The second of San Diego City Council President Joe LaCava’s District 1 town halls netted resident concerns about fire evacuation, trash fees and more.

As he’s done yearly, San Diego City Council President Joe LaCava, whose District 1 includes La Jolla, invited residents to a series of Town Halls designed to connect him with his constituents.

The La Jolla Town Hall, held March 5 at the La Jolla Recreation Center, gave LaCava, also a La Jolla resident, the opportunity to introduce his team and review his first-term accomplishments, which include opening Fire Station 52; assisting the Streetscape project to beautify and improve traffic conditions along portions of Girard Avenue; storm drain repairs; and protecting the coastal height limit against “threats” like the 23-story Turquoise Tower, he said.

In this, his second term, LaCava looks forward to achieving more, and announced the repaving of Fay Avenue, Nautilus Street, West Muirlands Drive, La Jolla Scenic Drive North and Via Capri “in the next several months.”

And as the city of San Diego is facing a $258 million budget deficit, LaCava’s goal “is to not cut city services, but streamline government, make it more efficient,” he said.

The more extensive portion of the Town Hall, however, involved LaCava responding to constituent questions, most of which centered on three local issues: fire evacuations and safety; accessory dwelling unit construction; and trash collection fees.

Fire evacuations and safety

After recent wildfires in La Jolla and San Diego unnerved residents, several Town Hall attendees raised concerns about the perceived lack of evacuation routes from La Jolla.

“We have very few evacuation routes,” said La Jollan Catharine Douglass, adding that the stretch of Torrey Pines Road from La Jolla Parkway northeast to UCSD, a main exit route, is lined by brush, dead trees and more, especially in Pottery Canyon.

“If that gets blocked off by fire, we’re toast,” she said.

LaCava said he will look into the Pottery Canyon concerns.

“There is an evacuation plan” for La Jolla, he said. “We’re working to figure out how we can inform you quicker and safer about how to evacuate if there is a fire.”

Acknowledging “the way we’ve built out our community makes some areas difficult to evacuate,” LaCava said he is excited about a forthcoming La Jolla Town Council initiative to establish a Fire Safe Council, a community-led organization that functions like a fire-focused neighborhood watch group.

La Jolla currently doesn’t have a Fire Safe Council, though San Diego County has more such councils than any other county in California.

In the past, Fire Safe Councils were focused on eastern communities of the city “that are up against that easterly open space,” LaCava said. “We’ve come to realize that every community should be speaking seriously about that.”

Accessory dwelling units

Several residents expressed dissatisfaction with a March 4 City Council action to repeal an incentive to construct accessory dwelling units on single-family properties.

The incentive has raised concerns about the ADU Bonus Program’s impact on density, neighborhood character, infrastructure capacity and public safety.

During the seven-hour hearing March 4, City Council voted to enact the repeal in eight zoned parcels across the city, though many La Jolla residents took to social media and other channels to claim the repeal did not do enough, leaving out single-family zones RS 1-5, RS 1-6 and RS 1-7, of which La Jolla has many.

The City Council will take a final vote on the proposal within 90 days.

“It was just disappointing,” Pacific Beach resident Marcella Bothwell said at the Town Hall.

“We did what we could,” LaCava said, adding that the City Council moved “to get some early action on the areas where we have zoned for very big lots.”

Noting that the repeal does not apply to any project already under construction or filed, LaCava said “big changes are coming to the ADU program” to eliminate loopholes and “abuse of practices.”

Trash collection fees

LaCava’s Town Hall also had many raising their hands to ask for clarification on trash collection fees – namely, why the recent news that standard service might cost homeowners about $53 monthly belies earlier estimates of $23 to $29.

The new amounts include expanded service, which some at the meeting said isn’t wanted.

The original cost was “based on how many properties we thought we served,” LaCava said. “It turns out that the city’s records were wrong; we actually serve a lot less properties than we thought, plus an increase in cost just from a couple of years ago, it gets a lot higher.”

“We can’t get the 29 because that was based on bad data,” he said.

LaCava asked residents to provide him additional feedback about costs and services.

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