A community member-led effort for La Jolla to become its own city is moving on to the next step after volunteers collected thousands of signatures required to apply for a financial feasibility study.
The Association for the City of La Jolla canvassed for six months in an attempt to gather the inked support of at least 25% of registered voters in the 92037 ZIP code. Now that the hurdle has been crossed, it plans to apply for a financial analysis through a state-backed organization called Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO) to discover if the split would work for both La Jolla and San Diego.
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“I don’t think the city of San Diego really treasures La Jolla like they should do,” Andrew Perry, an art gallery owner in La Jolla who is in support of the neighborhood’s independence, told NBC 7. “I’m hoping that if we can form our own city, then we can spend the money where it needs to be spent.”
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Perry pointed to a lack of city spending when it comes to infrastructure in the neighborhood, which has some cracked, bumpy roads and damaged pathways and barriers along the beach boardwalk in La Jolla Shores. “It doesn’t really look like a world-class city,” he added, despite it being a destination where a lot of tourism money is brought in.
San Diego City Council President Joe LaCava, who both lives in La Jolla and represents it as part of District 1, has chosen to remain relatively neutral on the issue. In a news conference on Dec. 11, the day after being re-elected and chosen as council president, he was asked for his thoughts on the effort.
“It will go through a long process through LAFCO to understand whether the boundary is drawn appropriately and then there will be a process going forward,” LaCava said. “I will simply point to the fact that in the state of California, only one community has successfully detached from another city, and that was Coronado in the 1800s. That speaks to the challenge.”
However difficult it may be, LaCava added, it doesn’t mean it's impossible. There have been other efforts to get this done in the past few decades, but supporters do not recall it ever making it this far.
“This is probably more than anywhere — other than maybe the harbor and downtown — where you see tourists,” Wyatt Johnson, a resident of San Diego’s College Area, told NBC 7. “I don’t see what [San Diego] would get from separating.”
Johnson explained that he is a frequent visitor to the La Jolla neighborhood and would be disappointed to see it become its own city, especially because he feels money spent there is still going toward helping other areas like where he lives.
“When we come here, we still feel like we’re in San Diego," Johnson said. "It would definitely feel a little different if it was its own thing.”
According to the Association for the City of La Jolla’s website, it expects the LAFCO study to reveal that La Jolla’s independence would leave a hole in San Diego’s income, which would not allow the neighborhood to separate because there needs to be “net-neutrality.” To remedy this, the organization anticipates the new city would need to make payments to San Diego to achieve a balance.
“The alternative would be maybe this effort will persuade the mayor to spend a little bit of money on La Jolla,” Perry said. “Maybe that will be the outcome.”
While future steps will depend on the result of the LAFCO research, voters in the city of San Diego, including within La Jolla, would have the opportunity to vote on the neighborhood’s desire to become a city. The majority of voters would need to support the effort for it to happen.
