San Diego City Council President Scott Peters recently sat down with the Peninsula Beacon to reflect on his past eight years in City Council before leaving his termed-out seat to newly elected Sherri Lightner. Peters plans to move to the San Diego Port Commission — a seat he was elected to over Point Loma resident Robert McNeely. McNeely instead will continue to serve in his recently appointed role as a member of the Centre City Development Corporation. As council president, Peters was a central figure, voting on major issues in La Jolla and University City (UC), from the Regents Road Bridge controversy to La Jolla’s parking battle. He disclosed opinions regarding several ongoing debates and talked about struggling to accomplish key projects. “Over the past eight years in city council, looking back on the stuff we set about accomplishing when I was elected, we’ve done a lot of good things. We’ve reconfigured the Throat, which was transformative for people getting in and out of La Jolla, whether you work there or live there,” Peters said, referencing one of San Diego’s busiest intersections. Peters said he improved La Jolla’s busy Throat intersection by reconstructing green-light time in 2003, though traffic and parking will continue to be issues in La Jolla and UC, he added. Peters achieved two major goals, he said: burying utility lines and completing Bird Rock’s improvements along La Jolla Boulevard. When Peters began his council tenure, he asked La Jolla residents and neighbors their thoughts on local problems, seeking to assess the area’s needs for improvement, Peters said. “When I walked the neighborhoods, anyone who talked about issues in La Jolla wanted to talk about one of two things — one was seals and two was the power lines,” Peters said. He asked Bird Rock residents’ opinions by walking door-to-door in an attempt to gain understanding of their needs, he said. “In Bird Rock in 2001 I walked the neighborhoods, if they wanted to talk to me … in Bird Rock it was always about La Jolla Boulevard, ‘It’s ugly, the businesses always fail, traffic is fast, I don’t feel safe walking across the street, I can’t get my stroller across the street, I can’t get my walker across the street,’” Peters said. “So I said, ‘Great, I’ll fix it.’” Armed with a cause from the Bird Rock constituents, Peters said he met with the Bird Rock Community Council three times, in an effort to fix La Jolla Boulevard. “We came up with a plan and I announced the plan and they went crazy,” he said. “People all over the neighborhood were just so irate, so I said, ‘We’ll have another meeting at Bird Rock Elementary.’” Peters said he took his plan to improve La Jolla Boulevard — which included focusing on traffic flow, sewer upgrades and parking — to Bird Rock Elementary School Aug. 1 and met a crowd of 350 people. “…It was like the torches and the battering rams as they came up one by one to speak about how awful I was. I thought, ‘Well, these were the same people who I went to in the community, and they wanted me to fix La Jolla Boulevard,’” Peters said. “So I said, ‘Well, we’re not going to do nothing. We’re going to fix it.” Although many residents gathered to reject Peters’ plan, he said he knew locals wanted to upgrade the main thoroughfare and believed the project would help the community and improve businesses. So, he grouped people from each block, hired a consultant and formed a committee, asking them to create their own project. Peters said the residents’ plan worked. Bird Rock’s businesses are improving along La Jolla Boulevard. The project included roundabouts to keep traffic flowing and new diagonal parking, while the city fixed sewage lines. “That was largely because the people in the neighborhoods stepped up and said, ‘We complained about this, now let’s make this better,’” Peters said. Although Peters’ La Jolla Boulevard strategy worked — calling on Bird Rock residents to create a committee to fix their problems — results differed when Peters tried the same tactic in La Jolla Village, asking locals to pull together regarding their parking problems, he said. “The thing about the Village is that even though they have competition from Orange County, I think there’s going to have to be more of a crisis or the players are going to have to change,” Peters said. “They’ve been talking about parking since 1979. You have to have more community consensus than we have now. It’s unfortunate.” As successful as Bird Rock’s committee may have been, the La Jolla Community Parking District Advisory Board (LJCPDAB) — one of nine parking boards formed by the City Council to advise on issues such as paid parking — may have been the