OB Rag

By Caryn Blanton

Founded in October 2016, Pacific Beach Street Guardians (PBSG) is a non-profit (501c3) that functions as a social enterprise. Neighbors who are experiencing homelessness are hired to handle many different tasks, including:

• Care for the streets, sidewalks, alleys, parking lots and beaches of our community
• Perform janitorial/custodial work for local businesses, organizations, and residents
• Provide event services (set up/take down and trash/recycling)

As a social enterprise, PBSG offers much more than a job – Team Members are given the opportunity to gain pride, purpose, stability, dignity, a path to self-sufficiency and hope.

From website:

AWOL Productions sponsored by Hodad’s would like to put on a local surf competition which will be located down at the Ocean Beach Pier on February 3, 2018 at 7am.

We have organized and put on skate competitions in Ocean Beach for the past 5 years and they have become a huge success. Seeing as Ocean Beach is a huge surfing and skateboarding community we would like to bring the community together with a local surf competition.

The County’s water quality program has issued a stunning number of advisories for Ocean Beach and Point Loma.

Count them – there’s five! And all because “Bacteria levels may exceed health standards,” and people are cautioned to “Avoid water contact in the advisory area.”

Here they are, verbatim:

Ocean Beach Area

One of the longest open-homicide cases involving the Peninsula can hopefully come to a close soon. The husband of Elizabeth Sullivan, a Navy mom who went missing in October 2014 and whose body was found 2 years later, has been arrested as the chief suspect in her murder.

On Wednesday, Jan. 31, police arrested her husband, Matthew Sullivan, 32, outside his home in Wyoming, Delaware, San Diego police announced. Formerly in the Navy, Sullivan was charged with her murder and jailed; he’ll be returned to San Diego after an extradition hearing.

by Joaquin Antique

January has been a month of medical marijuana madness for me and many others. I made my first purchase of recreational cannabis on January 4th, just a few days after it became legal in our fine state. It was a glorious day.

I had been waiting for legalization for 50 years and it finally came! Although I’ve had a physician’s recommendation to use medical marijuana for several years, it was cool to experience being a recreational buyer even if it limited some of my choices of cannabis products and was a little more expensive than what a medical patient pays. .

Mayor Kevin Faulconer announced today that Assistant Chief David Nisleit of the San Diego Police Department has been chosen as the new police chief for the city.

Nisleit has worked for three decades for the San Diego Police Department.

The City Council must confirm the appointment.

There are tough challenges and many rewards to serving as a volunteer on the Ocean Beach Planning Board. Reviewing projects and making recommendations to the City carries an important responsibility – but it also represents the crucial role that community members play in the arena of land-use and urban planning issues and insights.

Every year the OB Planning Board holds an election for seats on its 14-member Board of volunteers. This year, the election will be held on Wednesday, March 7th, and voting will take place inside the OB Recreation Center, from 4 to 6pm. Any tenant, resident, property owner or business owner in Ocean Beach can run as a candidate and/or take part in the election itself, as long as

By Murtaza Baxamusa / SanDiegoUrbDeZine Jan. 23, 2018

There isn’t enough affordable housing being built in the city of San Diego. Lenders and banks aren’t lending as much, apartment owners aren’t caring, and builders aren’t building as much since it’s not as remunerative to build for income-constrained households.

This worsens the disconnect between the economics of the housing stock and the demographics of the families it’s meant to serve, as shown by a recent Harvard University study on apartments. In San Diego, less than 10 percent of the rental housing stock is affordable*. With new federal tax policies, things could get worse.

Deadline Is March 1st

By Don Sevrens

Want to make a difference in the Peninsula community?

The candidate filing period has opened for five of the 15 seats on the Peninsula Community Planning Board. The deadline for filing is Thursday March 1. The election itself will be Thursday March 15 from 4 to 8 p.m. in the Point Loma Branch Library.

The planning board is an elected advisory body that has first say on important projects as well as influencing the City on important planning concepts.

By Bianca Bruno / Courthouse News / January 29, 2018

Standing in front of the picturesque San Diego harbor Monday at Spanish Landing in Point Loma, city council members called on the federal government to remove the eighth largest U.S. city from its list of potential offshore drilling sites, saying it will negatively impact military operations and tourism.

Councilwomen Lorie Zapf and Barbara Bry were joined by Councilman David Alvarez in calling for San Diego’s coastal waters to be protected from offshore oil drilling after the region made the Jan. 4 list of potential sites scoped out by the U.S. Department of the Interior.

Being portrayed negatively in the international spotlight is never good, as the city of El Cajon recently found out. The east county city found international attention after it banned feeding the homeless in parks, and after about a dozen homeless advocates were arrested, cited and released for trying to feed homeless people in a local El Cajon park.

The city lifted the temporary order on Tuesday, January 23rd. They had enacted the ban – they claimed – as a safety measure after the San Diego County Board of Supervisors declared the region’s growing hepatitis A outbreak a public health emergency. The same day, last Tuesday, the County ended the health emergency over Hep A.

The other bombshell that San Diego Reader writer Delinda Lombardo dropped in her Jan. 25th article – besides Nati’s Mexican Restaurant being replaced by Pop Pies Co. – was the change in ownership of the building Nati’s is currently in. The incoming Pop Pie partners still need to finalize their lease with the new owner. Plus other businesses in the building have not been told what to expect.

Lombardo reported that it appears that the structure is being taken over by controversial developer Michael Donovan of SDPB Holdings, LLC. . Donovan is controversial because of his conflicts with the city as well as with neighbors a year ago next to a Mission Hills project he was building, as well as conflicts with neighbors against a Golden Hill / South Park development of his a few years back.