The Association for the City of La Jolla needs about 2,000 more signatures to move forward.

Some La Jolla business owners are throwing in their support for La Jolla’s incorporation into its own city as the Association for the City of La Jolla ramps up its push to gather signatures for a request that San Diego County officials look into the idea.

La Jolla is currently a community within the city of San Diego, beholden to San Diego’s laws and policies. No other community in the region has been successful at detachment from a larger city, but the ACLJ believes it is viable.

ACLJ is now in the process of preparing an application to the San Diego Local Agency Formation Commission, which helps communities incorporate.

The application must be submitted with a petition showing support of 25 percent of the registered voters within the boundaries of La Jolla for the LAFCO application.

The association has until Dec 1 to collect the signatures and file the application; it currently has about 5,000 of the 7,000 signatures needed.

To help the initiative move forward, local business owners are pitching in.

At Prana Yoga Center in The Village, owner Gerhard Gessner has promoted the petition to his clients via email and is collecting signatures at the front desk, making sure to spend time talking to people about ACLJ.

An incorporated La Jolla, Gessner said, would be “more supportive an environment for everyone who lives here.”

A La Jolla resident for more than 40 years, Gessner feels the larger San Diego grows, the “more complicated it gets” to attend to issues across the city, he said.

“La Jolla is a beautiful community,” Gessner said. “Being independent from the city of San Diego, we could do a lot better taking care of” the community.

Incorporation would also help Gessner continue his business mission to improve wellness and longevity, he said, noting he’s particularly interested in seeing La Jolla increase its position as a “blue” health community.

Promoting wellness across the city is “too big of a project otherwise,” he said.

“We all want to see this come to fruition,” said Tracy Sheffer, who owns Pedego Electric Bikes La Jolla in Bird Rock.

Pedego La Jolla has had five burglaries in a five month period, Sheffer said, costing the company tens of thousands of dollars to repair vandalism and undertake legal proceedings.

When the store was broken into, local police units were slow to respond, she said, pointing to what she called an “unbelievable” lack. 

There “just aren’t enough resources” in San Diego, Sheffer said.

To help ACLJ, Sheffer has a petition at Pedego’s register to sign, and said her staff is “fully versed” in promoting the initiative to customers. “Now is the time.”

Sheffer can’t sign the petition herself as a resident of the city of Encinitas, which incorporated in 1986 right  before she moved there.

When smaller cities have “control over funding,” she said, there’s an increase in first response times.

“I want to feel safe” as a female business owner in La Jolla, Sheffer said.

ACLJ will also have volunteers gathering signatures at polls on Election Day, Nov 5, with the permission of the San Diego Registrar of Voters, according to board member Sharon Wampler.

La Jolla resident Elise Felicione is also spearheading “Operation Close the Gap,” a neighborhood canvassing campaign during which she is promoting more contact in the community with a group of ACLJ volunteers, organizing the unrelated volunteers into a cohesive team. 

“Empowering everyone” to go out and ask people, whether in line at the grocery or out walking the coast, if they’ve heard of the cityhood initiative and “whip out the signature sheet and information,” Felicione said, will help ACLJ reach its goal in a “limited time frame.”

“This is totally doable,” she said, reiterating the petition is not a vote in favor of incorporation but a request to the county to investigate the issue further.

Anyone wanting to volunteer in their neighborhood can contact info@cityoflajolla.org.

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