I read with great interest the arguments for and against parking meters in La Jolla (Letters to the editor, Village News, Aug. 9, 16, 23 and 30, page 8). As I understand the arguments, those against parking meters believe that their presence will destroy the current “village atmosphere.”
Without taking a position for or against parking meters, I am concerned that there is a much greater problem confronting La Jolla’s “village atmosphere,” namely the tidal wave of street people hitting our village every day. Indeed, I am confounded that there is not the angst expressed about their growing numbers that we read about the parking meters issue. The greatest challenges to our village atmosphere is not parking meters but the fact that:
1. Street people are camping out all day on the benches on Girard and Prospect and throwing their trash on the pavement next to “their” benches.
2. Street people are panhandling for money on La Jolla Parkway and the major thoroughfares of the Village and the Shores. Watch the guy who fakes a limp and wears a knee brace over his trousers until he leaves his post on the Parkway. How many people do you know who wear a knee brace over their trousers? Watch the guy in the electric wheelchair who can walk as well as anyone when he is not panhandling.
3. Street people are urinating in the bushes in plain sight.
4. Street people are drinking alcoholic beverages by the redemption center, in the park area where Torrey Pines Road intersects Girard, and on the benches on Silverado between Fay and Girard in blatant disregard for the laws prohibiting such conduct.
5. Street people are pushing Vons and Longs Drugs shopping carts and then abandoning them on the sidewalks, in the alleys, and in front of businesses full of trash.
6. Vons and Longs Drugs are tolerating such use of their shopping carts by the street people.
7. Vons and Longs Drugs are allowing the street people to loiter and aggressively solicit money in front of their businesses.
These people are not homeless! If you have any doubt about their status, go to the bus stop on Kline between Girard and Herschel in the late afternoon and watch the street people get on the buses with their bus passes hanging around their necks, exhausted after a difficult day defiling our streets. Or, in the morning go to La Jolla Parkway, where the street people work the incoming and outgoing traffic, i.e. by the gas station, and see them being dropped off by a van and then picked up by the same van in the late afternoon.
These people are ruining our village atmosphere now, a lot more than a few parking meters.
What do the tourists, who our merchants so heavily rely on, tell their friends about the village atmosphere of La Jolla when they go home?
“¢ It is blighted with street people.
“¢ You can’t sit on a bench in La Jolla because the street people have taken up residence on them.
“¢ You can’t walk down the streets of La Jolla to shop without being confronted by aggressive, pan-handling street people.
“¢ There are abandoned shopping carts full of trash everywhere.
“¢ The street people will curse at you if you don’t give them money.
“¢ There are parking meters in La Jolla.
“¢ The situation with the street people is so bad in La Jolla that I would never go back to La Jolla.
The La Jolla Town Council has been unwilling to do anything about this burgeoning issue.
After two information seminars, they have moved on to the bigger issue of parking meters. This is a waste of resources. If we don’t solve the street people problem now, the issue of parking meters will be moot. No one will be willing to come to La Jolla because of the blight of the street people.
” Edward J. Carnot, attorney at law, is a La Jolla resident.