The Group Chat

The San Diego Police Department acquired three more drones and two pepper ball launchers in 2025, adding to its already formidable arsenal of military equipment. A 2021 state law requires law enforcement agencies to report on their purchase of military equipment to their local governing body, which has to review and approve it. Law... Read more

I had a great time meeting with Oceanside residents, including someone running for City Council, at Vigilante Coffee on Wednesday. We talked about the upcoming sales tax on the city’s ballot, politics, parks and other secrets that you’ll see in a story soon. In case you haven’t heard, I go to a different coffee shop in North County on the... Read more

I sat in on a hearing about a housing development encroaching on Kumeyaay burial grounds, an issue my colleague Katie Futterman covered some weeks ago.  Did you know that under AB 52, California law deems tribal historic preservation officers as experts in the field of identifying cultural resources for the state’s environmental review... Read more

One theme that came up in my recent reporting on Balboa Park was that this is a crucial time in the park’s history. A constrained city budget, maintenance and infrastructure repair backlog approaching $1 billion – the next few years will determine how the beloved park evolves in the coming decades. A key part of that process gets underway... Read more

Otay Mesa Nestor is in the early stages of updating its community plan again. For those who aren’t familiar: community plans help shape the direction of how San Diego city officials design and develop a geographic area. That can look like guiding how many homes a community should build to how many shops or parks it should have, for example.... Read more

What do you think about your neighborhood and your local news experience? San Diego State University journalism professor Amy Schmitz Weiss is researching how locals identify their neighborhoods and get civic information and local news — and she wants your help. Her survey at mappingsandiego.com takes less than 15 minutes and is meant to give... Read more

ATTN RENTERS: Did you know paying “first, last and security” to move into a new apartment is a thing of the past? Most landlords can only charge an equivalent of two months’ rent to move in. A law went into effect two years ago that limits the security deposit to one months’ rent for most tenants. Property owners with no more than four units... Read more

There was a big sigh of relief, in more ways than one, when Mayor Todd Gloria and two councilmembers announced recently that 13 closed bathrooms at Mission Bay Park would reopen.  The closures were the cuts in the Parks and Rec budget that drew the most ire. Here are some others that haven’t gotten as much attention. Budget savings in... Read more

Ask the kids. A group chat is a great way for people to stay in touch in real time, sharing interests, information and more memes than Leonardo DiCaprio can point a finger at. Community connection is at the core of what makes us inewsource. So we wanted to bring some old-school Twitter energy to our platform and create a space where you, too,... Read more