‘Quite the push’: La Jolla cityhood effort races on

Last Updated on May 1, 2025

The Association for the City of La Jolla needs to raise $55,000 more by the end of January in its next steps to explore incorporation from San Diego.

A multiyear effort to have La Jolla detach from the city of San Diego is in its next phase of the process and its leaders are seeking donations.

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 Association for the City of La Jolla believes it is viable and would also benefit San Diego, as an incorporated La Jolla would be paying San Diego for services and more.

“We could be delivering back a lot of income to San Diego, which would be beneficial to our host city,” ACLJ President Trace Wilson said at the Jan 9 La Jolla Town Council meeting.

Having gathered more than the required signatures (nearly 8,000 of a needed 6,536) on a petition to ask the San Diego Local Agency Formation Commission, which helps communities incorporate, to investigate whether cityhood is feasible, ACLJ now has until Thursday, Jan 30 to formally apply to LAFCO.

The application requires the petition, a boundary map of a proposed city of La Jolla and ACLJ’s preliminary fiscal analysis that showed La Jolla generates $83.8 million in revenue while costing the city $74.8 million in services, Wilson said.

ACLJ also needs to raise about $100,000 by the end of January for the application.

“Today we have $45,000 in our account. Yesterday we had $28,000, so you can see the momentum that’s happening,” Wilson said, encouraging La Jollans to continue to donate.

“If we don’t apply [by Jan 30], then all of the work we’ve done for the last three years actually goes away,” he said. “It’s been quite the push.”

Both Wilson and ACLJ board member Sharon Wampler reiterated ACLJ’s goal to contract police and other services from San Diego, in response to Town Council President Mary Soriano’s question about San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria’s recent remarks that cityhood isn’t recommended and San Diego would not contract certain services to a detached La Jolla.

“There are various ways cities all over the country contract different services, and this would be no different,” Wampler said. “We could negotiate what’s possible.”

Contracting with San Diego, Wilson said, is one way in which San Diego would benefit from La Jolla’s incorporation.

For more information or to donate, visit cityoflajolla.org.