OB Rag

By Neighbors for a Better San Diego / June 11, 2025

According to San Diego’s fire codes, new development in San Diego requires at least 20 feet of unobstructed street width and a 50-foot turning radius for fire engines.

This applies EVERYWHERE in San Diego, not just in high-risk fire zones.

Yet, San Diego’s Bonus ADU program has allowed 15+ Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) to be packed behind homes, such as the project shown below in Rolando, which sits on a narrow cul-de-sac.

It is concerning that we are still discovering regulations that the Development Services Department (DSD) has not been enforcing.

By Ernie McCray / June 11, 2025

So proud of my old neighbors,

Golden Hill/South Park folks,

standing up to Trump’s

Immigration and Customs Enforcement goons

who, out of the blue,

in a style much like a military platoon,

descended on workers

at Buona Forchetta,

one of the hood’s

fine eating places,

By Francine Maxwell / June 11, 2025

Let’s stop pretending. San Diego’s City Council does not care about homeowners. If they did, they wouldn’t be nickel-and-diming property owners to death while hiding behind empty “equity” speeches.

We have the highest SDG&E rates in the county. Water rates are climbing. A stormwater fee is looming. And now they’re slapping a trash fee directly onto your property tax bill, buried like fine print — a lazy, cowardly move designed to avoid public accountability.

While working families struggle to keep their homes, the Council just passed yet another tenant ordinance, making it even harder for homeowners to manage their own properties. They’ve created a hostile, predatory environment for anyone trying to build generational wealth or own a home in this city.

By Swasti Singhai / Times of San Diego / June 10, 2025

Following months of deliberations — and facing a $258 million deficit — the City Council finalized San Diego’s 2026 budget on Tuesday.

The first budget draft proposed by Mayor Todd Gloria included reductions of recreation center and library operating hours as well as various community programs, such as the Small Business Enhancement Program — a move widely criticized by the public throughout the budget revision process.

The finalized budget includes an increase of $48.4 million in expenditures from the April budget draft, funds that restore some of the programs that had been on the chopping block.

The National Guard is typically brought into American cities during emergencies such as natural disasters and civil disturbances or to provide support during public health crises — when local authorities require additional resources or manpower. There was no indication that was needed or wanted in Los Angeles this weekend, where local law enforcement had kept protests over federal immigration raids, for the most part, under control.

Guard members also almost always arrive at the request of state leaders, but in California, Gov. Gavin Newsom called the deployment of troops “purposefully inflammatory” and likely to escalate tensions. It had been more than 60 years since a president sent in the National Guard on his own volition.

Which made President Trump’s order on Saturday to do so both ahistoric and based on false pretenses and is already creating the very chaos it was purportedly designed to prevent.

Mr. Trump invoked a rarely used provision of the U.S. Code on Armed Services that allows for the federal deployment of the National Guard if “there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the government of the United States.” No such rebellion is underway. As the governor’s spokesman and others have noted, Americans in cities routinely cause more property damage after their sports teams win or lose.

By Thom Hartman / AlterNet / June 10, 2025

Trump: Well, we’re going to have troops everywhere.

Reporter: What’s the bar for sending in the Marines?
Trump: The bar is what I think it is.

The 2026 and 2028 elections may have just gotten a lot more distant. First, the backstory.

It was around 2 a.m. on July 15, 2020, when Mark Pettibone, then 29, was walking home from a relatively calm Black Lives Matter protest in downtown Portland, Oregon. He hadn’t done anything more provocative than wearing a black shirt: no slogans, no mask, no glimmers of violence. Yet an unmarked minivan pulled up alongside him. Out jumped several armed men in camouflage, with no insignia, to slip a bag over his head and kidnap him.

“I was terrified,” Pettibone told reporters, his voice trembling with the memory. “It was like being preyed upon.”

He was shoved into the van, blindfolded, driven to the federal courthouse, interrogated, and held — with no Miranda rights, no paperwork, no explanation — for nearly 90 minutes before being released without charge or citation.

