OB Rag

From SOHO

On Wednesday, January 14, the San Diego City Council’s Land Use & Housing Committee will consider the City’s Preservation and Progress Package A.

This fast-tracked proposal would weaken San Diego’s historic preservation program by allowing the City Council to override expert historic designations, thereby stripping protections from historic districts such as Ocean Beach’s Cottage Emerging District and the Asian Thematic District, while prioritizing new construction over true preservation.

Your voice matters now. Please attend the meeting if you can and send a letter or email urging the committee to reject these harmful changes.

Land Use & Housing Committee
City Council, City of San Diego

Wednesday, January 14, 2026 • 2pm

City Administration Building
Council Chambers – 12th Floor
202 C Street, San Diego, CA 92101

Well-known community activist and now newspaper publisher, Shane Harris, has raised the issue of paid parking at Balboa Park to a new level with his introduction of a city ordinance to repeal the largely unpopular new policy which just went into effect formerly Monday, January 5.

Also, Harris has launched a county-wide petition to repeal paid parking in Balboa Park — with this effort having gained the support of 10 county mayors, his campaign claims.

In doing so, Harris has entered the squabble between city council members and Mayor Gloria over the apparent disastrous roll-out of the paid parking program (outlined by Rag writer Lou Rehling and by U-T reporter David Garrick).

by Ernie McCray

As the year 2025 closed
American citizens held out hope
that 2026
would be a better year,
considering that 2025
had us shaking in our boots,
in fear,
crying in our beer,
shedding tears,
but now, just a few days
after the new year arrived,
before we could

By Angelo Haynes

On the evening of January 8th at 6pm, residents and community members of Encanto and surrounding areas of City Council District 4 gathered at the Encanto Recreation Center to provide input on the construction of a skate plaza on an existing shuffleboard court.

Several community groups were in attendance, including the San Diego Parks Foundation, an independent non-profit group that raises funds with the goal of enhancing public parks across San Diego County. One man in particular, Abel Macias, has been the driving force behind this entire project beginning with his activism with a local chapter of Black Lives Matter during the pandemic.

Abel coordinated with several skater friends in the neighborhood to create an activist group that took to the streets in a unique protest that brought people together for social justice, but turned into a coalition that sought to develop the sport of skating in his community.

by Tessa Balc / Times of San Diego / Jan. 8, 2026

It’s been more than two years since the Ocean Beach Pier permanently closed for safety and structural concerns in late 2023. The city is planning for a replacement, but still has no clear idea of how it’ll pay for it.

Ocean Beach residents aren’t just concerned that constructing a new pier will face continued delays with no solution in sight. They’re also getting increasingly anxious with the state of the still-standing pier — especially considering plans for the replacement include elements of the current structure.

Ralph Teyssier, the son of the OB Pier’s original engineer and a member of the former Ocean Beach Pier Task Force, said the pier is being “pillaged.”

He cites historic elements of the pier, such as the original bronze plaque, which was stolen, and the bars of the original gate that were cut through, possibly by those who vandalized the former Walking on Water Cafe.

These pieces of the pier won’t be viable for incorporation into the future design even though they’ve been built into the plans to help maintain the pier’s historic character, Teyssier said.

From SOHO

A coalition of 17 former staff leaders and board members of the San Diego Historical Resources Board (HRB) has issued a formal letter to City leadership (read here), charging that the City’s Historical Resources Program has become professionally isolated and administratively dysfunctional. The group is calling for immediate administrative reform to restore the transparency and collaborative spirit that once defined San Diego’s preservation efforts.

The signatories, which include retired senior planners, former board chairs, and a past State Historic Preservation Officer, argue that the program now managed within the Development Services Department has lost the independence and transparency that once defined it.

The group highlights a critical shift in departmental culture:

Loss of Public Collaboration Former officials cite growing concerns regarding “diminishing communication and collaboration” between HRB staff and the public, noting that the principles of openness and mutual respect that once fostered confidence in the process have been replaced by administrative barriers and a loss of meaningful review.

By Rag Staff

For those San Diegans resisting City Hall’s housing policies, 2026 is off to a good start with two recent major court wins in the fight for sustainable development. Everett Delano, the lawyer who scored one of them, will be the guest speaker at the San Diego Community Coalition’s third “Town Hall With A Newsmaker” forum on Saturday, January 17, at 10:30 a.m. at the La Jolla-Riford Library, 7555 Draper Ave.

