OB Rag

KPBS – City News Service / August 26, 2025

The city of San Diego recently completed a pilot program in which people transitioning out of homelessness were hired to pick contaminants out of organic waste collected in the city’s green bins, it was announced Monday.

The two-week program, which concluded last week, was intended to improve the quality of compost generated by Miramar Greenery. The “Follow The Compost Pile” project employed homeless people, working through the East County Transitional Living Center, who were tasked with removing any non- organic material brought to Miramar, including plastic bags, scrap metal, glass bottles and more.

“If we are able to implement this process moving forward, we can lower the number of contaminants at the end, improve operational efficiencies, and in turn produce better compost to put out to the community,” said Jennifer Winfrey, assistant deputy director in the Environmental Services Department, which led the pilot program.

By Wayne Tyson

This is in response to the Rag post about the large tree branch that fell in an OB children’s park.

I started a tree survey and management program in 1970 when I was in charge of Balboa and Mission Bay parks. When I got kicked upstairs it was cancelled. It seems real management is “just too much work.” I don’t know what is being done in this regard now, fifty-five years later. I do know that God and Nature (or any other handy scapegoat) are commonly applied, almost nationwide; used to paper over the facts of human-related tree failures rather than treat tree failures as crime scenes– than just cleaning up the mess and moving on. To repeat the same mistakes later– and forever? (“Near misses deserve just as much respect as patient harm events, we usually perform a root cause analysis, which in this case would include city budgeting, etc.…)

By Lili Kim / San Diego Magazine / August 25, 2025

Rows of untouched seats face a stage still smelling faintly of sawdust and fresh paint. The air is quiet, almost reverent, as if the newly constructed theater is holding its breath before the curtain rises. After years of planning, one of the remaining puzzle pieces of Arts District Liberty Station is finally finding its place: the $43.5 million Joan and Irwin Jacobs Performing Arts Center (The Joan).

Named in honor of co-benefactor Joan Jacobs, The Joan is Liberty Station’s most recent addition to its lively Arts District and the new home of the Cygnet Theatre, which spent the past two decades in Old Town. [Go to original for links]

Housed in Building 178 (formerly a 1940s-era Naval Base Exchange) at Truxtun and Roosevelt roads, the project marries history and modern design. Inside the 42,000-square-foot space is a 282-seat mainstage, flexible 150-seat black box theatre, and open-air lobby. Backstage, the full kit includes green rooms, dressing rooms, and even an orchestra space.

The Sunset Cliffs Auto Show is on Saturday, September 6, 2025, from 10:00 AM – 3:00 PM, and is at Point Loma Avenue & Sunset Cliffs Boulevard, in Ocean Beach, San Diego 92107.

Admission is free.

Rev up for a day by the coast at the annual Sunset Cliffs Auto Show! This free, family-friendly event features classic and custom cars, live music, food trucks, local vendors, raffle prizes, and a Kid Zone with Power Wheels Races, Hot Wheels Derby, and a 3-Point Competition for local youth (ZIP codes 92107–92110).

by MacKenzie Elmer/ Voice of San Diego / August 27, 2025

One often wonders while strolling atop the bluffs at Sunset Cliffs: Will today be the day the path crumbles into the sea?

Determined to enjoy the view, families and elderly couples navigate a dwindling, dusty trail along Sunset Cliffs Boulevard. Exercisers dart into the road or hurdle barriers where erosion has already consumed any remaining clifftop.

[Here’s the City’s Coastal Resiliency Masterplan]

Knowing the ocean will eventually rise and more of the cliffs will fall, the city of San Diego plans to epically change how people use this peninsula’s crown jewel.

Namely, parking lots have got to move off the cliff’s edge and onto the street, making more space for natural land and hiking trails, the city’s plan says. On Sunset Cliffs at Monaco Street, traffic would switch to one-way heading south leaving one lane for parking and a protected walkway. (A southbound direction is the preference of emergency responders, I’m told.)

That’s a lot of reshuffling. Finding parking on a Sunday before sunset is already a battle royale even with parking available on both sides of the now two-lane street. The city is also leaving open the option of adding meters to shifted street parking, according to a presentation to City Council’s Environment Committee.

Reader Supported News / Aug. 27, 2025

“The article below is satire. Andy Borowitz is an American comedian and New York Times-bestselling author who satirizes the news for his column, ‘The Borowitz Report’.”

Complicating Donald J. Trump’s plan to send troops to Chicago, on Tuesday thousands of National Guard members called in sick with bone spurs.

The White House was plunged into chaos after receiving over seven thousand notes from guardsmen’s podiatrists, sources said.

An enlarged tree branch fell in the children’s park at Ebers and Saratoga on Sunday, August 10, which could’ve seriously injured or even killed any of the 12 toddlers playing at the park that day had they been right underneath it.

