OB Rag

In the third of four 2025 Budget Review Town Hall forums, public testimony again questioned whether the spending priorities of the Mayor and the City Council are in alignment with the spending priorities of communities and taxpayers.

More than 50 people gathered for the February 15 forum at the Mission Valley Library to hear a presentation from Independent Budget Analyst (IBA) Charles Modica and to express their own views about city finances.

The series title is “Now that Measure E Has Failed, Where Should City Budget Cuts Be Made?” The goal is for constituents to communicate directly with elected officials about their budget priorities and their concerns about city taxing and spending.

Members of the Mission Valley audience called for greater investment in infrastructure and more robust code enforcement, especially as neighborhoods are feeling the strain of infill densification.

By Phil Rockhold

I am opposed to all “for profit” commercial activity on public beaches.

Our beaches are San Diego’s most valuable resource, and as such, open access to the beach should be maintained at all times for the general public. The larger issue that is not talked about in current discussions of beach use, is the City and Park and Recreation Department’s designation of various activities as either “commercial” or “non-commercial.” There appears to be no logic whatsoever in the designation.

I live in Ocean Beach, and for years, an obviously “commercial” enterprise has completely taken over the beach at the foot of Cape May Avenue.

Six days a week during spring and summer, and weekends in the winter, the public use of the soft sand area on the beach is blocked by a forest of temporary volleyball poles and nets.  The effect of this activity also has a massive impact on the already scarce availability of parking in Ocean Beach.

By JW August / Special to the OB Rag

From the trenches…..”S” a long time source working for a federal agency in a management position tells me this will be news in the very near future–

The federal OPM (office of personnel management) and Elon Musk fired thousands of probationary employees who had signed up for the “fork in the road” (the deferred resignation offer).

Musk and the OPM are now backtracking, asking agencies to bring these workers back so they can sign an additional agreement

From KQED

Since its founding 77 years ago, Dr. Bronner’s evolved from a niche soap company favored by hippies and homemakers to a powerhouse brand that trades on the progressive ideals of sustainability, free expression and social justice.

The family-run company based in Vista saw its annual revenues balloon from $4 million to $200 million in the last 25 years. Known for its bottles and bars of soap wrapped in micro-font musings about love and world peace, Dr. Bronner’s can be found on the shelves of supermarkets and drugstores nationwide.

By Judi Curry

A friend of mine, trying to be funny, said to me yesterday, “I thought you had stopped writing fictional pieces.  It took me a minute to realize he was talking about my article a few days ago of my perception of the Trump presidency.  I told him I wished it were fiction, but as I saw the ways were happening it was a nightmare of nonfiction.  So….here we go again.

I guess the first thing that created havoc in my body was the story that Trump and his shadow Musk want to eliminate Social Security.  I’m on Social Security. And no, I do not get my deceased husbands social security. (It’s kind of funny that he got $622 a month from the Teachers Association and $101 from Social Security when he died.) Granted he was an old man – born in 1927 and retired in 1960.)  Baby sitters were earning 50 cents an hour!

By Kate Callen / Special to OB Rag

It was no surprise that the February 19 lead story in Voice of San Diego [VOSD] lauded Mayor Todd Gloria’s abrupt sacking of Chief Operating Officer Eric Dargan.

VOSD is to Gloria what Fox News is to Donald Trump, a media enabler always ready to hawk propaganda wrapped in newsprint.

But the story headline was something of a jolt: “Mayor Dismisses Embattled COO and Takes Reins of City Management.”

Dargan embattled? Since when?

By David Garrick / San Diego U-T / Feb. 17-18, 2025

San Diego officials are cracking down on an illegal float party held each July on Mission Bay, sending the organizers a $54,000 invoice to cover lifeguard rescues and crowd control by police and park rangers.

The goal of the invoices is to discourage organizers from hosting a fifth annual Festival of Floats, an event where hundreds of people congregate on flotation devices in Mission Bay’s northwest corner.

City officials say the event, where many participants drink alcohol, is chaotic, dangerous and typically requires many rescues and extreme vigilance by police and rangers.

There is no admission charge for the event, which is called “Floatopia” by some participants. But organizers, who promote the event on various social media platforms, include links to buy floats and other related products.

By Danna Givot / Op-Ed San Diego Union-Tribune / Feb. 19, 2025

Rather than respond to City Council’s request to roll back the bonus accessory dwelling unit program to align with state accessory dwelling unit law, San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria and his allies are promoting misrepresentations of the program in an effort to cow the council and stem the growing public anger against the program. I refute those false assertions here.

Assertion: Bonus accessory dwelling units are “gentle density” that fit seamlessly into neighborhoods. Daniel Parolek, author and leading  “Missing Middle Housing” expert, encourages infill housing as “home-scale buildings” that “fit seamlessly into existing residential neighborhoods,” “compatible in scale and form with detached single-family homes.” “These building types, such as duplexes, fourplexes, cottage courts and courtyard buildings, provide diverse housing options,” says Parolek. “The perceived density of these types is usually quite low — they do not look like dense buildings.”

The 12-, 17-, 36- and 43-unit backyard apartment complexes masquerading as accessory dwelling units being built under San Diego’s bonus accessory dwelling units program do not meet any missing middle housing criteria described above.

Background

In January 2025, community leaders from across the city connected and coordinated a meeting with the City of San Diego Independent Budget Analyst (IBA). During this meeting, they proposed holding four Town Hall Meetings across the city, and the IBA agreed.

Today, Wednesday Feb. 19, San Diego lifeguards in Ocean Beach responded to a report that a surfer saw a body in the ocean near the OB Pier around 7:30 a.m.

Several lifeguard vehicles and a helicopter responded but the initial search was called off just before 9 a.m. due to weather conditions. Lifeguards turned the search over to dive teams.

The body could be that of a missing 40-year-old kayaker from Arizona who has been missing since last Friday while on the water near Mission Beach. Danny Marron’s snapped-in-half kayak washed ashore but Marron was not located, despite a three-day search that the U.S. Coast Guard called off on Monday.