The most sophisticated effort yet to create an independent La Jolla, separate from the city of San Diego ran into its first big obstacle, Monday. The Local Agency Formation Commission of San Diego, or LAFCO, sent a letter to the group pushing for secession alerting it that it did not collect enough signatures to go forward.
The letter triggers a 15-day period during which the group, the Association for the City of La Jolla, can either correct the data the Registrar of Voters analyzed or get more signatures.
“This determination draws directly from the review of the Registrar of Voters’ Office (ROV) and their finding the Association has collected 5,723 valid signatures relative to the 6,750 needed to reach 25% threshold – a shortfall of 1,027,” reads the letter from Keene Simonds, the executive officer of LAFCO to Trace Wilson, the chair of the Association for the City of La Jolla.
The group has until April 1 to deliver the needed number of signatures.
The group had to collect signatures from 25 percent of registered La Jolla voters, or 6,750 valid signatures and it submitted 7,795 signatures. LAFCO contracted the verification of them to the county Registrar of Voters Cynthia Paes, who reported that 2,072 of them were found not to be valid.
