The good news for La Jolla Shores Association (LJSA) is that progress is being made to rein in commercial activity at Kellogg Park with the cooperation of police. Unfortunately, what the advisory group believes would solve the problem \u2014 hiring a new park ranger \u2014 is no closer to fruition. Where the money to hire a ranger would come from is still a mystery. It\u2019s all been part of an ongoing discussion at LJSA, which makes recommendations to the city on parks and community-related issues, about what to do concerning unpermitted and unregulated user groups at Kellogg Park. “The community is concerned about Kellogg Park and it\u2019s on our radar screen,” said San Diego police Lt. Mike Hasting at the Sept. 12 meeting. “We\u2019re working on requiring permitting for ice cream trucks, removing (improper) tents, etc. But I can\u2019t stand in front of this committee and tell you the park gates will always be closed at 10 p.m. and opened at 6 a.m. every morning. It just depends on the workload.” The issue, said LJSA chairwoman Audrey Keane, is one of fairness to the park\u2019s users who follow the permitting regulations. “The crux of the issue is we have commercial use of the park and beaches by scuba and other non-permitted groups, while we have kayaks and surf camps that are regulated by RFP\u2019s (request for permits) and their clients pay permit fees,” Keane said. “It doesn\u2019t seem fair that we have kayak and surf camps that pay fees, when there are private parties that make money and have free trade shows on the beach. That is not right.” Erin Demorest of District 1 City Councilwoman Sherri Lightner\u2019s office reported on the amount of fees that permitted surf and kayak camps pay to the city\u2019s general fund each year in order to operate. “The amount of money collected was about $68,000 in surf-camp revenue,” she said. “In fiscal year 2012, kayak companies paid about $237,000 in permit fees.” The money collected from fees, said LJSA board member Mary Coakley, “ought to pay for a park ranger.” But that $237,000, Keane said, wouldn\u2019t go very far in the end. “One park ranger isn\u2019t going to change things that are structural in nature,” Keane said. “There\u2019s really not that much money being collected. It costs millions of dollars to manage this park and beach.” But, Coakley maintained, with such a small geographical area, a ranger might do the trick. “The park is small enough that a park ranger is going to make a huge difference,” she said. “Anyone who runs a business at the park and causes wear and tear there, there should be some payback for the park. Not a dime of the RFP money comes back and helps the park.” A ranger, however, “isn\u2019t going to enforce regulations that don\u2019t exist,” Demorest pointed out. Demorest suggested the LJSA request funding for a ranger from the city\u2019s Park and Recreation Department in upcoming city budget deliberations, as a way to jumpstart momentum for hiring a park ranger. “There could be some seed money open up in the future,” Demorest said. “You might try to attack it from multiple angles.” Former LJSA board member Tim Lucas, agreeing with Coakley, expressed his desire for some of the fees collected to be funneled back into the park. “I just want to see 1 percent of (RFP) money collected from here put back into it (Kellogg Park),” Lucas said. “If 30 percent of that money stayed in the community, you could fund a ranger.” As an alternative, board member Janie Emerson suggested the LJSA take matters into its own hands. \u00a0“We could hire a private firm to go out and police the park and raise some money for it,” Emerson said. \u00a0 In other matters<\/b>\u00a0 \u2022 Joe LaCava, vice president of the La Jolla Community Planning Association (LJCPA), invited the community to the next meeting of the advisory group, which makes land-use recommendations to the city, on Tuesday, Oct. 4 at 6 p.m at La Jolla Recreation Center. \u00a0“We want all La Jollans to come out and express how they\u2019d like to see city funds on capital improvement projects, i.e. roads, storm drains, fire stations, etc. spent,” he said. “The caveat is the city is still struggling financially so no new projects are likely to get funded. But we\u2019re creating a process that we will be able to take advantage of next year as the city\u2019s finances improve. It\u2019s a good opportunity for La Jollans to get together and present some ideas on what the projects and priorities should be.” For more information on the capital improvement program, visit www.lajollacpa.org\/cip.html. \u2022 During public comment, Lucas said he felt UCSD\u2019s MESOM project, now under construction on La Jolla Shores Drive, is much more obtrusive visually than had been represented to the community previously by university planners.?”It\u2019s a shame this view has been stolen from the community,” he said. Emerson agreed. “This is not what was presented to us,” she said.?Anu Delouri of UCSD planning told the group that engineers said the project is being built exactly according to specifications relayed to the community at public meetings. “We never said there would not be any obstruction of public views,” Delouri said, adding she would be willing to arrange to have university representatives revisit the group at a later date to answer their questions about the MESOM project. MESOM stands for Marine Ecosystem Sensing, Observation and Modeling. The new three-story building will have 12 laboratories, 56 offices and three conference rooms, and will house\u00a0a new multidisciplinary program at Scripps aimed at integrating the development of physical,\u00a0biological and chemical sensors \u2014 and the autonomous ocean-going platforms to support them \u2014\u00a0to conduct long-term observation of the California Current Ecosystem.\u00a0 LJSA will next meet Wednesday, Oct. 10 at 7 p.m. at cottage T-29 at Scripps Institution of Oceanography.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The good news for La Jolla Shores Association (LJSA) is that progress is being made to rein in commercial activity at Kellogg Park with the cooperation of police. Unfortunately, what the advisory group believes would solve the problem \u2014 hiring a new park ranger \u2014 is no closer to fruition. Where the money to hire […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11560","_seopress_titles_title":"Civic report: La Jolla Shores Association, Sept. 12","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11560,11551,11593],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-300494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-la-jolla-village-news","category-news","category-no-images"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300494\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}