La Jolla Community Plan

by Councilman Scott Peters
June 2003

One of my top priorities in representing La Jolla on the San Diego City Council is to enact a new community plan. The La Jolla Community Plan, the general blueprint for growth and change in La Jolla, is supposed to be updated every five years. For a variety of reasons, we are still relying on the community plan approved in 1983. The California Coastal Commission approved the last proposed update in 1995. However, internal community squabbles induced the prior City Council to kill the plan rather than adopting the Coastal Commission's changes, and the update therefore never went into effect.

This time, at my urging, City staff and La Jolla volunteers worked hard on a community plan that our City Council adopted in June 2002. The plan would clarify and strengthen environmental protections of coastal bluffs, sensitive hillsides and open space. The regulations were clearer and the protection was better. The City forwarded the adopted plan to the Coastal Commission for its approval.

Just a day or two before the hearing in February, the Coastal Commission staff proposed over 50 changes to the plan adopted by the City Council. The Commission rejected some of these changes, and adopted most of them. Unfortunately, the Coastal Commission process is by nature last-minute, and there was not time for many members of the public to evaluate the changes before they were adopted. Many who had participated in creating the plan update over time were unsure of the meaning of some of these changes, and many felt that it was unfair to make so many changes in the last minute after the community had worked so hard to reach agreement over such a long period of time.

Now, our community is divided again over the community plan, and this update process is in jeopardy. On one hand, those who favor the changes proposed by the Coastal Commission are impatient for immediate City Council approval. On the other hand, many people are angry with the last-minute Coastal Commission process and disagree vehemently with the proposed changes. They want to kill the plan and start over.

I believe that the plan the City Council adopted last year was a good one. As a Coastal Commissioner, I myself opposed some of the changes proposed by the staff and some changes were approved by the Commission despite my objection. The plan is not perfect, but I believe that the plan, as amended, will prove worthy of our support.

However, I sympathize with those people, mostly the professionals who have to comply with these regulations, who feel that their input was shut out in a closed process. They believe that the Coastal Commission amendments will have dire and unintended consequences. I suspect strongly that these fears are unjustified. Many of the complaints I've heard so far are about rules that are already in effect. Other concerns are about interpretations of the plan that I am sure are not intended by the drafters. Still, there may be practical problems with the application of the Coastal Commission changes, and I think it is wise to understand any concerns and to address them fairly and fully.

I have asked the City Planning Department to meet with professional architects and engineers to analyze each Coastal Commission amendment and its possible implications on land use in La Jolla. If we identify technical issues or ambiguities that need clarification, I think we should fix them. The meetings provide an opportunity for us to identify and clarify any differences in understanding among the community, our City staff and Coastal Commission staff.

As is my practice with every district issue, I have met with people on both sides of the debate, and I will continue to engage in constructive discussions with all concerned parties. Before any City Council action, I would like to have an opportunity for a public discussion of the La Jolla Community Plan Update, and I am asking the Mayor to docket the plan for City Council consideration in September. I hope by then to have cleared up any misconceptions about the plan and its effect so that our update can finally be enacted.

The community plan has not been amended for over twenty years and I believe our community deserves better. There is no downside to waiting a few more months to make sure that everyone understands exactly what the update means before we adopt the final version at City Council. This is a complex procedure that involves the input of the residents, the City, and the Coastal Commission. Nothing is easy in La Jolla, and this is particularly difficult. However, we need an updated community plan to protect our community and the natural beauty we all enjoy in La Jolla.