OB Rag

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.

Presidents Day, Feb. 17th, turned into a day of protests against President Donald Trump and Elon Musk in dozens of cities across the United States.

The “Not My Presidents Day” and “No Kings on Presidents Day” gatherings on Monday were mainly organized by the 50501 Movement, which planned demonstrations in all 50 states to protest what the group called “the anti-democratic and illegal actions of the Trump administration and its plutocratic allies.” More than 75 protests had been scheduled for Monday.

Demonstrators marched to state capitols in California, Minnesota, Michigan, Texas, Wisconsin, Indiana and Pennsylvania to denounce Trump, Project 2025, billionaire Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an outside-government organization designed to slash federal spending.

Today — Tuesday — was Mayor Todd Gloria’s big announcement of a series of big budget cuts that will save the City of San Diego more than $5 million dollars. These cuts were “designed to generate cost savings and minimize service-level reductions,” his office said.

Here it is — the big cuts — I hope you’re sitting down — Gloria announced that 31 city jobs, that’s right, 31 FT jobs would be eliminated, including that of Chief Operating Officer Eric Dargan. The only catch: all these positions were already vacant — except for Dargan’s.

Dargan’s pay package of $448,810 alone probably accounted for nearly 10% of the new savings.

And in the meantime, Gloria will assume the role of city manager — yet, wasn’t he already the head cheese, the head honcho, the guy calling the shots? Wasn’t Gloria and all his mid-managers making six-figures running the show already?

Feb. 20, 2025, 7 pm, at Waters Edge Community Center, 1984 Sunset Cliffs Blvd.

The Ocean Beach Historical Society presents: Romantic Victorians: Dating, Marriage, and Love.

Join lecturers Sandee Wilhoit, Gaslamp Quarter Historcial Foundation Historian, and Jamie Laird, GQHF volunteer, to delve into the intricate customs and traditions surrounding dating, marriage, and love in the Victorian Era.

San Diego’s airport is dealing with a significant shortage of air traffic controllers, Axios San Diego reports.

This news comes as the Trump administration fired about 400 recently hired support staff employees at the Federal Aviation Administration over the weekend as part of the the mass terminations of federal workers.

Axios:

San Diego International Airport is fending with a 17.9% vacancy rate among air traffic controllers, per the most recent FAA data. … By the numbers: San Diego’s airport tower is five short of its FAA target of 28 air-traffic controllers.