The La Jolla Community Planning Association voted Thursday, May 3, to approve the City Council’s April 24 decision on its bylaws “” but it doesn’t plan to stop its crusade to continue revising the document even further at the city level.
Council voted not to decertify the LJCPA, despite recommendations from Jim Waring, the city’s deputy chief of economic development and land use, under the condition that the group vote to keep its current bylaws in effect with council policy deviations suspended until further approved by city staff.
Although trustees and approximately 90 resident members came to a consensus on the group’s bylaws, a few people spoke adamantly about recommending alterations to the city’s bylaws shell, which will be reviewed by council on Tuesday, May 22.
“Can the city still make additional changes to the bylaws shell?” resident Ed Ward asked trustees. “Because it calls for the majority of subcommittee members to be made up of trustees, and that is doing a disservice to this group.”
Ward, backed by trustee Orrin Gabsch, said that following such guidelines would cause LJCPA trustees to become bogged down and prevent them from doing their jobs properly.
The resident also requested that the LJCPA send council a recommendation to make such revisions. The bylaws subcommittee, a group of 18 trustees and members, was working to take action this week, according to trustee and subcommittee member Lance Peto.
After voting in January to approve a revised set of bylaws and making them effective immediately without city staff’s prior approval, the LJCPA faced two written warnings from Waring, advising the group it would be decertified if it continued to operate under bylaws not reviewed by the city.
The bylaws, however, have been the center of discussion since last June, when the LJCPA was faced with a resident lawsuit.
As part of City Council’s decision to settle the dispute, it mandated the bylaws be revised by January 2007 to allow for more public participation, which was part of the basis of the lawsuit.
The City’s Planning Department asked all planning groups in January to halt bylaw updates because of additions to the city’s master bylaws shell regarding the Brown Act, a provision that calls for proper noticing of public meetings. The LJCPA continued to revise its bylaws in accordance with the lawsuit agreement.
In other business, the LJCPA voted 10-4 to approve a recommendation for a temporary stop sign at the intersection of Via Capri and Senn Way for no longer than one year while the city finalizes plans for a traffic circle at the location.
LJCPA trustees David Abrams and Marty McGee opposed the idea because a traffic study did not warrant enough evidence for a stop sign, according to Gary Pense, the city’s senior traffic engineer who presented information to the LJCPA.
The stop sign could potentially cause more accidents than it prevents, especially if motorists chose to ignore the sign and pedestrians were attempting to cross the intersection.
“We should trust the engineers. There’s a reason why they established the method of determining what warrants stop signs,” Abrams said. “With no side traffic there, people are going to be tempted to run that stop sign.”
A motion proposed by Abrams to deny recommendation of a temporary stop sign at the intersection was rejected.
Criteria evaluated when determining whether intersections require stop signs include the volume of street traffic, the number of accidents and the number of pedestrians, according to Pense.
Via Capri resident Joe Dicks, who has headed up the effort to calm traffic in the area for the last few months, read an e-mail to the audience from Lt. Brian Ahearn of San Diego Police Department’s Northern Division.
Ahearn, who patrols La Jolla, listed six incidents of vehicles speeding or illegally passing on Via Capri and 34 accidents in the last six years. Ahearn, as well as Capt. Boyd Long of Northern Division, recommended that trustees make a decision based on information provided by Pense, according to Dicks.
“The stop sign isn’t going to cause any more accidents,” Pense said in response to questions from several trustees. “It’s going to give a calming effect until the circles can go in.”
Resident Barry Graceman, who is in favor of the stop sign, recounted an accident that occurred two years ago in front of his home on Senn Way, about two houses down from where the stop sign would be installed, when a speeding motorist smashed into a parked vehicle owned by one of his children.
The impact of the crash caused a child safety seat in the back seat of the parked vehicle to be ejected through the front windshield, Graceman said. The accident happened approximately 20 minutes after his family had arrived, he said.
A motorist going 45 miles per hour in a 25-mile-per-hour zone took the corner in front of Graceman’s home too fast and rolled his vehicle over on the resident’s front lawn, he said.
A stop sign could have prevented those accidents, according to Graceman.
La Jolla resident and Retired Senior Volunteer Patrol (RSVP) member Joseph Manno said the solution to the situation was educating the public through better signage and freestanding speed radar signs.
The intersection also needs more patrol and better enforcement, but that is not feasible for San Diego police at this time, Manno said.
“I’ve worked in the traffic division for 40 years and I know that the city can’t have sworn officers out there all the time “” there just aren’t enough,” he said.
The LJCPA meets the first Thursday of the month at 6 p.m. at the La Jolla Community Recreation Center, 615 Prospect St.
For more information, visit www.lajollacpa.org or send e-mail to [email protected].