Author: Source

by JW August / Times of San Diego / April 2, 2026

A San Diego council member suggested at a recent committee meeting that the city look into ways to take revenue from golf division leases to help fund all parks and recreation needs.

The Golf Enterprise Fund provides for the care and maintenance of the city’s three public courses. At the end of last year it held an impressive $55 million.

With a city facing a $120 million budget shortfall in the coming fiscal year, this tempting target is fodder for those tasked with filling the gap. Councilman Sean Elo-Rivera, at a Land Use and Housing Committee meeting last month, asked that city staff study the possibility of shifting more money away from the golf fund to cover other expenses.

In 2025, the gross revenue for San Diego’s municipal courses was $41.4 million, 9.9% of which was paid to the general fund.

by Tessa Balc / Times of San Diego / March 31, 2026

The next chapter in San Diego’s pursuit of Midway Rising will play out in Sacramento.

State Senator Akilah Weber Pierson introduced a bill last week to exempt the project from review under the state’s landmark environmental law and make way for the plan to redevelop the roughly 50-acre area around Pechanga Arena into an urban district with 4,000 homes, acres of parks, and a new arena.

[Please see original for any and all links.]

Weber Pierson’s proposal follows a California Supreme Court decision not to review a previous court ruling that threw out a 2022 voter-approved initiative to raise the height limit in the Midway area. The lower court ruled that the city failed to consider the environmental impacts of allowing taller buildings there.

Midway Rising’s developers quickly said the court’s ruling would not halt their project, because other state housing laws allowed them to exceed the height limit regardless.

The Home Team Act has been introduced in the U.S. Senate which would if pass keep the Padres in San Diego — at least for another year.

Here’s Phillip Molnar at the San Diego U-T:

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders is behind a bill that would prevent the Padres from leaving in the future — and would have kept the Chargers in San Diego. Some say the government has no place in dictating where private businesses operate.

Sanders, I-Vermont, and U.S. Rep. Greg Casar, D-Texas, recently introduced the Home Team Act, which would require team ownership to provide one year of notice before moving a team to a new location if the team would move across state lines or to a new metropolitan area.

During that year prior to the proposed relocation, the franchise in question would be available for other prospective owners to purchase “at a fair and reasonable price.”

San Diego is especially sensitive about teams leaving after the Chargers went to Los Angeles in 2017. Recently, the Padres have entertained several offers to sell, igniting fears someone may take the baseball club somewhere else.

Editordude: The following is an unsolicited response to a recent Rag post entitled, “Open Letter to the Demonstrators at the Corner of Sunset Cliffs & West Point Loma,” which has garnered quite a bit of attention but not a lot of actual dialog, which was our intent in publishing it. Until this … from Code Pink activists. 

Dear Clandestina Urbanista,

We appreciate you taking the time to write. We also want to be straightforward in response.

We are members of the San Diego chapter of CODEPINK, and we speak for our chapter only. Together with members of Veterans For Peace, Jewish Voice For Peace, and several other organizations throughout San Diego, we gather each week because what is happening in Gaza is not an abstract “complexity” – it is mass killing, carried out with the full support and funding of the United States government. As U.S. taxpayers, we refuse to be silent in the face of it.

We reject the framing that asking the public to hold “all sides” equally, in this moment, is a neutral act. It risks obscuring the scale, power, and ongoing nature of the violence being inflicted on Palestinians, as well as Iranians and Lebanese.

Editordude: The following was sent to us unsolicited and requested we publish it as an effort to open some dialogue. 

Hello,

I’ve passed your gathering many Saturdays at Sunset Cliffs and West Point Loma. Almost every time, I feel the impulse to pull over and speak with you – but my throat tightens, my stomach knots, and I keep driving. I’m writing instead because I don’t want to keep avoiding it.

When I moved to San Diego from the Bay Area, I knew I was leaving behind a certain kind of political energy that shaped my 20s. I lived a block from the Occupy Oakland encampment and spent time there almost daily. I marched in early Black Lives Matter demonstrations, long before 2020. I was engaged in activism around global issues, including Israel/Palestine, for many years.

So I don’t see you as apathetic. I recognize what it means to care enough to show up.

At the same time, I want to be honest that I experience what you’re doing very differently than you likely do.

Every Saturday at 10:30 am. San Diego Climate Mobilization Coalition Meetings April 4th, 11th, 18th and 25th

Every Saturday 10 am – 12 pm Peace Vigil for Palestine:

The San Diego River Park Foundation has volunteer opportunities in Ocean Beach:

Every Sunday 1:30 pm – 4 pm Otay Mesa Vigil

League of Women Voters EMPOWERING VOTERS & DEFENDING DEMOCRACY Information on upcoming forums for City Council Primary Races:

April 1st, 8th and 15th Wednesdays 4:30 pm – 5:30 pm Resist Trump Flash Banner Action –

April 2nd Thursday 6 pm – 7:30 pm Surfrider Open House

April 4th Saturday 4pm -7 pm Jewish Voice for Peace San Diego Passover Seder

April 4th Saturday 4 pm – 6 pm Spring GBM with Green New Deal

April 5th Sunday 11 am – 2 pm EASTER SUNDAY OUTREACH — Factory Farms Awareness Action

April 6th Monday 6 pm – 8 pm Friends of Famosa Slough 40th Anniversary

By Bruce D Coons, Barry Hager and Geoffrey Hueter / Op-Ed San Diego U-T / April 1, 2026

San Diegans face housing affordability challenges. But if policy solutions are going to work, they must be based on evidence rather than assumptions.

