The effort to incorporate La Jolla prompted a protest from San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria, who called the latest development “outrageous.”

The same day the Association for the City of La Jolla received a Certificate of Sufficiency allowing the effort for La Jolla’s detachment from the city of San Diego to continue, San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria issued a press release calling the certificate “outrageous.”

As certified by the April 29 certificate from the San Diego Local Agency Formation Commission, the ACLJ has collected more than the required signatures needed to trigger an official investigation into La Jolla’s viability as its own city.

The certificate, signed by LAFCO executive officer Keene Simonds, confirms ACLJ obtained 6,772 verified signatures, 22 above the needed 6,750 from registered La Jolla voters.

The certificate states 6,523 signatures were validated by the Registrar of Voters; an additional 240 signatures were validated by LAFCO itself.

The verification processes for ROV differ from that of LAFCO, ACLJ President Trace Wilson said. LAFCO accepts abbreviations (like “Ave” for “Avenue”) and other minutiae, whereas ROV requires a more thorough completion of signatures and will reject a signature based on these deviations.

Representatives from LAFCO did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The signatures support ACLJ’s formal application in January to LAFCO asking the San Diego County commission to investigate whether cityhood for La Jolla is feasible, and follow 10 months of petition signing and signature verification.

The addition of the LAFCO-verified signatures “is outrageous,” Gloria wrote in the press release, adding city staff who sat in on the process have “serious concerns about the exceptionally broad interpretations made by LAFCO staff to overrule the ROV.”

The city will now “issue a formal Letter of Objection and continue to explore the legal options available,” the press release states.

“LAFCO has approved our application and signatures as sufficient,” Wilson said. “We are going to move forward.”

© lajolla.ca