OB Rag

By Kristen Taketa / The San Diego Union-Tribune / March 16, 2025

San Diego college faculty and students say they fear the Trump administration’s plans to investigate UC San Diego and other universities, and its attempts elsewhere to deport student activists and assert control over academic programs, mark the start of a broader erosion of civil and human rights.

Last weekend, federal agents detained and tried to deport a Columbia University student for his role organizing pro-Palestinian protests. On Monday, the U.S. Department of Education said it was investigating 60 universities for alleged antisemitism amid such protests. And on Thursday, the Trump administration threatened to withhold all future funding from Columbia unless it cedes control of its Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies department to the government, on top of other demands, and  intensified an ongoing effort to deport student protesters.

To many academics, students and free-speech advocates in San Diego and beyond, more than individual free speech is at stake. They say such moves by President Donald Trump and his administration represent an attack on everyone’s academic freedom and First Amendment rights.

By Howard Bryman / Daily Coffee News /  March 18, 2025

While most specialty coffee shops promote their rarefied high-end arabica coffees, a new coffee business in San Diego called Excelsa Coffee Company is promoting a separate species altogether.

The company just opened the Excelsa Cafe in the heart of Ocean Beach, offering tastes of excelsa coffee, a variety of the liberica coffee species that — unlike arabica or robusta — has not been widely commercialized in the United States.

The cafe is the latest in a series of excelsa awareness initiatives undertaken by the San Diego company. In addition to brewing freshly roasted excelsa, the company is cultivating excelsa plants through its own farm in Nicaragua, while creating a nonprofit global network for excelsa production.

Like the commercialization of excelsa itself, the new coffee bar is being presented as something of a work in progress.

With the library’s expansion project moving forward, here’s a look back at its evolution, beginning in 1916

By Eric DuVall / Pt Loma-OB Weekly SDU-T / March 18, 2025

On a weekday afternoon last fall — it might have been a Wednesday in November — five San Diego city officials visited the venerable little library in Ocean Beach. What the heck was up with that, you might be wondering? I’ll tell you.

The folks from downtown were met by a group of locals including library staff, several Friends of the OB Library and representatives of the Ocean Beach MainStreet Association, Woman’s Club, Community Foundation, Community Development Corp. and Historical Society. We all sat in a circle around the rug in the children’s section on those little chairs to hear a heartwarming rendition of “Go Dog Go!”

OK, I made up that last part, but it was almost that exciting.

The good news was being revealed to the Ocean Beach community that the OB Library expansion project was finally being fully funded. The long-languishing project is a go, and if that isn’t a good excuse for a crazy dog party, I don’t know what is.

From San Diego Americans for Safe Access

Dear Esteemed Members of the City Council,

As the San Diego Chapter of Americans for Safe Access, a national non-profit dedicated to advancing safe access to cannabis for therapeutic use and research, we are writing to express our strong opposition to the proposed increase in San Diego’s cannabis business tax.

Within the City of San Diego, consumers already pay over 30% in taxes at the final point of sale—including an 8% cannabis business tax, a 15% cannabis excise tax, and a 7.75% sales tax. In addition, the cannabis excise tax is currently set to increase another four percentage points this summer. If both tax increases are adopted, San Diego consumers could soon be required to pay up to 6 percentage points more for legally acquired cannabis products—almost 40% in total taxes. This increase will impact all cannabis consumers but will place a particular strain on both patients and small and mid-sized cannabis businesses, threatening equity in access and cannabis business ownership while undermining public health goals and sustainable revenue generation.

By Paul Coogan / An Injustice

The City of San Diego is confronting a projected budget deficit of approximately $258 million for the upcoming 2025/2026 fiscal year. Is that the real number and how did this happen?

First off, the $258 million is the shortfall on the operating budget. The real price tag needs to include the deferred maintenance and upgrades to infrastructure totaling $11.87 billion — with a ‘B’. The city has less than half the money to pay for that work and comes up $6.51 billion short over the next five years. Assuming the operating budget is balanced for the next five years, the total need is $6,788,000,000.

