One day before the Pacific Beach Community Parking District (PBCPD) was to elect new board members and continue the discussion on whether meters and permits are the answer to the parking question, the city put the brakes on ” again.
“This is the closest we’ve gotten to holistically discussing parking solutions, and then ” boom ” it’s turned off,” PBCPD Vice Chairperson Patrick Finucane said.
The shutdown is the most recent installment in the competing agendas of the parking committee and the city. The PBCPD wants to move forward on implementing a parking-management plan. The city meanwhile is putting the board on hold while it ensures that the group’s volunteers do not have any conflicts of interest.
“It is really a shame that the paid and elected representatives of our community cannot resolve their political differences to allow unpaid volunteers to help improve our community,” PBCPD Chair Mike McNeill said in a letter to fellow board members and other stakeholders.
On April 9, the day before the PBCPD’s scheduled elections, McNeill said that a representative of the city’s small business office told him that the committee was not to hold formal meetings. The decision, he said, was based on the office’s interpretation of City Attorney Michael Aguirre’s opinion letter on a conflict of interest code for the city’s six parking advisory boards.
“It’s more of a political struggle between City Council and the city attorney now,” McNeill said in a telephone interview.
The city authorized the PBCPD to develop its own parking rules and regulations in June 2005. Earlier this year, it barred the advisory board from holding elections and taking other official action while it worked out the details on the conflict of interest code.
The code came about when residents raised concerns that members of La Jolla’s parking advisory board, some of whom own parking management companies, could benefit financially from installing meters.
To comply with the state’s Political Reform Act, Aguirre said that parking board members would have to file financial disclosure statements.
Councilman Kevin Faulconer also supports disclosure, saying at a council meeting, “Some level of disclosure is important ” it just is.”
McNeill said he and other board members do not take issue with the disclosure forms. “We don’t have anything to hide,” he said.
Finucane agreed that PBCPD members do not have a problem with the forms.
The real problem, Finucane said, is the City Council.
“The lack of leadership downtown has stopped the parking committee at a key moment when the makeup of the board was about to change, when we were getting more residents on the board and about to decide on a parking plan that we’ve worked on for two years and spent $25,000 on.”
Using a $26,000 grant from the Business Improvement District, the PBCPD hired Los Angeles-based Walker Consultants in 2007 to analyze Pacific Beach’s parking situation and recommend specific solutions.
Two of those recommendations ” meters and paid parking permits ” have drawn strong opposition from residents.
“We were at a point where we could finally get input on the specifics in the plan from the community,” Finucane said. “I really had hoped we’d come up with a plan that everybody liked and agreed on and could move forward with.”
McNeill is optimistic that the PBCPD will eventually move forward with a parking plan. He thinks the committee will have to wait, though, until after the mayoral election, when City Council is less reluctant to address on parking and other thorny issues.
The City Council ultimately has to approve whatever plan the PBCPD recommends.
“If we don’t have support from City Council or the mayor’s office, there’s no point in us continuing and wasting our time,” McNeill said.