Looking back – and ahead – Enhance La Jolla, the community’s maintenance assessment district, was productive in 2023, and looking forward to building on that success in 2024.

Enhance La Jolla is one of 64 MADs citywide. “We are the third-largest MAD by size and budget in the City of San Diego,” said Brian Earley, district manager of Enhance La Jolla, which was created by the La Jolla Community Foundation to meet the demands of the level of care needed for the public right of way in the boundaries of the district. Its services include landscape, janitorial, power washing, and graffiti abatement.

La Jolla’s MAD was highly active in 2023 with numerous administrative goals spearheaded and achieved by Enhance La Jolla’s board of directors including:

• Hiring a new district manager (Earley) with seven days a week oversite;

• Request for quotes issued in open bidding for vendor services;

• Signing a new three-year contract with San Diego’s Economic Development Department eliminating trip and fall liability;

• Tremendous response to Enhance La Jolla Day on May 13 where many of La Jolla’s planning groups and nonprofits met with local officials and the public;

• Enhance La Jolla to meet all requirements for contractual obligations and compliance for FY24.

Enhance La Jolla president Ed Witt discussed the accomplishments of La Jolla’s MAD last year praising La Jolla Community Foundation, the fundraising arm of Enhance La Jolla, for “raising money to do things in the Village we wanted to do in the public right-of-way.”

Witt pointed out that most of the City’s MADs are managed by the Parks and Rec or by business improvement districts He noted La Jolla is one of the few communities where the MAD is “managed locally by citizens,” which he added was the reason for establishing it as a tax-exempt nonprofit.

“Enhance La Jolla works seven days a week to make La Jolla a better place to live, work, and play,” said Witt, noting property owners and businesses in the district fund the MAD’s roughly $570,000 annual budget.

Concerning last year’s achievements, Witt said: “We continued to expand our year-round hanging (flower) baskets. Enhance La Jolla was out there seven days a week doing trash abatement and five days a week doing landscaping and maintenance.”

District manager Earley noted recently in a year-in-review report that Enhance La Jolla “created 10-15 hours a week of additional production time” in 2023while using Urban Corps of San Diego to “cover hundreds of blocks of our sidewalks with power washing combining four days a week services during the summer, and three days in the winter, including daytime washing in residential areas.”

Earley added illegal graffiti, adhesive stickers, yard signs, and taped advertisements in the PROW were eliminated seven days a week in the MAD. “Enhance La Jolla continually watches the health and appearance of trees, as well as adding world-class hanging flower baskets to Wall Street and Girard Avenue with more to be added in 2024,” concluded Earley.

ENHANCE LA JOLLA

Passed by a 56% to 44% margin by mail ballot of residents and businesses in November 2016, Enhance La Jolla, a maintenance assessment district, is dedicated to preserving and physically improving the Village of La Jolla. Established as a nonprofit, Enhance La Jolla and its 13-member board are operated by commercial and residential property owners within the boundaries of the La Jolla MAD.

The organization’s primary goal is to help create inviting and appealing public spaces that bring people together improving quality of life. The La Jolla Community Foundation was established in 2008 to enhance the aesthetic character of the community through private investment and to create inviting public spaces to bring people together. As an affiliate of The San Diego Community Foundation, The La Jolla Community Foundation is the fundraising arm of Enhance La Jolla.

The City’s Economic Development Department oversees nine MADs, while its Parks and Recreation Department manages 55 MADs citywide. Seven of the MADs administered by Economic Development are self-managed by nonprofits.

Enhance La Jolla board meetings are held the first month of each quarter on the third Thursday at 4 p.m. For more information, visit enhancelajolla.org. To report issues needing attention within the La Jolla MAD, call 858-444-5892 or email [email protected].