OB Rag

By Michael Winn

We need to elect a Point Loma Town Council that appropriately reflects demographics on the Peninsula, and charge it with promulgating a vision to preserve and restore quality of life on the Peninsula.

The Emerson project and San Diego airport (SAN) flight path expansions show us what we should expect from traditional back-door politics and ad hoc citizen protests.

Kellogg Beach shows us that unless we organize better, this will continue to plague our community because we must organize unpaid labor for each new proposal, while developers can budget it.

Our Peninsula Community Planning Board carries little political weight, has no authority and is limited in scope.

We “will overwhelm Washington…and we will bury the White House post office in pink slips, all informing the president that he’s fired!”

By Nadia Prupis / Common Dreams

A new movement is aiming to mail at least 1 million postcards to President Donald Trump on Wednesday, March 15—historically dubbed “the Ides of March” and known as the day Julius Caesar was assassinated—to show “the man, the media, and the politicians how vast our numbers are…to make it irrefutable that the president’s claim of wide support is a farce.”

The Project Review Committee, a sub-committee of the Ocean Beach Planning Board, has one project before it at its upcoming meeting on Wednesday, March 15th.

It’s a permit application to build a 918 square foot residence over a garage at 4925 Saratoga Avenue.

Senators Feinstein and Harris Asked to Host Town Halls in San Diego – Duncan Hunter to Be Called Out on Ethics Violations

From Indivisible San Diego Media Team:

SAN DIEGO – Following a successful weekend mobilizing thousands of members at four congressional town halls, San Diego Indivisible will rally this week to stop the TrumpCare legislation proposed by Republicans to replace the Affordable Care Act and to call out Rep. Duncan Hunter for his ethics violations. They will also ask California’s two U.S. senators to hold town halls in San Diego during the April recess.

Taken by South OB Girl, around noon on Friday, March 10th.

By Jim Miller

The last time I saw Hunter S. Thompson speak before he died, he threw out a good line about how in the post-AIDS world, the New Right began to flourish because people were afraid to touch each other.

And how Thompson mused, can we ever expect people to stand together in any other way when they are afraid to do that?

Now, years later, what seemed like a bit of insightful hyperbole appears to be backed up by social research.

I am afraid. And I am not the only one.

By Anonymous Is a Woman / San Diego Free Press

A handful of Democratic women saw each other at the ADEM elections for the first time since the holidays. For some, it’s the first time they had come out for an event since the election. For others, this was their third event that weekend.

After a few minutes of small talk and “Holy-crap-the-world-is-ending” Trump commentary, the conversation becomes a bit more hushed when one of the women asked, “So what do you think about this Mickey Kasparian situation?”

Voices automatically lower.

Restaurant Review

Pepe’s Italian Restaurant
1830 Sunset Cliffs Blvd.
San Diego, CA 92107
619-221-1926
www.pepesitalian.com

It’s been many years since I ate at “Pepe’s.” I do not even think that I was doing restaurant reviews at that time, and I have been doing reviews for almost 8 years. When Irene called and suggested that we get together for lunch I knew just where to go. And I am certainly glad that we went there.

We were early; just a little bit past 11:00am, and there was one other diner in the restaurant. We were greeted by “Ed/Pepe” with a smile and exuberance that had us feeling good before we ever sat down.

San Diego City lifeguards and their union are seriously considering getting out from under the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department.

The lifeguard union leader claims that recent changes in dispatching procedures initiated by the new fire chief, Brian Fennessy, now route all water-related 911 calls to the fire department instead of directly to lifeguards- who have historically made all water rescues.

This is leading to longer response times and a waste of resources, says Sgt Ed Harris of the lifeguard union.

In a recent Op-Ed piece in the OB Rag, Harris wrote:

“We cannot afford to have the Fire Department divert our trainers, personnel and budget. … Teaching Fire Fighters how to swim and perform river rescue is not acceptable.”

This twenty dollar bill came our way and we just had to share it.

By Murtaza Baxamusa / UrbDeZine

Having invested a billion and a half dollars of public funds in downtown redevelopment, it is worth asking if it helped or hindered in solving the affordable housing crisis that San Diego faces.

From the catalytic start of downtown’s boom with the construction of the ballpark to the unceremonious demise of tax increment financing under Governor Brown, there has been a lot of change.

Census data shows that from 2000 to 2015, downtown’s housing stock doubled. About half of downtown’s current stock of 25 thousand housing units has been built during this time frame. About 5 thousand renter-occupied housing units were added to the stock. Of the total housing stock almost 18 percent (over 4 thousand units) are vacant, compared to 9 percent vacancy back in 2000. This indicates a greater share of investor-owned units or second homes that are not occupied.

In terms of affordability, downtown is at a tipping point.