OB Rag

The City of San Diego is inviting the public to a community event they are hosting where staff will speak on City of San Diego operations. For this upcoming session, the Development Services Department will highlight Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs).

Topics will include:

• Where ADUs are being built.
• Overview of City ADU regulations, including recent changes.
• ADU resources and zoning information.
• Answers to frequently asked questions.

Date: Monday, August 5, 2024 — 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.

Check out this brief video by Charles Landon of the Waterfalls of Point Loma. Charles and friend David Helvarg were diving off Point Loma on Sunday, Aug. 4, and saw them

By Geoff Page

Judging by the size of the crowd and the overall positive vibe from everyone, the cleanup effort at Sunset Cliffs Natural Park Saturday, August 3, noticed here in The Rag last Thursday, August 1, was a big success.

The event was organized by a partnership between two civic-minded groups. One a 501(c)nonprofit called Cans4Books , the work of Tisha Goolsby. The other group is a creation of OB’s own Tracy Dezenzo, a familiar face in local civic endeavors.

Tracy is a past director on the OB Town Council and has been on the OB Planning Board for years. She is also a commissioner on the City of San Diego’s Arts & Culture Commission.  Tracy’s new group is called “Desborder:Together for a Cleaner Environment.”

By Edward Carver / Common Dreams / Aug 01, 2024

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Thursday introduced legislation that would establish that the president and vice president don’t have immunity from prosecution—an effort to overturn the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Trump v. United States that grants presidents broad immunity when they break the law.

The No Kings Act, which has 34 co-sponsors from the Senate’s Democratic caucus, would stipulate that Congress, and not the Supreme Court, determines whom federal law applies to. It comes as the latest Democratic response to the July 1 ruling, decided 6-3 along ideological lines, that gave former president and current Republican nominee Donald Trump “absolute immunity” for “core” presidential duties and “presumptive immunity” for other official acts.

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

Editordude: The information in the following U-T article by Jennifer van Grove is too important to be hidden away from San Diegans who don’t subscribe to the U-T.

By Jennifer van Grove / San Diego Union-Tribune / August 1, 2024

An otherwise routine loan morphed into a flashpoint of contention between a council member, Pacific Beach community members and two affordable housing developers.

That’s because the money, to be doled out by the city of San Diego to the nonprofit developers of the proposed Rose Creek Village project, was the last thing standing in the way of a mid-rise residential building that promises to skirt a voter-enacted law that keeps building heights at 30 feet or less in coastal neighborhoods.

On Tuesday, San Diego City Councilmember Joe LaCava, who represents the Pacific Beach community, sought to kill the loan — and, by association, the project. The developers, he said, were initially dishonest with community members about the project’s planned height. What’s more, taxpayer funds should not be used to override the will of voters, he said.

By Mark Powell / Op-Ed San Diego Union-Tribune / July 30, 2024

[Please see original for the many links]

To effectively support our city’s climate action goals, San Diego needs more electric vehicle charging stations, not bike lanes. The funds currently allocated to converting traffic lanes into bike lanes would be better spent on installing these stations.

San Diego’s “Better by Bike” initiative has proven to be a failed climate action experiment, and city government should start converting underutilized bike lanes back into traffic lanes and halt any further conversions to make roads more accessible. You don’t need a doctorate in urban planning to realize that replacing traffic lanes with underutilized bike lanes is impacting traffic flow and commuting time.

By Andrew Dyer / KPBS / August 1, 2024 a

Rents are down slightly from this point last year, according to Rent.com, but that doesn’t mean they’re affordable. Average rent for a studio apartment in San Diego is more than $2,300. For a two bedroom the average raises to $3,700.

The San Diego County Board of Supervisors is trying to tackle the issue with a new initiative looking at the impact private equity is having on housing costs. The board approved a series of actions at a meeting July 16. The county wants to know exactly how many condos, townhouses and single-family homes are owned by commercial entities and in what part of the county they’re in.

Editordude: Check out this view from San Francisco media about the La Jolla battle between humans and sea  lions.

By Olivia Harden / SFGate / Aug 1, 2024

A coastal California community is at odds over one of its biggest tourist attractions as residents draw a line in the sand for what’s more important: allowing sea lions to thrive or keeping the beach accessible to humans.

Multiple community groups in San Diego are clashing with city officials over how to mitigate the thousands of tourists who flock to La Jolla Cove to see the sea lions and their pups on the rocky shore.

Environmentalists argue that the city’s failure to develop a more effective management plan has put the animals in danger, as several sea lion pups have died this summer potentially due to human interaction at La Jolla Cove.

Every Saturday 10 am – 12 pm Peace Vigil for Palestine — on the plaza corner of Sunset Cliffs Blvd. and W. Point Loma Blvd:

August 2nd Friday and August 3rd Saturday Don’t miss “Guac,” a powerful one-man show by Manuel Oliver, honoring his son, Parkland shooting victim Joaquin Oliver.

August 3rd – 8am, Sunset Cliffs Natural Park in Point Loma, CA is the  Kick off cleanup and whale “launching” event for DesBorder Project, 

August 3rd   Saturday 9:30 am – 1 pm Mutual Aid Community  Event by Sunrise Movement San Diego

August 4th and 18th Sunday Ramona Wildlife Center Tour 9:30 am – 10:30 am

Vets for Peace has several events for August: August 5th Hiroshima Memorial

From Press statement

Join Us for the Kick-off of the Cans4Books DesBorder Project

Cans4Books is thrilled to announce the launch of the Cans4Books DesBorder Project, a unique initiative that combines recycling, education, and art to tackle coastal waterways pollution and support the children of our communities. The project will kick off with a cleanup and whale launching event at 8 AM on August 3rd at Sunset Cliffs Natural Park in Point Loma, CA.

The San Diego Planning Commission will hold a public hearing on an application to convert 21 apartment units within three existing buildings into condominium units located at 2916 through 2996 Worden Street.

The hearing will be August 8, 2024, at 9 am in Council Chambers, 12th floor of the City Administration Building at 202 C Street. If the conversion project is approved, then all the tenants who currently live n the 21 apartments would be required to move out, to vacate the premises.

Those same tenants will have the right to contract for the purchase of their unit — for a limited period of time, however — 90 days from the issuance of a building report (see official notice below). The 1.2 acre project site is within the Peninsula Community Plan area.

The applicant for the conversion is Hunsaker & Associates, who describe themselves

By Piper French / Nation Magazine / August 1, 2024

California’s two most marginalized constituencies, its homeless and its imprisoned, each represent about half a percentage of the state’s 39 million residents. Both groups are vulnerable to abuse and untimely death, suffer from the deprivation of vital resources, and have little say in political discussions about their future. Black people are notably overrepresented in each category.

There is a reason the latter population passes basically unremarked upon and why the former is considered the marquee problem of the state, synonymous with the supposed crisis of California itself,