PBID Efforts Led by Parking Panel Chairs: Unmistakable Conflict of Interest

Judging by the building-sized, We-Support-the-PBID banner Jim Wieboldt erected at the epicenter of this year’s La Mesa Oktoberfest, the We-Support-the-PBID sign in front of Unique Travel Concepts and the We-Support-the-PBID sign in the front window of McRea and Associates, it is clear Wieboldt and Lynn McRea Support-the-PBID. 

As Village business owners, their support and zealous championing of the PBID is perfectly acceptable.

As members of the PBID Steering Committee (McRea is chair), their support and zealous championing of the PBID is perfectly acceptable.

As members of the La Mesa Parking Commission (Wieboldt is chair, McRea is vice-chair), their support and zealous championing of the PBID is perfectly unacceptable. 

The PBID has been described as a “Mechanism for collecting money to improve the Village.” Isn’t that what the parking meters are: mechanisms for collecting money to improve the Village? 

That the PBID and the parking meters offer two opposing spending options for improving the Village and are both chaired by Wieboldt and McRea is wrong, wrong, wrong. Especially when their agenda is as clear as the signs on their doors. 

It is called a CONFLICT OF INTEREST: When an individual or organization is involved in multiple interests, one of which could possibly corrupt the motivation for an act in the other. 

Involved in multiple interests define Wieboldt and McRea as both are also the Golden Stars of Mayor Art Madrid’s “Kitchen Cabinet.” 

The mayor is pro-PBID. Perhaps he sees the PBID as the means to improve the Village. But maybe there’s another motivating factor at work, a disquieting one. A PBID could greatly diminish the decades-old La Mesa Village Merchants Association, perhaps vanquish it entirely.

La Mesa Today describes the relationship between the mayor and the LMVMA as a “long tussle.” After the mayor failed last week to get increased permit regulations passed, a move generally regarded as a slap at the merchants, Councilman Arapostathis put it more plainly, “Art doesn’t like the merchants group.” 

Is Art Madrid’s sentiment toward the Merchants Association the basis for Lynn McRea’s recent transformation to a one-woman forensic LMVMA compliance cop: “Your papers are not in order.” 

McRea has been poring through LMVMA tax filings, ledgers, articles of incorporations, accounting books, statements, minutes seeking anything the Merchants Association are not doing perfectly as a means to publicly discredit the Merchants Association. LMVMA has retained an attorney for assistance in complying with all laws but also to deal with Lynn McRea. 

But back to the conflict of interest. 

There is a need in Downtown La Mesa for cleaner streets, power-washed sidewalks and touches of beauty such as flowers in our numerous planters and permanent decorative lighting (the just-lit temporary Christmas lights are pure magic; permanent lighting should be up year-round). 

There is a mountain of money, over $700,000, sitting in the Downtown Parking Fund. The common sense, in-tough-economic-times, immediate improvement, fiscally prudent, anti-waste, pro-business, noncontroversial, pragmatic course of action to improve La Mesa Village is to use parking meter money now. 

Property owners would not pay any additional fees or taxes, so there would be no need to pass along new costs to business owners and their customers. Hundreds of thousands of dollars would not be wasted on bloated administration fees (projected PBID admin costs alone for the first five years: $569,000). 

The annual PBID admin fees ($103k - $125k) are three times what it would cost to power wash the sidewalks four times per year, street sweep every week and the flower budget for an entire year! 

Lastly, the parking meters’ motto, “Your Fees Fund Downtown Improvements,” would be sincere.

And though the PBID has more ambitious plans than cleaning the boulevard (do we really need security personnel handing out maps and greeting visitors?), it is evident by the meetings I’ve attended and their published draft that a major objective of the PBID is what I’ve described above: street sweeping, power washing, beautifying—all accomplishments that could be achieved by quarters. 

At a recent City Council meeting, Wieboldt declared that he “cannot wait for the PBID to clean up the Village.” If he cannot wait for a clean village, why has he never, in the seven years he has served on the Parking Commission, exhorted the use of meter money to do what he is so eager for the PBID to do? 

Wieboldt and McCrea are entitled to their causes. What they should not be entitled to—via their seasoned leadership positions on the Parking Commission—is the handicapping of meter money in such a way that it makes the PBID look like the only solution to improving the village when that is clearly not the case.