OB Rag

By David Garrick / San Diego Union-Tribune / November 18, 2025

A sharply divided San Diego City Council voted 6-3 Tuesday to approve annual parking passes for Balboa Park that are intended to allow frequent park users to avoid daily and hourly parking fees coming in January.

The council’s approval of the permits, which will cost $100 a year for city residents and $300 a year for nonresidents, comes after city officials retreated last week from much higher prices proposed initially.

Council members who voted in favor called the lower rates a good compromise and stressed that Mayor Todd Gloria and his staff had made many concessions this year to the council and frequent park users.

Council members who voted against the permit fees — Stephen Whitburn, Raul Campillo and Vivian Moreno — criticized the entire idea of parking fees in Balboa Park.

Their comments echoed complaints from three dozen clubs and other organizations in the park focused on dance, gardening, beekeeping, model railroading, playing bridge and other activities.

During the city council hearing Tuesday afternoon, November 18, a discussion was held about charging residents and non-residents for parking at San Diego beaches and at Mission Bay Park. Former city council member Donna Frye observed the hearing and participated by phone. She filed this exclusive report for the Rag this morning, the 19th.

Non-Resident Paid Parking at Our Beaches and Mission Bay Park Does Not Move Forward as a Revenue Option- For Now

By Donna Frye

On November 18, the city council did not include the proposal for non-residents to pay a fee to park at our beaches and Mission Bay Park as a revenue option. Therefore, it was not part of the council resolution being sent to the mayor’s office for consideration in preparing the FY 2027 budget.

Oddly, there was almost no discussion at the council meeting about the paid parking proposal or the decision by the mayor to enact a revenue audit moratorium on the Mission Bay Park leases for nine months.

Councilmember Campillo was the only one who spoke at any length about the paid parking and made it very clear that he would not support charging residents or non-residents to park at Mission Bay Park or our beaches.

By John Ziebarth / Op-Ed SD Union-Tribune / November 18, 2025 

The progress of Midway Rising, the massive Sports Arena redevelopment project with a potential price tag of $3.9 billion, has been a history of bait-and-switch tactics.

[Please go to original here for any and all links.]

On July 15, 2022, the San Diego City Council cleared the way for Proposition C to allow voters to remove the 30-foot height limit in the Midway/Pacific Highway Community Plan. Members approved the Supplemental Environmental Impact Report analyzing the effects of a 65-foot-high development. A judge had required the additional analysis to address deficiencies in the original environmental documents. At the hearing, a council member stated that the 65-foot height limit in the zoning code/community plan would be the cap if Proposition C passed.

Two months later, on Sept. 13, at Mayor Todd Gloria’s behest, the council selected Midway Rising with a proposed 86-foot height limit (not 65 feet) for the mixed-use portion of the Sports Arena project. Prior to the Proposition C vote, Midway Rising was asked at the Point Loma Association if it would go above 86 feet if offered several million dollars for an ocean-view unit on the 20th floor. A representative responded that its proposal was for 86 feet in height.

by Kevin Sullivan / Times of San Diego / Nov. 3, 2025

San Diego City Council Resolution 280194 of June 1992 declared the city would not develop Montgomery-Gibbs airport for the full range of general aviation aircraft nor pursue a strategy leading to commercial or passenger services. The city’s Airports Advisory Committee is now proposing projects that may nullify this resolution.

The cleverly worded Airport Master Plan proposal to “remove the displaced threshold on runway 28R” will expand the airport so more, larger, heavier and noisier planes can operate from there. The proposal’s wording disguises the actual meaning which is to relocate the runway’s landing area 1,077 feet farther East.

This is what the council stopped in 1992 — building a longer runway. The neighborhoods of Navajo, Allied Gardens and Grantville are under the flight path.

Moving the landing area farther east may also mean passenger planes on approach are in closer proximity to the power lines that caused the tragic May 2025 crash in Murphy Canyon that killed six people.

By Mandy Havlik

Electric bicycles are transforming transportation but without clear rules and a strong safety framework, they are also making our streets more dangerous, especially for children. It’s common to see young riders without helmets, e-bikes speeding down sidewalks, and parents startled by close calls at intersections, school zones, and neighborhood walkways. The increasing frequency of these incidents is not just alarming, it is unacceptable.

Other cities in our region have taken decisive action. Poway, Chula Vista, Encinitas and Santee have all adopted e-bike regulations that establish clearer guidelines and elevate safety expectations. These cities recognize what San Diego has not yet acted upon; that e-bikes operated by untrained or underage riders pose real risks. As the largest city in the region, San Diego should not be trailing behind its neighbors in safeguarding its residents. It is time for our city to adopt the commonsense approaches outlined in California State Assembly Bill 2234 and implement them locally.

By Paul Krueger / Times of San Diego / Nov. 17, 2025

Five years after Home Depot’s corporate office announced the construction of a new superstore in Mission Valley, the concrete behemoth is rising from the dust on Camino del Rio South just east of Texas Street.

You can see the project move toward completion as you zoom along Interstate 8. The steel-and-concrete girders closest to the freeway are the backbone of the store’s 155,000-square-foot parking structure. That’s actually bigger than the store and its garden center with 125,000 square feet of shopping space.

