OB Rag

By Bruce Coons / SOHO Jan-Feb 2025 Newsletter

The state Mills Act is widely recognized as one of San Diego’s most effective tools for protecting historic homes and commercial buildings. However, what often goes underappreciated is its role in addressing modern housing needs and environmental challenges.

By offering property tax reductions to owners of historic properties, the Mills Act makes owning and maintaining these buildings more financially feasible. The program provides meaningful financial relief, particularly for middle-income families, retirees, and others who might otherwise be priced out of the housing market.

As a result, the Mills Act has helped San Diego achieve a rare balance: preserving historic architecture while improving housing affordability to a broader range of people.

Ever since Measure E failed, the one-cent sales tax, City Hall observers and critics have been carefully watching what Mayor Todd Gloria and the City Council do in terms of the budget and any potential cuts. Reportedly, there’s more than $1 billion budget deficit over the next five years.

About a month ago, Axios San Diego published a post that was astounding because it encapsulated ideas and concerns of Michael Zucchet, head of the Municipal Employees Association, who made a presentation to the council’s budget committee around that time. (Zucchet used to sit on the City Council representing what’s now District 2, Point Loma and OB, so he’s well aware of how the budget process works.)

Zucchet’s main issue was the astronomical growth of nonunion managers over the last decade, who earn higher pay and give the mayor more flexibility over their employment.

Simply put: there’s just too many middle managers. Check these numbers out.

The San Diego City Council has a new president and it’s Councilmember Joe LaCava who represents District 1 – which includes the north side of Mission Bay. LaCava, who has a history of community activism, wants to put a stop to the nightly fireworks that SeaWorld shoots off. He told Voice of San Diego:

“Fireworks, night after night, is something that has to end. It’s one thing to do Fourth of July or start of the summer season shows, but 150 nights a year is just way beyond.”

LaCava also told the Voice that laser or light shows via drone could be a viable substitute. And actually, five years ago, SeaWorld did just that — it held a light show using 500 drones.

In addition LaCava pledged to work with the city’s legal team after the first of the year to see how the city could limit fireworks under its 50-year lease agreement with SeaWorld which sunsets in 2048.

In an Op-ed on January 1, Scott Lewis — the CEO and main editor of the online Voice of San Diego — warned his fellow San Diegans that in 2025, we have to deal with all the screaming.Scott, who lives in the OB-Point Loma area — was talking about how we need to face up to the plight and screaming of all the homeless people, now that the city is in, what Scott calls –“the eighth year of the homeless crisis.” We must all heed his warning.

By Scott Lewis / Voice of San Diego / January 1, 2025

A few weeks ago, a man in the alley behind our house began screaming. Screaming is not unusual around us, unfortunately. But usually it comes and goes – less frequent than the airplanes, more frequent than the helicopters.

One man walks around screaming all the time. Long beard, bike. Sometimes he begs on the corner. Sometimes he disappears for weeks. But he’s always back and almost always screaming.

This wasn’t him. We know him. This was deeper, closer and more disturbed. And it wasn’t going away. It scared my daughter. I went back there with the flashlight and found the man. He was ensconced in a combination of blankets and garbage. He was ranting incoherently, unaware of me even as I tried to get his attention.

I finally yelled “Hey!” He turned and looked right at me. “You’re freaking people out.”

Now that the City of San Diego is making noises once again about developing the land over the historic industrial landfill along the southern end of Mission Bay, it’s time for the Rag once again to remind residents of what lies beneath the sands and dirt of what’s called “South Shores.”

These noises came to light just recently with Union-Tribune front bench writer, David Garrick’s piece January 5th and 6th entitled, “Can a once-toxic shoreline solve Mission Bay’s recreation needs? San Diego readies rival visions for South Shores.”

Garrick was indeed alluding to the dump that activists two decades believed was toxic. He wrote:

Development of South Shores, just east of Sea World and just south of Fiesta Island, has been delayed for decades by concerns over its history — industrial waste was dumped there in the 1950s.

By Dave Schwab / Peninsula Beacon / Jan. 6, 2025

The City and a local historical architectural preservation group are squabbling over whether historic housing stock supports or restricts, increasing the housing supply in San Diego.

Since 1969, the nonprofit Save Our Heritage Organisation has led the way as a powerful catalyst for historical preservation by raising awareness and appreciation of San Diego’s architectural and cultural heritage.

Recently, SOHO’s president, David Goldberg, contended in a newsletter that: “As the push continues to lower San Diego housing costs by increasing housing supply, two points stand out. Preservation of existing and historic housing stock is part of the solution, not part of the problem. Secondly, the focus on simply increasing the total housing supply is grossly misplaced. Protecting and increasing the aggregate supply of ‘affordable’ housing is what’s necessary.”

by Ann Jarmusch / SOHO January-February 2025

Developments in preservation in San Diego began at a gallop last year, and never slowed down. In February 2024, the City of San Diego launched its still-ongoing Preservation and Progress initiative to update and overhaul heritage preservation policies, procedures, and perhaps the 1965 ordinance itself. (Read about it online).

