Traffic safety was the No. 1 priority for Capital Improvement Projects at a recent joint meeting between Pacific Beach Town Council and Pacific Beach Planning Group to select a preferred list of community infrastructure projects to be funded in this year’s City budget.

CIP priorities voted on Sept. 20 included building a new North Pacific Beach Lifeguard Tower; installing a traffic circle on Foothill Boulevard at Vickie Drive; installing traffic regulating on Beryl Street between Foothill Boulevard and Soledad Mountain Road; and installing a crosswalk with pedestrian beacons, a pedestrian refuge island and curb extensions at Soledad Road at Los Altos Way.

Following the joint meeting, District 1 Councilmember Joe LaCava representing PB said: “My September budget memo will broadly include infrastructure priorities put forward by D1 community planning groups. I appreciate their work in building consensus within their community and evaluation of competing needs. Over the next several months, I will work with my council colleagues, the mayor, and staff to assess those projects against FY 2025 revenue and expenditure projections, coordinate with other priorities, and seek creative approaches to achieve the greatest impact during this budget cycle.”

“Tonight is going to be a little social experiment,” said PBTC president Charlie Nieto introducing the joint meeting. “The community infrastructure project priority list is the special business item of the night and there will be a community voting process that will take place.”

During a break in the meeting, over 100 audience members had the opportunity to cast their votes on community infrastructure projects they preferred. The public’s vote was then tallied and compared with the positions taken by PBTC-PBPG on the same list of CIP community projects to be recommended for funding.

Iain Richardson of PB Plan Group then gave a slideshow presentation. “We’ve been working on this (meeting) for three months,” he said adding, “It’s all about choice. That’s what we’re here to do.”

Richardson noted in his presentation that, “There are things that last more than a year or two. And there are things that depreciate and have wear and tear. Tonight is all about making choices around capital items that the City is going to try and fund.”

“What we’re also doing tonight is making priorities,” Richardson pointed out in explaining the City’s annual CIP budget process. He added, “We all know there’s never enough time and money and, unfortunately for the City’s capital budget, that is true.”

Likening the City’s CIP budgeting process to a family making decisions with its budgeting priorities, Richardson asked: “Do I put money in the kid’s college fund, or fix the roof? What we’re hoping to do tonight is get your insights as a community about what things are most important to you, and what priority you put on those things.”

Richardson then talked about what the City’s capital budget looks like. “The last estimate the City issued said that, over the next five years, they would have funds available of about $4.6 billion to spend on capital infrastructure,” he said. “Sounds like a lot of money. But the add-up of all the (infrastructure) needs in the City is closer to $10 billion. So that tells you, with the funding that they (City) have identified so far, roughly half of those projects, that people have said they need at meetings like this, will not necessarily get funding.”

“The other issue the City has is a lot of that $4.6 billion in funding comes with strings attached,” continued Richardson. “Of that $4.6 billion roughly about $112 million of that is fully flexible, (meaning) you can spend it any way you want. The rest of that money, $4.5 billion, comes with strings attached.”

For example, Richardson noted the lion’s share of CIP funding is mandated to be spent only on certain types of infrastructure and not others. “The City has to match up funding with what the projected needs are going to be,” he said. “That’s why we’re here tonight, to tell them what’s important for PB.”

Following Richardson’s presentation and audience questions during PBTC’s portion of the joint meeting, Scott Chipman, acting chair, reconvened the joint meeting turning it over to PB Planning Group, and subsequently voted on CIP priorities. “I’ve been pretty pleased with the process we’ve gone through as a planning group,” noted Chipman. “We’ve collected good information. This started with a list of about 50 (projects).”