Category: San Diego

By Deborah Boss

It was disappointing learning about Akilah Weber Pierson’s Senate Bill 958 focused on a workaround to eliminate CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) review for Midway Rising. It’s slated to be one of the largest developments of affordable housing for the State of California.

Do people understand why CEQA was formed and why developers can’t just go around these protections?  Stan Kroenke certainly doesn’t understand.  He finds ways to work around it when he creates his multi-million dollar stadiums.

Midway Rising is a different kind of development because most of it will be housing and when homes sink into the ground, they have sewage problems or floods someone has to pay.  But, should it be the citizens of San Diego?  How many times should Save Our Access have to go to court to force the City to accept CEQA review?  The California Appellate Court has ruled twice and the California Supreme Court has denied hearing which is why Akilah Weber Pierson’s Bill 978 is coming to fruition in the legislature.

The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) was established in 1970 to require state and local agencies to identify, disclose, and mitigate the environmental impacts of public and private development projects. It was enacted to promote transparency, public participation, and environmental protection in land-use decisions. It is the state’s most important environmental law.

Inflated land prices aren’t an unintended consequence. They were the expected outcome.

By Lisa Sinclair

San Diego’s housing strategy is built on a simple premise: rezone large swaths of the city to increase the housing supply until everyone can live where they want, and pay a rent they want to pay.

It’s a simplistic version of supply and demand that ignores the one factor that matters most— land value.

When governments increase the number of units that can be built on a property, they increase the value of that land. That is basic economics that everyone can understand.

In fact, during the implementation of the 2005–2006 Downtown Community Plan, officials warned that increasing density would drive up land prices, decreasing affordability.

Editordude: Paul Krueger testified before the City Council on Monday, April 6, about his experiences collecting signatures for a “Repeal the Fees” November ballot measure. This essay is based on his remarks to the council.

By Paul Krueger

I stand with the 81 percent of San Diegans who strongly oppose paid parking in Balboa Park.

Last Saturday, during the “Repeal The Fees” ballot measure rally at the Organ Pavilion, I stood by the parking payment kiosk behind the pavilion to gather signatures for the initiative. And I talked with locals and tourists as they waited in line to pay. What I heard – and saw – was both enlightening and infuriating.

The line at the kiosk stretched as long as 20 yards. It moved painfully slow. There is no display of instructions at that kiosk, so many visitors couldn’t begin to figure out how to pay. Some didn’t know they needed their license plate number to process their payment. If they had to go back to their car to get that information, they lost their place. Others didn’t know if they needed to return to their vehicle to put their payment receipt on their dashboards (they don’t).

When the wait hit 10 minutes or longer, some visitors worried they’d get a citation before they could pay. This was a legitimate concern; I saw at least one parking enforcement officer checking plates. Others were upset they might miss performances at the Houses of Hospitality or Balboa Park Club which brought them to the park.

No Fireworks on Nights of Drone Shows — California Coastal Commission Meeting is April 15

By Donna Frye

Sea World San Diego is seeking a Coastal Development Permit (CDP) from the California Coastal Commission to conduct up to 110 aerial drone shows, that would be approximately 15 minutes in length and “include up to 1,000 illuminated drones above the waters of Mission Bay for a pilot period of one year from the date of CDP issuance.” The Coastal Commission meeting will be held on Wednesday, April 15 to hear the request; it is Item Number 10b on the agenda.

The Coastal Commission staff report states in part:

“SeaWorld San Diego has traditionally ended many of its park days with a nighttime fireworks show. However, in response to growing concerns related to the impact of fireworks on coastal resources, as well as improvements in drone entertainment technology, SeaWorld is proposing a pilot period of one year for aerial drone shows.The drone shows would involve up to 1,000 illuminated aerial drones that would be programmed to autonomously take off, perform an up to 15-minute show up to 660 feet above Mission Bay, and then return to land. The shows would involve the drones following pre-programmed routes that depict various shapes formed by their onboard colored lights, accompanied by music played at ground level for patrons within SeaWorld.”

By Kate Callen / April 7, 2026

The 1933 movie Duck Soup added a wicked line to the comedy lexicon when a sly Chico Marx asked a flummoxed Margaret Dumont, “Who ya gonna believe, me or your own eyes?”

That quip, used by comics ever since, has become a running joke in North Park since the 30th Street Bike Lanes were installed in 2021 as part of a $30-million pipeline project.

For five years now, North Park residents have ridiculed the empty bike lanes. When my friends and I have coffee at a 30th Street sidewalk cafe, and an occasional cyclist whizzes by, we nudge one another and say, “Hey, look, there’s a bike in the bike lane!”

We live in a city where elected officials sell out neighborhoods to serve the interests of developer-backed “climate action” lobbyists. So we expect politicians and their cronies to treat us with insolence.

But sometimes their con jobs cross the line from absurdity into all-out farce.

