OB Rag

By David Moty from Neighbors for a Better San Diego

I’ve never seen this before: A community plan update that wipes out most of a community’s single-family zoning. That’s what’s happening to Normal Heights, Kensington, and Talmadge under the City of San Diego’s undemocratic Mid-City Communities Plan Update.

And if this plan is adopted, state law makes these changes permanent. Even a future City Council couldn’t undo it.

Even if you do not live in Mid-City, please continue reading to understand how the City is bypassing the democratic process to implement the Mayor’s upzoning plans for San Diego. Your community may be next.

The City is close to developing an official draft plan, and everything indicates that they intend to upzone nearly all of Normal Heights and Kensington-Talmadge for multi-family housing, [ to see graphs and maps go here }as shown on the following Concept Plan #2:

The near-total upzoning of single-family neighborhoods in this concept would be in addition to the 8-story buildings recently allowed on Adams Avenue, and potential 18-story buildings on El Cajon Boulevard.

No Kings protests are being organized for Saturday, March 28. Over 3,000 events are being planned across the country — 19 just here in San Diego County (so far). From Otay Mesa, downtown San Diego to Borrego Springs and Oceanside — thousands of County and city residents will be mobilizing.

Figure out the nearest one to you and RSVP to one of them here.  See official statement from NO KINGS below.

Also sign up to volunteer to be a Rag photographer and reporter for the day. Send name and contact info to Editordude, obragblog@gmail.com

Here’s the lists of No King protests in the city and county — they are all on Sat., March 28th but some have different times):

No Kings Day in City of San Diego

By J.W. August / KPBS /  March 3, 2026

For decades, Mike’s Market at the corner of 37th Street and Ocean View Boulevard, had been an open wound for the residents of the Mountain View neighborhood in Southeast San Diego.

It was well-known as a front for drug dealing and other illegal acts. But then in 2022, coming out of the pandemic, the crime and violence exploded.

The crime surge included murders, attempted murders, assaults, sales of firearms, robberies and narcotics sales, according San Diego Police Department records. The SDPD fielded thousands of calls from the immediate area around Mike’s Market in the two years prior to an investigation being launched.

The market had been under the control of the 59 Brim street gang for decades, multiple law enforcement sources and community members told KPBS. The gang was an off-shoot of the infamous Bloods.

The gang’s increasing violence was a deadly serious threat to the community and led to a significant change in how local law enforcement confronted the ongoing problem, according to documents in the case filed by San Diego District Attorney Summer Stephan’s office.

By Tanja Kropf / ExploreClairemont / Jan. 14, 2026

You’ve likely driven down Kearny Villa Road, Linda Vista Road, and Convoy Street dozens (or even hundreds) of times without giving much thought to their history. Your first thoughts of Kearny Mesa probably flit to the Convoy District and its reputation as an Asian food hub, flanked by industrial warehouses and office complexes emblematic of the area.

But the land now occupied by frontage roads, brown, boxy office buildings, and award-winning ramen restaurants used to be something much different.

Dry, dusty land covered in leathery chaparral stretched for miles. The area was called the Linda Vista mesa. It was early 1917, and the United States was on the precipice of war. By April, the nation had entered World War I, ready to battle Germany, and needed a training site.

San Diego’s civic boosters lobbied hard in pitching the Linda Vista mesa area. The San Diego Union wrote, “No city can better serve the nation than ours, where every day is a training day.”

The Army agreed. In May, war inspectors surveyed the mesa and found it ideal: flat, open, close to rail and port, with plenty of room to drill soldiers. Plus, San Diego Consolidated Gas and Electric promised to provide electricity. Its proximity to the Santa Fe Depot

By Geoff Page

The farther away a person is from the effort that created the wealth that person is responsible for, the less effort a person will expend in using it wisely. The curse of public works.

In a November 19, 2025 article, The Rag reported that people were stealing copper wire off the OB Pier amounting to several thousand dollars in recycle value. The city was notified but did not seem to care at all. It was only due to my persistence that the city finally filed a police report about the theft. The report just illustrated how little attention the city paid to information about the theft.

The police report, dated 12-8-25, stated “petty theft” with a market value of $500. It was filed a month after I notified the city of the apparent theft of wire and piping on the pier rail.

A thousand feet of copper wire was clearly worth much more than $500. But, as is now known, the cabling was the least of the theft. The thievery could be valued as high as $250,000.

More Construction, Less to Advise on, More Difficult to Be Heard

by Drew Sitton / Times of San Diego / March 16, 2026

It’s a time of shifting sands for the 42 community planning groups that are the official voice of San Diego neighborhoods when it comes to land-use decisions. This is in part due to reforms passed in 2022, but also because of dramatic changes to local and statewide housing rules and regulations.

The city’s Complete Communities program and state Senate Bill 79, passed last year, have similarly aimed to turn “discretionary projects” — those that require community review or approval from elected officials — into “ministerial projects.” The latter means that once a city staffer determines a project meets basic development rules, it’s greenlit.

Reforms recap

That leaves community groups – and the City Council too, as one planning group observer noted – with less authority, even as the City Hall changes to CPGs have proven successful at increasing participation.

“The changes have allowed for people who may not have been able to attend in person before to now be able to attend virtual meetings when a planning group provides that option,” city spokesperson Peter Kelly said in a statement.

The reforms followed a 2019 city attorney analysis that concluded the city network of advisory boards was inconsistent with the city charter.

Olivia Rosane / CommonDreams / Mar 14, 2026

In a move one administration critic described as “fragrantly unconstitutional,” Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr wrote a post on social media on Saturday that appeared to threaten the broadcast license of any media outlet that reported information concerning President Donald Trump’s war on Iran that the president did not like.

“Broadcasters that are running hoaxes and news distortions—also known as the fake news—have a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up. The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not,” Carr’s message began.

