Category: Economy

There were at least three consecutive days of protests in San Diego County against ICE and in solidarity with Minneapolis over this past weekend.

On Friday, Jan. 30, nearly 1,000 people gathered at a large rally at Teralta Park in City Heights, followed by a march. Initially protesters met at the park between Orange and Polk avenues around 2 p.m. on Friday, calling for an end to the Trump administration’s federal immigration crackdown across the country.

The day before on Thursday, people of faith rallied at the Federal Building in downtown San Diego.

The nationwide rallies, called a “National Shutdown” by organizers, called for people to not go to school, work or businesses to demand Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents out of communities. It came after federal actions in Minnesota that led to the deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, both 37 years old.

By Marina Dunbar  / The Guardian / Feb. 1, 2026

Government documents have identified the two federal officers who fatally shot Alex Pretti in Minneapolis as Jesus Ochoa, a border patrol agent, and Raymundo Gutierrez, an officer with Customs and Border Protection (CBP), according to ProPublica.

According to those records, Ochoa, 43, and Gutierrez, 35, were the agents who fired their weapons during the confrontation last weekend that resulted in Pretti’s death. The shooting sparked widespread demonstrations and renewed demands for criminal inquiries into federal immigration enforcement actions. Immediately following Pretti’s killing, the Trump administration repeatedly pushed false claims about the shooting.

At the time of the incident, both agents were participating in Operation Metro Surge, a large-scale immigration enforcement initiative that launched in December. The operation deployed numerous armed, masked agents throughout Minneapolis as part of a citywide sweep.

By  Kate Callen / Op-Ed San Diego Union-Tribune / Jan. 30 – Feb. 1, 2026

Any government facing a financial implosion has three options: increase revenue with new or expanded taxes or fees, cut spending by reducing services and cut spending by shrinking the workforce.

The city of San Diego is aggressively pursuing Option 1 (trash fees, Balboa Park parking) and gingerly exploring Option 2 (eliminating services to neighborhoods). But Option 3 seems to be off the table. Why? Are elected officials too squeamish to take a painful but essential step? Too attached to faithful staff?

I know more than most San Diegans do about government reductions-in-force (RIFs). I lived through one in the 1980s while working as a science writer in the U.S. Public Health Service.

The experience was hellish. But because the agency handled it professionally, the payroll shrank appreciably, and few of us landed on the street. There is no reason, besides intransigence, that City Hall can’t do the same.

The humane way to reduce staff, to borrow a favorite expression of my Navy veteran husband, is to plan your work and work your plan. My agency’s RIF proceeded gradually and methodically, and employees were kept informed at every step.

By Sue Taylor

There are people who tell those of us who don’t want to pay for parking in Balboa Park, “Just take transit!” I’m sure this works fine for people who live near the park. For the rest of us, it’s more of an adventure.

Today I had a public meeting downtown at 10:00 a.m. Having commuted downtown many times in the past, I know that if you want to arrive on time by transit, you need to leave very early and build in a generous margin for… surprises.

I left my house at 8:30 and walked to the bus stop for the 8:45 bus. I like to get there early because buses can be early, and there’s nothing quite like watching yours drive past as you’re jogging downhill waving at the driver to stop for you!

At 8:45, no bus. I checked the “One Bus Away” app. It said the bus was delayed by 12 minutes. Fine. That’s why I padded my schedule.

by Deborah Brennan / Cal-Matters / January 23, 2026

[Please see original for more photos and links]

For decades, parking lots at San Diego’s Balboa Park were packed, with lines of drivers snaking through lanes in search of a rare open spot.

Last Saturday there were plenty of open spaces, and on Wednesday several lots were half empty, while people lined up behind kiosks to pay newly imposed parking fees.

This month San Diego city imposed the first parking fees for the century-old cultural site, provoking confusion and contempt. Museums reported that visitation dropped 20% immediately, vandals defaced the meters and San Diego County mayors urged the city to reverse the unpopular policy.

“The negative impacts paid parking on Balboa Park have been immediate and they have been measurable,” Jessica Hanson York, executive director of the Mingei Museum and president of the Balboa Park Cultural Partnership, which represents the park’s museums, said at a press conference Wednesday. “Our visitors are feeling it and our cultural institutions and our museums are feeling it across the park.”

San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria has said the parking fees will provide stable revenue for the park and its museums, and help close a city budget gap of roughly $300 million this fiscal year and $110 million next year.

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

Monday, January 26: City Council, Closed Session, 10:00 a.m.

Agenda.

Item CS-1: Conference with legal counsel regarding 56 flooding litigation suits brought by nearly 2,000 residents.

