OB Rag

by Michael Zucchet / Voice of San Diego / January 21, 2026

In his Jan. 13 op-ed published in Voice of San Diego, former Coronado Mayor Richard Bailey argues that increased spending and poor management are the real culprits of the city of San Diego’s budget woes.

But in many of the issue areas that Bailey cites (personnel and pension costs, lack of public safety spending and trash collection fees) San Diego is in line with or even outperforming other cities – including the city of Coronado under Bailey’s leadership as councilmember and mayor for 12 years:

• According to the Census Bureau, the city of San Diego’s population steadily grew more than 7 percent between 2010 and 2024 to 1,404,000. During the same period, the population of Coronado decreased 5 percent to 18,000. Despite this decline in residents, Coronado’s general fund personnel budget rose 89 percent from FY 2014 (Mr. Bailey’s first full fiscal year in office) to FY 2026.  During the same period – with a rising population – San Diego’s general fund personnel expenditures rose 76 percent. Coronado has one city employee for every 70 residents; San Diego has one employee for every 107 residents.

By Dave Schwab / Times of San Diego / Jan. 21, 2026

Last September, the City Council unanimously passed a Coastal Resilience Master Plan, adopting nature-based solutions to flooding and erosion risks.

The CRMP was adopted to counteract the effects of climate change on six pilot sites in Ocean Beach, Pacific Beach, Mission Beach and La Jolla.

City spokesperson Peter Kelly noted that the four project sites moving forward under Phase 2 are Tourmaline Beach in PB, Dog Beach in Ocean Beach, the Ocean Beach beachfront and Sunset Cliffs.

“Phase 2 is fully grant-funded through a State Coastal Conservancy grant,” said Kelly. “Work will be completed in January 2027…. This work will also include determining a rough order of magnitude for construction costs for each of the Phase 2 project sites.”

Sunset Cliffs’ plans include developing a separated pedestrian path, removing west side parking, and creating one lane for southbound vehicular travel on Sunset Cliffs Boulevard.

Responding to that roadway-altering proposal, Leon Scales, chair of the Sunset Cliffs Natural Park Council overseeing Sunset Cliffs’ future development, offered an anecdote.

Scales said someone told him recently that they “would love to live on it (Sunset Cliffs Boulevard).” Scales asked, “If you did, would you be concerned that ‘cliff retreat’ would threaten your home and investment?”

The man responded that he would be dead before a cliff collapse occurred that was serious enough to affect his home, and added that he’d be much more worried if he lived on a street above the boulevard after it became a one-way passage, with all the reverse-direction traffic — and parking — in front of his house.

By Kate Callen

Balboa Park’s institutional stewards joined forces to denounce Mayor Todd Gloria’s paid parking fees in a January 21 press conference that delivered ominous news about the fees’ early impacts.

The 19 park leaders were brought together by the Balboa Park Cultural Partnership to announce a new website, that will serve as a portal for pressuring the City Council to shelve the fees.

The leaders stopped short of demanding a total repeal. They chose a milder stance: “to express our serious concerns and go on record requesting the reconsideration of the vote supporting paid parking.”

But they did (finally) challenge Gloria’s hype that the new fees will go straight into overdue park maintenance. And they would not rule out the idea of a public-private partnership, modeled after the New York City Central Park Conservancy, that would wrest management of the park away from City Hall.

“I think our community should and can have that larger discussion,” said Peter Comiskey, the partnership’s Executive Director.

Early data on attendance and revenue have borne out dire predictions that paid parking will drive away the visitors who keep the park solvent.

There are more and more calls to invoke the Constitution’s 25th Amendment as Donald Trump’s poor mental state becomes more and more obvious. These calls have accelerated since Trump’s deranged statements and efforts to seize Greenland. The 25th Amendment allows for the removal of a president if certain substantive criteria are met.

As Josh Fiallo at the  Daily Beast on Jan. 20 reported

Trump, 79, posted 33 times in 45 minutes on Tuesday [Jan.20], claiming he “has done more for NATO” than anyone and sharing conspiracies about Dominion voting machines, non-existent voter fraud, and a clip of his 2017 Inaugural address, among other things.

The flood of posts, which come as he threatens to shatter relations with longstanding European allies by demanding that the United States seize Greenland from Denmark, immediately renewed calls for his removal from power.

Former Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger asked on BlueSky, “Are we watching a real-time mental health crisis with Trump?” shortly after Trump’s mad barrage ended. “Seriously.” …

By Carolyn Gramling / ScienceNews  / January 13, 2026

The last three years were the hottest on record, a new analysis of global climate data finds. They also mark the first three-year period in which the global average temperature exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels — a threshold associated with increased risks to biodiversity, human health and weather extremes.

“1.5 degrees C is not a cliff edge, but we know that every half a degree matters,” said climate scientist Samantha Burgess at a January 12 press event announcing the report. Burgess is the strategic climate lead for the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, or ECMWF, which released the report January 14.

Although 2025 was slightly cooler than the two previous years, averaging 1.47 degrees above preindustrial temperatures, Earth is warming faster than it was a decade ago. The planet is now on track to consistently exceed the 1.5-degree threshold by 2029.

By David Helvarg / Golden State / Jan. 13–20, 2026

In November, the Trump administration released a map that alarmed a lot of Californians. It showed the waters off the entire 1,100-mile state coastline carved into potential “program areas” for new oil and gas drilling.

For 40 years, there’ve been no new oil lease sales in the state’s coastal waters, and Californians of all political stripes overwhelmingly – 72% according to a Public Policy Institute poll – hope it stays that way. When its legacy offshore wells run dry, the state  should be done with ocean drilling for good.

