Serving OB, the Peninsula and San Diego Beaches
By OB Rag Staff / September 25, 2025
It’s showtime.
The Office of the San Diego City Clerk has a “2026 Election Information” webpage which shows the candidates who have publicly declared their intention to run for a City Council District seat. Their names are listed here. Hyperlinks will take you to the active websites of those candidates.
Council District 2
OB Staff Report / September 24, 2025
With fewer than 24 hours before the San Diego Planning Commission considers the bait-and-switch Midway Rising proposal, only a handful of comments have been posted via the Commission’s web-based Public Comment Form. A Public Comment Spreadsheet revised yesterday shows five comments, and four of them support the project.
So let’s get to work! The link to the Public Comment Form is:
https://www.sandiego.gov/planning-commission/agenda-comment-form
Fill in the Contact Info blanks — red asterisks indicate required fields — the Meeting Date is 09/25/2025, the Comment type is Agenda Comment, Agenda Item Number is 2, and Position is Opposition.
By JW August / Times of San Diego / September 22, 2025 
If you play the Torrey Pines or Balboa Park golf courses, you’re probably aware of how difficult it is to get a good tee time, especially for slots on Thursday through Sunday from the early morning to noon.
It’s a common problem across municipal courses in Southern California, and a new federal indictment provides insight into the disappearance of weekend morning tee times within seconds of being released.
The possible reveal to the mystery of the vanishing tee times can be found in a grand jury document filed this month in Los Angeles, alleging that two men started a brokering business using digital devices to reserve thousands of tee times for resale at numerous golf courses nationwide.
In doing so, they allegedly created “a monopoly of Los Angeles and Orange County area golf course tee times by securing the most sought-after early morning slots, often within seconds of their release to the public.”
By Kate Callen
Ever see a German shepherd frightened by a barking terrier?
That was the vibe when the organizers of a convention of accessory dwelling unit (ADU) developers were thrown into a panic by a small band of civil protesters.
A September 17 demonstration against predatory ADU builders was organized by Pamela Begeal of Adubonus.org. Her tracking of industry activities found that an
events company called Informa Connect was hosting an ADU builders meeting that day at the San Diego Marriott Marquis.
Begeal identified two speakers on the agenda who have ravaged countless local neighborhoods: Christian Spicer of SDRE Homebuilders and Daniel Shkolnik of
Atlas West Group. And she saw an opportunity to send them a public message.
Some 20 community activists answered her invitation to gather on Harbor Drive outside the hotel. Upon arrival, they encountered a security force of men in dark
suits wearing sunglasses and carrying walkie-talkies.
Demonstrators who strayed from the sidewalk onto a stretch of lawn were told to move. Two people who walked into the hotel lobby were stopped, asked to show
picture IDs, and body screened by electronic wands for weapons.
But the real farce took place inside the convention area when Lisa Becerra and Kim Beck, who had paid $1,599 each to attend the event, were denied admission.
By Kate Callen
At the September 15 hearing on parking fees in Balboa Park, weary San Diego City Councilmembers knew they would be hammered by volunteers, arts patrons, bridge players, lawn bowlers, square dancers, and other regular park users who skew elderly.
But they didn’t see the high school students coming.
Nearly 200 San Diego High students marched from their campus to City Hall with courtesy escorts from City and School District police. The Inspiration Point parking lot is walking distance from their classrooms. Under the new fee system, these students from mostly low-income families would now have to pay to park there.
The sight of gray-haired and teenage constituents teaming up to rebuke City officials made this one of the most enthralling Council hearings in recent memory.
After four hours of deliberation, the Council chose to delay the new fees until January 1. City residents will pay less; out-of-town visitors will pay more. An annual resident parking pass, which the mayor’s staff claimed was impossible, is on the table. The yearly fee will likely be $150.
An application has been made for a Process 2 Coastal Development Permit for 4611 Newport Avenue, dated September 8.
The application calls:
The San Diego Police Department is investigating a shooting that killed a man late Wednesday night in Ocean Beach.
