The Nov. 13 La Jolla Community Parking Advisory Board meeting ended abruptly when firefighters stormed into a room at the Hotel Parisi after receiving a call of overcrowding, said a dispatcher with the San Diego Fire Rescue Department.
In anticipation of exceeding legal limit of occupants, Peter Wegener, owner of the hotel and a parking board member, hired security guards to stop the public from entering into a room at the hotel where the board holds its meetings, keeping much of the public in the adjacent hallway.
While some agenda items were discussed and members of the public spoke, many people in the hallway continued to shout that they couldn’t hear or that the meeting was illegal. Other people seated in the audience shouted that because the board couldn’t fulfill the seating needs of the people, they weren’t in compliance with the Brown Act, which governs meeting notification procedure.
Finally, firefighters from the San Diego Fire Rescue Department rushed in to a cheering audience. A captain from engine 13 with the SDFRD said there were more than 150 people in an area meant to occupy 88. They asked people to exit the building immediately.
But before the meeting broke, some items were put forth, including filling the vacant seat on the parking board. Celeste Johnson, who had filed a petition to run for the seat, pulled it for personal reasons, said Tiffany Sherer, executive director of Promote La Jolla.
The nomination process for the vacant business-at-large seat on the parking board has been reopened for 30 days, and any business owner inside the boundary of the Community Parking District is eligible to run, Sherer said.
Still in the running to fill the vacancy is Sonia Decal, owner of Truffles Café. Although Decal didn’t say if she was in favor of paid parking, she said she would like to “find a solution to satisfy at least a large majority of the community.”
Other board members began to give their solutions to the paid on-street parking issue. Three alternatives were introduced before the meeting broke up. They ranged from implementing the program as it is to using the AutoVu technology, which attaches to parking carts, to implementing an incremental program proposed by Tom Brady and endorsed by Darcy Ashley, a member of Free La Jolla, a new anti-paid-parking organization that held its first meeting Nov. 2 at Warwick’s stationery store.
Many people attending the parking meeting wore shirts that displayed a large parking meter with a red line through it that read “Free La Jolla,” including Ashley, an alternate on the parking board, who sat at one end of the board’s table at Wednesday’s meeting.
Ashley presented petitions signed by residents opposed to the pilot-parking program. One petition contained nearly 1,700 signatures and the other contained nearly 2,700 signatures, she said.
Ashley said she hoped the board wouldn’t vote on anything yet.
“The community is not ready for paid on-street parking,” Ashley said. “The community is ready for an incremental approach … Tom has one.”
Because the meeting was cancelled, a new meeting will be held at noon on Monday, Nov. 19 at La Jolla Recreation Center, 615 Prospect St. For information, visit www.lajollabythesea.com/parking.