OB Rag

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.

There are 7 candidates for the OB Community Foundation Board of Directors. OB community members who want to vote should become a member of the OB Community Foundation (no-cost memberships are available); more info at https://obcommunityfoundation.org/membership. Voting will be open through April 27.

Here are the candidates and their statements (in the order sent to the Rag).

From Port of San Diego / April 23, 2025

The Port of San Diego has reopened the west side of the Shelter Island Boat Launch Ramp after completing repairs to the west side floating dock.

The repair project began in January and included pumping about 200 cubic yards of sand out from underneath the damaged floating dock and placing it onto the adjacent beach, installing neoprene sleeves and stainless-steel wedge anchors along the seawall to prevent future sand migration, removing the damaged floating dock, and installing the new floating dock.

Come inside for details………

By Alex Lai / CBS8 / April 19, 2025

The American dream of owning a home is being reimagined. Developers are buying single-family homes and adding high-density units in backyards, or as Realtor Jim LaMattery calls them, “alligator projects.”

“The reason I call these alligator projects is because they’re over-built, bloated, monstrosities in the middle of our neighborhoods,” LaMattery said.

He leads LIMBY, or Look In My Backyard tours, to show residents the projects in neighborhoods. One “alligator project” is in the backyard of a single-family home on Almayo Avenue in Clairemont.

“These are 17 units that are all one bedroom, one bath, and they’re 441 square feet and they’re going to rent at $2,600 a month,” LaMattery said.

This April 18th letter of protest was sent to San Diego Planning Director Heidi Vonblum by Neighbors for a Better San Diego as a warning in advance of the May 1 San Diego Planning Commission hearing at City Hall.

Ms. Vonblum:

On March 4, the San Diego City Council passed a resolution requesting the Planning Department to return in 90 days with a recommendation for eliminating the Bonus ADU program in single-family residential (RS) zones with a minimum lot size of 10,000 square feet.

A second part of the resolution requests that the Planning Department consider further revisions to the Bonus ADU program in the remaining RS zones, in keeping with the more thorough process of a Land Development Code (LDC) Update.

However, it appears from the Planning Department’s 2025 LDC Update webpage that the upcoming May 1 Planning Commission hearing will include all proposed revisions to the Bonus ADU program and not just the exclusions of certain residential zones.

This is contrary to both the expectation of the Council’s March 4 resolution

by Jeanne Kuang / CalMatters /  April 23, 2025

Amid a post-2024 wave of Democratic interest in the burgeoning pro-development “abundance” movement, this seemed to be an easy year for California’s yes-in-my-backyard housing development activists. Democratic leaders in the state Legislature declared their intention to tackle affordability this year. Gov. Gavin Newsom and other politicians have since embraced the “abundance” platform, which argues that Democrats must do more to quickly deliver housing, transportation and other infrastructure projects to their constituents.

Lawmakers have introduced ambitious bills that would, for housing developments in existing neighborhoods, blow a hole through the longstanding thicket of environmental reviews and regulations that often slow down projects and add costs. One of those passed its first committee on Monday, April 21.

Still, YIMBY-ism hit a stumbling block Tuesday, April 22, in the form of the Senate housing committee. The committee, led by Sen. Aisha Wahab, nearly killed a closely watched bill to require cities to allow taller, denser apartments and condo construction near public transit stations.