Guest Commentary: Lack of care for infrastructure is impossible to understand

It is no secret how bad our infrastructure is in La Jolla and in the entire city of San Diego, which is incomprehensible considering the city has around 12,000 employees, according to our City Council member, Joe LaCava.

As of 2022, San Diego had about 1.38 million residents. This means we have one city employee for every 115 residents. I don’t know other cities' counts, but this seems an exorbitant number.

In any case, with this kind of ratio, it makes the current state of our city’s streets and sidewalks (I don’t even want to think about our sewer system) even more frustrating. What do these employees do all day? They certainly don’t seem to be caring for our city’s infrastructure. Things can’t get much worse.

San Diego talks about making the city walkable and bikeable and has invested immensely in bike lanes. But take a look at the photo accompanying this commentary of the sidewalk on Torrey Pines Road between Calle de la Plata and Little Street.

You will see the sidewalk is becoming impassable. It is an accident waiting to happen. Two-abreast walking is not an alternative — one must step into the bike lane with cars whizzing by at 40 mph.

Weeds grow all over city streets and sidewalks. It appears no one has responsibility to maintain our infrastructure.

Another of the photos shows the median of Torrey Pines between Calle de la Plata and Little. The debris has been in the median for at least six months.

Notice in another photo the overgrown weeds on the side of Torrey Pines where the retaining wall sits. That was last cut a year ago. Some weeds are more than 6 feet tall and are encroaching over the curb onto the road. The orange cone has sat there for at least a year.

I don’t know how LaCava or his staff can walk or drive around our, or any, community without seeing these things.

I just don’t understand our city’s approach to maintaining its infrastructure. This is the duty of a city.

The city says it can’t afford to repave (another story), but what about maintain? With 12,000 employees, someone has to have some responsibility. Yet here we sit.

Summer is coming and more people will come to our community. One would think the city would want to put its best foot forward for tourists. However, it just doesn’t seem to care.

Ted Levis is the owner of Emerald Properties in La Jolla. ◆

This story originally appeared in La Jolla Light .