In its first meeting of the year, La Jolla Community Planning Association heard a pitch from La Jolla Community Foundation about proposed creation of a Maintenance Assessment District (MAD) to pay for public improvements. “We need to polish the Jewel that we all love, which is why we’re proposing a MAD to enhance, beautify and improve our village,” Julie Bronstein, executive director of the nonprofit foundation, told trustees. An assessment district is a legal mechanism by which property owners can vote to tax themselves to receive enhanced maintenance, landscaping and lighting services or other civic improvements. Bronstein said creating such a district would serve as a tool for ongoing maintenance on public improvements, such as landscaping and periodic watering of hanging plants, which the community has struggled to pay for over the years. “MAD is also an investment process,” noted Bronstein, adding that creation of an assessment district would “mean we would be able to fundraise, adding private dollars to do capital improvement projects within the Village and see them to completion.” Bronstein gave a slideshow presentation showing a map of the boundaries for the proposed district, which does not include all of La Jolla’s 92037 ZIP code but much of the Village of La Jolla, a roughly 30-block area including about 1,300 businesses in the neighborhood’s heart. It is represented by La Jolla Village Merchants Association, one of 18 self-taxing city business improvement districts representing mostly small businesses. La Jolla, noted Bronstein, is an “older community” with aging infrastructure that has lacked funding for ongoing maintenance, which she said has translated into “overflowing trash, dirty sidewalks and broken and untended landscaping. This unfortunately has led to the degradation of the Village. We are seeing more vacant storefronts, impacts to property values and less vibrant public space.” Bronstein said the bottom line is that “the city does not have the resources needed to provide the level of maintenance that we need to keep our Village beautiful.” Bronstein added fees would be charged to residences and businesses which would have to vote, by a simple majority, to tax themselves to fund the assessment district. “Our goal is to get the MAD approved by July 31 of this year,” Bronstein said. Bronstein added that City Council ultimately would also have to sign off on creation of the new district should it be approved by voters. Planning association trustee Joe LaCava, a Bird Rock resident which created an assessment district to pay for ongoing maintenance of that neighborhood’s roundabout traffic circles a few years ago, pointed out that that assessment district has accomplished its purpose at a reasonable cost to residents and businesses. “I enthusiastically support the MAD,” agreed Mike Costello, an association trustee and Bird Rock resident. “We worked hard to pass our MAD in Bird Rock, and it has been very successful and very worthwhile.”