Now that Mayor Todd Gloria is saddled with the financial disaster he promoted, he is initiating several measures aimed at mitigating the shortfall: Reassessing office space leases, a hiring freeze, higher parking meter fees, new trash collection fees, and eliminating the position of Chief Operating Officer. Removing the CCO of the city is consistent with the mayor eliminating the City Manager position thus concentrating more power in himself. Authoritarian rule has far less overhead and pesky oversight.

Our friends at Peninsula News have put together some history about the issue of “paid parking” in Balboa Park — now that the City of San Diego wants to balance its budget by installing paid parking in the “crown jewel” of the city (and other places like  Mission Bay). Links in the original do not work but see them at the end.

A 29-year-old man is in critical condition after losing control of his motorcycle on Sunset Cliffs Boulevard, on Sunday, March 16.

The unidentified biker sustained severe injuries, including multiple abrasions, a spinal fracture, a skull base fracture and a laceration to his leg. He was transported to a local hospital with life-threatening injuries. Police suspect alcohol to be a factor in this collision.

By Colleen O’Connor

One of the two fires, “still under investigation,” started at Liberty Station in one of the undeveloped buildings earmarked for an aquatic center. Close to High Tech High.

The proposed design (before the destructive design) included an expansive piece of outdoor space, one fifty-meter swimming pools and a smaller twenty-five meter one and a splash pool. Add to that a water slide.

From Barry Jantz

Following years of growing public opposition, the controversial Cottonwood Sand Mine proposal is now on its way to San Diego County Planning Commission. Because of this, the local planning group will be meeting as the community is again called to action. That’s the Valle do Oro CPG which will meet on March 18 at the Rancho San Diego Library, technically in El Cajon.

Following a more than six year process, including thousands of members of the public signing opposition petitions, expressing concerns at several public meetings, and sending hundreds of letters detailing the many significant safety, environmental, and community impacts, the proposal is now making its way to County Planning Commission.

While the Planning Commission is tentatively slated to consider the project application and EIR in April, the Valle de Oro Community Planning Group will meet Tuesday night, March 18, to finalize a recommendation to the County.

By Natallie Rocha / The San Diego Union-Tribune / March 13, 2025

The Port of San Diego signed off Tuesday on a prominent local restaurant group’s planned takeover of the waterfront lease held by the Fish Market Restaurant.

The Brigantine restaurant group — a family-owned business that has operated in San Diego County since 1969 — will assume the lease for the Fish Market’s location on North Harbor Drive. Brigantine’s private deal to acquire the Fish Market brand was announced late last year.

The sale marked a new era for the nearly 50-year old Fish Market restaurants, a family-owned seafood business. The Brigantine restaurant group intends to continue operating the downtown and Solana Beach eateries under the Fish Market brand.

Two US District Court judges have now ruled that thousands of fired federal employees must be reinstated within the next week. First, a district judge in San Francisco issued a blistering blast and now a Maryland district judge has ruled basically the same. Here is a report from NPR on the California ruling:

By Chris Arnold and Emily Feng / npr / March 13, 2025

Thousands of federal employees fired by the Trump administration must be offered job reinstatement within the next week, a U.S. district judge in San Francisco has ruled, because he said they were terminated unlawfully.

“It is a sad day when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that is a lie,” Judge William Alsup, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, said before issuing his ruling from the bench.

The Thursday decision marks a significant stand against President Trump’s sweeping efforts to remake the federal government. The White House has appealed the decision.

By Jesse Bedayn / Associated Press / March 12, 2025

The Trump administration is halting a $1 billion program that helps preserve affordable housing, threatening projects that keep tens of thousands of units livable for low-income Americans, according to a document obtained by The Associated Press.

The action is part of a slew of cuts and funding freezes at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, largely at the direction of President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, that have rattled the affordable-housing industry.

Preserving these units gets less attention than ribbon-cuttings, but it’s a centerpiece of efforts to address the nation’s housing crisis. Hundreds of thousands of low-rent apartments, many of them aging and in need of urgent repair, are at risk of being yanked out from under poor Americans.

The program has already awarded the money to projects that would upgrade at least 25,000 affordable units across the country, and details of how it will be wound down remain unclear.