A year after creating a special committee on cost-of-living, the San Diego City Council is shutting it down.

Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera, who chaired the committee, said he was content to let it die as the council had plenty of work to do completing policy initiatives that started there.

The committee took on some of the most high profile and divisive issues that the city considered last year, such as the successful effort to increase the minimum wage for tourism workers to $25 starting in July 2026.

But it also operated just as city officials passed new and increased fees that added to residents’ cost of living. The city’s new monthly trash fee, hikes to parking rates around town and increased charges for using city facilities all hit residents’ bottom lines this year.

Elo-Rivera stood by approving those fees with one hand while trying to combat costs with the other.

“The cuts on the table that those fee increases mitigated or avoided — library, recreation center and park hours services —  were things the community said they didn’t want cut,” he said. “The fees we established were the most fiscally responsible way to avoid those cuts.”

Elo-Rivera is still pushing two other cost-of-living initiatives that could pass in 2026. One is a joint effort with the county to ban landlords from charging hidden fees tacked on to rent. The other is a potential June ballot measure to impose a $5,000 per-bedroom tax on vacation rentals or second homes.

“I completely understand why someone would say, ‘If you want to fix the cost of living, don’t raise these other costs,’” Elo-Rivera said. “We proposed a vacation home tax for the specific purpose of having the things that city residents want and deserve, without the cost of that resource falling on the backs of middle class and working class San Diegans.”

San Diego this year also became the first city in the country to ban grocery stores from offering digital-only deals, another initiative that started at the committee.

Elo-Rivera said the fees the city passed this year “only made it more important to have urgency to address cost-of-living increases driven by corporate greed, those that are disproportionately felt by everyday people.”

Councilmembers Henry Foster III and Marni von Wilpert also served on the select committee. Elo-Rivera credited them for stepping up. 

“Everyone wants to talk about affordability, but nobody wants to own it,” he said. “There’s a tension there, but those two weren’t afraid to stand next to this issue and wrestle it.”

SAN DIEGO (FOX 5/KUSI) — A local mother is raising awareness about holiday theft after her children’s Christmas presents were stolen from their family home. 

Meanwhile, San Diego police are warning people to be wary of scammers and thieves this time of year when the department sees a rise in these types of crimes. 

“All the gifts that were hidden from my children were all gone,” said Kristin Lyons.

Plans for a Christmas surprise are now a loss for her two boys. Just before 3 a.m. Friday, a holiday grinch was caught on camera walking up the family’s University Heights driveway.

“It was a male. Jeans, gray sweatshirt, black backpack, a brown Padres hat and he came in on a bike,” said Lyons.

The alleged thief used a flashlight to search their carport before leaving with arms full. 

“It was a big bin full of like 30 or 40 gifts wrapped,” according to Lyons. She explained the gifts included a scooter, shoes, clothes, and toys for her 3 and 4-year-old sons. 

“They may not be very expensive items, they were very sentimental and personalized for the kids,” said Lyons.

Her neighborhood is located off Park Blvd. and Adams Ave. “We’ve had a lot of foot traffic, which has increased a lot of the crime as well.”

She said she and her neighbors rely on security cameras for safety, but hope police increase patrols after filing a report.

“There’s crimes of opportunity,” said SDPS Lt. Cesar Jimenez. He added that typically thieves look for easy targets. 

“They’re looking for homes that are empty. They’re also looking into windows, and if people have all their presents, they have their Christmas tree by a window with all the presents underneath, then that’s a big temptation,” said Lt. Jimenez.

He advised residents to avoid placing their Christmas tree right by a window and to make sure packages are secured and out of sight.

Meanwhile, Lyons said she wants others to learn from her experience and isn’t letting this bring her and her family down. 

She added that a neighbor found a partially wrapped gift dumped in the area and returned it to her after they saw her Nextdoor post. She’d like others who may stumble upon more gifts to also post about it on the Nextdoor app in the University Heights area, and she will keep an eye out.