No uniforms, no accountability, no transparency, yet a citizen was stripped of his rights and dignity in a blurry high-stakes operation. And around the same time in Washington, DC, Donald Trump was trying to talk Gen. Mark Milley into having the National Guard shoot at protesters in that city.

This was not some fringe vigilante action. It was federal agents wielding brute force under cover of Trump’s executive order, agents whose silence spoke louder than any badge. The American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon called it an unconstitutional kidnapping. Legal scholars said probable cause was nowhere to be found.

Yet Merrick Garland, U.S. Attorney General under Joe Biden, decided it wasn’t worth investigating or prosecuting. Let’s just move on. And so here we are.

As Trump levels attacks on Los Angeles — sending in federal forces to “restore order” amid unrest provoked by ICE’s illegal tactics —

By Kevin Hastings

Every day, I drive past a half-finished structure that is covered in tar paper and crumbling away behind weeds and chain-link fencing. It stands at the corner of West Point Loma and Sunset Cliffs Blvd. as a monument to the utter dysfunction of San Diego’s Development Services Department (DSD).

In 2021, the owner of the former Valvoline station applied for a permit to “remodel” the building into a modern drive-thru oil change facility.

Plans included the excavation of a basement-level service pit under the entire building and the addition of garage doors for vehicles to exit onto Lotus Street.

In DSD terminology, a “remodel” project reuses at least 50% of the exterior wall’s structure. While the building is, for all practical purposes, a completely new structure, the “remodel” status allows the applicant to use certain design elements, or “previously conforming conditions,” that are no longer allowed under new building code.

Remodel projects also can qualify for a “ministerial permit,” a simpler and cheaper permitting process. Removing more than 50% of the exterior wall structure triggers what is called a “discretionary permit.” This treats a project as a new construction that must follow all the new and more restrictive codes, including parking, setbacks, and building envelope.

And here in Ocean Beach, discretionary permits also require an expensive Coastal Development Permit,

The 1.7-acre landmark overlooking the San Diego Bay was built for fast-food mogul Robert O. Petersen

Introduction by Geoff Page

There is a very unique home in upper Point Loma that was designed for the founder of Jack in the Box, Robert O. Peterson, by architect Russell Forester. During some research on Peterson, a story popped up about that home in Mansion Global, a digital site for all things mansions. The home is on the market valued at $16.9 million.

For those not necessarily familiar with Peterson, his other claim to fame was his fourth marriage to Maureen O’Connor, who went on to become the first female mayor of San Diego from 1985 to 1992. Peterson was 61 years old, O’Connor was 26 when they married.

It was a bit ironic when Peterson’s partner, Richard Silberman, was almost married to a woman mayor, the political rival of O’Connor, Susan Golding. He was married to Golding, but, Golding dumped him right before the mayoral election when Silberman went from being an asset to being a huge liability. The money-laundering conviction was the problem.

By Greg Moran / inewsource / June 5, 2025

They were four hours in at a San Diego City Council budget review meeting when the discussion got around to the mystery worker of the Environmental Services department.

“In regards to Clean SD,” Councilmember Henry Foster III began, a note of exasperation in his voice. He was referring to the program within the department that cleans sidewalks, picks up piles of trash that were illegally dumped, cleans up homeless encampments and scrapes up road kill.

“It looks like we are looking at adding a program manager, and I am just curious as to — this program seems to have been around for quite some time,” he continued. “I believe it was started under the Faulconer administration.”

“Why are we now, so many years in, today being presented — having to add an additional management position in regards to this program?”

By David Garrick / SD Union-Tribune / June 10, 2025

A sharply divided San Diego City Council voted 6-3 Monday to impose the city’s first fee for trash collection at single-family homes, despite complaints the $43.60 monthly charge is much higher than earlier estimates.

The vote came shortly after City Clerk Diana Fuentes determined that a protest against the new fee had failed to get enough support. Residents turned in just over 46,000 protest cards — well short of the 113,000 necessary.

Supporters said the fee will help San Diego close a large budget deficit, lengthen the life of the Miramar landfill by boosting recycling rates and eliminate an unfair situation for people living in condos and apartments.