Carr also shared a screenshot of a Trump post on Truth Social complaining about “Fake News Media” coverage of five US Air Force refueling planes that were reportedly hit and damaged in an Iranian missile strike on Prince Sultan air base in Saudi Arabia.

“The[is] is the federal government telling news stations to provide favorable coverage of the war or their licenses will be pulled,” wrote Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) on social media in response to the post. “A truly extraordinary moment. We aren’t on the verge of a totalitarian takeover. WE ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF IT. Act like it.”

Backlash Against Trash Fee and Paid Parking in Balboa Park “Uniformly and Powerfully Non-Partisan”

Editordude: Below, Rag contributor Paul Krueger responds to a Politics Report from Voice of San Diego (see end) which stated:

“The anti-tax-and-fees crowd is having a moment. Conservative politicians past and present are pushing ballot measures to repeal the city’s trash fee and paid parking in Balboa Park.”

By Paul Krueger

Just a few thoughts on the intro to your Politics Report, from a perspective that you might not hear, day-to-day. (And of course, no response is expected.)

I sense that the backlash against the trash fee and paid parking in Balboa Park is uniformly and powerfully non-partisan, and in no way exclusively supported by the so-called  “anti-tax-and-fees-crowd.”

The Lincoln Club and Richard Bailey may have filed the paperwork, but did so only because polling showed huge, bipartisan/non-partisan opposition to both fees: 81 percent of those polled oppose paid parking in the Park, and 60+ percent oppose the trash fees. Those numbers far exceed Democrat Party registration in the city.

Thousands of San Diegans who never have and never will identify as “anti-tax-and-fees” support the rollbacks because they’re angry that the trash fee was a “bait and switch,” and feel the  Balboa Park parking fees are unwarranted, unfair, and very poorly planned from the get-go (and opposition solidified and expanded after the botched roll-out of kiosks and the parking permit application process).

By Robert Campbell

In early 2025, the Housing Authority (the San Diego City Council) voted to “right-size” the compensation of the San Diego Housing Commission (SDHC) CEO Lisa Jones, pushing her total compensation package toward $400,000 annually – credit to Council members von Wilpert and Campillo who were the only members to see the hypocrisy of the motion and voted no.

Meanwhile, in 2026, the city’s poorest residents are being forced to “right-size” their survival as the Section 8 waiting list which has grown to over 76,000 people has been officially closed.

The inequity is staggering. Under the Baker v. San Diego settlement, the city committed to stronger oversight and greater fairness in its housing programs because the SDHC has been concentrating poverty in Low Resource, Environmentally Burdened areas of the City.

Yet today, to bridge a massive multi-million-dollar funding deficit, the SDHC requires “work-able” families to contribute 40% of their income toward rent. If we applied this same standard of “shared sacrifice” to Jones, her personal housing budget would be $13,333 of her $33,300 salary per month, enough to finance a multimillion-dollar home in an exclusive enclave of San Diego.  The person in charge of affordable housing in San Diego, a public employee, makes more than the mayor.

NBC7 / March 16, 2026

A woman who wounded two men by stabbing them behind an Ocean Beach restaurant was sentenced Monday to four years in state prison.

Jana Halaska, 30, pleaded guilty to charges of assault with a deadly weapon for the April 13, 2025, stabbings, which occurred around 1 a.m. behind Hodad’s on Newport Avenue.

The two victims, both of whom suffered punctured lungs in the attack, were strangers to Halaska. Halaska initially faced an attempted murder charge in the case.

Prosecution sentencing papers state that just before the stabbings, one of the victims got into a physical altercation with a different woman, which culminated in that victim kicking the woman.

The victim then walked away, but witnesses heard Halaska say, “That’s not how you treat a lady,” prosecutors allege.

The Big Picture: Preservation Overreach? The Data Says Otherwise

From SOHO / March-April Newsletter

With the release of the comprehensive report by PlaceEconomics, The Urban Vitality Blueprint: A Data-Driven Analysis of Equity, Affordability, and Vitality in San Diego’s Historic Districts, San Diego now has the clearest, most comprehensive data ever produced on the real economic and social impacts of historic preservation and the evidence shows that our most important affordable housing is not what we plan to build, it is the older homes and historic neighborhoods we already have.

Read the full report online.

Protecting San Diego’s older and historic housing is the most immediate, scalable, and cost?effective affordable housing strategy we have. Keeping these homes standing is how we keep San Diego livable.

Why This Matters Now
This report arrives as San Diego’s preservation ordinance is under intense political pressure and misinformation is spreading about its impacts. The new data makes several things clear:

• Preservation protects and extends existing affordable housing.
• Historic districts are more economically mixed and diverse than many newer areas.

By Michael Smolens / The San Diego Union-Tribune / March 15, 2026 

The outrage over the city’s new parking fees at Balboa Park seemed ripe for harnessing into an effort to repeal them.

Now there is an initiative drive aimed at doing just that spearheaded by former Coronado Mayor Richard Bailey, a relatively new resident of Point Loma running for San Diego City Council.

Backers of the initiative quietly filed the paperwork on March 6, though Bailey said a higher-profile unveiling is likely when they start collecting signatures in a couple of weeks.

That move follows a more public launch for a petition drive to at least temporarily do away with new city trash collection fees, which also triggered an uproar from those who have to pay them — single-family homeowners. That effort is being led by the Lincoln Club Business League and its CEO Kevin Faulconer, the former San Diego mayor.

There’s a lot more here than two former Republican mayors (Bailey has since changed his voter registration to NPP, or No Party Preference) potentially giving a bigger budget headache to the current Democratic mayor, Todd Gloria, and the members of the all-Democratic City Council, who already face a budget shortfall of at least $100 million.