Category: Economy

By Staff

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

Monday, October 5: City Council, 2:00 p.m.

Agenda:

Item S400: 11370 Paymogo Court, Appeal of the Environmental Determination

Why it matters: As the project map shows, construction of a 2,653-square-foot three-level single family home would carve into a heavily wooded area, wiping out trees and wildlife habitat. It’s hard to see how such environmental destruction is justified.

Democrat With Local Roots Outshines Triple-Time Trump Voter and Carpetbagger Richard Bailey

Candidate Nicole Crosby has won the OB Rag’s endorsement for the general election to be held in 30 days. Coming to this stance, I looked at Nicole’s campaign website, my experiences over the last year with Richard Bailey, reviewed candidate debate reports from the U-T, Times of San Diego and our own Rag account.

Bailey has been campaigning for over a year and has polished off a number of campaign phrases — he’s into policies not politics, and the city doesn’t have a money problem, it has a spending problem. Yet, of course, he’s into politics.

Although not perfect, Crosby has a more compassionate heart than Bailey does when you compare their positions on San Diego’s homelessness, rent-control, city staffing,Trump’s immigration policies and the constitutional rights of all citizens in the area.

Of note are Crosby’s local roots — they particularly stand out in heavy contrast to the current District 2 officeholder, Jen Campell. Crosby and her family have lived in Clairemont for many years; she was the president of the PTA for her daughter’s school and was the chair of the Clairemont Town Council. This is also a huge contrast between her and the other candidate, Richard Bailey. Bailey — the former part-time mayor of the tiny community of Coronado – just recently moved to Point Loma so he would be eligible to run. That type of movement is often called “carpetbagging.”

Merriam-Webster defines carpet-bagging as “an outsider moving into a new area to exploit a situation or seek personal, financial, or political gain without having local connections.”  A similar definition states it’s a politician who runs for office in a region where they do not live or have no prior ties, just because they think it will be easier to win. This is what Bailey has done.

Yet, setting that aside, on the issue of homelessness, Crosby believes the city is spending too much on enforcing the so-called “camping ban” and sees that as a serious waste of money and the use of police officers, that it costs more than providing housing. Bailey wants to cut city funds for homeless programs.

Crosby believes in rent control for senior citizens as a way to cut into future homeless seniors; Bailey takes a typical Republican view and doesn’t believe in rent-control at all.

By La Prensa News Desk / Sept. 21, 2026

A new poll of likely voters in coastal San Diego finds strong opposition to a proposed City sales tax increase, homelessness ranking as the top concern, and Mayor Todd Gloria receiving a lower favorability rating than President Donald Trump.

The poll conducted over the past two weeks shows 64% of respondents oppose a November election ballot measure to raise the City’s sales tax, with only 25% supporting the measure. A similar one-cent sales tax increase, Measure E, failed in November 2024 by only 3,506 votes.

Respondents cited homelessness as their top concern, followed by housing affordability, and the City’s fiscal issues.

When asked whether they believe the City is headed in the right or wrong direction, only 19% said it was headed in the right direction, while 64% said it was headed in the wrong direction.

The poll respondents also expressed negative views of both Mayor Gloria and President Trump.

By Laura Henson / Times of San Diego / Sept. 28, 2026

As California cities embrace increasingly aggressive upzoning, one consequence of these policies receives remarkably little attention: What happens psychologically to people when the future of their own neighborhood becomes permanently uncertain?

That question is particularly relevant as San Diego considers the First Draft Mid-City Communities Plan, which would guide land use and development in Mid-City for the next 30 years.

In San Diego, the argument for allowing substantially more housing in established single-family neighborhoods often comes with a reassurance: Don’t worry. Just because every property can be redeveloped doesn’t mean every property will be redeveloped.

But think about what residents are actually being asked to accept.

Your neighbor’s house may remain a house for another 30 years. Or it may be sold next year and replaced with a large apartment building. The house behind you may remain unchanged — or redevelopment may suddenly take away your privacy, sunlight, parking trees and the physical environment you believed you were buying into.

You don’t know.

And that is precisely the problem.

By Alex J. Chavez / Only In San Diego / Sept. 28, 2026

Todd Gloria has spent most of his adult life in public service. Few people entered the San Diego mayor’s office with more experience, more political relationships or a friendlier City Council.

