OB Rag

By Alberto Garcia / La Prensa / March 26, 2024

The same developer who gave over $100,000 to elect Todd Gloria in 2020 before being selected to rebuild the Sports Arena site later contributed $650,000 more to remove the 30-foot building height limit around the Midway area, raising questions about the timing of his selection by the Mayor and City Council.

Brad Termini and his wife donated $100,000 to a campaign committee supporting Todd Gloria’s 2020 campaign for Mayor, and Termini and other relatives also gave another $6,900 directly to Gloria’s personal campaign before he won the November 2020 election.

With another drawing Tuesday for the ever-growing $1.12 billion Mega Millions jackpot, San Diegans who are feeling the lottery fever are hoping for a little bit of luck — some turning to specific stores with a track record of winning.

There are only a handful of stores out of the thousands of lotto retailers across California that regularly sell winning tickets, including ones to claim the largest prizes. The California Lottery has a special designation for these retailers, aptly — if not obviously — called “lucky stores.”

The Ocean Beach Town Council meets tonight, Wednesday, March 27 at 7 PM, and the meeting will be  held at the Point Loma Hervey Branch Library, at 3701 Voltaire Street.

When they sent out notices of the meeting, the OBTC called it a “Neighborhood Round Table” — and curiously, the name “OB Town Council” was nowhere to be seen in the email notification. Nowhere, not even above their mailing address.

Yet, coming off two months of stress and scandal, the leaders say, “We are excited to host a March Neighborhood Round Table discussion!”

David Garrick at the U-T wrote an extensive status report on the “power struggles” between existing community planning groups in Uptown and La Jolla with the new, upstart groups that are challenging the status quo. The power struggle played out last week at the city council committee that deals with land use and housing issues. Garrick summarized it this way:

by JW August / Times of San Diego / March 19, 2024

[Last week was] Sunshine Week, a celebration of democracy and the transparency that keeps it alive in this country — and you don’t just have to be a journalist to join the celebration. It’s for civic groups, government employees, and anyone who cares about maintaining our rights to access public information so that we can keep an eye on our government at all levels.

The California Public Records Act is  one of those powerful “hammers” the public can use to find out what the government is up to.

By Martin Kuebler / DW / March 25, 2024

A winter of heavy storms and flooding, especially in late December, has washed away vast stretches of protective sand dunes and bathing beaches on Germany’s North Sea islands.

Coastal areas on islands such as Sylt, Borkum and Norderney, which together attract millions of tourists, will need to be rebuilt before the summer holidays — an extensive and expensive procedure.

San Diego mayoral candidate Larry Turner on Monday, March 25, called for the city to rebid the Midway District redevelopment project, accusing Mayor Todd Gloria of having ties to a member of the development team.

The Midway Rising project would redevelop a dilapidated area of warehouses and two strip clubs, building 4,250 new homes, replacing the aging Sports Arena and creating an urban park and adjacent entertainment district.

But in a letter to the mayor, Turner requested a rebid because of “modifications to the initial plan, significant cost increases being passed on to taxpayers, and the appointment of a major campaign donor as the project developer.”

The city of San Diego began Monday with street- resurfacing and repair projects in Ocean Beach and Point Loma, as well as Clairemont Mesa and Rancho Penasquitos, officials said.

The following local streets will be resurfaced:

• Voltaire Street
• Udall Street
• Narragansett Avenue
• Guizot Street

U.S. Marine Corp poised to reabsorb Old Mans.

By Chas Smith / Beach Grit / March 25, 2024

There are many places in Southern California where baby wave enthusiasts can gather with their longer craft, malinger in parking lots, talk small talk, vibe then paddle out into tiny ocean lumps for to make glide but none more iconic than San Onofre. Just south of Upper Trestles and pressed up against the Marine base Camp Pendleton,

By José Martinez / Electronic Frontier Foundation  / March 15, 2024

In a stunning reversal against the popular Transparent & Responsible Use of Surveillance Technology (TRUST) ordinance, the San Diego city council voted earlier this year to cut many of the provisions that sought to ensure public transparency for law enforcement surveillance technologies.

Similar to other Community Control Of Police Surveillance (CCOPS) ordinances, the TRUST ordinance was intended to ensure that each police surveillance technology would be subject to basic democratic oversight

By Arturo Castañares / La Prensa San Diego – Editor-at-Large / March 23, 2024

San Diego State University officials received a proposal in 2022 to build a new sports arena within the Mission Valley development at no cost to the public but have kept the offer under wraps even as the City of San Diego is currently negotiating to develop a similar facility at the existing Sports Arena site.

SDSU President Adela de la Torre, the University’s Athletic Director, and several prominent San Diegans flew to Texas on a private jet in May 2022 to tour the Moody Center at the University of Texas at Austin (UTA) at the invitation of the company that led the development project.

By Colleen O’Connor

The wind, weather, and small craft advisories did not stop great fun in the greater Point Loma/Ocean Beach neighborhoods. Crowded streets were non-existent while the weather commanded attention. Rain, winds, and small craft advisories.

First, the many calculations on rain and winds fluctuated wildly, but most came true. Over time, they ranged from 1.2 inches of to .5 of rain, with wind gusts from 20-30 mph. The two-day rain tally hit .85…and winds did whistle by at 20 to 30 mph.