antithesis. La Jolla began implementing the parking process in 2005, when Peters created LJCPDAB to find solutions for parking problems, including paid parking. But many La Jollans rebelled, claiming metered parking would disrupt their businesses. Meetings grew in size and battles erupted, with locals claiming parking board members were corrupt. San Diego City Attorney Michael Aguirre stepped in last December, asking board members to disclose financial interests. Peters and council members voted against forcing parking boards to disclose financial interests at the Feb. 2008 city council meeting. In April 2008, Peters told the Village News he decided to pull the parking plug, ending the LJCPDAB. But although he called for an end to parking committees, he said he doesn’t think paid parking problems are going anywhere. “Those issues are going to recur and we can have a better conversation about that,” Peters said. Peters said his other big accomplishment was helping residents who said they wanted to bury utility lines, resulting in the underground power line program. Peters said he renegotiated the SDG&E franchise agreement with utility companies such as SDG&E, the phone company (now AT&T), Time Warner Cable and Cox Cable, calling on them to install power lines underground. “In La Jolla that was the big thing, bigger than parking. It takes a long time to do,” Peters said. After years of planning, trenches were dug and crews finished installing underground utility lines inside one La Jolla tract, according to Peters. “All the trenching is done and now they’re connecting. Over time, power lines in La Jolla will be put underground, and we are also starting the first block in UC, so that’s been a good thing,” he said. “The next council’s going to advance the timing of it.” Regarding UC, Peters said he was pleased with Westfield’s plans for the UTC expansion, which was planned years ago. Peters said he wants to preserve South UC’s single-family residential structure while continuing to implement more commercial and infrastructure projects in North UC. “The big issue starting out was the [Regents Road] bridge and the big issue today is the bridge,” Peters said. “I think we came to a compromise that would make the canyon a better resource but still provide the best traffic solution and provide fire safety.” The Regents Road Bridge Project, currently in litigation, would connect South UC to North UC, but the project’s opponents said the bridge would infringe on Rose Canyon’s habitat — a natural preserve. Peters then discussed “remaining issues in La Jolla” such as the lifeguard towers and the harbor seal colony at the Children’s Pool. According to Peters, the city council issued a bond for two of La Jolla’s lifeguard towers in March 2008, after the city condemned the Children’s Pool station. “We had a bond issuance of $6 million for two of the three towers,” he said. But Aguirre pulled rank, Peters said, telling the council the bonds couldn’t pass. “It’s possible that it could be revived, but economic conditions are tougher now. I hope the next council and city attorney can do it,” Peters said. “Mike and I had our differences … I never questioned his motives, but I just thought he took a position that was a policy position instead of a legal position.” An environmental attorney, Peters also voiced his opinion regarding the harbor seal colony at the Children’s Pool. “I hoped to come up with a compromise that worked for everybody,” Peters said. “Clearly that issue’s been in litigation for three years or so.” Dredging sand is the best way to comply with the court order to restore clean sand and water, Peters said. He thinks there is no way the city can get around the judge’s order, he said. “I think we should clean up the water — comply with the court order that would reconfigure the contours of the pool to the 1940s, which would provide for people who grew up there,” Peters said. “There were some seals out there but there weren’t 200.” Regarding the man-made wall that creates the Children’s Pool, Peters said it contributes to contamination. “As an environmental lawyer, I think that having that artificial sewer there is just sort of an artificial cesspool,” he said. “People say it’s a natural habitat but … it doesn’t allow for natural tidal flushing.” On Dec. 8, Peters leaves the city council, heading for the San Diego Port Commission, he said. As a La Jolla resident, Peters said local issues take on new meaning. “Going forward, the challenge for the whole region is the economy,” Peters said. “We believe San Diego is well-positioned in the long run to pull out of that. It’s pretty clear that we’re going to pull out of that.”