Nearly six years later, that makes the question increasingly awkward:

What, exactly, has Todd Gloria delivered?

That is not an unfair standard. It is his.

As president of the United States Conference of Mayors, Gloria now travels the country under the banner “Mayors Deliver,” promoting local leadership on housing, affordability and public safety.

It is a catchy slogan. It also begs San Diego to look at the record at home.

Gloria came into office selling competence. He had been a councilmember, interim mayor and state legislator. He knew City Hall. He knew its personalities, processes and dysfunctions. If anyone was supposed to know how to make the machinery work, it was Todd Gloria.

Yet reporting this year found frustration even among former allies over both his policy record and the administration’s ability to execute.

Public Gets Kicked in the Gut- Part 3

By Donna Frye

Here is Part 1- and here is Part 2–

On Tuesday, September 30, 2026, Governor Newsom signed SB 344, a gut-and-amend bill that eliminated the public’s ability to file a civil lawsuit and challenge in court any unmitigated environmental impacts that may be caused by the Midway Rising project. Specifically, SB 344 “Declares the City of San Diego’s Midway Rising Specific Plan Subsequent Environmental Impact Report (SPSEIR), which is pending certification by the City, fully complies with the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).”

That means the San Diego City Council will be the final deciders of whether the environmental analysis for the project is adequate and what mitigation measures will be required.

To say that this gut-and-amend legislation reached the governor’s desk in record time is a gross understatement.  Here’s a condensed history of the approximate six week “public process” for SB 344.

On February 12, 2025, SB 344 was introduced as legislation related to the disposition of human remains and the scattering of the ashes at sea. For some reason, on July 17, 2025, SB 344 was placed in the inactive file where it remained for over a year.

by Dorian Hargrove / Peninsula Beacon / Sept. 29, 2026

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 344 into law on Tuesday, clearing Midway Rising’s path to begin construction on a massive redevelopment of the former San Diego Sports Arena.

The plan, to convert the land around the arena into a project with 4,250 housing units, 130,000 square feet of retail, a new 16,000-seat arena and 14.5 acres of park space, has long been challenged by residents citing coastal height limits.

The bill, proposed by State Sen. Akilah Weber Pierson, declares the environmental reports studying the impacts of the redevelopment as sufficient, allowing city officials to grant approval of the project.

The bill states that because the Midway Rising project includes 2,000 affordable units, the environmental review approved by the city is enough and should not be held up by any further litigation.

With the bill now law, the Midway Rising project will soon go before the San Diego City Council for final approval. It also likely ends all legal challenges which thus far have thwarted progress on the redevelopment of the site around Pechanga Arena, as it is now known.

The project, proposed by local developer Brad Termini and his company Zephyr, is mostly owned by billionaire Stan Kroenke, who owns the Los Angeles Rams, the Los Angeles Angels, Arsenal F.C., Colorado Avalanche and Denver Nuggets sports teams.

Kroenke is said to be the largest private landholder in the country.

by Tessa Balc / Times of San Diego / Sept. 29, 2026

The two Candidates vying to represent San Diego’s District 2 — which covers Point Loma, Ocean Beach, Pacific Beach and Clairemont — faced off Monday over how to address city spending and homelessness, two reliable parts of any city debate.

But at the evening candidate forum they also  jumped in  on the recently re-ignited debate over automated license plate readers.

Both Nicole Crosby, a deputy city attorney, and Richard Bailey, the former mayor of Coronado, rehashed their respective positions on topics like the proposed Midway Rising development and Liberty Station leasing at the forum, hosted by the Point Loma Association and League of Women Voters at Liberty Station Conference Center. This time around, though, as the two candidates who survived the primary, they had more opportunities to take direct shots at one another ahead of the Nov. 3 general election.

The first question of the night, about where the budget should be cut, provided Bailey the opportunity to repeat a mantra from his campaign: The city has a spending problem not a revenue problem. The solution, he says, does not necessitate cuts to programs, but significant trims to personnel  – as in back to 2015 staffing levels.

“We have to restructure City Hall, starting with cutting back personnel across most departments, so that we can actually do more with less instead of doing less with more.”

For Crosby, this line of reasoning was an opportunity to question if it is effective to compare two different decades in city government, whether based on nationwide inflation or the city’s specific circumstances.

