OB Rag

From SOHO / October Newsletter

San Diego’s Historical Resources Board (HRB) plays a vital and crucial role in protecting our city’s cultural and architectural heritage. The board is made up of community volunteers—historians, architects, designers, archaeologists, environmental specialists, and academics—who contribute considerable time, effort, and expertise.

It is not an easy job. Their decisions carry weight, and their efforts are both technical and public in nature. Their work requires hours of reading, site visits, and thoughtful analysis. It is complex, sometimes contentious, and always essential. Their decisions carry lasting consequences. Once a resource is gone, it is gone forever.

In recent years, however, the HRB’s role has begun to erode and diminish. City staff interpretations, advice, and positions have too often overshadowed the board’s authority, sometimes leaving members to think or feel they have less independence than they truly do. The reality is that the HRB is much more than advisory. It is quasi-judicial and independent, entrusted with applying preservation law and established standards, safeguarding the public interest, and ensuring that San Diego’s legacy endures.

By City News Service – 7NBC / October 28, 2025

Water rates for San Diegans will rise 14.7% next year and 14.5% the following year after the San Diego City Council Tuesday passed an amended water and wastewater rate hike.

A staff proposal before the council was to increase water rates by 63% through 2029 and wastewater rates by 31% in the same period. The much-reduced, two-year plan passed by a 5-4 majority Tuesday was proposed by Councilman Stephen Whitburn.

In a back-and-forth with Lisa Celaya, executive assistant director for the city, and Jordan More of the Office of the Independent Budget Analyst, Whitburn repeatedly tried to figure out the lowest possible rate increase to keep water flowing amid increased costs from the San Diego County Water Authority and asked the consequences of not meeting that number.

by Robert Reich / Robert Reich’s Substack- Reader Supported News / October 29, 2025

Friends,

He’s now saying it out loud — blurring the line between his so-called “war” on alleged foreign drug smugglers and his war on the “enemy within” the United States. Both now involve the deployment of the U.S. military. Neither requires proof of wrongdoing.

That was his message yesterday when Trump told American troops in Japan that he would send “more than the National Guard” into cities to enforce his crackdowns on crime and immigration:

“We have cities that are troubled, we can’t have cities that are troubled. And we’re sending in our National Guard, and if we need more than the National Guard, we’ll send more than the National Guard, because we’re going to have safe cities … . We’re not going to have people killed in our cities. And whether people like that or not, that’s what we’re doing.”

In the same speech, Trump defended U.S. military strikes against suspected drug smugglers — more than a dozen on vessels from South America that have killed 57 people so far, without evidence they were actually smuggling drugs. (Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced yesterday that the military had carried out three more strikes on Monday.)

by Dave Schwab / Peninsula Beacon / Oct. 29, 2025, 2:09 p.m.

The Peninsula Beacon did a “shout out” soliciting local opinion via email and social media on whether the recent appellate court ruling upholding the 30-foot Midway height limit was the right call.

Most of the residents who responded favor the limit, but a few do not mind the possibility of taller developments in the sports arena area.

Here’s some of their responses:

“[The city] put it (Measure C) on the ballot looking to sneak this project through, saying, ‘You’re going to get a new sports arena,’” said Save Our Access spokesperson John McNab. “But what they didn’t tell you is that they wanted to put 150,000 to 200,000 people in this area. They think developer first – and public last.”

Three members of the Peninsula Community Planning Group – Eric Law, Mandy Havlik, and Andrew Hollingworth – speaking for themselves, concurred with McNab.

Residents Say Enough Is Enough to Mayor Todd Gloria’s New Fees

By San Diego Monitor News Staff / October 28, 2025

San Diego’s patience is wearing thin. From Paradise Hills to Clairemont, from Rancho Bernardo to Southcrest, the same refrain is echoing through backyards and block parties: “We’re getting nickel-and-dimed to death.” This time, it’s not the potholes or the parking tickets—it’s the trash fee.

A century-old promise has been tossed to the curb, and homeowners are furious. For the first time in more than a hundred years, single-family homeowners in San Diego are being billed directly for trash pickup, a service once covered by property taxes since before most residents’ grandparents were born. San Diegans are calling it betrayal. Across social media, neighborhood boards, and kitchen-table conversations, San Diegans are venting about what they see as the city’s latest money grab. “It’s not about twenty-five dollars a month,” says one resident, a homeowner in North Park. “It’s about trust. Todd Gloria told us this was about fairness, but we weren’t told the real story—that it’s about plugging budget holes they created.”

At City Hall, the mayor’s allies on the council pushed through the measure, arguing that the city’s long-standing People’s Ordinance, which guaranteed free trash collection for single-family homes, was outdated and unfair to renters who already paid private haulers. But many homeowners see through that framing.

This is yet one more post as part of the Rag’s response to a U-T commentary by Harry Bobbins about lifting the coastal 30 foot height limit.

By Geoff Page

Part of the “Argument For” Prop D as presented by the City Clerk in 1972.

“We hold the right of the public to use and reach their beach property to be greater than the right of a select few to build structures of unlimited height.”

How could anyone say it any better?

The opinion piece in the UT’s October 23 issue took the position that San Diego should do away with the coastal 30-foot height limit. The writer made several assertions, using deliberately inflammatory language, that were unsupported or wrong.

The curious question for the UT editorial board is, what qualified this writer, who has been in San Diego barely four years after a long career in New York, for this opinion piece?

