Category: Civil Rights

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Everyone is invited to come out and celebrate a 50-year old community victory for Ocean Beach. It’s the half-century celebration of the very first election to the OB Planning Board — and we’re having it this Tuesday, May 26th, at Dirty Birds OB. From 6 to 8pm.

We’ll have some finger-foods, good vibes and brief statements in solidarity of this election. There will be representatives from different OB groups including members of the current OB Planning Board.

If you’ve ever been a volunteer for anything in OB, then you’ll appreciate this event — and help honor the hundreds of OBceans who have volunteered for the planning board over the many years it has been in existence.

Here’s the agenda for this week’s meeting of the Project Review Committee of the OB Planning Board, Tuesday, May 19.

Projects come before the review committee for a first pass – and usually the committee gives a recommendation to the full board.

The first is a permit to demolish 2 existing one-story houses and construct a 3-story unit and a a 2-story home at 4866–4870 Del Mar Avenue.

And the second is a permit to remodel two existing homes to include a second-story to each, at 1759 to 1761 Ocean Front Street.

From 7SanDiego

More than 100,000 pounds of food were collected across San Diego County during the 34th annual Letter Carrier’s Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive last weekend, organizers announced Tuesday, May 12.

The National Association of Letter Carriers and the Jacobs & Cushman San Diego Food Bank collaborated on Saturday’s – May 9 regional food drive. Residents across San Diego County donated bags of non-perishable food by their mailboxes and mail carriers collected the donations along their routes before delivering them to the food bank for distribution through its network of more than 450 nonprofit partners.

The San Diego Community Coalition publishes this email bulletin to keep our members and the San Diego general public informed about important Council and Planning Commission hearings and other city public meetings.

Editor’s note: Last Wednesday’s Economic Development and Intergovernmental Relations Committee agenda included an item on the impact of paid parking on Balboa Park. The item was pulled before the meeting at the request of city staff.

Monday, May 18: City Council, 2:00 p.m.

Agenda:

Item 200: FY2026 Third Quarter Budget Monitoring Report

Why it matters: FY2026 revenues are expected to be down $10.5 million versus the budget. Fortunately, expenditures will likely be $1.7 million less than the decreased $2.1 billion revenue. But here’s the fine print: If revenues don’t exceed expenditures, “authority is requested, as a contingency, to draw from the General Fund Stability Reserve as needed to ensure the General Fund ends the fiscal year balanced.”

Monday, May 18: City Council, 6:00 p.m.

Agenda:

Item 202: May Revision to the FY2027 Draft Budget and Public Hearing on the 2027 Draft Budget

by Ernie McCray

My heart weakens
when I see my city
seeking to make catastrophic reductions
in arts funding,
as I feel,
in my very being
that the arts
should be at the center
of all things
since from humankind’s beginning
the arts have been essential
to a human being’s
wellbeing,
a means of communicating emotions,

By Doug Poole

A vacant lot sits at the corner of Fort Stockton Drive and Goldfinch Street in Mission Hills. It has been empty since October 2023, when the previous buildings were
demolished by Affordable Development 820 LLC. They had plans then too. Those plans fell through. Now they’re back — with something much bigger.

What they’re proposing is a 12-story, 120-unit tower made of 288-square-foot micro-units manufactured in Mexico, with zero parking, zero setback, and only 5 affordable units out of 120. The building would be taller than anything in the neighborhood, casting shadows over adjacent properties and fundamentally altering the character of one of San Diego's most beloved historic communities.

The City of San Diego is processing this permit ministerially — meaning automatically, with no community input, no design review, and no public hearing. Under the Complete Communities Housing Solutions program, if a project checks the right boxes, it goes through. Period. Your opinion doesn’t matter. The shadows don’t matter. The parking doesn’9;t matter. The fit with the neighborhood doesn’t matter.

Here’s what is wrong with that.

By David Hogan / East County Magazine / May 13, 2026

Conservation groups have sent a letter to officials at the Cleveland National Forest opposing the proposed Laguna Mountains Forest Restoration Project.

The groups condemn the Forest Service’s so-called “restoration” plan to log trees, bulldoze and burn natural chaparral shrublands, and spray herbicide across more than 13,000 acres of scenic mountains near San Diego.

This project is pure Orwellian doublespeak.

It’s not forest “restoration” if you use bulldozers, masticators, chainsaws, herbicides, and fire to beat the environment into conditions that never existed in the first place. National Forest land belongs to everyone and shouldn’t be sacrificed to private companies that stand to massively profit from destroying delicate mountain environments.

By City News Service – KPBS / May 13, 2026

Trial began Tuesday, May 12, in the lawsuit brought by a collection of homeowners who are challenging San Diego’s trash collection fee.

The homeowners sued the city following the passage of Measure B, which ended free trash pickup services for single-family homes. The plaintiffs allege the fees violate Proposition 218, a state ballot measure that holds utility fees cannot exceed the costs of providing those services.

Former San Diego City Attorney Michael Aguirre, one of the attorneys representing the homeowners, said in his opening statements on Tuesday afternoon that while voters approved a monthly fee of between $23 and $29, the San Diego City Council approved imposing a nearly $44 monthly fee.

Aguirre also said the city used an incorrect estimate for the number of customers that would be paying the fee, resulting in higher monthly costs than expected for homeowners.

By JP Theberge

The Harmony Grove Village South saga has a new chapter, and this one is playing out in Sacramento, behind closed doors.

A Colorado billionaire is using the California state legislature to get what he’s been unable to get in court.

SB 1256, authored by San Diego-based Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones (R), would kill a pending wildfire safety lawsuit against the Harmony Grove Village South (HGVS) project near Escondido, and the bill’s sole listed supporter is RCS Harmony Partners, the entity owned by Marcel Arsenault, the Colorado-based developer behind the project.

by Michael J. Stepner and Mary Lydon / Times of San Diego / May 12, 2026

Theaster Gates is an urban planner, artist and a professor at the University of Chicago in visual arts. In 2019 he received the prestigious Urban Land Institute’s J.C. Nichols Prize for Urban Development.

“Many cities are looking to reinvent themselves, and Theaster’s work represents art and culture as important elements of reinvention,” said Michael Spies, the Nichols Prize jury chairman. Recognition by this respected international real estate organization becomes a powerful justification for art being at the core of community and economic development.

Meanwhile, Mayor Todd Gloria is proposing to cut $11.8 million from the arts and culture grant program to help shore up the overall $118 million city budget deficit in the next fiscal year. The majority of the San Diego Union-Tribune’s “Econometer” expert panelists stated that the arts are a nice to have amenity, but the city needs to make difficult budget decisions.

We beg to differ. The impact of the arts cannot be commodified on a spreadsheet.