OB Rag

Every month, local writers unite in Ocean Beach to work through guided creative prompts in community. At the end of each meeting, the group selects one piece of writing from a participant to share with the wider community. The featured work below was written during a recent Writing Club gathering.

If you enjoy what you read and would like to get involved, please contact shanecoopersmith@gmail.com for more details.

And below is the selected piece from January’s Writing Club

A woman who stabbed two men in an Ocean Beach alley, pleaded guilty and will be sentenced to prison on February 17. Jana Nicole Halaska’s sentence will range from four to eight years. She is 29.

Halaska pleaded guilty to two counts of assault with a deadly weapon on Jan. 14 as her trial date approached. It all extends from an incident on April 13, 2025, when she stabbed the victims, Gabriel Millan and Christopher Abrahamsen in an alley at Bacon Street and Newport Avenue just after 1 a.m. Millan and Abrahamsen were seriously injured, were rushed to an emergency room at a hospital, where they remained for many days.

Halaska famously declared “that’s not how you treat a lady” before stabbing the two men.

Halaska’s attorney tried to resolve the case by entering her into a mental health diversion program, but Judge Chandra Reid denied the motion on Dec. 10, records show. and she remains in the Las Colinas Women’s Detention Facility on $500,000 bail.

More than 500 healthcare workers at Kaiser Permanente locations in San Diego County are joining their sibling nurses’ unions who have been on strike for two weeks. They are members of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 135 and are beginning an Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) action Monday, February 9, 2026. The strike will begin at 7:00 AM with picketing to commence shortly after.

The walkout comes after workers voted overwhelmingly to authorize a ULP strike in response to Kaiser’s refusal to return to National Bargaining and negotiate in good faith. Close to 350 pharmacy workers including technicians, assistants, and other classifications approved a ULP strike with a vote in October 2025. In January 2026, approximately 150 Clinical Lab Scientists and Medical Laboratory Technicians in San Diego County also voted to authorize a ULP strike.

Picketing will take place daily from 7:00 AM to 3:00 PM at two San Diego County locations: San Diego Medical Center at 9455 Clairemont Mesa Blvd, San Diego, CA 92123 and in North County at the San Marcos Medical Center, 400 Craven Rd, San Marcos, CA 92078.

A rally and press conference will also be held at 11 a.m. Monday at the SD Med Ctr, involving Todd Walters, President, UFCW Local 135 and former San Diegan Lorena Gonzalez, President of the California Federation of Labor Unions.

By Donna Frye / Op-Ed SD Union-Tribune / Feb. 8, 2026

On Jan. 5, the city of San Diego began charging residents and nonresidents to park at Balboa Park. To say that the rollout went badly is a gross understatement; the only way it could have been worse is if the city made everyone parallel park before paying.

There was extensive news coverage both before and after the paid parking was enacted showing widespread opposition to the parking fees for residents and nonresidents alike.

On Jan. 27, three City Council members who had voted in support of paid parking in Balboa Park held a press conference inside City Hall.

At that press conference, Council President Joe LaCava, Council President Pro Tem Kent Lee and Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera jointly announced their proposal to suspend paid parking fees for residents, but keep the parking fees for nonresidents.

LaCava said he was docketing their proposal for the council meeting that would be held on Monday, Feb. 9. There was no mention of a ballot measure as part of their proposal.

On Jan. 28, the Rules Committee had a meeting. LaCava, Lee and Elo-Rivera are three of the five members who serve on the Rules Committee; LaCava is the chair and Lee is the vice chair.

Fox5 San Diego / Feb. 7, 2026

The San Diego Lifeguard confirmed four people were rescued from Sunset Cliffs Saturday afternoon, Feb.7, after recreationally leaping off the cliff before becoming stuck.

Three of the jumpers were saved by cliff-rescue operations, while the fourth was rescued by a watercraft around 1:45 p.m., authorities said.

The San Diego Community Coalition publishes this email bulletin to keep our members and the general public informed about important Council and Planning Commission hearings and other city public meetings.

Monday, February 9: City Council, 10:00 a.m.

Agenda:

Non-Agenda Public Comment:  The Mayor and the Council just cut a ragtag deal to “reform” paid parking at Balboa Park (but still charge for the closest lots). So the topic won’t be on this week’s Council docket. But San Diegans can still express their views on the issue in person or virtually during non-agenda public comment. On Monday, non-agenda comment is scheduled early in the meeting at about 10:15 a.m. On Tuesday, the comment period is near the end at about 12 noon.

By Mark Sherman / The Associated Press – 7SanDiego / February 4, 2026

The Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed California to use a new voter-approved congressional map that is favorable to Democrats in this year’s elections, rejecting a last-ditch plea from state Republicans and the Trump administration.

