OB Rag

Here are other media reports on the Palm Tree controversy raging in Point Loma this week.

The first is from ABC 10News:

Some Ocean Beach residents gathered to protest the removal of palm trees in their neighborhood Thursday morning. The City of San Diego and Federal Aviation Administration have cited a row of palm trees as a potential threat to airplanes traveling to and from San Diego International Airport.

By Norma Damashek / NumbersRunner / Oct. 21, 2021

Part I: The endless summer is fading fast

Breeze through this nostalgic snapshot of the place we call home, seen through the lens of the New York Times travel page:

Like its urban rival Los Angeles, San Diego is not so much a city as a loose collection of overlapping (and sometimes colliding) communities bound by arterial, life-giving freeways: it’s a military town in Coronado; a surf town in funky, eclectic Ocean Beach; and a border town in the historic Mexican-American neighborhood of Barrio Logan.

By Geoff Page

The actions of a collection of community residents early Thursday morning resulted in a temporary stay of execution for the historic palm trees on upper Newport Ave. The city had told a resident on Wednesday they would be back this morning at 7:30 a.m. to cut down the trees and they would be bringing the police. So, the locals rallied and showed up to voice very vocal opposition to the city steamrolling the community.

They did indeed bring the police.

By Edwin Decker

Dear Ed,

One of my acquaintances is a devoted Trump supporter. I don’t necessarily have a problem with that but some of my other friends are appalled by our relationship. They say that my friendship with him is a problem for them and that I should terminate if I want to continue being friends with them. I honestly don’t want to do that, but I am much closer to them and I frankly value their friendship more. Any suggestions?

Sincerely,

Sashona of Point Loma

Dear Sashona, when I was in 9th grade I befriended a kid who I will call Georgy Von Doofydork,

By John Williams

In 2018’s Senate Bill 946 the state of California eliminated penalties for unlicensed street vendors offering products to the public while on public property.

It’s nice, I guess, if you’ve got responsibilities and this is how you earn.

OB has for many years been known for its Wednesday Farmers Market which started as something much closer to a market with fruits and vegetables, coffee, honey, etc., than the repetitive hand-crafted variety of jewelry and other sideways stuff available now.

California’s Drought Emergency Extended to San Diego County

By Judi Curry

Here we go again. Another drought. Another curtailment of the use of water. The Governor is asking people to cutback on water usage 15% over last year.

My question is what about those of us that cut back 15% last year and are still cutting back? How much are we supposed to cut back

For the last two mornings, city crews have been out in the Point Loma neighborhood attempting to remove Palm Trees that have been determined to “obstruct” aircraft flight paths and airspace.

No permits have been made, no traffic or parking control signs have been put up, no planning boards or neighborhoods informed. All in the name of “emergency” and public safety.

Rag writer Geoff Page reported on what has been going on:

There’s currently a debate going on in the “pages” of the La Jolla Light over whether “progress” has been made regarding commercial jet noise, particularly over Point Loma and OB.

Anthony Stiegler, the co-founder and secretary of Quiet Skies La Jolla, wrote a piece on September 7 about the progress that has been made with the noise from aircraft.

Stiegler reported on the progress his group has made with the FAA and the County Airport Authority:

by Bart Ziegler, PhD / Voice of OC / Oct. 20, 2021

On the topic of environmental disasters, could you imagine trying to deal with contamination from a far deadlier kind of waste that you can’t see or smell and that remains toxic for hundreds of thousands of years?

As details of the Orange County oil spill continue to unfold, globs of tar are washing onto San Onofre State Beach beneath the shadow of a shuttered nuclear power plant where Southern California Edison is storing 3.6 million pounds of radioactive waste 100 feet from the ocean.

Reporting on the oil spill has us drawing comparisons and thinking about the state of nuclear waste safety.

Take corrosion, for instance.

City Forester: “We don’t care what you think.”

By Geoff Page

The City of San Diego is moving forward aggressively to cut down iconic and historic, tall palm trees on Newport Avenue, Santa Monica and Santa Barbara.

They are lying to the public saying it is because of a safety issue.

These are healthy trees — there is no safety issue whatsoever. But, when talking to the city’s forester, Brian Widener, it soon becomes clear that he is one of those people who believe if you repeat a lie over and over, people will eventually believe it is true. No matter how many times he says it is a safety issue, it is still not true.

The city is not only using public safety as an excuse, they are bypassing all the normal procedures for removing city trees by designating these as emergency removals. There is no emergency, the city just does not want to take the time to explain to the public why removals are necessary.