The question is necessary because all the UT provided for the writer’s qualifications was “a former president of the La Jolla Community Planning Association” How do you assess the value of the writer’s opinion with only this qualification?

As it turns out, the UT did not identify the writer as an ally of Todd Gloria who appointed the writer to the city’s Mobility Board. Nor was the writer identified as a member of Bike San Diego. This provides an understanding of the writer’s bias. The city and Bike San Diego are in bed with the development industry.

Meeting for OBceans Set for Friday, Oct. 31

Members of SOHO (Save Our Heritage Organization) took their opposition to city staff’s package of “reforms” for San Diego’s Historic Resource Board — which included the decapitation of OB’s Emerging Cottage Historic District to the city-wide Community Planners Committee last night, October 28. This committee, or CPC, is the city-recognized body that has reps from every community planning group in the city.

The so-called reforms called for the elimination of OB’s Historic Cottage District as a basis for preventing the application of the city’s Complete Communities to new projects in Ocean Beach. It was this historic district that prevented The Point — 20 ADUs — to be built on Point Loma Ave last year.

And SOHO members told the Rag: “Great news — we had a unanimous rejection of Package A at last night’s CPC meeting!” It still has to go to the Planning Commission and the full City Council.

Presentation Set Up for OB Residents

By Paul Krueger

Mayor Todd Gloria and City Attorney Heather Febert have followed through on their effort to overturn an appeals court ruling that requires a thorough review of the environmental impact of high-density, high-rise housing throughout the Midway District.

They’re now asking the City Council to approve a long-shot and costly appeal of that ruling to the State Supreme Court.

This dispute broke loose on October 17. That’s when a panel of the 4th District Court of Appeal issued a unanimous, strongly-worded ruling faulting the city for preparing an incomplete analysis of the negative impacts of waiving the voter-approved 30-foot height limit and allowing intense, high-rise development throughout the Midway District.

The justices said voters were deprived of information about the impact of that development when they narrowly approved the controversial height-limit waiver.

“As Save Our Access (the group that sued to invalidate the election results) stated in one of its comment letters, ‘San Diegans deserve to know the complete picture’ of removing the 30-foot Coast Zone height limit,” the ruling states. “We agree that the California Environmental Quality Act requires as much.”

Proponents of smart, managed growth rejoiced at the ruling. They believe the City must prepare a complete analysis of the environmental impacts and share that information with voters, so they can make a fully-informed decision before voting yet again to approve or reject any effort to invalidate the 30-foot coastal height limit.

This is another post as part of the Rag’s response to a U-T commentary by Harry Bobbins about lifting the coastal 30 foot height limit.

By Frances Zimmerman

Like Union-Tribune commenter Harry Bobbins, whom I don’t know, I too have done time on the La Jolla Community Planning Association (LJCPA.)

I have lived here since 1970, first as a renter and then as a homeowner, in the flats, with no ocean-view, but near Windansea Beach. I don’t recognize Bobbins’ description of my neighborhood as “job-rich” and “well-connected.” I do know there are more and more home rentals and the beach is jammed and street parking is tough in the summer. But it’s easier off-season, and there’s no Miami-wall of high-rises between me and the water’s edge, for which I am grateful every day of my life.

LJCPA is like other “planning” groups throughout our City, comprised of a mix of well-meaning and opportunistic elected locals with zero policy clout over the physical configuration of their communities. Notably, LJCPA has been toothless to prevent villa-fication and mansion-ization of single-family neighborhoods. Smaller homes and lots regularly are sold and rebuilt bigger in every way, as new flat-roofed concrete behemoths that resemble either prisons or VRBO hotels loom over their neighbors.

By David Garrick /// San Diego Union-Tribune / October 26, 2025

San Diego may shift the second phase of the city’s Pure Water sewage recycling system to a more efficient purification method that could save billions of dollars, preventing steep jumps in local sewer and water bills.

The new method could dramatically change the size, scope and cost of the massive project’s Phase Two, which had been expected to be nearly twice as large as the nearly complete first phase.

City officials say it could let them avoid building expensive pipelines to either San Vicente Reservoir or Lake Murray from a new purification plant to be built in Mission Valley.

That change is possible because California recently loosened its purification rules to allow purified wastewater to be pumped directly into a water system, instead of being stored for months in reservoirs or underground basins.

The rule change, which took effect last fall, came just as San Diego was already re-evaluating Phase Two of Pure Water, because conservation has depressed local water demand and construction costs have soared.

Ruling will decide what, if any, limits exist to president’s use of military in the U.S.

By David G. Savage / Los Angeles Times / Oct. 25, 2025

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court is set to rule for the first time on whether the president has the power to deploy troops in American cities over the objections of local and state officials.

A decision could come at any time.

And even a one-line order siding with President Trump would send the message that he is free to use the military to carry out his orders — and in particular, in Democratic-controlled cities and states.

Trump administration lawyers filed an emergency appeal last week asking the court to reverse judges in Chicago who blocked the deployment of the National Guard there.

By Frank Gormlie, OB Rag Publisher/ Editordude

I want to extend my personal congratulations to Shane Harris, the new owner and publisher of the San Diego Monitor and Business Journal, and to warmly welcome him to the local news media community in this town.

Shane has a distinguished record of civic leadership and of advocacy for civil rights. He has been a powerful force for justice, and has spoken out for so many whose voices are too often silenced. Now he will become a force for the mission of journalism, which is to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable.