cannabis delivery services, which officials blame for worsening budget deficits by hurting legal dispensaries’ business and costing the city tax revenue.

The proposed policy changes would make enforcement more rigorous by raising the penalties for any illegal cannabis activity in San Diego and strengthen the ability of legal dispensaries to sue illegal operators and recover damages.

San Diego would also seek more aggressively to regulate delivery services from outside the city by requiring them to get a new kind of permit and disclose detailed information about their operations in San Diego.

While the new permit wouldn’t affect delivery services operating completely outside the law, industry officials say a big part of the problem is legal delivery services from areas outside the area operating in San Diego but declining to pay local taxes.

By Donna Frye

On November 5, 2025 the Economic Development & Intergovernmental Relations Committee met to update the city’s 2025-2026 Legislative Priorities.

Included was a state policy priority that read:

“Support measures that promote the use of public land for housing, including affordable and middle-income housing, and streamline Surplus Land Act processes to enhance the viability of housing projects on public land.”

The public made their voices heard through their emails and public comments; they requested that this legislative priority be changed to help protect our public parklands, such as Mission Bay Park, from housing development and not be considered surplus land under the State Surplus Land Act.

The chair of the committee, Councilmember Campillo, made a motion to support the public’s request

Let’s Help Her Through This Tough Time — Visit the GoFundMe Page

Friends,

Judy Forman, “Judy the Beauty on Duty” of The Big Kitchen, urgently needs our help. The past five years have been incredibly challenging for small businesses everywhere, and while The Big Kitchen thankfully remains open, Judy has faced a difficult road.

Following the pandemic, Judy suffered a heart attack. Her recovery has been long and difficult, and impacted her ability to manage the business. This led to unpaid taxes and mounting penalties, which recently resulted in funds being taken directly from her bank accounts – money she desperately needed for essential expenses like rent.
As a friend and someone who has personally benefited from Judy’s incredible generosity over the years, I believe it’s time for us to step up.

More Than a Restaurant: A Lifeline

For over 45 years, Judy and The Big Kitchen have been a cornerstone of the San Diego community. It’s far more than just a place to eat; it’s an unofficial social service agency without the benefit of non-profit status! Judy has consistently fed the hungry, providing meals to the poor and homeless.

by Will Huntsberry / Voice of San Diego / November 5, 2025 

Midway Rising is an ambitious plan to build 4,254 new apartments, 14 acres of public space and a new Sports Arena on 49 acres of city-owned land in the center of the Midway District. That won’t entirely transform the whole area overnight, or maybe ever, but it is currently the city’s only hope for bringing housing and vitality to one of San Diego’s most soul-crushing neighborhoods.

Recently, an appeals court seemed to deal a death blow to the project when it overturned a decision by city voters to remove Midway’s height limit of 30 feet. But surprisingly, the developers behind Midway Rising say that isn’t the case at all. They say state law provides all the legal ground they need to go forth with the massive multi-billion-dollar project.

Now that Midway’s 30-foot height limit is back on the table, Midway Rising promises to be – both literally and in principle – the largest test of the state’s density bonus laws in all of California.

“This recent court ruling does not affect mixed-use housing development projects, such as Midway Rising, which proceed under state density bonus law,” wrote Jeff Meyer, a spokesperson for the Midway Rising team. “State law controls local height restrictions, and applies to all aspects of Midway Rising, including the new arena.”

By Bruce Wolpe / The AlterNet -The Conversation / November 05, 2025 

One year and a day after Donald Trump won a second term as president – and on the 35th day of the US government shutdown, which has tied a record for the longest in history – the Democrats swept to victory in key races across the county.

Democratic candidates won the governorships in the states of Virginia and New Jersey, while Zohran Mamdani became New York City’s next mayor.

The Democrats may have just become the winners of the fight to reopen the government, too.

Trump’s ratings dropping sharply
Sixteen years ago, then-President Barack Obama was staggered by Republicans winning the governorships in Virginia and New Jersey in the 2009 elections.

The message was indelible: voters wanted to put a check on Obama and his wide-ranging agenda, from health care to global warming. Many Americans wanted him to cool his jets, including on what would become his signature achievement, Obamacare.

The following year, in the 2010 midterm elections, the Democrats lost more than 60 seats and their majority in the House. For the next six years, Republicans had a veto over whatever bills Obama wanted Congress to enact.

With Democrats now winning the governorships in those two states, Trump and his Republican allies in Congress have just been sent the same message: you need to be checked, too.

By Paul Krueger

On Sunday, November 2, I asked Rag readers to join me at City Hall the next day in asking the City Council why an item about a reckless legal appeal had been abruptly pulled from that day’s closed-session agenda.

It was a fair and legitimate question. But I wasn’t allowed to even ask it.

Mayor Todd Gloria and City Attorney Heather Ferbert are determined to fight a ruling by California’s 4th District Court of Appeal against the voter-approved 30-foot height limit west of Interstate 5. The judges unanimously decided that the city failed to produce an adequate environmental study of the negative impacts of high-density, high-rise development throughout the Midway District.

An item was put on Monday’s agenda to discuss Gloria and Ferbert’s determination to mount a truculent appeal to the State Supreme Court. A day later, the item was removed.

Concerns Also Expressed About Threats to OB’s Cottage Emerging Historical District

By San Diego Monitor News Staff / San Diego Monitor / November 4, 2025

The Save Our Heritage Organisation (SOHO) has voiced strong opposition to elements of the City of San Diego’s proposed Preservation and Progress Initiative, urging the Planning Commission to delay approval of “Package A” until further public review and documentation are provided.

In a formal letter addressed to Planning Commission Chair Kelly Modén and the commissioners, SOHO commended the City’s stated intent to make the preservation process “clearer, more equitable, and more accessible.” However, the nonprofit argued that several of the proposed revisions would instead “introduce new procedural obstacles, restrict public participation, and reinforce existing inequities.”

One of SOHO’s key objections centers on new appeal procedures outlined in Sections 123.0203(a) and (b) of the Municipal Code. The organization contends that the amendments create unequal appeal rights, allowing property owners to challenge non-designations of historic resources, but limiting others—such as community members or preservation advocates—from doing so. “…

The group also expressed concern over a proposed amendment applying the Complete Communities Housing Solutions Regulations to the Ocean Beach Cottage Emerging Historical District. SOHO argues that the area’s historic cottages serve as a form of “naturally occurring affordable housing” (NOAH) and that the City should instead designate the neighborhood as a traditional historic district.

By Joey Reams / What Now San Diego / Oct. 31, 2025

Sourdough & Moore, a locally founded bakery specializing in naturally leavened breads and pastries, is getting ready to officially open in Ocean Beach at 4853 Newport Avenue.

The company’s first brick-and-mortar is set to move into the former home of Ocean Beach Meat Company, with doors officially opening on Friday, November 14, according to San Diego Magazine.

Before the grand opening, Sourdough & Moore hosted a one-day pop-up pre-order event on Sunday, November 2, in collaboration with An’s Electronics Repair. …

Founded by longtime Ocean Beach resident David Moore and co-owner Emma Gibb, Sourdough & Moore began as a farmers market vendor about five years ago. Moore, who has lived in Ocean Beach for 25 years, previously worked for two decades at the Omni San Diego Hotel before pursuing baking as a full-time career. Gibb transitioned from the corporate world to pastry production after meeting Moore at the Mission Valley Farmers Market, where they began collaborating on the bakery concept.

Chin’s Szechwan
Point Loma
3373 Rosecrans St.
San Diego, CA 92110
www.govisitchin.com

By LK Bruce

Healthy, tasty, affordable and close by. These are the criteria against which all dining or take-out decisions were made in our busy family of four. Even long after the birds left the nest, these figure prominently in meals not made at home.

We got around to Chin’s Szechwan a little later than hoped after their opening in Point Loma but they hit on all cylinders of the old fam criteria. And oh my, do we need good Chinese on the Peninsula.

To start, they’re very popular. If you show up without a reservation, prepare to wait a while on the sidewalk. If you make a reservation, prepare to guarantee it with a credit card for $10/per person in your reservation. Of course, many restaurants do this but you don’t expect it from a Chinese place in a strip mall. That tells you something. And, if you’re like many in and around the ‘hood, you’ll grab some take-out, a booming side of the business.

At the September 2025 meeting of the City of San Diego Historical Resources Board, the members designated five houses and approved a sixth as a Heritage Structure.

One of the houses is in Point Loma. (See photo above)

3030 Alcott Street in the Peninsula Community is named the Laura and Harold Conklin House, for the couple who built it as their residence in 1937, and is designated under HRB Criterion C for its Spanish Colonial Revival style architecture.

It retains integrity and embodies design elements of the style, including a low-pitched hipped roof with single barrel clay tile, wide eaves with exposed rafter tails, sand stucco siding with belt courses, wood-framed multi-light casement and fixed windows, wood-framed multi-light French doors, diamond pane casement windows, stucco grilles, an open second-story porch with wood posts and beams, battered wing walls, decorative corbels, and a stucco chimney.

Here are the others from around the city:

By Ian Rodney Lazarus / SFGate / Nov 3, 2025 

Few structures evoke such varied emotions as the sight of a weathered lighthouse standing firm against an incoming tide. Without these tall, circular towers set along the shore, California wouldn’t be what it is today.

But these iconic coastal features have lost almost all their original function, replaced by modern technology, and simultaneously face threats from age and environmental degradation. They’re some of the oldest structures still standing, largely due to their sentimental value, even as they come under increasing financial strain. For all the pride and pleasure we get from seeing these monuments up close, many visitors remain unaware of the challenges they face today.

Part of California’s history

As a staff officer for the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary in San Diego, I’ve been lucky enough to explore California’s lighthouses in ways others aren’t able to. Walking on grounds that retain original structures approaching two centuries old, it feels like walking right out of a time machine. Very little has changed, even inside the homes that were occupied by the original keepers and officers more than 150 years ago.