OB Rag

by Jim Newton / Cal-Matters / September 4, 2025

At least two things are true about SB 79, a bill by state Sen. Scott Wiener that would clear the way for construction of apartment buildings near transit stops in California, most pointedly including Los Angeles: It’s a bad idea, and Los Angeles has only itself to blame for it.

The fact that Wiener’s approach is both wrongheaded and entirely understandable has led to some strange reactions in California’s largest city, where unusual bedfellows have found themselves together either supporting or opposing it. A bare majority of a city council normally divided between liberals and democratic socialists came together to formally oppose the bill, the eight no votes drawing from both political camps. Supporters similarly crossed ideological lines.

Mayor Karen Bass also opposed Wiener’s bill, positing a brief statement. “While I support the intent to accelerate housing development statewide,” she said, “as written, this bill risks unintended consequences for LA.”

She was joined by her once and possibly future opponent, developer Rick Caruso, who echoed Bass’ ambivalence as well as her conclusion.

“The state is right to encourage more housing,” he said, “but it must be done with the full engagement and support of local officials and residents.”

By Kate Callen 

Why do San Diego’s political leaders keep pushing transit-oriented development in a city with a hopelessly inadequate transit system?

That question was at the heart of my August 29 post about commuting by bus and trolley around San Diego. Our YIMBY government claims that more people will use transit if they live closer to it. Judging by the responses to my post, proximity won’t make a bit of difference.

Simply put, the Metropolitan Transit System (MTS) does not get people where they need to go when they need to be there. The Blue, Orange and Green trolley lines are efficient, but they are linear routes with narrow reach. Most of the city must depend on a sprawl of 97 bus lines that are neither timely nor user-friendly.

For a full picture of the hardships of transit commuting, and using the excellent online MTS Trip Planner, let’s map out how the residents of two “Complete Communities” housing projects would take buses and trolleys to regional employment centers for jobs that start at 8:30 a.m.

In Point Loma, a four-story, 56-unit apartment building is planned at the busy intersection of Rosecrans and Talbot Streets. In Lomita, 37 ADU units are slated for construction at 819 Jacumba Street. Neither project will have on-site parking for residents. Both are in congested neighborhoods where street parking is already scarce.

We’ll start by commuting from Rosecrans and Talbot to Qualcomm in Sorrento Valley. You would leave at 7:00, walk to Rosecrans and Canon to catch the #28 bus to the Old Town Transit Center, take the Coaster to the Sorrento Valley station, then take the 472 Coaster connection bus to Qualcomm Building Q.

State Assembly: COMPLETE FORM HERE

State Senate: COMPLETE FORM HERE

WATCH HERE for Statewide rallies recap

To:  San Diego City Council Members and Mayor

From:  Coastal Caretakers /Lynne Miller

Item 331: Coastal Resilience Master Plan and Programmatic Environmental Impact Report.  (SEPT 9, 2025)

This Agenda has been on your calendar and cancelled several times.  Now it is the last item on the agenda.  People who live in the Ocean Beach, Sunset Cliffs, and Point Loma area have tried unsuccessfully to communicate with the ‘board’ and designers of this plan.  Requests to set up a new meeting to answer local concerns have been denied.  This behavior is consistent with unbridled building that is justified by the high-density affordable housing philosophy and new laws.

We are asking City Council Members and Staff, and the Mayor, to listen to and respond to the concerns of local neighborhoods and San Diego residents.  San Diego citizens have voiced their concerns about mandated changes through meetings, emails, letters, slideshow presentations, bound documents, appeals, and protests. Private organizations around the city are combining forces to challenge the city’s power structure, which has stripped local San Diegans of their rights. The ministerial law is clearly the government’s strategy to exclude people from making decisions about their immediate community.  Years of city planning have been systematically destroyed.  New laws provide developers with a permitting process that streamlines building and ensures a profit.

By Richard Bailey

How much will the new paid parking at Balboa Park, the Zoo, and the increased meters rates actually generate for the City? More importantly, will it even make a dent in the city’s structural deficit?

San Diego just raised parking rates on two fronts: (1) higher rates and longer hours at existing meters including $10/hour “special event” pricing around Petco Park, and (2) the start of paid parking in Balboa Park, including the zoo lot under a pending lease amendment.

City budget documents and the Independent Budget Analyst (IBA) say the meter changes are expected to add $18.4 million in FY26 (about $9.6M from doubling the base rate, $6.3M from special-event pricing, and $2.6M from extended hours/Sundays). The mayor’s FY26 budget message also plugs about $11.0 million more from launching paid parking in Balboa Park.

Together, that’s $29.4 million in new revenue for FY26.

By Paul Krueger / Special to the OB Rag

The more we learn about the new parking fees at downtown meters and in and around Balboa Park, the angrier we get.

It’s bad enough that Mayor Todd Gloria is balancing the city budget on the backs of families and working people. But it’s worse that the Mayor deliberately distorts how those new revenues will be spent.

And his exploitation of the public’s love of Balboa Park is especially craven.

