Some suggestions for cuts to help fund Recreation Center
I attended the May 14 La Jolla Town Council meeting where Joaquin Quintero from [San Diego City Council President] Joe LaCava’s office stated “If we’re going to increase expenditures … for the [La Jolla] Rec Center, we need to cut from something else” (“La Jolla Town Council looks for solutions to proposed cut in Recreation Center hours,” May 21, La Jolla Light).
I agree.
1. Eliminate the [San Diego] Performance and Analytics Department that generated that irresponsible and badly thought-out study [ranking the city’s recreation centers and libraries].
2. Eliminate the special promotions programs. San Diego businesses can do their own cheerleading.
3. Revert all city of San Diego salaries to 2023 levels.
4. Eliminate the positions of Mr. Quintero and his more senior colleague, Emily Lynch. That alone would save nearly a quarter-million dollars.
LaCava did say [in April], “This year, it’s going to be all about cuts,” in impeccably tailored threads and polished loafers.
I agree with that, too. I suggest he check out the excellent offerings at Goodwill on Herschel Avenue.
The more [city officials] ignore hot-button issues important to La Jollans — the Rec Center, safe streets, getting homeless off our streets, rapid police response times — the less we identify as San Diegans and want to secede.
Vincent Suzara
La Jolla marine protected areas aren’t so protected
What is happening in and around the La Jolla marine protected areas — including at La Jolla Cove and the Children’s Pool — is a profound failure of wildlife management and public stewardship.
These areas are supposed to be protected habitat. Instead, they have become scenes of daily disturbance, injury, pollution and preventable wildlife deaths.
At La Jolla Cove, there are effectively no meaningful protections for vulnerable sea lion mothers and pups during pupping season. Human crowding, harassment and chronic disturbance continue largely unchecked.
The consequences are devastating: Pup mortality at The Cove has been estimated at 78% [according to San Diego Coastkeeper], compared with only 10-20% at Point La Jolla, a nearby protected and closed rookery. This should alarm every San Diegan who values marine life and coastal conservation.
The Cove was recently labeled the No. 1 beach in the United States and the seventh-best in the world by TripAdvisor, designations that will likely bring even larger crowds to an already overwhelmed area. Last year, July 4 alone brought hundreds of thousands of people into the La Jolla area, intensifying pressure on wildlife and fragile coastal habitat.
At the Children’s Pool, conditions are equally troubling. The beach is closed annually from Dec. 15 through May 15 to protect harbor seal pupping season. Yet the moment the beach reopens, newly born seal pups — animals that have known only quiet and minimal human presence for the first months of their lives — are suddenly flooded with crowds of people. Many people approach too closely, surround resting seals or otherwise violate the Marine Mammal Protection Act, often with little to no enforcement present.
The Children’s Pool also is an active nesting area for gulls. Last year, visitors were documented throwing rocks at nesting birds and trampling nesting areas.
Fishing continues directly adjacent to seal habitat as well, leading to repeated entanglements involving fishing line and lures. One seal pup was found trapped in a discarded fishing bucket lid.
Offshore, fishing boats crowd the edge of the MPA, contributing to mounting entanglements that lead to prolonged suffering and slow deaths by strangulation or asphyxiation for marine mammals and seabirds.
Meanwhile, illegal take of marine life, shells and other intertidal organisms continues throughout the MPA with little visible enforcement. Over-tourism and unmanaged tide pooling place additional stress on already fragile ecosystems, with sensitive habitats being repeatedly trampled and disturbed by large crowds.
Nesting pelicans and cormorants also face threats from toxic cleaning substances. These chemicals can compromise birds’ feather integrity, affecting waterproofing and thermoregulation — both essential for survival.
The disturbance does not stop there. Low-flying aircraft repeatedly flush wildlife from resting areas, despite Federal Aviation Administration regulations intended to minimize disruption.
Beaches are routinely left covered in trash that washes into the ocean, degrading habitat and threatening marine animals through ingestion and entanglement.
This is not isolated or occasional. It is cumulative, chronic ecological degradation occurring daily inside and around one of Southern California’s most iconic marine environments.
The city of San Diego, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and California Coastal Commission must work together to implement stronger management and enforcement measures immediately. That includes wildlife buffer zones, meaningful enforcement of harassment laws, better regulation of fishing activity near sensitive habitat, protections during pupping season, pollution oversight and increased public education.
A marine protected area should not exist in name only. If we continue to allow unmanaged tourism, pollution and disturbance to overwhelm these habitats, we will lose the wildlife that makes La Jolla extraordinary.
Elena Murphy
What’s on YOUR mind?
Letters published in the La Jolla Light express views from readers about community matters. Submissions of related photos also are welcome. Letters reflect the writers’ opinions and not necessarily those of the newspaper staff or publisher. Letters are subject to editing. To share your thoughts in this public forum, email them with your first and last names and city or neighborhood of residence to robert.vardon@lajollalight.com. The deadline is 5 p.m. Friday for publication in the following Thursday’s paper. Letters without the writer’s name cannot be published. Letters from the same person are limited to one in a 30-day period. ♦