A pot of money to alleviate parking problems in La Jolla has two decades of history, and Promote La Jolla’s alleged mishandling of $65,323 of those funds has brought the issue back into the foreground. The city is suing Promote La Jolla — the former manager of the Village’s Business Improvement District — to recover $65,323 earmarked for parking, which was seized by a bank when Promote La Jolla defaulted on a loan. The city wants to return the money to its rightful place — the La Jolla Parking & Transportation Fund — created in the 1990s from developers’ fees paid to mitigate congestion their projects would bring. Developers had paid into the fund throughout the ’70s and ’80s. Today, the city is sitting on approximately $300,000 in the transportation fund, waiting for the Village to initiate ideas to use the money to alleviate its parking problems. In the meantime, the city wants to recover the money Promote La Jolla allegedly squandered. The discussion surrounding the transportation fund was derailed by controversy over paid parking and the downfall of Promote La Jolla, according to Joe La Cava, president of the Coastal Access & Parking Board, formed to manage the funds in 2004. “Things need to settle down before people have an interest in revisiting it,” La Cava said, adding there aren’t as many cars in the Village with the economic downturn. “Right now there doesn’t seem to be much motivation. You have to let the problem build-up to create a sense of urgency.” In the past eight years, the Coastal Access & Parking Board has used the transportation fund to encourage employees to ride the bus to La Jolla or to park in the underground parking garages. The board purchased monthly bus and parking passes and sold them to employees at a discount. In the late 1990s, the city’s Metropolitan Transit System (MTS) spent $10,000 from the fund to study the feasibility of establishing a park-and-ride for La Jolla, shuttling visitors from a remote lot to the Village. The study showed the idea was not feasible, said Martin Mosier, a member of the board at the time. “The study said if MTS can’t make money on a bus, how can the coastal access board do it?” Mosier said. Mosier believes installing parking meters is the best solution to get employees’ cars off the streets, and the only way to guarantee a steady stream of income to subsidize other programs. “If all the parking spaces are free, then they will all be gone,” Martin said. “The only way to do it is to charge something.” Two years ago, parking became a passionate topic in the Village when Promote La Jolla’s newly-formed Community Parking District Advisory Board proposed paid parking in La Jolla. Meanwhile, the Coastal Access & Parking Board had stepped down, assuming it would fold into the parking district, La Cava said. Last spring, La Cava saw trouble brewing, he said. La Cava said he and others noticed that Promote La Jolla had put $65,000 of the parking money into a CD and that the group also had a $65,000 debt. La Cava said he approached Promote La Jolla about his concern but the board assured him it wasn’t a problem, he said. La Cava believes it’s crucial for the city to keep community groups accountable even if the board is comprised of unpaid volunteers, especially since the city is trying to push decision-making to the community level. “The city has really ramped up its efforts to create processes, which creates bureaucracy and makes it hard to do things and turns volunteers off, but when you’re talking about taxpayers dollars, it’s really the thing to do,” La Cava said.