San Diego’s biggest affordable housing program isn’t on paper — it’s already built. Our older and historic homes are doing more for affordability than any subsidy program in the city.

A new independent analysis released recently by PlaceEconomics, “The Urban Vitality Blueprint: A Data-Driven Analysis of Equity, Affordability, and Vitality in San Diego’s Historic Districts,” examines the role that historic districts and older neighborhoods play in housing, affordability and sustainability across San Diego. The findings challenge several widely repeated claims in the city’s current policy debate.

Historic districts are often portrayed as low-density neighborhoods that limit housing growth. In reality, the opposite is true. Here are a few key facts from the report:

By Mark Joseph Stern  / Slate / April 01, 2026

On Wednesday, April 1, Donald Trump became the first sitting president to attend Supreme Court arguments in person. It must have been a brutal morning for him. The justices heard Trump v. Barbara, a challenge to the executive order purporting to strip birthright citizenship from the children of many immigrants—and it quickly shaped up to be a blowout against the administration. Seven justices expressed profound skepticism toward the government’s revisionist history of the 14th Amendment, with most sounding downright hostile toward the pseudo-originalist theory cooked up to legitimize the policy. Only Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito asked questions friendly to the administration, and none of their colleagues sounded persuaded by their strained defenses. It appears that Trump’s attack on birthright citizenship—in some ways, the centerpiece of his nativist immigration agenda—is about to go down in flames.

From the outset, the justices gave Trump’s solicitor general, John Sauer, a frosty reception. He pressed an ahistorical, atextual theory of the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause, which declares that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” The clause’s central purpose was to grant citizenship to newly freed slaves and their children. When ratifying the amendment in 1868, however, Congress explicitly recognized that it would also apply to the American-born offspring of immigrants. The Supreme Court affirmed that principle in 1898’s Wong Kim Ark, and ever since, these children have received U.S. citizenship at birth regardless of their parents’ immigration status. Nonetheless, Trump issued an executive order on his first day back in office ordering the government to deny citizenship to the children of immigrants who lack permanent legal status and temporary visa-holders.

If You Want Chaos and Community — Go to Dog Beach in OB

By Lark Coryell / DogTrekker

San Diego has more dedicated dog beach than any city in California, and most of the state doesn’t even come close. Four beaches allow dogs, each with a different personality. Here’s what actually matters at each one.

Dog Beach, Ocean Beach
This is the original. Dog Beach at the south end of Ocean Beach has been off-leash since 1972, making it one of the first legal off-leash beaches in the country. It runs about a quarter mile from the Ocean Beach Pier south to the San Diego River channel.

The sand is wide and flat, the surf is mellow, and on any given Saturday there are 100 dogs doing exactly what they want. No permit, no check-in, no nonsense. Just park on Voltaire Street or Abbott Street, walk past the sign and unclip the leash.

Two things to know: the river mouth at the south end gets murky after rain, and the parking situation is genuinely bad on weekends. Go before 10 a.m. or accept your fate.

Fiesta Island
If your dog needs to run — really run — this is the place.

Three OBceans were just elected in March to the OB Planning Board.

There were Tracy Dezenzo, Greg Diamond, and John Phillips. Here are their bios from the OB Planning Board website:

Tracy Dezenzo

Tracy Dezenzo has been an OB Planning Board Member since September 2018, has been a renter/resident in the OB “war zone” for over 25 years. She lives with her husband Bill, who volunteers as the OB Holiday Santa, and her aloof rescue pup Gia, who has zero impulse control but nevertheless is a good doggo.

She served as Commissioner on the San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture from December 2019 to September 2024 and served on the Board of Directors of the Ocean Beach Town Council from September 2021-January 2024 as Chair of the Advocacy Committee for 2 1/2 years and Corresponding Secretary for 9 months.

Famous Bar Survived Prohibition, Developers — and Now This

By Jacob Smith / Hoodline / March 26, 2026

The Waterfront Bar & Grill has been pouring drinks in Little Italy since 1933 — the year Prohibition was repealed, the year it all became legal again, and the year San Diego’s oldest tavern planted its flag on Kettner Boulevard and never left. Developers eventually built condos around it rather than demolish it. Celebrities including Gene Wilder and Bill Murray came through. Regulars have been coming for decades.

One of them loved the place so much he asked to have his ashes placed on the north wall when he died, and they honored the request. So it takes more than a health inspection closure to rattle a place like this — but that’s exactly what happened on March 25, 2026, when San Diego County inspectors found a major vermin violation and ordered the doors shut.

What Inspectors Found
The routine inspection on March 25 flagged five violations, according to records on SD Food Info: a major vermin violation (the category that triggers automatic closure), a minor food contact surfaces finding, and three out-of-compliance findings covering toilet facilities, premises and vermin-proofing, and floors, walls, and ceilings.

Forum at Mission Valley Library Organized by San Diego Community Coalition – Also Hosted by Neighbors for a Better San Diego

From San Diego Today / March 29, 2026

San Diego community members are voicing concerns and calling for significant changes to the governance and funding of Balboa Park, following a public forum held at the Mission Valley Library on Saturday, March 28. Dozens attended the meeting, organized by the San Diego Community Coalition, to discuss the future of the iconic public space, with the central issue being the current city-controlled management system.

Why it matters
Balboa Park is a beloved and heavily utilized public space in San Diego, and the way it is governed and funded has major implications for its long-term health and vitality. The community’s push for change reflects a common challenge faced by urban parks and cultural institutions – balancing local control with the need for sustainable funding and regional benefit.