Imperial Beach

In Sacramento, an Assembly committee Monday gave unanimous approval to a bill that would allow the financially strapped City of Imperial Beach to give 403 acres of its beachfront to the San Diego Unified Port District.

The bill, sponsored by Sen. Wadie A. Deddeh (D-Bonita), would allow the transfer to relieve Imperial Beach of an estimated $1.2 million in costs each year to maintain the beaches and pay off bonds worth $2.7 million to reconstruct a fishing pier that was nearly destroyed by storms in the early 1980s.

The city needs to deed its beachfront to the port or else go broke by January, 1992, according to a state auditor general’s report issued in March.

Deddeh’s Senate bill to allow the transfer passed by an 11-0 vote Monday in the Assembly’s Natural Resources Committee, which forwarded the measure to the Assembly Ways and Means Committee for another review.

If the non-controversial bill passes the Assembly as expected, it will go back to the Senate for concurrence in technical amendments and then be sent to Gov. George Deukmejian to be signed into law.