OB Rag

By Mark Powell / Times of San Diego / May 6, 2025

As San Diegans continue to struggle with the rising cost of housing, a new financial burden has made its way into our monthly expenses. If you own a single-family home in San Diego, you will now have to pay to have your trash picked up.

This will have a long-lasting impact on both home affordability and the rental market. In other words, it will make homes and housing less affordable.

The city of San Diego’s proposed trash collection fee, which was pitched to voters as a modest cost-recovery measure, is now estimated to be around $50 a month. While that might not seem like much to some, for many working families, seniors on fixed incomes, and first-time homebuyers, this seemingly minor monthly charge could be the tipping point that pushes homeownership out of reach.

Every $50 increase in monthly household expenses can reduce a buyer’s purchasing power by $8,000 to $10,000. That’s not an opinion; it’s a fact based on interest rates and mortgage qualification formulas used by lenders.

It’s city budget time in San Diego (and elsewhere) and that means the head executive (Mayor Gloria) presents his budget for discussion to the legislature (city council) and they and their constituents then bob heads for several weeks in response, and the electeds all come back together and finalize the final financial plan.

Although this is 2025, so that means we’re in for a “mean” budget (in both senses of the word) because San Diego voters refused back in November to pass Gloria’s tax measure and he’s now in a mood to punish the rest of the city for this miscreant act. (See below for the budget)

So, the process is basic: the chief exec proposes all kinds of cut-backs to favored programs and services — and then the screaming begins, with those with the loudest objections are handed some relief, but those other program cuts are then enacted.

And this year, there’s another new wrinkle. City Council members are concerned that Gloria called the spending plan he released April 15 a “draft” budget instead of a full-blown “proposed” budget ready for debate and haggling. As David Garrick at the U-T explained:

The mayor’s subtle shift in terminology appears to begin the next front in an ongoing war between the mayor and council for control and influence over the city budget. The new battle comes at a crucial time, with the city facing deep cuts and potentially significant employee layoffs for the first time since the aftermath of the Great Recession 15 years ago.

By Lynne Miller

May 6, 2025
OB PLANNING BOARD MEETING
OB REC CENTER

Before I write about what I learned at last night’s Ocean Beach Planning Board, I want to thank the members of the board for their time and commitment to our community.  If I could do one thing for the Board and OB I would somehow get a law passed that required the City of San Diego to listen and act on the recommendations of the community planning boards.  I thought we had a system that allowed citizens of San Diego to have a voice in their local communities. Apparently we do not, which means the OBPB and sister organizations around the city do not have power to insert their recommendations into city law.

The San Diego Police Association reported that there was a discussion at the City about the budgets for several departments, including the Police Department.  The city of San Diego is losing about 150 officers to retirement, and some others to higher pay outside of San Diego.  It was noted that police response time was often too long.  The policeman encouraged us to voice support of increased funding to the City reminding us that there are many agencies vying for funding.  My thoughts:  imagine the response time if funding is cut!

The meat of the meeting was all new to me.  In a greasy nutshell, Valvoline has leased a plot of land and hired an architecture firm to create a new instant oil business on the corner of Sunset Cliffs Blvd, West Point Loma Blvd, and Lotus Street.  The builders presented their new rendition of a new building on that corner reminding us that the drive-in/driveout concept was not negotiable.  Impacted neighbors had some solutions that seemed simple and reasonable.

By Tresean Osgood / San Diego City Times / April 23, 2025

As I stood outside the Elk’s Lodge at around 10:30 a.m., waiting to interview Jeffery Jennings, Co-Founder of the California Black Panther Party, I reflected on how Jennings and other Black Panthers were at City College just two weeks ago to speak about social justice. They were at the lodge to give out food to local families and the homeless.

The line of people waiting for the lodge to open grew, and more volunteers gathered, waiting for Jennings to arrive. I finally spotted him around 11 a.m. After he greeted the volunteers and people, they began to unload the food. At 11:38 a.m., recipients were able to enter. “It feels good, man, you know that you’re helping somebody who needs it,” said 51-year-old veteran Antojuan Scott, who recently started volunteering. “Everybody needs a little blessing every now and then.”

Born in 1949, Jennings grew up in southeast San Diego under the Jim Crow laws that had existed since 1865. These segregation laws prohibited Black people from using White-only buses, restrooms and water fountains. Jennings shared his experience of when, as a four-year-old with his mother at a Greyhound bus stop, he “rubbed shoulders” with Jim Crow laws.

by Terry L. Wilson / Peninsula Beacon / April 30, 2025

There’s a new taste treat in town that’s guaranteed to transport your taste buds to Italy with every scoop of gelato at An’s Electronics Repair on Bacon Street.
Kris Warren, president and CEO, David Aguilera, chief gelato officer, Travis Bailey, chief marketing officer, and Jimmy Blalock, chief financial officer, are four friends who teamed up seven years ago to create this unique concept that has fostered four locations, serving a product voted the No. 1 ice cream in America by USA Today in 2024.

“Our business plan was to create shops that were all independently branded,” said Kris Warren. “I don’t think chains are very cool, the days of rubber stamping a product aren’t being well received.

By Geoff Page

Ocean Beach will soon have a big empty eye sore right on Sunset Cliffs Blvd. The Rite Aid store, with an address of 4840 Niagara, will soon be a shuttered shell. A very big shuttered shell. Its closure was confirmed.

Rita Aid has filed for its second Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the first was in 2023. The result this time appears to be liquidation or sale to another company. These proceedings can take a long time so, until it all shakes out, the building will eventually end up closed and empty.

Rite Aid has said it is committed to keeping the stores open during the bankruptcy process. The pharmacies will keep operating in-store and on-line for now. But, the remainder of the available inventory in the store will slowly disappear and not be restocked.

Long time OB residents may remember when the building was a grocery store, the Mayfair Market. It was one of only two large scale grocery stores in OB at that time. The other was the Safeway on Santa Monica and Cable, later the Apple Tree Market, before it became CVS.

By Dr Shirley Weber / Los Angeles Times Op-Ed / May 2, 2025

In my family, voting isn’t just a right — it’s a lifeline.

My parents were sharecroppers in Arkansas until 1951, when my dad dared stand up to his boss for not paying him a fair wage at the agricultural weigh station. Under threat from the KKK, he left town in a wagon, covered in hay so he wouldn’t be discovered. Three months later — after months of threats of violence from the Klan at our home — the rest of our family rode in that same wagon on our way to join him in California.

Only when we settled in Los Angeles were my parents able to register to vote, finally free from fear of the violent and deadly retribution that such a simple act would trigger across the Jim Crow South.

My family’s lived experience facing discrimination and the vigilantes of the South cannot be forgotten, especially now as Congress considers the SAVE Act. The House recently approved the SAVE Act under the guise that it will prevent illegal voting — an issue that is infinitesimally rare but buoyed by baseless narratives.

If passed by the Senate and signed into law, the act’s true effect would be to disenfranchise millions of voters across the country and in California.

For years, construction projects were not conducted in San Diego’s coastal communities from Memorial Day to Labor Day to reduce potential impacts during the busy tourism season.

But now it’s over.

The summer construction moratorium in beach areas was considered an annual reprieve from building-related noise and traffic interruptions.

According to a memo from the city Engineering & Capital Projects Department to the Development Services Department, the summer moratorium will “no longer be enforced by the city for private and public construction,” starting this year.

Now, the construction ban is being discontinued to allow for “timely completion of projects.”

The memo stated:

“The primary objectives of removing this [summer moratorium] policy within the city’s jurisdiction is twofold: to allow for timely completion of projects and to increase efficiency in project completion in these areas. This change is intended to streamline project delivery within city rights of way while minimizing disruptions to the community by avoiding prolonged construction timelines.

Yes, for local lovers of tequila, this is good news. There’s a new brand coming out from Point Loma — the Midway District to be exact. It’s been around for about a year and is a creation of Adam Prange and Michael Brown. Blowfish, a new Blue Agave distillation, distributes to around 200 places so far — liquor stores and bars included.

Headquartered at 3486 Kurtz St., #102, Blowfish pours out of a bottle that is modeled on the blowfish characterizing it as “cute on the outside but dangerous inside.”

Brown told the Peninsula Beacon that they’re “trying to make that connection because it goes so perfectly,” noting and Brown are in Baja a lot where their tequila is made pointing out blowfish “are everywhere there.”

On Saturday, May 3, more than a 1,000 climate action demonstrators gathered outside the County Administration building and then marched to the federal courthouse and then through Little Italy, ending back where they had begun.

Organized by San Diego 350, they demanded bold climate action, accountability from fossil fuel companies, and derided President Trump’s environmental policies, including his recent efforts to prevent California from phasing out gasoline-powered cars by 2035.

The San Diego U-T reported:

The line of protesters stretched more than two city blocks and was flush with people holding signs whose messages extended beyond the environment to cuts in science funding and Elon Musk’s elimination of about 280,000 federal jobs through the Department of Government Efficiency.

Trump says he opposes California’s efforts to get rid of gas-powered cars because he believes it sets caps on carbon use that are impossible to meet and that it impedes domestic production of oil, natural gas and nuclear power. He also has called climate change a “hoax.” The president also defends DOGE, saying that it will save taxpayers billions of dollars and boost the economy.