Alcohol licenses, parking meter fees and graffiti were among the topics discussed during the Pacific Town Council’s April 16 meeting.
Most were not on the agenda, but often raised by some of the 40 audience during the regular meeting reports given by representatives of public safety agencies and community organizations.
Marcella Teran, a Neighborhood Watch coordinator, asked police about the growing use in Pacific Beach of nitrous oxide as a recreational drug, also known as whippets because the gas is used as a propellant for whipped cream.
“There’s an increase in people using that,” Teran said. “It causes psychosis and paranoia. Sometimes you can never recover from the maladies we’ve had.”
San Diego Police Det. Melanie Bognuda from the vice unit said nitrous oxide is also being increasingly abused in the Gaslamp district. She said police are taking actions to quash the developing fad, but because the chemical has legitimate purposes, enforcement is tricky.
“That’s the misuse of a product,” Bognuda said. “The sale of it is not illegal. It’s the misuse of it that causes the person to be under the influence, or high. There aren’t too many ways in which our officers witness that and take enforcement. … It’s just a matter of catching them in the act of the misuse. It’s kind of a harder thing, but it is being enforced.”
Bognuda outlined her unit’s intentions to crackdown on businesses selling alcohol to minors, but the subsequent discussion rapidly devolved into anxieties over the volume of liquor businesses in Pacific Beach.
Teran said PB has about 80% more liquor licenses than average for a San Diego community and others inquired about specific businesses seeking more expansive liquor licenses, such as those required to serve on an outdoor patio or to sell unopened containers taken off premises.
Because the state’s Alcoholic Beverage Control s local municipalities for before granting liquor licenses, Bognuda said police can protest particular applications, but the community has an equally effective role in that decision.
“The biggest help that we can get is from the community stating we do not want anymore here,” Bognuda said. “So if you guys see signs posted in windows at businesses showing an application for a license, feel free to ABC directly and let them know ‘I don’t want any more licenses in my neighborhood. We already have problems with alcohol.’”
In his report, Council President Charlie Nieto discussed the potential impact on the PB Community Parking District with the City of San Diego raising hourly parking meter rates from $1.25 to $2.50 to help fund the projected $258 million budget deficit.
Under the current parking district program, roughly half of the revenue collected from the meters pay for istrative costs and about 28% is earmarked for the city budget. The remainder must be spent on local infrastructure projects determined by Pacific Beach’s Parking Advisory Board, managed by Discover PB. The board includes a PB Town Council representative.
Although rates have doubled, Nieto said the current ratio of revenue allocations was not guaranteed.
“It wasn’t clear if the raised rates were going to have that same breakdown of funds going back into the community,” Nieto said. “I don’t think that the City Council has yet been presented with a breakdown of the new split revenue because they’re going to do something different than previously; a different kind of breakdown.”
The funds raised since the more than 200 parking meters became operational in November 2023 in the PB business district, primarily along Garnet Avenue, have yet to be spent, according to Nieto.
“Our parking funds are brand new,” he said. “We haven’t had any projects really established to start spending funds. … It’s really important that those funds keep going back into the community, especially since … we have so much tourism, our infrastructure gets so much wear and tear.”
Eve Anderson, coordinator for the Garnet Block Captains program, said the parking district money should be spent on improving Garnet Avenue, where a large majority of parking meters are located.
Anderson also argued for pedestrian safety enhancements as the best investment for those funds.
“Spend them on pedestrian improvements,” Anderson said. “I keep hearing about bike paths and bikes. Wait a minute. Look at Garnet Avenue at any hour of the day: morning, afternoon, nighttime. Count the number of people walking along compared to the number of bikes. It’s 10 to 1 (more) people. … Anything that improves pedestrian safety, that is what I would like to recommend to the parking district.”
Nieto also urged people to volunteer for the council’s 15th annual Graffiti Clean-Up Day from 9 a.m. to noon Saturday, May 10. Participants are to meet in the PB Presbyterian Church parking lot by 9 a.m.
They will be provided with materials as well as a virtual or physical map of preselected locations where graffiti was identified during a recently-conducted communitywide survey.
“Last year, we had over 130 volunteers clean up over 700 graffiti tags, stickers and other marks of vandals around the community,” Nieto said.
To volunteer or get information, visit pbtowncouncil.org/graffiti-day.
The meeting’s main presentation was an overview of the Commission on Police Practices by Yasmeen Obeid, its community engagement coordinator. Common to most major American cities, the independent body is composed of citizens appointed by the City Council and provides oversight through its power to review, investigate and audit police actions and policies.
“That’s really our job is to make sure that whoever submits a complaint, that complaint is looked at thoroughly and investigated thoroughly and all the evidence was taken into consideration,” Obeid said. “(In any investigation) all they’re doing is making sure the officer is following the policy and procedures of the San Diego police department.”