SDPD reported that at about 11:29 p.m., police received a report of a shooting in the area of 5000 Newport Ave. in Ocean Beach. Officers arrived on scene and located an adult male suffering from at least one gunshot wound to his upper body. Officers and medics rendered aid at the scene, but unfortunately, the man did not survive.
7SanDiego reported that the shooting took place in the parking lot next to the popular Hodad’s restaurant on Newport Avenue near Bacon Street.
Homicide detectives were called to the scene to investigate. Investigators have learned the decedent was involved in a confrontation with two men in a parking lot. The victim punched one of the men, at which time the second man produced a handgun and shot the decedent.
Tragedy struck on Saturday, September 6, around 4:40 pm when a 21-year-old woman driving a BMW sedan entered a pedestrian pathway near the entrance to Naval Base Point Loma, hit a steel bench, and then struck a 5-year old girl riding a scooter before crashing into a tree.
The girl was left with life-threatening injuries and was transported to a local hospital with severe head injuries and may not survive, authorities said.
As alcohol was a factor in the collision, the driver was arrested at the scene, located near 2500 Laning Road.
Activists in the greater Golden Hill area mobilized on Sunday, Sept. 7, to bring attention to the horrendous threats of huge development projects alive in their community. There’s at least six projects in the process of construction right now, sitting in the middle of quiet residential and small business neighborhoods, telegraphing their disruption of those areas. [Richard Santini wrote a great piece about the threats to the soul of Golden Hill on behalf of Preserve Greater Golden Hill just recently here at the Rag.]
Roughly 50 residents and supporters gathered at the children’s park at 28th and Cedar — and most of them took off for a “walk and roll” through that neighborhood of South Park with banners, signs and chants.
By Kate Callen
Why do San Diego’s political leaders keep pushing transit-oriented development in a city with a hopelessly inadequate transit system?
That question was at the heart of my August 29 post about commuting by bus and trolley around San Diego. Our YIMBY government claims that more people will use transit if they live closer to it. Judging by the responses to my post, proximity won’t make a bit of difference.
Simply put, the Metropolitan Transit System (MTS) does not get people where they need to go when they need to be there. The Blue, Orange and Green trolley lines are efficient, but they are linear routes with narrow reach. Most of the city must depend on a sprawl of 97 bus lines that are neither timely nor user-friendly.
For a full picture of the hardships of transit commuting, and using the excellent online MTS Trip Planner, let’s map out how the residents of two “Complete Communities” housing projects would take buses and trolleys to regional employment centers for jobs that start at 8:30 a.m.
In Point Loma, a four-story, 56-unit apartment building is planned at the busy intersection of Rosecrans and Talbot Streets. In Lomita, 37 ADU units are slated for construction at 819 Jacumba Street. Neither project will have on-site parking for residents. Both are in congested neighborhoods where street parking is already scarce.
We’ll start by commuting from Rosecrans and Talbot to Qualcomm in Sorrento Valley. You would leave at 7:00, walk to Rosecrans and Canon to catch the #28 bus to the Old Town Transit Center, take the Coaster to the Sorrento Valley station, then take the 472 Coaster connection bus to Qualcomm Building Q.
One of the most important networks of San Diego residents to emerge over the last 6 months is holding its general public monthly meeting tomorrow, Saturday, September 6. It’s the San Diego Community Coalition – a network of over two dozen communities and their leaders and activists.
As they state on their facebook page:
A network of San Diego community activists and leaders from 25 neighborhoods riled up about over-development and its consequences plus the disrespect shown to residents by City Hall.
The Coalition is having its meeting in Clairemont, at the Northminister Presbyterian Church at 4324 Clairemont Mesa Blvd (92117) and it starts at 10am and runs to noon.
Cutting its teeth on pushing the City Council to enact reforms to the disastrous so-called Bonus ADU program, the Coalition works to share knowledge, give support to and help to coordinate all the myriad different neighborhood groups that have formed recently explicitly to push back on City Hall’s housing policies.
There is so much going on right now across the city’s neighborhoods, that one needs a program to keep track of everything.
For example, check all these out:
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