This colossus will become the dominant structure on the disappearing south rim of Mission Valley. But who exactly will it serve?

There is no housing of any kind along this stretch of Camino del Rio South or even close by. Home Depot executives reportedly believe the new superstore will be a magnet for customers who live up the hill in Normal Heights, North Park, Hillcrest, and adjoining neighborhoods.

Audits Suspended for 9 Months in Summer of 2024 Due to ‘Backlog’

By Jeff McDonald / San Diego Union-Tribune / November 18, 2025

Bookkeeping practices at San Diego City Hall were so muddled that officials last year stopped auditing Mission Bay percentage leases, the lucrative rental agreements that direct a portion of tenants’ profits to the public treasury, an independent report has found.

The decision by Mayor Todd Gloria and his aides to suspend routine oversight of bayfront leases for nine months raised the city’s risk of losing money at the same time it was confronting major shortfalls in revenue.

It also prevented San Diego from imposing late fees and other penalties on tenants that failed to pay rent on time or otherwise meet the terms of their leases, the City Auditor’s Office reported.

Is This a Quixotic Move by City in Efforts to Eliminate the 30-foot Height Limit? State Appellate Court Ruled that 2022 Ballot Measure Was Illegally Placed Before Voters

By Jennifer Van Grove / The San Diego Union-Tribune / November 18, 2025 

San Diego will ask the state’s highest court to keep intact a 2022 ballot measure, recently deemed illegal, that sought to eliminate the 30-foot height limit from the Midway District.

Monday, San Diego City Council members voted 6 to 2 in closed session to authorize a petition for review to the Supreme Court of California.

The decision comes one month after the city lost, on appeal, a lawsuit to environmental advocacy group Save Our Access, which contested the legality of the ballot measure, known as Measure C.

In October, California’s 4th District Court of Appeal determined that the city violated California’s Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, when it put the ballot measure in front of voters before sufficiently studying the environmental impacts of taller buildings. The three-judge panel decision, in favor of plaintiff Save Our Access, directed the trial court to issue a writ of mandate, which would invalidate the ordinance and restore the 30-foot height limit in the Midway District.

The ruling could have devastating implications for new development in a part of town city leaders have said has been hamstrung by the 53-year-old building height restriction.

Around midnight and 1 a.m. Nov. 16, an explosive device was detonated in the alley between Cape May and Brighton east of Abbott .

No one was hurt but a truck sustained damage. The San Diego City Metro Bomb Squad was on scene gathering evidence and conducting an investigation.

Come inside and see the video by Charles Landon who interviews some witnesses to the sound of the explosion and the fireball.

By Paul Krueger

California has robust protections for citizen participation in the government process, with laws that require open meetings and encourage full public participation at the local level.

But City Council President Joe LaCava violated the spirit — if not the letter — of those protections today (Monday, Nov. 17) when he made it extremely — and unnecessarily difficult for San Diegans to keep informed about important actions related to a controversial building height limit in the Midway/Pacific Highway area.

The City Council met today in Closed Session to discuss — and probably vote on — Mayor Todd Gloria and City Attorney Heather Ferbert’s effort to overturn the recent appellate court ruling that reinstates the 30-foot height limit throughout the 1,300-acre Midway/ Pacific Highway district.

That unanimous appellate court ruling requires the city to perform a more comprehensive environmental study of the negative impacts of high-density, high-rise development in the Midway/Pac Hwy area. Armed with this additional information, voters would — for the third time — decide the size and shape of future development in that neighborhood.

By Rob Campbell 

This Thursday, November 20th, at 9am, at 7650 Mission Valley Road, San Diego, the San Diego Planning Commission will hear agenda item #2. This agenda item concerns what some call the “Radio Towers” of Emerald Hills.

In the historically Black enclave of the neighborhood of Emerald Hills in San Diego, the latest development upheaval lays bare how old injustices don’t die. They merely get repackaged in the language of progress.  What was once a promise of expanding parkland for a neighborhood long denied environmental justice or infrastructure, the last and largest green space is now being transmuted into a windfall for a for-profit multibillion-dollar corporation, with the full complicity of the City of San Diego and its planning apparatus.

The project in question — what locals call the “Radio Towers” — is a parcel on Old Memory Lane, formerly earmarked for new parkland in Emerald Hills, a “destination” park offering sweeping downtown and ocean views.  It is now slated instead to host 130 private homes with a single entrance and exit with an up-zoning at roughly 400% the density allowed in the same zoning white-neighborhood just to the north in La Jolla.

Here’s the brutal arithmetic of injustice:

By Frank Gormlie

I’m happy to share the news that two of the Rag’s current commentators and long-time San Diego journalist have received well-deserved awards of merit from local non-profit organizations.

J.W. August was honored by the San Diego Press Club with a “Best in Show” award for “Best Daily and Online Entry Excellence in Journalism.” August was recognized for his KPBS report on a detective in the Navy Criminal Investigations Division who is now serving time for abusing a federal prisoner in custody.

Paul Krueger was honored by the San Diego County Taxpayers Association with the Chairman’s Golden Watchdog Award for Grassroots Advocacy. Paul is a co-founder of both Neighbors for a Better San Diego and the San Diego Community Coalition.