OB Rag

By Kate Callen

Community college students running an underfunded newspaper in Chula Vista have just taught the nation a lesson about the power of diversity.

The Southwestern Sun of Southwestern Community College has won the Gold Crown award from the Columbia University Scholastic Press Association for being the top collegiate newspaper in North America.

The Sun’s multi-cultural staff are student reporters from working-class and immigrant families. They surpassed peers who attend prestigious universities and grew up in privileged surroundings.

If you badly need a ray of hope in a dark time when journalism and equity are under siege, this might do the trick.

Sun reporters have had plenty of reason to give up. For many, English is a second language. They juggle full courseloads with jobs of 25 hours a week or more to support themselves and their families.

But they are unyielding. “These students do journalism the right way for the right reason,” said Max Branscomb, professor of journalism at Southwestern and a decades-long Sun adviser.

by City News Service – Times of San Diego / April 23, 2025

San Diego County is well on its way to meeting state-mandated goals for housing development, and could easily exceed the benchmark, according to a report presented Wednesday to the county Board of Supervisors.

The county Board of Supervisors Wednesday voted unanimously to formally accept a report that its vice chair said shows progress on more  housing development.

According to Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer’s office, the new data shows that 84% of the state-mandated housing goal has already been met, “just four years into the eight-year cycle.”

The county’s 2024 General Plan and Housing Element Annual Progress Report found that 5,645 housing units had received permits toward a goal of 6,700 units, along with 4,500 additional homes “moving through the pipeline,” according to Lawson-Remer’s office.

At the current pace, “the county is projected to exceed its housing goal by more than 4,500 homes by 2029,  a milestone that could mean thousands more families, young people and essential workers can afford to stay in San Diego County,” according to the supervisor’s office.

$1.3 Billion Gaylord Pacific Resort Rises Like a Huge Block Along San Diego’s Bayfront

A few months ago, I was up on Mt. Helix for the great views. As I cast my eyes westward, I saw a huge block sitting near the southbay coast. It was a monster and stood out like nothing I’d ever seen along that lower stretch of San Diego Bay. Was it military? Was it some huge monument? Nope, neither as I found out later. It was the new Gaylord Pacific Hotel and Convention Center in Chula Vista. Here’s some other views of the place.

For more than 20 years, the Gaylord Pacific Hotel and Convention Center has been talked about in some fashion, in large part because of the incredible opportunity that the Chula Vista development holds for San Diego’s South Bay region. That vision is nearly reality as the $1.3-billion project rapidly approaches its mid-May opening date.

by Ernie McCray

There is so much around us
that can lift our spirits,
a song,
a poem,
a loving gesture,
a bright smile on
a handsome face
like the one of gratitude
on Eric Allen’s
as he received the news
that he had made the NFL Hall of Fame,

By Steve O San Diego

Secret menu item alert!!! Shhh….

Last week, I stopped by Northside Tavern for my favorite item on the menu: the Cali Bowl.

I didn’t realize things were about to change. If you haven’t had it yet, it’s basically a burrito in a bowl with shredded cabbage, rice, black beans, avocado, pico de gallo, cotija cheese, and your choice of protein (chicken, carne asada, shrimp, carnitas, or birria), all topped with salsa or chipotle sauce if you go with the shrimp.

The last time I had it, it was still a secret menu item, so secret that even some of the bartenders didn’t know about it. I ordered it with shrimp, and honestly, it was next-level good. Now it has been added to their menu.

But this visit took an unexpected and delicious turn. Just as I arrived, I ran into Tom North, one of the owners, on his way out. I mentioned I was about to order the Cali Bowl again, and he let me in on another secret menu item he’s been working on which is a twist inspired by the Hawaiian Loco Moco.

By Paul Krueger

After repeatedly dismissing — and even ridiculing — public concerns about San Diego’s “Bonus ADU” program, Mayor Todd Gloria is trying to take credit for our grassroots effort to limit the damage inflicted by multi-unit backyard monstrosities.

Worse, the Mayor and his planning department now dare to congratulate themselves for “…ensuring projects are consistent with the scale and character of San Diego’s neighborhoods.”