In a July 28th news release the Mayor misleadingly states that parking revenue “will go far toward much-needed upgrades to further beautify and preserve the park.” Those words created the false impression that revenue from new parking fees in and around the Park would fund deferred Park improvements over and above what’s already allocated in the general fund.

That’s patently false. But the Mayor’s purposely misleading comments were amplified by local reporters whose coverage of the Mayor is consistently uncritical.

Coastal Resiliency Master Plan
SEPTEMBER 9TH AGENDA ITEM
SAN DIEGO CITY COUNCIL

Pop Quiz?  “What do you do if the City plans a big change in your neighborhood?”
Answer: Follow the instructions below

While we have been researching, learning, teaching, and agonizing over the changing landscape in our beach community, our city has been planning! Many of us attended the CRMP meetings, one in person, one virtual. Many times the Coastal Resiliency Master Plan, CRMP, has been served up as an item on the City Council agenda, only to be cancelled without explanation.  On Sept 9th the San Diego City Council lists it as the last item on a heavy agenda day.  Just try to talk to someone about the plan, and your concerns.  Good Luck.

I encourage you all to write and submit your concerns.  You could read the 91 page plan that was released recently. It is long and tedious, like all of the plans.  Are there 50 citywide plans?  I heard there are!  The committee that put together this plan has convinced organizations to support it, partially because it is a real issue that needs a good action plan. I am going to submit a letter to voice my concerns and I will try to attend the meeting.

by Geoffrey Hueter / Times of San Diego / Sept. 6, 2025

Despite recent revisions, Senate Bill 79 should not be approved without further meaningful changes.

SB 79 is a solution in search of a problem. Its goal is supposedly to enable transit-oriented development, but most California cities — especially those with significant transit investments — have already zoned for this.

In addition to adding housing capacity through general plan and community plan updates, regional transportation planning agencies and municipalities, including SANDAG and cities throughout the San Diego region, have maximized their transit investments by creating and funding specific plans for transit-oriented development — by increasing densities, eliminating parking, and streamlining permitting.

That these cities have housing plans that have been certified by the California Department of Housing and Community Development is proof that cities have already “made it legal to build housing near transit” as proponents of the bill are fond of saying.

SB 79 is too expansive to be transit-oriented. The bill’s one-half and one-quarter mile tiers should be defined by walking distance, not straight line (“as the crow flies”) distance,

By David Garrick / San Diego Union-Tribune / September 7, 2025

A new growth blueprint for Clairemont — the oldest and largest of San Diego’s suburban neighborhoods — calls for 17,000 new homes, mostly in new mixed-use villages or along a trolley line.

The blueprint, which is slated for City Council approval before the end of the year, aims mostly to preserve Clairemont’s suburban character by concentrating the new housing in existing commercial areas.

Clairemont’s sprawling shopping plazas would be transformed into densely built mixed-use villages with high-rise housing above the shops. The area’s neighborhoods of single-family homes would remain mostly untouched.

One of the most important networks of San Diego residents to emerge over the last 6 months is holding its general public monthly meeting tomorrow, Saturday, September 6. It’s the San Diego Community Coalition – a network of over two dozen communities and their leaders and activists.

As they state on their facebook page:

A network of San Diego community activists and leaders from 25 neighborhoods riled up about over-development and its consequences plus the disrespect shown to residents by City Hall.

The Coalition is having its meeting in Clairemont, at the Northminister Presbyterian Church at 4324 Clairemont Mesa Blvd (92117) and it starts at 10am and runs to noon.

Cutting its teeth on pushing the City Council to enact reforms to the disastrous so-called Bonus ADU program, the Coalition works to share knowledge, give support to and help to coordinate all the myriad different neighborhood groups that have formed recently explicitly to push back on City Hall’s housing policies.

There is so much going on right now across the city’s neighborhoods, that one needs a program to keep track of everything.

For example, check all these out:

Here’s the very latest from Washington, DC, the nation’s capital — your capital. There’s a brand new lawsuit from DC officials that challenges Trump’s use of the National Guard as a “military occupation.” A Federal Judge in D.C. said U.S. Atty. Jeanine Pirro’s office have tarnished its reputation with how they are handling the deluge of hundreds of cases. And leaders in the House and Senate are not planning to hold votes to extend President Donald Trump’s temporary control of D.C. police before it expires next week. Here’s details ….

DC lawsuit challenges Trump’s National Guard deployment as a forced ‘military occupation’

The District of Columbia on Thursday [Sept.4] challenged President Donald Trump’s use of the National Guard in Washington, asking a federal court to intervene even as he plans to send troops to other cities in the name of driving down crime. Brian Schwalb, the district’s elected attorney general, said in a lawsuit that the deployment, which now involves more than 1,000 troops, is an illegal use of the military for domestic law enforcement.

“No American jurisdiction should be involuntarily subjected to military occupation,” Schwalb wrote.

The White House said deploying the Guard to protect federal assets and assist law enforcement is within Trump’s authority as president. “This lawsuit is nothing more than another attempt — at the detriment of D.C. residents and visitors — to undermine the President’s highly successful operations to stop violent crime in D.C.,” spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said.