La Jolla, which is a segment of the City of San Diego, is apparently looking at secession from the Mother Ship. The City of San Diego is enormous and spreads out all over the place. San Diego is like Los Angeles and San Jose - a big city that dominates their county and has a history of far-reaching annexations. The 1.39 million residents of San Diego have a 9-member city council, meaning there are about 154,000 people in each council district. La Jolla's 47,000 residents are less than 1/3 of their Council Member's constituents. And that puts La Jolla into something of a nowhere land within the city. The needs and wants of La Jolla get lost in the complexities of the city's budget and are drowned out by the noise of the full range of issues in the city. Scant attention is paid to local priorities, and yet, revenues generated by La Jolla's businesses and tourism are cash cows for San Diego. It's a little like the situation the state's unincorporated areas live with.

La Jolla splitting from San Diego is not a new idea. According to articles in the La Jolla Light, La Jolla pushed for independence in 1955, 2005, and 2019. Now, it is trying again, using a process like the one LAFCO uses for incorporation. The concept is to conduct a financial feasibility analysis to determine whether La Jolla could stand alone and also to identify how much of a burden it is for the city to maintain and operate La Jolla. The major difference between a secession process and an incorporation process is that a succession requires two public elections: one from the registered voters of La Jolla, and a second from the registered voters of the entirety of San Diego. That's a very steep mountain for La Jolla to climb. Time will tell what happens.