No justices dissented from the brief order denying the appeal without explanation, which is common on the court’s emergency docket.

The justices had previously allowed Texas’ Republican-friendly map to be used in 2026, despite a lower-court ruling that it likely discriminates on the basis of race.

Conservative Justice Samuel Alito wrote in December that it appeared both states had adopted new maps for political advantage, which the high court has previously ruled cannot be a basis for a federal lawsuit.

Republicans, joined by the Trump administration, claimed the California map improperly relied on race as well. But a lower court disagreed by a 2-1 vote. The Justice Department and White House did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

The justices’ unsigned order keeps in place districts that are designed to flip up to five seats now held by Republicans, part of a tit-for-tat nationwide

by Ernie McCray

Say what?
Students are facing
being suspended from school
for standing up|
against ICE’s
muggings and
cold-blooded killings
of citizens?

Based on what?
Doing the right thing?

I mean if I was still a principal
of a school
and my students
decided they wanted to make a statement
about some goons
who had never heard of
or cared about the Golden Rule,
I’d be out there with them,

By David Garrick / San Diego Union-Tribune / Feb. 5, 2026

Campaign contribution disclosures filed this week highlight how wide open the races are for open San Diego City Council seats in mid-coastal District 2 and South Bay District 8 just four months ahead of the June 2 primary.

Four candidates in the District 8 race have raised more than $30,000. And candidates Gerardo Ramirez and Antonio Martinez closed the gap on fundraising frontrunner Venus Molina during the second half of 2025.

Three candidates in District 2 have raised more than $30,000. But former City Hall staffer Josh Coyne widened his fundraising lead during the second half of 2025.

Coyne, who now works for the Downtown San Diego Partnership, raised nearly twice as much as both Deputy City Attorney Nicole Crosby and Point Loma neighborhood leader Mandy Havlik.

In southeastern San Diego’s District 4, incumbent Henry Foster appears to have at least one viable challenger. Foster was out-raised during the second half of 2025 by nurse and community organizer Martha Abraham.

by Michael J. Stepner and Mary Lydon / Times of San Diego / Feb. 4, 2026

For decades Paris, Barcelona and Brooklyn have been held up as models for humanely scaled, mid-rise housing neighborhoods.

This density is created by four-to-six story residential buildings. These communities have high rises and retail woven throughout, with pleasant walkable, tree-lined streets.

Here in San Diego, the award winning, 230-acre Civita urban village in Mission Valley stands in as our local model.

Mid-rise housing is part of Mayor Todd Gloria’s “Neighborhood Homes for All of Us” initiative. This type of housing is both necessary and appropriate — but it must be in the right location and provide the type of housing that affordable to those who need it.

The city’s 1979 General Plan stated in its urban design section that “the quality of the community is of overriding importance to the individual, since the most basic human needs must be satisfied close to home.” This is as true today as then.

Currently there is a lot of mid-rise housing being built. It is being built along commercial corridors and in the older neighborhoods.

By Shane Harris / Times of San Diego / Feb. 5, 2026

I live near Balboa Park, and I want to be clear about something from the start: my opposition to paid parking has nothing to do with convenience — mine or anyone else’s. This isn’t about saving a few dollars at a meter for me.

It’s about who gets pushed out when we turn one of the last truly public spaces in San Diego into a revenue stream. It’s about foster youth on group trips, families stretching every dollar, seniors on fixed incomes, volunteers who give thousands of hours to the museums, and working people whose livelihoods depend on foot traffic in the park.

Balboa Park was never meant to be City Hall’s cash register. For more than a century, it has served as San Diego’s shared civic commons — a place intentionally gifted to the people with the understanding that access would be open, equitable and free. That promise is now under threat, not because the park failed, but because the city chose to use it as a shortcut to address a budget problem it created for itself.

On Feb. 9, the City Council will once again take up the issue of parking fees in Balboa Park.

By Sue Taylor

Dear San Diego City Council Members:

I was born in the City of San Diego and graduated from Point Loma High School. I worked for the City of San Diego for 41 years, and I am also a volunteer with the San Diego Police Department. I now live just outside the City limits, about two and a half miles from Council District 9.

I want to directly challenge the claim that only City residents “pay for” Balboa Park. That claim may be convenient, but it is not how the City’s finances actually work.

Yes, only City residents pay property tax to the City. But what is consistently left out of this discussion is that most of any property tax bill does not go to the City at all. It goes to schools and the county. For a typical City household, only a few hundred dollars a year from their property tax actually ends up in the City’s General Fund. At the same time, a very large share of the City’s General Fund comes from sales tax and the hotel tax. Those taxes are paid heavily by non-City residents and by visitors.