And it’s damn near Orwellian for the mayor’s publicists to claim the City “…monitors its housing programs to ensure they are achieving the desired results, and often makes adjustments based on feedback from the community…”

Those of us who have fought in the trenches on this issue know the reality: The mayor, the planning department, the city council, and the planning commission are directly responsible for the blight caused by excessive ADU construction.

They have consistently rebuffed any criticism of this infrastructure-busting program. They have empowered predatory developers and corporate investors to defy neighborhood concerns, with proposals that will jam up to 126 dwelling units on a single-family lot, with no parking, minuscule setbacks, and give-away waivers for infrastructure fees.

By Lisa Mortensen

Here is a copy of the 8-page notice that will be delivered to all property taxpayers who receive city trash service in San Diego.

Please read the highlighted portions of information that will provide the basic instruction and where to deliver the protest vote.  You can mail it or hand-deliver to:

Office of the City Clerk
202 C Street – MS 2T
San Diego, CA 92101

~The protest slip is on page 7 of the material you will receive.  It appears in tear off form but you may want to use scissors to remove it.

~It requires your name, property address (that will be on the envelope of the 8-page notice) and your signature.

~All protest ballots must be received by the City Clerk by 2pm (PDT) on June 9th, 2025.

In her State of the County speech last week, San Diego County Supervisor and acting chair Terra Lawson-Remer took on the Trump administration and all his cut-backs to local programs that benefit a lot of vulnerable residents.

She declared:

“Right now, the federal government is slashing programs we rely on for health care, housing, clean air and water, public safety and disease prevention. Every decision Washington makes impacts our ability to serve you.”

Yet her solution was to propose a new tax ballot measure that could raise $1 Billion a year. The San Diego U-T reported:

Lawson-Remer said she will propose a local tax ballot measure to offset federal cuts and boost services.

“We can raise the money ourselves, right here at home,” she added, “not by waiting, or begging for D.C. to do its job, but by taking the wheel of our own destiny and steering our own San Diego County ship through this storm.”

This funding, she said, would help the county adhere to an ambitious plan, introduced last month, to double behavioral health and substance use disorder treatment slots from 16,000 to 32,000 by 2030. …

Lawson-Remer had floated the idea of a ballot measure in February but pulled the discussion from the board’s agenda.

A supervisor-led tax increase would require the support of two-thirds of county voters, but there are ways to structure a ballot measure so as to require only a majority vote, she said.

In her address, Lawson-Remer said such a measure could generate $1 billion a year.

What? What was she thinking? Was she here when city voters rejected Mayor Gloria’s tax measure last year? (And Gloria has been punishing San Diegans ever since with high trash fees, increased fees for parks and facilities, higher parking rates and now cut-backs to police, libraries and rec centers and the arts.)

This is NOT the answer, Terra! It’s absolutely DOA – dead on arrival.

There’s a 12 unit, three story ADU being built in on Canon Street in Point Loma and it’s coming in under the radar as they are accessing from the back side (Avenida de Portugal) and putting materials in the chain link area next to the bank.

The units have no setbacks and no on-site parking. It’s a familiar story across San Diego these days: high density taking over the backyard of a single-family residence.

A San Diego jury on Friday convicted a local Hells Angel of attempted murder for stabbing a Black man on Newport Avenue two years ago.

Troy Scholder was also found guilty of assault with a deadly weapon causing great bodily injury, and a separate charge of felony assault against another victim. The stabbing and assaults occurred on June 6, 2023.

The jury also agreed with prosecutor Miriam Hemming’s argument that Scholder committed a hate crime in those attacks.

Scholder now faces another hearing to determine if he committed those crimes for the benefit of.a gang.

Reporter Robert Vardon at the OB-Point Loma Monthly (which is a publication of the Union-Tribune) picked up our story about Corey Bruins, the former head of the OB Town Council forced to resign in early 2024, and now facing 9 felonies.

Based on his reporting, here are more details of the Bruins’ affair.

Bruins is 34. At his arraignment on March 28 where he pleaded not guilty, he was ordered by the court not to possess any “personal identifying information” about current board members Jenny Brengelman, Shelly Parks and Stephanie Kane of the Ocean Beach Community Foundation, which succeeded the Town Council after the board decided last year to drop the Town Council name after nearly six decades because of the scandal.