Category: San Diego

by Frank Gormlie and Patty Jones

When we heard what the Encinitas tree-sitter was doing, Patty and I wanted to meet him. So we drove up the coast on a beautiful day to do just that. We found Orpheus Park – about halfway between the freeway and the coast – denuded of most of its trees.

And there was Andrew Watkins hanging upside down from a large branch, along with a few other friends who had climbed up to the platform that Watkins had assembled.

With today’s announcement by the Union-Tribune of the latest San Diego area teacher to be accused of having sex with a student being arraigned in the South County Court, we turn to our archives. Now, with Carmina Erica Lopez charged with molesting and having sex with a boy who was a one-time student, we add her to our rolls of area teachers – which now add up to twelve – who have had sex with students in the last few years. Helix High School has been getting all the attention, as four of the teachers taught there. But the focus by the mainstream media on that singular fact misses an even greater issue.

The debate over the recent vote of the San Diego Unified School District Board of Education on a Project Stabilization Agreement with the local Building Trades continues here. Pat Flannery – blogger, city gadfly, community activist – has been very critical of the PSA, and we re-post his most recent comments. The Center for Policy Initiatives speaks up for organized labor, and we re-post their website comments.

The right not to associate – union shop or merit shop
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Fight the barrage of lies with facts: School board vote is good for San Diego

San Diego environmental activists are split over the compromise between a few major environmental groups and San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders on the City obtaining a waiver for the secondary treatment of its wastewater.

On January 19th it was announced that Mayor Sanders and the Sierra Club, the Surfrider Foundation and San Diego Coastkeeper had all come to an agreement on the waiver. In December of last year, the Environmental Protection Agency had granted the City a five-year waiver on having to upgrade the sewage treatment.

On February 25 of last year, professional skydiver Alan (Buzz) Fink and his wife Kristina, who are not residents of San Diego, gave a total of $640 to Jan Goldsmith in his run for city attorney. On July 23, Fink, president of Jamul’s Skydive San Diego, gave Goldsmith another $320.

Goldsmith won the election, and on January 8 he fired deputy city attorney John Serrano, who worked on real estate property. He is one of nine deputy city attorneys who have been fired by Goldsmith. Serrano is an experienced government lawyer, having served as a deputy city attorney in Los Angeles and assistant city attorney in Escondido, among many things.

Local beach residents want no part of the recent elimination of trash cans by the City of San Diego along walkways and viewpoints at the cliffs and beaches. They are registering their opposition by leaving mounds of rubbish and trash where trash cans once gallantly stood.

Nearly two weeks ago, the City of San Diego announced that it was permanently removing about two dozen trash receptacles from Ocean Beach to La Jolla. The cans removed were at walkways and viewpoints – not the actual beach and parks in between.

Water rationing probably will be imposed in San Diego by July 1, Mayor Jerry Sanders said yesterday. The reduction would vary per household depending on factors including how much water is used for landscaping. Sanders said residential and business customers alike would face “fairly significant penalties” for using too much water in the face of a drought and spring cutbacks expected from the wholesaler that provides water to the city. Sanders didn’t elaborate on what the penalties might be.

Water administrator Alex Ruiz said the rationing plan would try to take into account customers’ past conservation efforts and seek to distinguish between “discretionary” outdoor water uses and indoor uses, such as cooking and cleaning.

Antiwar activists have taken up the cause of an Army deserter who was deported from Canada and is now being held at the brig at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar. Two dozen members of Military Families Speak Out and San Diego Veterans for Peace protested Tuesday [Jan. 13,2009] afternoon outside the base in support of Robin Long, a onetime Army private who was sentenced in August to 15 months behind bars and a dishonorable discharge.

The activists support Long’s view that the Iraq war is illegal and say his sentence is particularly cruel because it could prevent him from returning to his sick girlfriend and their 2-year-old son in Canada. Canadian law makes it difficult for convicted felons to enter Canada.

A more than $1 billion plan to add 10 gates, and probably a parking structure, at Lindbergh Field is scheduled before the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority in March, but it may cost another $4 billion to build out the airport that would soon be gridlocked. An airport update was presented at a Society for Marketing Professional Services meeting at the DoubleTree Hotel in Mission Valley last Wednesday.

Iraj Ghaemi, the Airport Authority’s director of facilities development, noted that with 227,000 aircraft operations, Lindbergh was the busiest single runway commercial service airport in North America in 2008.

A memorial for Donnie Truesdail is being planned here in Ocean Beach for next Thursday, January 22nd. His family and friends hope it will allow all the different people touched by the local musician and music teacher to come together and express their sympathies.

The planning for the memorial, however, is being done in the dark shadow cast by the California Highway Patrol’s conclusion that Donnie’s death was a ‘suicide.’ Their conclusion is based on faulty evidence.

Aside from the beautiful full moon we had last week there was a very low tide over the weekend. I’m sure they’re somehow related but don’t ask me how… Frank and I took a hike on the beach south from the staircase at the foot of Ladera St. We didn’t get far before the batteries in my camera and the backups were dead, but we had a great hike and watched the sunset from the beach before making our way back up. I was happy to get these great photos of the low tide from our good friend Jeff.

Check ’em out, click on the smaller image below to see a larger version. Let us know your favorite!

The Ocean Beach branch Library has no better friends than Dorothy Shumway and her family. Over the past year, this long-time OB family donated nearly $13,000 to the OB Branch of the San Diego Public Library. Dorothy Shumway, now 83, and her family wrote checks that totaled $12,900 at two different times during 2008, and sent them to the San Diego Public Library Foundation ear-marked for our local branch. This incredible act of generosity by one family in support of the Ocean Branch Library, particularly since the branch has just fought a successful, if temporary, battle to keep its doors open, does need to be recognized by the broader community.