OB Rag

by Ernie McCray

I just had
one of the nicest experiences
of my lifetime
via a dramatic piece,
“Day of Absence,”
a Douglas Turner Ward
masterpiece
of a play
on Zoom,
each actor
sitting
at their own place
in a room
facing a Mac
or a PC,
scrolling scripts
on a split screen
against a green screen,

Here are two Op-Ed pieces that ran in the San Diego Union-Tribune on Tuesday, Feb. 23, on the subject of recalling Jen Campbell.

Campbell Puts Special Interests Before Voters

By Wendy D. Gelernter

City Council President Jennifer Campbell has lost the trust of her constituents by ignoring their input, breaking campaign promises and siding with powerful special interests and corporations against the needs of her voters. This is why a diverse coalition of San Diegans this month announced a movement to recall Campbell from office.

As a small business owner and 34-year resident of Pacific Beach, I donated to and campaigned for Campbell when she ran for council. But I soon grew alarmed at her lack of responsiveness to community voices.

Well, so much for the Democratic majority on the City Council.

Yesterday, Tuesday, Feb. 23, after hours of “public” testimony, the Council voted 8 to 1 to approve Jen Campbell’s proposal on short-term vacation rentals. Councilmember Joe LaCava – representing District 1, the other coastal district – was the dissenting vote. The other Democrats voted along with the Republican to endorse the ordinance – which will need a second vote in October before becoming law in 2022. The ordinance will return to council for updates on the lottery and prioritization related to licensing.

LaCava proposed four amendments which would have been much stricter than the version which passed. None were accepted. He was concerned with equity in the ordinance and how to hold rental platforms accountable. According to the Beacon, said LaCava:

By Judi Curry

During the past month when in the throes of Covid, I have been overwhelmed by the responses I have received from my friends, relatives, neighbors, strangers, etc.

I received over 100 get well wishes; I even received over 75 “Happy Birthday” wishes.

People that I do not know have sent me cards; a neighbor that I still don’t know sent me a long note telling me that he would be glad to anything for me that needed to be done during this time. (He sent me his address so that when I am finally able to go out I can see where he lives with his family.)

Al Nashashibi from Faurouz left me a huge of amount of his restaurants’ “Lemon Grass” soup by my front door;

After nearly a year of campus closures and at-home learning due to the coronavirus pandemic, the San Diego Unified School District on Tuesday announced its target date to reopen its campuses.

San Diego Unified school board member Richard Barrera told NBC 7 that staff members are slated to return to campuses the week of April 5, with students at all grade levels returning the following week, dependent upon whether the county had returned to the red tier and vaccines being fully available to staffers.

The county will begin making COVID-19 vaccines available to school employees March 1.

Join the Ocean Beach Town Council this Wednesday, Feb. 24, at 7pm for a public meeting. It will be live on Facebook.

They will swear in their new board members and receive an update from State Assemblymember Chris Ward.

There will also be a presentation on the Kate Sessions Commitment

The Kate Sessions Commitment is a grass-roots effort to engage community on public and private lands to pledge to plant 100 trees in San Diego County in honor of Kate Sessions–each year and in each community. It’s an effort to reduce greenhouse emissions and increase our urban tree canopy coverage.

Your input can help craft the OB Library’s future! Click the link below to take the survey, and let the San Diego Public Library Commission know:

1. What do you need from the Library?
2. How can the Library better serve OBceans?
3. What services, technologies, and programs would help you?

From the PCPB / Feb. 23, 2021

As with all other officially recognized community planning groups throughout the City of San Diego, the COVID-19 pandemic prevented the Peninsula Community Planning Board (PCPB) from holding its annual election in March 2020.

But, under guidelines recently promulgated by the City of San Diego and procedures approved by the Peninsula Community Planning Board (PCPB) at its meeting on February 18, 2021, PCPB will be holding an election this March to fill a total of eleven vacancies.

These eleven Board positions to be filled comprise over two-thirds of the Board’s fifteen positions. Board terms are typically three (3) years in length. Because the 2020 election was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, however, the 2021 election will include several positions with shorter terms. Of the eleven PCPB positions to be filled, five will be for three-year terms, five will be for two-year terms and one will fill a current vacancy for the balance of a one-year term.

The relatively new owners of OB Hardware – which has to be the oldest businesses in Ocean Beach – are moving on and are looking for local buyers to take the storefront over.

Michael DeEmidio and his business partner Michael Grimes bought OB Hardware from Carl and Carolyn Weidetz in 2018. The Weidetzs owned the century-old Ocean Beach Paint and Hardware at 4871 Newport Avenue for half that time. The business – which has become OB’s most iconic, locally-owned storefront – opened in 1919, and has carried tools, gardening, plumbing and electrical supplies as well as paints ever since.

DeEmidio told the Beacon:

“After a lot of heavy-hearted consideration, my wife and I have decided to move out of California to be closer to family. ”

By Lisa Halverstadt / Voice of San Diego / Feb. 22, 2021

As City Council President Jen Campbell and stakeholders on both sides of the vacation rental saga prepare to debate yet another regulation proposal, they’re grappling with an inconvenient truth: No one knows exactly how many vacation rentals there are in the city. Campbell has predicted her plan could slash the number of whole-home rentals in the city by at least two-thirds.

But new data obtained separately by Voice of San Diego and the city’s Office of the Independent Budget Analyst suggests Campbell’s proposal may not reduce the number of whole-home vacation rentals as much as she predicts.

By Kevin Hastings

Tomorrow, Tuesday, Feb 23rd, councilmember Jen Campbell will seek to legalize all the Short Term Vacation Rentals (STVRs) in your neighborhood, and leave room for even more. Her proposal has been endorsed by Airbnb and VRBO, but none of the neighborhood community groups.

Campbell’s policy was developed behind closed doors by VRBO and a hotel worker’s union and successfully dodged public input and scrutiny. It would create a 4-tier licensing system covering everything to full-time STVRs without host on site (Tier 3 & 4), to the uncontroversial part-time rentals and room shares (Tier 1 & 2).

It would limit licenses for the full-time whole-home STRs to approximately 6,500 city-wide. Campbell has peddled this as a “78% reduction in STRs” that will “return 7,000 units to long term housing”. She does this despite providing no analysis of the existing number and types of STRs. A cursory study of the existing STR situation, and a previous study commissioned by the city both show her claims to be false.

February 22, 1974 was the day Ocean Beach lost its innocence. It was the day a man – recently released from prison – who was associated with the then network of OB radicals, tried to commit what we today call “suicide by cop.”

Peter Mahone walked up to a San Diego Police officer sitting in his patrol car in the OB Pier parking lot – and pulled out a gun and shot him. Mahone then calmly walked back to his little shack on Abbott and waited for the fusillade. And it came with a vengeance. Police surrounded Peter’s little hole in the wall and poured lead into it.

Miraculously, no one died that day. The officer shot in the parking lot survived – as did Peter Mahone.