By Cody Delaney / inewsource / April 6, 2026

Opponents of San Diego’s proposed empty homes tax are sounding the alarms, warning that the ballot measure is nearly identical to a tax that was struck down and ruled unconstitutional not long ago.

They’re referring to a case in San Francisco, where voters passed a similar initiative by a narrow margin in 2022. Officials there stopped collecting the tax two years later as they appeal the court’s decision.

But that hasn’t stopped San Diego officials from bringing the question to voters in June: Should property owners who intentionally keep homes empty and off the market during a housing shortage be required to pay an additional tax worth thousands of dollars a year?

It’s a question that has divided San Diegans in recent months, from renters to property owners and businesses to union representatives. And it comes at a time when limited housing supply has kept rents high for years — in a region where more people fall into homelessness for the first time than leave the streets for housing.

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

Monday, April 6: City Council, 2:00 p.m.

Agenda

Item 251: Propositions for the November 3, 2026 Ballot Forwarded for 2nd Committee Review

Why it matters: Two of the five measures under review seek changes related to how the Transient Occupancy Tax applies to online travel companies. The other three would establish free parking at city beaches and bays (Campillo), remove term limits for the City Auditor (Lee), and reform campaign finance and ethics laws (Elo-Rivera).

By Nadia Lathan and Deborah Brenner / Cal-Matters / April 6, 2026

When Republican Rep. Darrell Issa quit his reelection campaign last month, Democrats celebrated. Now, some are worried.

Issa’s exit is seen as a mixed blessing among Democratic officials who have eyed flipping his San Diego House seat for years. While demonstrators at a No Kings rally last weekend were exultant to see him leave the race, local Democratic organizers are more guarded. The Republican who took his place, San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond, is a longtime local official with name recognition, fundraising connections and community relationships — without Issa’s close ties to President Donald Trump.

“If anything, Jim Desmond is a slightly better candidate than Darrell Issa in some regards,” because he is not as closely affiliated with Trump, said Dan Rottenstreich, a spokesperson for Marni von Wilpert, one of two leading Democrats in the race.

Twenty years ago, the San Diego Reader ran a long cover story called “90 Years of Curl,” an in-depth review of surfing history, particularly in San Diego, written by Jeannette DeWyze.

Then this year on March 30, the online version of the Reader republished it as “San Diego surf heroes going back to 1910 — When Duke Kahanamoku tried the OB Pier.”

[What OB Pier would that be? The one that is permanently closed right now was opened in 1966. There was another pier built earlier – south of where the 66 pier is.]

This story first appeared in the Reader on December 14, 2006.

There’s a good chance Ralph Noisat caught the first wave in San Diego. He died in 1980, and as he wasn’t a man to brag, his pioneering role might have been lost were it not for his board. He made it himself when he was a boy, and it was still in the Noisat family home in 1998 when Ralph’s daughter, Margie Chamberlain, was preparing to sell the Mission Hills residence. Chamberlain realized the heavy wooden board might have historic value, so she called the California Surf Museum in Oceanside. No one there knew anything about Noisat, but the museum staff was thrilled to accept the board when they heard what Chamberlain had to say about her father.

Here are samples of photos sent to us last weekend, too late for the live-blog (that shut down about 5:30 pm after beginning at 8:15 in the morning) that we now would like to share.

Downtown San Diego — Waterfront Park

From Change Begins With ME .Indivisible.

Tribe Never Consulted During Planning for Hidden Valley Ranch Housing Project

by Katie Futterman / inewsource / March 29, 2026

Tribal leaders have found human remains and evidence of a burial site – first in October and twice this March – at the construction site of a housing development first approved in Poway over 20 years ago.

The San Pasqual Band of Mission Indians is calling on the city and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to stop work on a portion of a 420-acre site on the east side of Old Coach Road immediately.

In October, Johnny Bear Contreras, the chair of the cultural committee for the San Pasqual Band of Mission Indians, got a call from fellow cultural monitors telling him to come take a look at the Hidden Valley Ranch project.

When he arrived at the site of what’s slated to be 41 single-family homes, he found just what the tribe had expected: human remains.

by JW August / Times of San Diego / April 2, 2026

A San Diego council member suggested at a recent committee meeting that the city look into ways to take revenue from golf division leases to help fund all parks and recreation needs.

The Golf Enterprise Fund provides for the care and maintenance of the city’s three public courses. At the end of last year it held an impressive $55 million.

With a city facing a $120 million budget shortfall in the coming fiscal year, this tempting target is fodder for those tasked with filling the gap. Councilman Sean Elo-Rivera, at a Land Use and Housing Committee meeting last month, asked that city staff study the possibility of shifting more money away from the golf fund to cover other expenses.

In 2025, the gross revenue for San Diego’s municipal courses was $41.4 million, 9.9% of which was paid to the general fund.