It seemed to SOHO and other preservationists that the update’s true goal is to make building permits and approvals even friendlier than in recent years to developers who falsely complain that protecting historic architecture and sites delays or prevents them from fulfilling a great civic need: the production of affordable housing.

From Press Release

On Jan. 9, 1915, AAA and Al Bahr Shrine sponsored a 300-mile road race over a 6-mile course around Point Loma on roads that still exist today. On the morning of the great race, an estimated 50,000 people spread out along the course to watch the spectacle. The San Diego Union newspaper proclaimed, “It was the greatest throng ever seen at one event in San Diego, excepting, perhaps, the opening of the exposition.”

On January 12th, 2025, our Vintage cars will be driving from the San Diego Automotive Museum in Balboa Park to Point Loma, where they will drive two laps of the original race route on Rosecrans, Lytton, Chatsworth, Catalina, Talbot, and Canon Streets.

The Point Loma drive will be from 11 AM to 12 N. We are the San Diego regions of the Horseless Carriage Club of America and we are doing this just to share our vintage autos with the public.  We expect it could be a lot of fun for kids (of all ages) to gather along the route and watch the parade of cars as old as 1907 drive by.Come inside for all the details

Every Saturday at 10:30 am. San Diego Climate Mobilization Coalition Meetings January 4th, 11th, 18th and 25th

Every Saturday 10 am – 12 pm Peace Vigil for Palestine: Advocate for Peace and Justice in Gaza and Everywhere Join CODEPINK SD, San Diego Veterans for Peace, and Palestine Pals . Wear pink and bring a peace-related poster if you have one!

January 14th Tuesday 6 pm – 8 pm City of San Diego District 4 Community Event by Sierra Club

January 15th Wednesday 5 pm – 6:30 pm Resist US-Led War Network

January 15th Wednesday 6:45 pm Screening SOS – The San Onofre Syndrome Event by California Surf Museum and SOS – The San Onofre Syndrome Film California Surf Museum 312 Pier View Way, Oceanside

January 15th Wednesday 12 pm – 12:30 pm  EN Webinar:  EV Charging at Home E

January 16th Thursday 4:30 pm – 6:30 pm Climate Education Training:

January 18th Saturday 10 am – 12:30 pm Olivewood Gardens Tour 2525 N Avenue National City

January 18th Saturday, Noon San Diego People’s March

January 19th Sunday 11 am 43rd Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Parade! Harbor Dr. South from Ash to Pacific

Our friend in Mission Beach, Gary Wonocutt, sent us this ancient article from the New York Times, entitled, “SAN DIEGO IMPOSES NIGHT FLIGHT CURB” by Everett R. Holles as a “special to The New York Times” from December 7, 1975. (Please excuse the use of the old name for the airport.)

SAN DIEGO, Dec. 6—A curfew prohibiting aircraft takeoffs from San Diego’s Lindbergh Field between midnight and 6 A.M. has been ordered in what the city’s Port Commission called the most restrictive noise-abatement action by any metropolitan airport in the country.

Already facing “noise pollution”claims and damage suits totaling nearly $125 million brought by more than 1,000 citizens as well as the city’s school administration, the port commissioners were warned by several airline officials that the ruling this week would “inevitably” be challenged in the courts.

Six scheduled airlines using Lindbergh Field and the National Air Transport Association called the order an encroachment on the Federal Government’s regulatory authority. The Federal Aviation Administration also joined in opposing the action.

In 3 years since trolley’s Blue Line extension, why hasn’t more housing been developed along it?

by David Garrick / The San Diego Union-Tribune – MSN / Dec.29, 2024

Ridership continues to rise on the 3-year-old trolley line extension connecting Old Town and UC San Diego, but virtually none of the high-rise housing expected to sprout up along the line has been built — or even proposed.

Developers haven’t shown much interest in special zoning rules the City Council created to encourage high-rises and dense urban villages along the line in Linda Vista, Clairemont and eastern Pacific Beach.

Even though 2023 was a banner year for new housing in San Diego, with permits for nearly 9,700 new units issued — the most since 2005 — only one apartment complex was approved near that trolley line extension, and it has just four units.

By Paul Krugman / Substack / Dec. 29, 2024

Like many observers, I expected severe buyers’ regret fairly early in the second Trump administration. After all, many Americans who voted for Trump did so because they believed he would bring down grocery prices. He was never going to be able to deliver on that promise and stopped talking about the subject as soon as the election was over; sooner or later, voters were going to notice.

I did not, however, expect a MAGA civil war weeks before Trump had even taken office. But in retrospect I should have seen it coming.

Background: Every political movement is a coalition made up of factions with different goals and priorities. Normally what holds these factions together is realism and a willingness to compromise: Each faction is willing to give the other factions part of what they want in return for part of what it wants.