The forum is titled “What Communities Need to Know About Land Use Court Battles,” and is free and open to the public. The event is co-hosted by Neighbors for a Better San Diego.

Delano has a distinguished record of representing neighborhood groups seeking to block environmentally destructive development. His latest win came December 31 when the California Supreme Court denied Mayor Todd Gloria’s effort to override the 30-foot height limit in the Midway/Pacific Highway district.

That decision followed a December 18 ruling against Chalcifica, a notorious 136-unit complex planned for Pacific Beach. Superior Court Judge Katherine Bacal ordered the City to stop issuing permits for the project until a more comprehensive impact analysis is performed.

Clearly, the ICE agent who shot and killed Renee Gold needs to be identified, arrested and brought to trial for her murder. We cannot rest until this happens.

This national tragedy is a near “Kent State incident” — the incident in May of 1970 when National Guard troops opened fire on demonstrating students at Kent State University in Ohio — killing four — two of whom were not even demonstrating. Students were protesting President Nixon’s expansion of the Vietnam war by invading Cambodia. The resulting response brought the country to a halt.

TN News:

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent who fatally shot 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good during a confrontation in south Minneapolis on January 7 has not been publicly identified, heightening concerns over transparency and accountability as investigations continue.

Although social media users have circulated the name “Steve Grove” in connection with the shooting, federal authorities have not confirmed the identity of the agent, and no official records support those claims.

By Jordan Liz / Common Dreams / Jan. 8, 2026

On January 7, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent murdered Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis. Immediately, the Trump administration sprang into action to propagandize the incident. Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin claimed that the woman “weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them.” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem claimed, “It was an act of domestic terrorism.”

President Donald Trump posted via Truth Social:

The woman screaming was, obviously, a professional agitator, and the woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self-defense. Based on the attached clip, it is hard to believe he is alive, but is now recovering in the hospital. The situation is being studied, in its entirety, but the reason these incidents are happening is because the Radical Left is threatening, assaulting, and targeting our Law Enforcement Officers and ICE Agents on a daily basis. They are just trying to do the job of MAKING AMERICA SAFE. We need to stand by and protect our Law Enforcement Officers from this Radical Left Movement of Violence and Hate!

This is a national tragedy. A young woman, a US citizen acting as a “legal observer” of federal agents, is now dead. A completely avoidable death if only ICE officers could exercise any level of restraint. If only the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) wasn’t actively invading Minneapolis and indiscriminately targeting its residents—citizens and immigrants alike. If only the Trump administration gave a singular fuck about America.

Even after shooting Good, ICE agents refused to allow a doctor who was at the scene to provide aid. When an ambulance arrived 15 minutes later, they were blocked by ICE vehicles. They harassed her, shot her, and if there was even the faintest possibility that she might have lived, they took that away from her too.

In moments like this, we must remember that in democracies like the US there are four systems of checks and balances: In addition to the executive, judicial, and the legislative, there is the people.

by Lisa Needham / Daily Kos / Jan. 8, 2026

On Wednesday, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed an observer in Minneapolis.

This was always going to happen.

With the Trump administration’s now-standard insistence that the ICE goons invading blue cities are actually the ones who are afraid and vulnerable, the agent claimed that he was “fearing for his life” because the woman “weaponized her vehicle.”

This was a favorite lie that ICE invoked in Illinois and California—basically, if your car happens to be anywhere near an ICE agent, they become so scared that they have to shoot you.

ICE’s behavior in Minneapolis is so beyond the pale that even Mayor Jacob Frey—a person not exactly known for his condemnation of law enforcement and who defended the presence of Minneapolis police officers at a July 2025 federal raid—is furious.

The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) said it “reluctantly” withdrew from investigating the fatal ICE-involved shooting in Minneapolis after the FBI told the agency the US Attorney’s Office “had reversed course” and would no longer allow the BCA “access to the case materials, scene evidence or investigative interviews,” BCA Superintendent Drew Evans said in a statement.

The BCA was initially set to conduct the joint investigation with the FBI after consulting with the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office, the US Attorney’s Office and the FBI yesterday.

“Without complete access to the evidence, witnesses and information collected, we cannot meet the investigative standards that Minnesota law and the public demands.”
“If the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the FBI were to reconsider this approach and express a willingness to resume a joint investigation, the BCA is prepared to reengage in support of our shared goal of public safety in Minnesota,” Evans added in the statement.

UPDATED

The woman shot dead by a federal immigration agent in Minneapolis has been identified as Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother of three who had just moved to the city.