Why it matters: It’s been a full two years since Southeastern San Diego neighborhoods were flooded because the city failed to maintain storm drain channels. Victims are still seeking reparation.

The City of San Diego has just released a Notice of Future Decision regarding an application for a Process 2 Coastal Development Permit for a 3-story, 10-unit project for 4862 and 4864 Santa Monica Ave. in Ocean Beach. The Notice was dated January 22, 2026.

It’s an application to:

• to demolish an existing two-story, 2,934 square-foot duplex consisting of two residential units at the rear the property, and
• construct a three-story, 6,545 square-foot multifamily building consisting of ten (10) units.

Billionaire Geoff Palmer Sued the City for Having to Include Some Affordable Housing Units While His Company Builds 1,000s of Units in San Diego.

By Dorian Hargrove / CBS8 / January 22, 2026

A Los Angeles landlord who owns more than 15,000 units in Southern California and is set to build more than 2,500 apartments in San Diego has lost his lawsuit seeking to get out of including affordable housing units in his projects.

According to court documents obtained by CBS 8, on Jan. 16, a federal judge dismissed billionaire Geoff Palmer’s lawsuit, which claimed the city’s inclusionary affordable housing rules were unconstitutional and akin to the government seizing private property.

Currently, Palmer’s company, G.H. Palmer, is finishing a 1,642-apartment project on Convoy Street in Kearny Mesa and is waiting to build nearly 1,000 additional units at a separate project in Grantville.

In Dec. 2022, before construction began on the Kearny Mesa project, Palmer’s company requested that the city exempt the project from the City’s Inclusionary Affordable Housing Requirement. The program required Palmer to set aside 10% of the units, or 164 in the case of the Kearny Mesa development, or to pay “in lieu of fees” for opting out.

The city denied Palmer’s request.

In Sept. 2023, Palmer sued the city, alleging the law was unconstitutional and violated private property safeguards.

by Michael Zucchet / Voice of San Diego / January 21, 2026

In his Jan. 13 op-ed published in Voice of San Diego, former Coronado Mayor Richard Bailey argues that increased spending and poor management are the real culprits of the city of San Diego’s budget woes.

But in many of the issue areas that Bailey cites (personnel and pension costs, lack of public safety spending and trash collection fees) San Diego is in line with or even outperforming other cities – including the city of Coronado under Bailey’s leadership as councilmember and mayor for 12 years:

• According to the Census Bureau, the city of San Diego’s population steadily grew more than 7 percent between 2010 and 2024 to 1,404,000. During the same period, the population of Coronado decreased 5 percent to 18,000. Despite this decline in residents, Coronado’s general fund personnel budget rose 89 percent from FY 2014 (Mr. Bailey’s first full fiscal year in office) to FY 2026.  During the same period – with a rising population – San Diego’s general fund personnel expenditures rose 76 percent. Coronado has one city employee for every 70 residents; San Diego has one employee for every 107 residents.

By Kate Callen

Balboa Park’s institutional stewards joined forces to denounce Mayor Todd Gloria’s paid parking fees in a January 21 press conference that delivered ominous news about the fees’ early impacts.

The 19 park leaders were brought together by the Balboa Park Cultural Partnership to announce a new website, that will serve as a portal for pressuring the City Council to shelve the fees.

The leaders stopped short of demanding a total repeal. They chose a milder stance: “to express our serious concerns and go on record requesting the reconsideration of the vote supporting paid parking.”

But they did (finally) challenge Gloria’s hype that the new fees will go straight into overdue park maintenance. And they would not rule out the idea of a public-private partnership, modeled after the New York City Central Park Conservancy, that would wrest management of the park away from City Hall.

“I think our community should and can have that larger discussion,” said Peter Comiskey, the partnership’s Executive Director.

Early data on attendance and revenue have borne out dire predictions that paid parking will drive away the visitors who keep the park solvent.

By Ron Donoho / San Diego Sun / January 16, 2026

Was San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria hoping to turn the page on public outrage over new parking fees by ignoring the topic during his 2026 State of the City address?

If so, the tactic backfired.

Those fees – in place at Balboa Park and also covering 17 blocks in downtown San Diego – are what many people still wanted to talk about after the mayor’s glaring omission in his annual speech. It was delivered on January 15, and the setting for the second year in a row was the 250-seat City Council Chambers at City Hall.

TV newscasts, online reports and other headlines focused on parking fees. Leaving the topic out of his address didn’t tamp down the ire. It stoked flames of discontent.

After the city faced more than a quarter-of-a-billion-dollar deficit in its last annual budget, one of the hot button fixes by the mayor was implementation of new charges on people who drive cars.

Rookie move by a veteran politician.