“If we’re looking at a 2015 baseline number that Mr. Bailey would like you to look at, we need to remember that we were operating with a shoestring budget,” she said.

“Proposition B and the pension decimation and salary freezes in that era destroyed (the) city infrastructure we had, and I mean human capital as opposed to the longstanding infrastructure we have.”

By Paul Krueger

In their recent, pay-wall protected analysis of City Council District 4 candidate Martha Abraham’s campaign, Voice of San Diego editors opined that “conservatives” constitute a significant base of Abraham’s support.

I responded by email to VOSD editor Scott Lewis and assistant editor Will Huntsberry, and acknowledged that some “conservatives” do in fact support Abraham’s campaign.
But that one-word description overstates their influence, ignores important political differences among those supporters, and understates the non-partisan nature of the support for Abraham’s challenge to incumbent Henry Foster.

It’s true that Abraham’s supporters include some political activists who skew to the political “right.” Some of them are outspoken — even vitriolic — critics of some Democratic officeholders, including Todd Gloria and Gavin Newsom. And, yes, some also support Republican candidates.

They also helped organize “San Diego United Communities,” and have prominent — if not outsized-roles — in that group’s actions.

(For the record, while I share their posts and respect their opposition to the Mayor’s hyper-development policies, I’m not a member of San Diego United Communities. That group was formed by activists who were disillusioned with the apolitical, non-partisan and non-confrontative stance taken by the San Diego Community Coalition, which Kate Callen, Frank Gormlie, and I organized.)

I support Martha’s campaign. I’ve known her since she made her first public comments during council meetings opposing the controversial “Footnote 7” policy that enabled developers

Shawn Styles / CBS8 / Sept.22, 2026

The Ocean Beach Pier has been closed for nearly three years, leaving many residents frustrated and saddened by the loss of one of the community’s most recognizable landmarks.
For local graphic designer Brad Fernbaugh, the closure is personal.

“The pier holds a special place in my heart,” Fernbaugh said. “My wife’s grandmother is the one that put on the contest, and it’s been closed for three years. I look at it every day and it bums me out.”

Fernbaugh is behind the “’66 Poster Project,” a fundraising campaign built around Ocean Beach’s connection to the 1966 World Surfing Championships. The competition, held near the Ocean Beach Pier, is remembered as a pivotal event in surf culture.

A tribute to 1966 surf history
Fernbaugh recreated the style of the original poster used to promote the 1966 contest.

“The original that looks like this was done for the 1966 contest, so I replicated something similar,” he said.

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

Monday, September 28: Council Closed Session, 10:00 a.m.

Agenda:

Why it matters: Two of three litigation items involve damages associated with lack of city maintenance: a sidewalk trip-and-fall and a leaking water meter. Isn’t it less costly to fix problems than to pay for harm they cause? And these cases date back to 2022, 2023, and 2024. They should have been handled more expeditiously.

By Caitlin Rother / Substack / Sep 22, 2026

Until I found a flyer on my doorstep about a community meeting last night, I was not aware that the city of San Diego was updating the 1998 community plan for my neighborhood of Kensington-Talmadge and several others that are nearby but have completely unrelated interests and socio-economic demographics. Because I covered City Hall for many years when I was still a working investigative reporter for The San Diego Union-Tribune, I took my notebook to the meeting.

After we listened to two city planners present the highlights of the community plan update, Neil Winner, chairman of the Kensington-Talmadge Community Planning Group (KTCPG), summed up his group’s very measured response like this: the plan update “is not compatible” with the historic nature or the infrastructure and fire safety needs of our community. He said the KTCPG submitted an alternative plan to the city, but was told that it did not comply, without any discussion or the ability to challenge or resolve that conclusion.

Here’s my view: First, don’t hold back. What the city is proposing is a nightmarish crush of increased density, to fill our cute, historic neighborhood of well-maintained single-family homes in South Kensington with garrish apartment complexes looming six to eight stories, and three to five times the number of people living in that space as they are today. The plan allowing these new complexes, which would all be squished into the few square blocks surrounding my house, is envisioned to triple the community’s overall population and yet developers will not be required to provide any additional parking spaces because they will be built just blocks from a couple of bus routes, some of which are now slated for reduction or elimination.

Just take a minute to process that ridiculous lapse of common sense and logic.