Category: Ocean Beach

This Thursday, May 7th, the City Council is holding a “Special Meeting” to vote on an ordinance implementing Senate Bill 79, the new state law that allows 5+ story apartments within one-half mile of trolley stops and certain major bus routes.

And a Call to Action has been announced for residents to help limit the impact of SB 79 by attending or by using the city’s online comment system.
It’s Agenda Item 600.

Here’s more on the situation from Neighbors For A Better San Diego (NFABSD):

To use the protections allowed under the law, San Diego must adopt an implementing ordinance before SB 79 takes effect on July 1.

 While Neighbors For A Better San Diego (NFABSD) opposed the bill in Sacramento, the Planning Department’s phased approach is the best available path under a bad law and deserves support. It limits immediate exposure in high-fire-hazard zones, low-resource areas, historic sites, and sea-level-rise areas, and it applies the state’s optional one-mile walking-distance cap to reduce the most unreasonable overreach.

/>bold /italicBased on a polling of our writers, the OB Rag now endorses Mandy Havlik for District 2 of the San Diego City Council.

Mandy has long been active in the communities of Point Loma and Ocean Beach and has ingrained the wishes, dreams and complaints of the residents of this sector of District 2. For instance, she’s been the first vice-chair of the Peninsula Community Planning Board for years, has been active in helping maintain Sunset Cliffs as a local treasure, active in the local Rotary and among the leadership of the local Democratic club.

by Debbie L. Sklar / Times of San Diego / May 4, 2026

Mission Bay didn’t start as a destination. It started as water that refused to sit still.

Just inland from the oceanfront homes and boardwalk of Mission Beach, the waters of the bay stretch across what was once a wide, shifting tidal wetland. Before it became a center of recreation, the bay was part of a dynamic coastal system of marshes, mudflats and seasonal channels— land that helped shape the surrounding beach communities as they developed.

Early waters and wetlands
For centuries, the San Diego River spread across a wide tidal basin here, carving through a shifting wetland of mudflats, marsh channels, and seasonal flood zones. Long before development, this was part of a larger coastal ecosystem used by the Kumeyaay, whose presence in the region predates Spanish settlement by thousands of years.

By the mid-20th century, that landscape was already being redesigned.

On April 27, the mayor sent a memo to the City Council laying out three options for cutting costs at libraries:

Option 1 focuses on preserving hours in Districts 4, 8, and 9 (historically underserved communities), while cutting hours at 14 other branches. Six of these branches would eliminate a full day of service. Eight branches would be reduced to a half-day on Saturdays.

Option 2 would result in more uniform cuts across the city for branches open Monday-Saturday. Most locations would lose Saturday hours, and four locations (Carmel Valley, North Park, University Heights, and Allied Gardens) would lose Monday hours entirely.

Celebratory Party Being Planned for Later in May

It was May 4, 1976, and thousands of OB residents, property owners and business owners took part in a day-long election to select the very first Ocean Beach Planning Board. It was the first time a community democratically elected their volunteer citizen planning committee in San Diego history.

Fifty years later, we celebrate this victory for the OB Planning Board is still alive and kicking. And now there are over 40 other community planning boards across the city.

Here’s the history of the moment 5 decades ago.

Working with the San Diego County Registrar of Voters and the League of Women Voters, Ocean Beach was divided into 7 voting districts, and on May 4th, there were one to two voting sites per district, mainly in front of markets. The balloting took place all day – and at the appointed hour, ballot boxes were taken to the OB Recreation Center for counting, with everything monitored by the League of Women Voters.

When the votes came in, it was apparent that the election and its turnout had been astounding. Thousands had voted. All told, nearly 4500 ballots were cast in this special election. With a community population of 13,000, the eligibility rolls included 6,100 registered voters, 2,100 property owners (1,100 inside the plan area and 1,000 outside the area), and 600 business license holders.

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

Budget Review May 4 — May 8

The Council will spend all five days this week (May 4–May 8) in one continuous meeting to review the proposed FY2027 budget. Here’s the link to the week-long agenda of city department budget presentations

A quick review shows that Mayor Gloria is making good on his threat that the defeat of the 2024 Measure E sales tax increase would result in cuts to community services.

The “Community Services Branch Expenditures Summary” lists a reduction of 38 positions or 8.8% ($3.4M) out of 434 in the Library Department; 94 positions or 8% ($8.8M) out of 1,168 in Parks and Recreation; and 33 positions or 4.3% ($2.8M) out of 760 in Engineering and Capital Projects.

The Ocean Beach Planning Board meets Tuesday night, May 5 at 6 p.m. at the OB Rec Center for their monthly meeting. \

The major item on the Board’s agenda is part 2 of the District 2 Candidate Forum. Candidates Josh Coyne, Richard Bailey, Nicole Crosby and Mike Rickey will be in attendance and each will be given 15 minutes to make introductory statements and answer questions from the board and the audience.

Back in the late Sixties in San Diego, there was only 3 local TV stations and TV 8 (the future CBS8) was one of them. And one of their best reporters was Harold Keen – who later wrote for San Diego Magazine during its hey-day.

In this video from the past, Keen does a story on OB’s Inbetween, a youth drop-in center on Newport Avenue. Come inside to check it out.

by Scott Hopkins / Times of San Diego / April 29, 2026

There will be new leadership at Point Loma High next school year, after the current principal announced his early retirement. David Jaffe took the job with the school three years ago, succeeding Kelly Lowry, and had planned to work for three more years.

Over the past 34 years, Jaffe has served across all grades from pre-K-12. He has served as principal at four high schools, one elementary school, and for two years as a district superintendent. He began in 1992 as an instructional aide at Lewis Junior High School in San Diego.

From Coastal Caretakers

Senate Bill 79 (SB 79), also known as the Abundant and Affordable Homes Near Transit Act, is a landmark piece of California legislation signed into law in October, 2025. San Diego Mayor and Council members were among the first cities in the State to embrace the bill and create new laws supporting the State mandate.  Look out folks, ‘they’ have just begun.

We can expect the City of San Diego Council to have future meetings about SB 79 legislation.  With San Diego approving tiny, tiny apartments ministerially into high-rises, declaring they are proponents of equity and affordable housing, Neighbors for a Better San Diego saw otherwise: “SB 79 (Wiener) remains one of the most disruptive state housing bills in recent memory.”