President Trump, of course, likes nothing better than to bait California, love-bomb the oil and gas industry, attack clean energy and overturn Biden-era actions (President Biden banned new drilling in the same federal waters Trump now wants to exploit). The latest Interior Department plan for six lease sales between 2027 and 2030 is one more White House jab at Golden State values.

But here’s the thing: It’s far, far from a done deal.

First a little  background.

A little local airfield was home to the country’s first regularly scheduled airline

By Eric DuVall / Point Loma — OB Monthly SDU-T / January 14, 2026 

When we left our expedition into the soggy bogs of Dutch Flats last month [see here for Part 1], the 1920s had come roaring into San Diego, and the Marines had landed. The Point Loma Golf Club had flourished for a brief 13 years before missing the cut.

Taking flight
The second decade of the 20th century had seen San Diego become one of the world’s hotbeds for innovation and development in the nascent field of manned flight. Many aeronautical firsts occurred in the equable skies above this city. The first seaplane flight, the first aerial loop-the-loop, even the first night flight — considered an extremely dangerous and even foolhardy experiment — was successfully executed by Maj. T.C. Macauley in 1913.

Col. Jimmy Erickson had taken the first aerial photographs from a plane in 1911. Army Air Service Lts. Oakley Kelly and John Macready are credited with several firsts, including the first nonstop transcontinental flight, from New York to San Diego, in 1923. The first transcontinental flight of an airship, the Navy’s enormous USS Shenandoah, terminated, rather precariously, at North Island’s Rockwell Field the following year.

You may have noticed that all of these air innovations were of the military variety. Commercial aviation, in particular air travel, which we take for granted these days, was not a thing at all a century ago.

Next Stop: New York City TV Festival, Jan. 28 – 30

by Tessa Balc / Times of San Diego /  Jan. 19, 2026

Ocean Beach got its own show this fall, and now it’s starting to garner some serious attention on the independent film circuit.

In October, Daniel Dyer premiered the first episode of “End of the 8,” named for the Ocean Beach location where Interstate 8 hits the Pacific Ocean. But OB isn’t just the show’s setting; the bohemian beach town also functions like a character in the show.

Dyer’s premier event sold out local bar The Harp. Clips disseminated on social media have led total strangers to yell “end of the f—–g 8” at Dyer when they see him around the neighborhood.

Now the show will travel across the country, premiering at the New York City TV Festival, taking place Jan. 28 – 30.

By Jillian Butler

On the evening of Thursday January 15, 2026, the Peninsula Community Planning Board (PCPB) hosted its first meeting of the new year. While the meeting followed a standard agenda, public concern over a proposed coastal development quickly emerged as the dominant issue of the night.

Hosted in the usual meeting location of the Point Loma Hervey Library, the meeting was small with less than 50 in attendance. Chairperson Eric Law was away traveling on business, so vice-chair Mandy Havlik presided. Additionally, several government, agency, and community representatives were not present.

The meeting began with its general call to order, agenda approval, approval of minutes, and board officer reports. Following this introduction the board heard non-agenda comments.

Ronald Duran started with the first comment, asking the PCPB to aid in opposing a coastal development project on Guizot street. Mr. Duran voiced his concerns about the developer using provisions from California Senate Bill 9 to purchase and demolish a single family home, split a .16 acre lot, and build two houses each with attached ADUs. Where one home previously stood, now four units would exist.  At the moment, tenants live in the single family home, rendering the property ineligible for SB 9. Duran’s son requested the city get involved. The city has reached out to the developer.

By Kate Callen

Years ago, when attorney Everett DeLano challenged the City of San Diego for violating the Clean Water Act, the city insisted it should not have to pay penalties because taxpayers would have to foot the bill.

“In the legal system, we call that ‘externalizing the costs,’” DeLano told a packed audience at a January 17 San Diego Community Coalition forum. “You make other people pay. And that applies now.

“State laws are encouraging a tremendous amount of development. But we’re in a situation where we have a lack of infrastructure, so communities are paying the costs.”

Today, DeLano is one San Diego’s foremost land use attorneys. His recent victories against high-density projects include the Save Our Access lawsuit to restore the 30-foot height limit in the Midway/ Pacific Highway area, which includes Mayor Todd Gloria’s pet Midway Rising project.

DeLano didn’t start out fighting predatory development. He began his career as an environmental lawyer with the Sierra Club in Denver and the Natural Resources Defense Council in Los Angeles pursuing what he calls “natural resources defense.”

His abiding belief in environmental protection – whether the “environment” is an estuary or a neighborhood – has propelled DeLano into a string of court wins to mitigate the harsher impacts of rampant growth.

BBy Mandy Taheri / Newsweek / Jan. 20, 2026

What Is the 25th Amendment?

The 25th Amendment was ratified in 1967, in the aftermath of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. It was instituted to prepare for medical emergencies and incapacitation that could prevent a president from performing normal duties.

The Amendment has four sections.

Section 1 says that if a president dies, resigns or is removed from office, the vice president becomes president.

Section 2 notes that if there is a vacancy in the vice president’s office, the president shall nominate a stand-in who shall take office after being confirmed by a majority vote in both chambers of Congress.

Section 3 allows a president to temporarily hand over power by sending a written declaration to the House speaker and the Senate’s president pro tempore, saying he is unable to perform his duties. The vice president then becomes acting president until the president sends another written declaration, saying he is able to resume the job. This section has been invoked when the president undergoes medical procedures.

Finally, Section 4 allows the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet to declare in writing that the president is unable to discharge the powers and duties of the office, making the vice president the acting president. If the president contests that declaration, Congress must decide the issue. The president remains sidelined only if two-thirds of both the House and Senate vote that he is unable to serve. Congress has 21 days to reach a decision once the question is formally before it.

Trump’s Letter Renews Talk