Category: San Diego

Todd Gloria, mayor of San Diego, appears to have won the recent round on the city budget with both the City Council and the Municipal Employees Association — who represents most of the city’s workforce. Gloria refused to fire any of the hundreds of so-called “middle managers” in order to fill in the $350 million deficit — something the Council and MEA — and public — wanted.

Voice of San Diego reported:

Mayor Todd Gloria and his office are making clear none of their employees are on the chopping block.

Mayoral spokesperson Rachel Laing stated:

“As noted by the City Attorney’s Office, the Mayor alone is responsible for making decisions for his office, which includes the City’s executive team and other mayoral departments.”

Laing “added that the mayor will continue to make staffing decisions based on what the mayor thinks is needed to run a responsive and effective city government,” says the Voice.

The plight of middle managers became an issue in discussions during “controversial budget negotiations this spring” — which “pitted Mayor Todd Gloria against city labor leaders — and eventually most of the City Council,” reports David Garrick of the San Diego U-T.

And we have to add that members of the public at large — city residents — also chimed in about doing away with the many managerial positions the city has,

By Lorena Gonzalez / San Diego Union-Tribune Op-Ed / July 13, 2025

Abundance.

Of course!

But abundance for whom?

The labor movement has always been supportive of dreaming big, building large projects, increasing housing supply and completing massive infrastructure projects.

That’s what union workers do — skillfully build things, advocate within our communities for government-driven investments and large infrastructure projects, and support campaigns for those investments. And, I would argue, our unions know better than anyone what happens when government-funded infrastructure projects and jobs get held up with unnecessary delays, duplicative permitting processes and red tape.

We see it with the waning interest in California high-speed rail as the delays and permitting impediments make it a punching bag for right-wing politicians. We saw it with our own members, as massive public investments by President Biden simply took too long for the effect to trickle down and be felt in terms of the good union jobs that were guaranteed.

Our main criticism with “the Abundance agenda” isn’t about what it does — in terms of reducing regulations to speed up development to increase supply — but what it fails to do. Streamlining development must be tied to labor and environmental standards so that there is a clear public benefit and not just a giveaway to developers.

By Alexandra Mendoza and Teri Figueroa / The San Diego Union-Tribune / July 13, 2025

At a Linda Vista apartment complex, masked federal agents recently swarmed an undocumented immigrant to make an arrest as an angry crowd gathered in protest, in a scene that has played out in viral videos across social media amid the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

Standing in front of yellow police tape, between the agents and bystanders, stood San Diego police officers.

“All we are here for is scene security,” the officer told Arturo Gonzalez, an activist recording the operation. “We have not made any immigration arrests.”

Gonzalez wasn’t convinced: “You’re not making any arrests. You are just protecting them so they can do their duties.”

California law is clear. Local law enforcement agencies cannot assist federal agents with immigration enforcement. But local cops have been increasingly called to the scenes of such arrests in recent weeks as public immigration arrests continue to roil communities.

Police are in a thorny spot.

Here is the staff report, dated June 23, 2025. (all pdf files)

By Lisa Mortensen

To Mayor Gloria and all Councilmembers:

San Diego City Planning Commissioner, Kelly Moden, must resign her appointed position as head of the Planning Commission.  Your selection of Ms. Moden’s one-person development company to renovate 101 Ash Street is filled with terms that are an ethical quagmire.

Awarding her development company $24 million dollars of credit on Development Impact Fees on the Ash Street project is just one more glaring display of impropriety.

By Kate Callen / July 14, 2025

Tomorrow — July 15 — should have been the day the San Diego City Council ended four years of predatory development by enacting reforms of the destructive Bonus ADU program.

But the vote, rescheduled from July 1 by Council President Joe La Cava, did not appear on tomorrow’s meeting agenda when it was posted last Wednesday. Then the item was added to the agenda on Thursday. Then it was removed on Friday.

La Cava had said he postponed the July 1 vote at the last minute because Councilmember Jen Campbell was absent. But Campbell has been attending meetings remotely while wearing a neck brace.

Perhaps he will explain the new last-minute postponement when the Council meets. Perhaps his explanation will be plausible. Agenda items are moved all the time for all sorts of reasons.

But the Council President is facing a public that has run out of patience and faith. There have been too many bad deals, too many botched estimates, too many bait-and-switches.

The stakes in the battle for Bonus ADU reform are still high. Right now, across the city, people living near modest homes listed for sale have to wonder: Will that property turn into a multi-story apartment building?

The City of San Diego in its infinite wisdom, has just announced it is lifting the “Summer Construction Moratorium” at the beaches and in coastal neighborhoods in order to speed up “street repair”, to “save taxpayer dollars” and to “complete projects faster.”

The “moratorium” has been enacted at the beaches during the summer months between Memorial Day and Labor Day for decades because of the impact of construction in coastal zones at the height of the tourist season with the general popularity of the beaches. It was mainly a way to relieve congestion for coastal residents, businesses and tourists because of prior years of complaints from the beaches about street repairs and construction projects blocking streets, rights-of-way, traffic and making it more difficult for merchants to keep their doors open.

