Carlsbad

Hoping to nip the growing La Costa secession movement in the bud, the Carlsbad City Council has voted unanimously to oppose an effort by several residents to break off the upscale community and form a separate city.

Saying it was eager to resolve the issue, the council agreed Tuesday night that the idea of La Costa becoming an independent municipality was ill-advised.

Council members have questioned whether La Costa, a web of neighborhoods that has sprouted in the past two decades around the tony resort on the city’s southern edge, could survive as an independent municipality and have wondered about the effect secession would have on the remainder of Carlsbad.

The council vote represents a significant roadblock for the secession effort. Without the council’s blessing, the issue cannot be heard by the Local Agency Formation Commission, the state agency that determines if such matters are worthy enough to go before voters.

Nonetheless, movement leaders maintain they will press on, hopeful that council members will either change their minds or new members can be elected who are more sympathetic to the secession effort.

Jim Popovich, a secession booster, said the council’s decision was “premature and irrelevant” because much of the economic data showing whether secession is feasible has yet to be gathered.

“They have not even waited to see what the facts are,” Popovich said. “They figure they’ll stop us dead in our tracks, but it will backfire.”