OK, I admit it. I’m suffering from protest fatigue. How is it possible that there are so many things to protest, including on the local level?
I’m a lifelong Democrat and I voted for these idiots, folks. Frankly, I expected better. I’ve covered my political leanings in this column before, so I will just mention that I am married to a lifelong Republican, although we have both voted across party lines on many occasions.
Olof still hopes the Republican Party will return to what he refers to as its former glory. And I can never help querying, “Did it actually have any?” There’s a lot of spirited debate in our household.
Ironically, Olof and I have never been more politically aligned than in recent years. One of the (many) reasons is that we’re both totally fed up with the parties we have supported all our lives.
Locally, the Democratic leadership, in my view, seems to be making one bad decision after another. Nationally, they’ve completely evaporated.
The Republicans? When even my Republican husband wants to vote every last one of the Republican incumbents out of office, they should be concerned.
Are we turning into irascible curmudgeons? Probably. But we don’t seem to be alone.
I will be the first to say that our local leadership isn’t responsible for all the ills that seem to be befalling this city. But I did have expectations that they would be working hard to make sure the citizenry didn’t have to fight them.
Why are we having to protest a 22-story, utterly useless building proposed for Turquoise Street in Pacific Beach that has, in my view, not a single redeeming feature, is blatantly in violation of 1972’s Proposition D 30-foot coastal height limit and will bankrupt the small, heavily utilized neighborhood businesses on that street. Including 139 “market rate” apartments/hotel rooms does not provide “affordable housing.”
Ditto the Chalcifica project in Pacific Beach, which reportedly includes up to 136 accessory dwelling units of 450 square feet each that will be marketed at $3,000 a month each. Not affordable. Livable only by munchkins. Woefully lacking in parking. And there is nothing “accessory” about this. It’s an apartment building. Once again, why is the citizenry having to fight this idiocy?
Now let’s talk parking. I’ve written about this before, but I wish every single person on the City Council and their families were required to use only public transit for an entire month. That means going to work, getting the kids to school and sports practices, making medical appointments on time, etc., etc.
I’m a huge fan of public transit (we never had a car when we lived in Sweden), but this city isn’t set up for it.
Not requiring parking on new builds is ridiculous. Taking out parking to put in bike lanes that are extremely underutilized was senseless. Proposing expensive paid parking in Balboa Park would remove a long-cherished free outing for local families.
Meanwhile, the new “daylighting” law that went into effect Jan. 1 prohibits parking within 20 feet of an intersection with the aim of boosting visibility for drivers, pedestrians and cyclists. This state mandate applies even if the curb is not marked or in the absence of “No parking” signs. The tickets are a whopping $117.
The law de facto removed hundreds of parking places in hard-to-park areas. Only 400 of the city’s affected 16,000 intersections have had the curbs painted red. Which is how the city managed to issue 6,133 tickets and reportedly generate over $660,000 in revenue just between March 1 (when the new law became enforced) and the end of May.
The city, of course, is gleeful at this fortuitous windfall, which is a testament to how truly unclear the law is and how difficult it is on many blocks to estimate the 20 feet. Meanwhile, some 6,133 people returned to their cars from an eight-hour work shift or a nice lunch to find themselves $117 poorer.
I recently watched the meter guy ticket all four vehicles parked closest to the intersection at the other end of my block, an area where parking is at a premium both for residents and nearby businesses. The city made $468 in about 10 minutes.
This spring, the city decided to assess 226,000 single-family homeowners with trash fees in a plan so convoluted it would make your head explode. Despite a serious grassroots effort to fight this, the protest mechanism was doomed to failure from the start, on multiple levels.
Now we’re fighting a proposed whopping 62% increase to water rates and 31% increase to sewer rates over the next four years. Another grassroots effort seems to be forming. But the protest form on the back of the flier sent to single-family homeowners clearly states “This form may be used to submit protests only, not objections.”
I don’t even know what that means, other than this protest is just as doomed as the one about the trash fees.
Just when you think the city powers that be can’t make any worse decisions, remember that back in 2023, the city proposed a law that would shift a backlog of 37,000 sidewalk repairs (and the estimated $185 million to fix them) onto San Diego property owners.
Are we seeing a pattern here? This seems to be the city’s new motto toward the citizenry (with apologies to Marie Antoinette): “Let them eat it.”
Homelessness? OK, this is one I’m glad I don’t have to personally solve. I get that it’s a huge and complicated problem, but we just seem to keep spinning our wheels on any solutions. It seems to lead the local news almost every single night, like a repetition of the movie “Groundhog Day.”
I went to college in the late 1960s, when Vietnam War protests were constant, and I remember it well. I went to a lot of those protests. But we were all protesting the same thing.
Lately, it seems like there’s the Protest of the Day, over many different things. I’m really glad people are stepping up, since the folks we elected aren’t doing so. There are many truly important issues to be standing up for right now.
I just wish that with all that is going on nationally and internationally that we didn’t have to be fighting genuinely bad (in my view) decisions from our local government — decisions that will not only not solve problems (affordable housing, homelessness) but, in the case of the “Turquoise Tower,” start a domino effect of high-rise buildings that will negatively impact the quality of life for people who live here and permanently change the character of the area.
Even when the concept isn’t bad (the daylighting law), implementation seems universally, profoundly abysmal.
Come on, City Council. Come on, Mayor Gloria. You know you can do better.
Inga’s looks at life appear regularly in the La Jolla Light. Reach her at inga47@san.rr.com. ♦