So, today, July 14th, Mayor Gloria announced:

“For decades, projects were stalled during the summer, delaying improvements for residents. Now we can get streets paved and infrastructure improvements completed faster. The removal of this restriction is one way we’re cutting red tape and finding creative solutions across City departments to improve service to residents.”

Well, there ya go. Todd is really just helping out residents and cutting red tape in order to improve city services.

July 9, 2025
To:
Assembly Local Government Committee Chair, The Honorable Cecelia Aguiar-Curry
San Diego County Assembly State Members
District 74 – The Honorable Laurie Davies
District 75 – The Honorable Carl DeMaio
District 76 – The Honorable Dr. Darshana R. Patel
District 77 – The Honorable Tasha Boerner
District 78 – The Honorable Christopher Ward
District 79 – The Honorable Dr. LaShae Sharp-Collins
District 80 – The Honorable David Alvarez
Subject: Opposition to SB 79 – Request to Vote NO

Dear Assembly Members,

The Community Planners Committee (CPC), representing 41 Community Planning groups throughout the City of San Diego, urges you to vote NO on Senate Bill 79 (Weiner) (hereafter, SB 79). As the elected community voices for the city, we urge you to consider what is appropriate for San Diego and your constituents. While Senator Scott Weiner’s Fact Sheet – Updated 7.7.25 states the City of San Diego supports SB 79, neither the mayor nor the city council have explicitly endorsed SB 79.

In fact, San Diego’s Legislative Platform not only emphasizes support of land use regulations that would be eliminated by SB 79, it supports retaining local control over state and federal regulations in general.

In a city where so many big plans have gone so badly for 30 years, San Diego residents shouldn’t just be wary when another bold proposal comes along — they should be terrified.

That’s especially true when it comes to cleaning up after Mayor Kevin Faulconer’s 2016 agreement to enter into a 20-year, $127 million lease-to-own deal for the former Sempra Energy headquarters at 101 Ash Street. Contrary to the enduring narrative that the city had no way of knowing the severity of problems at the 19-story office building, a Sempra consultant publicly testified in 2014 that the decrepit building was in need of at least $34 million in repairs and potentially much more because of extensive asbestos contamination.

Now Mayor Todd Gloria — who backed the Ash Street deal as a council member — has won initial City Council support for a $250 million proposal from the development team of MRK-Create to convert the vacant tower into 247 residential units reserved for “low-income” families.

The July 2 committee vote alarmed activist Paul Krueger, who [in Rag article] questioned the lack of detail in the development agreement, the feasibility of securing $32.2 million in tax credits associated with historic properties for a property that is hardly historic, the $24.5 million fee to be paid to the developers, and the reliability of estimates on how much it would cost for asbestos removal and renovation. Former City Attorney Mike Aguirre also expressed dismay at the lack of thorough vetting of the proposal before it won initial approval.

By Danna Givot

The State Assembly’s Local Government Committee will vote on Senate Bill 79 on Wednesday, July 16. SB 79 will allow 45 to 75 foot tall apartment buildings to be built up to ½ mile from transit (as the crow flies), which can be several miles walking distance from transit across freeways and canyons). You can view a 1 minute video explaining SB 79 here or an 8 minute video here.

State assembly member Chris Ward of San Diego sits on the committee that will vote on SB 79 this Wednesday.  It was Assemblymember Ward who told the Housing and Community Development Committee on July 2nd that the City of San Diego supports SB 79.  But we now know that the supposed support letter from the City of San Diego was drafted and signed by the City’s lobbyist, not an official representative of the City of San Diego

Eligible communities include Point Loma, Ocean Beach, Bankers Hill, Middletown, Golden Hill and South Park

By Lorie Weisberg / San Diego Union-Tribune / July 11, 2025

San Diego International Airport has been awarded $15 million in federal funds that will go a long way toward soundproofing hundreds of nearby homes impacted by the roar of arriving and departing planes.

In all, 18 airports in California were awarded grants from the Federal Aviation Administration. The funding comes through the Airport Improvement Program, which earmarks funds for airport infrastructure projects, like runways, taxiways, noise mitigation, airport signage and airport lighting.

The grant comes at a time when there’s continuing uncertainty surrounding a wide variety of federal grant programs that are being reevaluated by the current administration.

by CBS8 Staff / July 10, 2025

Attorneys for 15 property owners who are suing to overturn San Diego’s new trash fees have laid out their argument.

In a newly amended complaint, former city attorney Mike Aguirre and law partner Mia Severson say the city purposely inflated the cost to provide trash collections to generate cash to balance a massive budget deficit.

“The city is in dire financial shape, which we appreciate, and that puts all the pressure in the world on city officials to come up with some way to plug the hole, and that’s what this is,” Aguirre told CBS 8.

Plaintiffs argue that the city used “inflated and hidden” cost projections, including a $5 million consultant study and an operational analysis that added more than $41 million to the budget, to justify the fee.

“We’re not asking for money, we’re not asking for anything draconian,” said Aguirre.  “We are just asking for what the public is entitled to.”

The lawsuit contends that the city’s projected costs for fiscal year 2026 nearly double actual recent costs, resulting in a surplus that plaintiffs say will be diverted to cover unrelated budget shortfalls, such as pension debt and deferred maintenance.