Imperial Beach’s Beach a Drag; City Seeks to Cut It Loose

Most people would give anything to own a stretch of the San Diego County shore, especially if it includes a fishing pier and a short drive to a venerable tourist center like the Hotel del Coronado.

Not the City of Imperial Beach.

The financially ailing border town is so desperate to cut costs that it is actually asking the state for permission to give away its responsibility for 3.5 miles of oceanfront from Coronado to the Mexican border.

At the city’s request, Sen. Wadie P. Deddeh (D-Bonita) on Wednesday introduced legislation that would allow the beleaguered city of 24,500 residents to deed over its tidelands to the San Diego Unified Port District, which controls most of the other tidelands in the county.

Such a transfer, city officials say, would save the Imperial Beach treasury $1.5 million each year in expenses to patrol and maintain the beach, as well as pay off the bill for an extensive face lift of the municipal pier.

With those expenses gone--they gobble up 30% of the city budget--the city has a chance to reverse its dismal record of municipal finance and keep from becoming financially insolvent by the summer.

“If something doesn’t happen before the end of the budget year in July 1990, the city should begin its disincorporation,” said Richard Jung, Imperial Beach director of administrative services.

And, just in case the tidelands transfer isn’t enough, Deddeh said Wednesday, he also will introduce measures during the next few weeks as a sort of piecemeal financial aid package for San Diego County’s neediest city. One of the bills would propose that the state loan the city $4 million.

“Imperial Beach may just be the only city in the state that is experiencing this kind of financial difficulty, and I hope they are the only one,” Deddeh said about the unusual loan. “And, if my colleagues are compassionate, I plan to plead my case with the governor . . . and see if we can swing it.”

The city’s financial woes are the result of a decade of deficit spending, in which city fathers consistently dipped into the financial reserves to make up for a shortfall in municipal revenues, officials say. The city has also made some major mistakes, like the $300,000 loss it suffered in 1986 and 1987 on bad stock investments.

In 1988, the City Council created another financial fiasco when it voted to spend $2.9 million to refurbish its 1,500-foot fishing pier so it could be leased to a commercial sportfishing business.

Although paying off the bonds would cost $356,000 a year, council members thought they could make that up with the city’s share of the fishing business revenues--estimated at the time to be between $150,000 to $500,000 a year.

But so far, the city hasn’t received anything because the business, Imperial Beach Sportfishing Inc., has yet to set up shop.

Although the city receives no revenue from its beaches, it pays out nearly a third of its $5-million municipal budget to keep them clean and safe, said Imperial Beach City Manager Ron Jack.

And, to add insult to injury, statistics show that only about 25% of the people who use the beaches are Imperial Beach residents; the rest are people who pay no taxes for beach upkeep, Jack said.

“I’m not sure that controlling your destiny is paying 30% of your budget and getting no return,” Jack said.

The solution: Give the beach away.

Jack said Wednesday that deeding the tidelands over to the Port District was supposed to be done after the 1963 formation of the district by the Legislature. The four other member cities in the district--San Diego, Chula Vista, Coronado and National City--all gave their tidelands to the port, which then became responsible for coastline commercial and recreational development.

Imperial Beach, however, held onto its land temporarily to help the district in its planning for a second bay entrance near the border. When plans for the second entrance fell through, Imperial Beach never bothered to officially give its land to the port--a decision that led to a constant drain on city coffers, Jack said.

He said Deddeh’s bill would “clean up 27 years of history, where the city was not a direct beneficiary of the Port District, although city residents paid the initial taxes to establish the Port District.”

Port commissioners last week went on record supporting any efforts to deed the Imperial Beach tidelands to the port, a district spokesman said Wednesday.