OB Rag

By Jim Miller

While there was much bluster about the rich tying their hot tubs to the roofs of their Mercedes and heading off to Texas after Prop 30 passed, the truth is that the poor still pay a heftier share of their income in taxes than the wealthy. Last week, the California Budget Project (CBP) released their annual report “Who Pays Taxes on California?”, and it appears that the post Proposition 30 landscape is far from apocalyptic for the top 1%.

By the broadest measure of revenue collection, “Taxafornia,” despite its largely progressive tax system, ranks 15^th in the country in total “own source” revenue, and the poorest among us pay the highest share of their family income in taxes.

Yes, folks, there is a winner in the Great OB Rag T-Shirt Design Contest! And here is the design.

Kat Svetik is the designer of the First Place winning entry and we will now have T-shirts made with her design. The contest, announced in February, had a short extension due to staff illness. Twelve judges – all either current or former residents of Ocean Beach – had 12 designs to pick from. And after two rounds of voting, the top designs were chosen.

Kat is an OB-native, and an elementary school librarian who currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband. She was raised in Ocean Beach in the same OB house where her father (his sister and brother) and his father (her grandfather) were raised. The family house was originally purchased in 1913 and has since been home to 5 generations of the O’Mara family – her family. She has deep roots in Ocean Beach, and told us that she is “proud to be part of a community that supports and encourages independent thinking.”

City Councilman Faulconer says things are looking good here in District 2 and San Diego

By Mic Porte

Wednesday April 10, 2013, Paradise Point Resort –

Sounds like the name of the sequel of a sci-fi film, but it was actually a fantasy island dream moment with our San Diego District 2 elected official, Councilmember Kevin Faulconer, and his team, at beautiful Paradise Point Resort in the middle of beautiful Mission Bay in beautiful San Diego, on a beautiful evening and with all the beautiful people around, you wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

And according to Councilmember Faulconer, things are looking pretty beautiful around here, and with a little more bi-partisan effort on the part of the city council and everybody else in San Diego and the great state of California, and regional funding, we might even be able to finally get the crumbling oldest part of the seawall in front of Belmont Park repaired in time for the rising ocean levels, and balance the city budget too, and get back to pursuing happiness, something we do great here in San Diego.

Boys and girls, are we lucky? Yes, thank you.

Thoughts on defensible spaces and private places

By Anna Daniels / San Diego Free Press

…Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out, …
Robert Frost, Mending Wall

A few days ago I realized that every single piece of residential property on my City Heights block, save one, has a fence and or a gate between the residence and the street. The business at the end of the block is also completely fenced.

I only became conscious of this fact after spending a number of hours last month walking along the side streets north of University Avenue a few blocks east and west of 30th Street in North Park. This area looks in many ways like the City Heights side streets off of University Avenue, farther to the east, where I now live.

WallStreet Journal / April 11, 2013

San Diego County Annual 5K NAMI Walk to be held this Saturday at Point Loma Liberty Station

Calling all walkers! The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI San Diego and NAMI North Coastal) is holding their annual walk on Saturday, April 13 at NTC Park in Liberty Station and wants you there!

The walk starts at 9 am Saturday with check-in beginning at 7:30 am at NTC Park in Liberty Station at 2455 Cushing Road, San Diego, CA 92106.

Media personality Geni Cavitt will be the emcee for the event. “A lot of people there know how I feel about NAMI so I’m happy to do it,” said Cavitt, who has more than 20 years of experience in communications and broadcast journalism and is a champion of mental health in the community.

Wednesday’s – 10th of April – episode of the wayward sea lion pup in OB’s Pier Parking lot is but the latest in a string of local human and sea lion pup collisions, incidents whose numbers are way out of proportion to the norm along the coast in Ocean Beach and other beach towns in Southern California.

The wayward pup was sighted around 5 a.m. on the corner of Abbott Street and Newport Avenue. A witness notified a passing police officer, who called SeaWorld. Even some media in the area found it.

But after about an hour, the pup waddled back into the ocean before the rescue squad arrived. The resident who originally saw the pup, Pamela Martinez, told the media “she was thrilled the pup went back on its own.”

An Ocean Beach pit bull crashed through a metal fence yesterday – April 10th – in the morning as a woman walked her dogs down the alley of 4400 block of Santa Cruz Avenue. The dog attacked one of the woman’s dogs, clamping onto it that it took the pit bull’s owner who tried to break it up, to have to hit it with a metal pole before the pit released its clench.

Animal Control was called to the scene, the pit captured and taken. As the dog has been regulated by Animal Control since 2010 when it was deemed a public nuisance after it bit someone ‘off-property’, it will be put down.

It all began between 8:15 and 8:30 am on Wednesday as Danielle Johnston was walking her three dogs down the Santa Cruz alley. One of her dogs was a German Shepard.

Editor: Apparently, the commmunity of North Park has something to show Ocean Beach: North Park is about to initiate San Diego’s first “EcoDistrict”. What is that?

By John Anderson / San Diego Free Press

North Park in the first stages of becoming the first sustainable-focused neighborhood in San Diego following the U.S. lead of Portland, OR. I recently talked with Paulina Lis, who is heading up the North Park EcoDistrict project along with colleague Jennifer Owens, to learn more about the project.

By Annie Lane / San Diego Free Press

Last week I came across a Steve Breen cartoon in the San Diego Union-Tribune entitled “Mapping Bob Filner’s Brain” (see left). I had quite the guffaw. I mean, if guffaws were redefined to be humorless, silent events that’s what it was.

I find it interesting that, given Breen’s skill and Pulitzer Prize history, the brain he chose to draw was so boorishly simple. Don’t worry, I get it — it’s intended to represent the supposedly simple mind of our union-sympathizing, anti-hotelier mayor.

By Sub-committee

Wednesday, April 10, Bill Allen – owner of the Crystal Pier Motel – and other residents called a press conference at the pier to help expose a simmering problem in Pacific Beach to the larger community. Allen and many other concerned residents have over the last while voiced their complaints about Scott Slaga – owner of the 710 Club (ex-Blind Melons) near the Crystal Pier – in his efforts to obtain a sidewalk encroachment variance for his establishment.

Allen and the complaining residents have issues caused, they contend, by encroachments for bars, problems such as the high crime stats and high noise impact, to lowered property values to no room on the sidewalks for people to walk to the beach.

This is all in preparation for the city council vote today, April 11, on whether or not to allow Slaga to obtain his sidewalk encroachment variance.

By John Anderson / San Diego Free Press

Last Saturday, April 6, the San Diego County Bicycle Coalition (SDCBC) hosted a ‘State of Cycling in San Diego County’ event in the Balboa Room of the historic Lafayette Hotel on El Cajon Boulevard in North Park.

This event was held to mark the one-year anniversary of the 5-Year Strategic Plan the group adopted in 2012 and discuss progress and goals for the coming years. Every seat in the room was taken, plus some standing in the doorways. I counted approximately 60 people. A bicycle valet service was provided outside the hotel for attendees – a service the SDCBC also offered at the Padres home opener on Tuesday, April 8.