A local parent immediately contacted the city — as well as the Rag about this. He had one question: “Have recent city budget cuts affected tree maintenance and surveillance at public parks?” He wrote:

This is unacceptable, this is the only child’s park in Ocean Beach. This deserves more awareness and exposure.

He wrote:

My wife and I are very shook by what we saw (we saw it fall in real time) Because they were many children, including our own, in that area minutes prior. We have many family pictures picnicking under that tree as well. It just adds to a growing sentiment we have about the city falling short in protecting its residents, including its most vulnerable—children.

By Francine Maxwell

San Diego’s parking enforcement is not equal across the city, and District 4 residents see the consequences every day.

In July, a San Diego resident filed a Get It Done report [see above] about a car parked in the wrong direction on 68th Street. The violation was clear — a 72-hour parking violation. The city’s response was just as clear:

“Due to limited resources, SDPD was not yet able to address your report. If the vehicle has moved, please Close Your Report. If the vehicle is still there, it will be addressed as SDPD resources are available.”

This response is common in District 4. But the lack of enforcement doesn’t stop at cars parked the wrong way. It invites larger problems. On Streamview, illegal dumping piles up when abandoned cars are left on the street. Missed enforcement also means more unsafe encampments, repeated Oversized Vehicle Ordinance (OVO) and Vehicle Habitation Ordinance (VHO) violations, and blocked street sweeping that leaves our neighborhoods dirty and drains unchecked.

By Staff / CBS8 / August 25, 2025

The Chollas Valley Community Planning Group is suing the City of San Diego, alleging officials broke state planning laws and violated California’s fair housing mandate by approving a 23-home subdivision on land long promised for a public park.

The lawsuit targets the city’s use of Footnote 7, a controversial zoning loophole that enabled dense housing development only in Encanto and Emerald Hills, each neighborhood historically impacted by redlining.

Residents say city leaders ignored environmental justice rules and fair housing law by fast-tracking the Klauber Project over unanimous local opposition.

The suit argues that San Diego’s City Council applied Footnote 7 to sidestep the area’s 20,000-square-foot minimum lot standards, allowing the developer to subdivide steep hillside terrain for an inward-facing subdivision.

The council approved the project 6–3 in July, despite warnings that it violates more than 40 provisions in the city’s General Plan, Community Plan, and local land use rules.

Community leaders call Footnote 7 a form of targeted upzoning, claiming city officials applied it exclusively in the poorest and most segregated areas, not in higher-resource, wealthier, and whiter communities.

August 25, 2025

Office of Mayor Todd Gloria
City of San Diego

Subject: Urgent Request to Address Parking Reform Rollout & Special Event Pricing Impacts Downtown

Dear Mayor Gloria,

I am writing to express serious concerns on behalf of the Gaslamp Quarter Association regarding the upcoming parking reform rollout scheduled for September 1, 2025, and more specifically, the Special Event Parking Rate Zone that will impose a $10/hour rate two hours before and two hours after major events at Petco Park. While I understand the need to address the City’s budget challenges, this plan fails to account for the very real and immediate consequences to downtown’s workforce, residents, and business community.

In 2025, there are 18 remaining Padre’s home games and 16 special events at Petco Park that meet the threshold to trigger this pricing structure. In 2026, we anticipate a minimum of 81 home games and up to 10 large-scale events or concerts. That means nearly one-third of the calendar year could be subject to this surge pricing, is proportionately affecting downtown.

By Blake Nelson / The San Diego Union-Tribune / August 26, 2025 

Several residents of San Diego’s designated camping areas for homeless people are suing to overhaul the program, alleging that both lots are dirty, lack quality food and remain unequipped to aid those with disabilities.

The safe sleeping sites hold hundreds of two-person tents near Balboa Park. Each location is “rodent infested” and a “fire hazard,” according to the lawsuit filed Monday in U.S. District Court. They are also host to “excessive and dangerous heat” during part of the year as well as “cold and flooding in the winter,” weather that often leaves belongings “saturated with mold.”

All in all, “living conditions in the Camps” are “untenable, seriously threatening and aggravating mental and physical health,” the filing says.

The lawsuit asks a court to force reforms on the effort.

by Drew Sitton / Times of San Diego  / Aug. 24, 2025

A controversial 453-unit housing development has been unanimously approved by the San Diego County Planning Commission in Harmony Grove, an unincorporated rural residential area in North County sandwiched between Escondido and San Marcos.

Several neighbors spoke out at the meeting over the controversial proposal because it does not include a secondary access road to escape wildfires.

They fear entrapment if a wildfire came from the direction of the single dead-end road.

Winding approval
The project, Harmony Grove Village South, had been before the commission in 2018 and later approved by the Board of Supervisors.

However, CEQA litigation from the Sierra Club, residents and other parties had delayed construction.

The board rescinded approval in 2022 after a trial court sided with residents. However, a state appellate court then found all but one aspect of the project complied with CEQA.

The same project as in 2018 is now headed back before the board for the third time,